STOCK MARKET WATCH - Thursday, 18 March 2021

[Tansy_Gold]

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Thursday, 18 March 2021

Previous SMW:
SMW for 17 March 2021




AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 17 March 2021


Dow Jones 33,015.37 +189.42 (0.58%)
S&P 500 3,974.12 +11.41 (0.29%)
Nasdaq 13,525.20 +53.64 (0.40%)

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Market Condit*ions During Trading Hours:

Google Finance
MarketWatch
Bloomberg
Stocktwits

(click on links for latest updates)

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Currencies:











Gold & Silver:






Petroleum:

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DU Economics Group Contributor Megathreads:

Progree's Economic Statistics (with links!)
mahatmakanejeeves' Rail Safety Megathread
mahatmakanejeeves' Oil Train Safety Megathread

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This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.

[Warpy]

1. I wonder how much bigger this stock bubble is going to get before it pops

and what will trigger it. It's like waiting for a thunderstorm to break on a hot, muggy August afternoon.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. It's scary

I have no skin in the stock market game, but obviously I keep an eye on the big numbers.

Over the years I've hung around this board, and especially since my infamous rant against Obama's financial transition team in 2008, I've watched the balloon inflate bigger and bigger with more than a little concern. I hesitate to say anything, because I think there are at least some folks here who **do** have a vested interest.

But . . . how much of the "wealth" of our billionaires is all on paper? How much of their billions would disappear if the market crashed? More important, how much of their physical, tangible assets would enter some kind of limbo? Okay, so Bezos is putting 35 bathrooms into his mansion, and a big drop in the market won't halt his spending or even put a dent in his obscene fortune. But what really **would** happen to the physical assets? Are there mortgages/loans against properties that would be liable to foreclosure or anything like that?

What about the mega-churches? What about the mere millionaires?

I don't expect answers; my questions are pretty much rhetorical. But maybe, if some of the tax proposals go through over the next year or two, and if -- **IF** -- there's a true correction in the market, there will be some answers and they might not be pretty.

[Warpy]

3. The problem is that a large crash tends to take everything else with it

as the cascade of unpayable debt causes banking and business to come to a screeching halt.

[Tansy_Gold]

4. But . . . .

. . . .the bubble is unsustainable, isn't it? And that's not a rhetorical question.

If it's **not** sustainable, what happens? How do we get out of it?

I've believed for a long time that the stock market is essentially a Ponzi scheme, where the Buffets and Bezoses and Gateses, etc., keep sucking in money EARNED by others through what used to be termed "work." Workers/labor don't even have a choice;the system sucks the money out of them. The health care system is rigged against them. The financial system is rigged against them. The education system is rigged against them.

And does that ultimately mean a crash, with its cascade of economic failure, is not only inevitable but also the only hope we have for ever getting out of systemic economic strangulation?

[Warpy]

5. It's not sustainable at all and there will be a crash, getting out of it

is no longer a real possibility. Once Dumdum passed that ruinous giveaway to the rich and the corporate and then refused to let the shakier hedge funds go under in 2020, plus offering corporations huge amounts of cheap debt that they've been using to buy back their own stock, I'm afraid the game was up. Tweaking the system won't work and the sweeping changes that have been necessary for the last 30 years will not be allowed to take place.

Only complete fools predict the timing and the trigger, but seeing an unsustainable system, especially a relatively unregulated capitalist one, and calling it out is perfectly sensible.

Generally speaking, such systems sink in oceans of debt. We're certainly there.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. I take it you mean . . .

. . . "getting out of it" as in avoiding it, rather than surviving it after it happens. Right?