The past two weeks have been very volatile, with a new dynamic. Recent polls show Biden with a huge lead over Trump, and many of these recent moves are starting to price in a Biden victory.

Wall Street Quietly Begins Warning About A Biden Presidency

Both candidates say that they are for the working class over Wall Street.

Watch Wall Street to see which one they know is lying.

Yippeeee.

It feels weird to be celebrating "only" 11.1% unemployment.

But it's all relative with the context :)

I just sold everything

I think things are going to get pretty bad in the next month or two

I agree. But trying to time this stuff is pretty risky--even moreso than normal.

I'm not good enough to time the market.

Assuming you don't need the funds in the short term, plenty of time for it to recover. I'm "hodoring" so I don't miss out on any positive returns.

The markets are going to crap themselves with joy when we get that definitive virus vaccine headline. And a vaccine doesn't mean the end of COVID, but, it seems more and more likely every day that it's going to be pushed out within 4-5 months. China's already using theirs on their military.

There will be a long road of recovery still in the economy after that, but, I think it will be a differently mentality entirely when recovery is happening and in sight.

I think it is a very dangerous time to be in the market. A lot of Fear of Missing Out going on.

Maybe I listen to too much Dave Ramsey but I'm staying the course with my investing.

And the underlying fundamentals feel like they should be going south quickly, right? I mean, who has "no business for a month and decreased business for an extended period of time" in their business plan?

SI

It's gaining 5 yards on 2nd and 23.

Anyone else play the EV stock hype the past couple of weeks? I realized around 400% profit the past few days, mainly on WKHS. Rolled some of the profits into twenty October $20 calls to see if the trend continues.

Looked up WKHS, looks way too risky for my risk profile!

We do have a little bit of Tesla stock and that has been on a roll.

My riskiest investment is a small position in SPCE. Thinking long term (10-20 years) I'm thinking of increasing it some because of the recent success of the private sector.

I think with the stimulus coming and positive news on vaccine testing, the market should be OK through the summer.

I could see a dip after the election - Trump will be trying to prop up the market to win. So, if (hopefully when) he loses, I could see a small selloff - especially if the vaccine is slow in coming out.

One stock item - today is the first day most of the big bank/owners of Nikola can sell the shares they got at $10 a share. I think over 50 million shares have been marked as "sellable" by these institutions. Given that would amount to a 500-600% profit, I expect many of the places like Fidelity to exercise that option. That could cause the price to dip 30-40% next week.

Strange days indeed.

Las Vegas home prices hit new record in June amid pandemic

Yeah, go Gilead and remdesivir. Keep up with the good progress & news. Good way to end the week.

Yeah, go Moderna & AstraZeneca. Keep the good news coming.

Futures up +434 or 1.6%

It is crazy there is that much activity there, it has been a steady, albeit small decline in Phoenix

You guys always have such high fluctuations in price, up and down. In suburban Cincy prices are still rising steadily, but we never change by more than 5% up or down in any given year. You're never going to flip for a 50 or 100% gain here, ever.

Alright you stock watcher professionals/amateurs, care to make a guess on what the market will do with the seemingly inevitable second wave, uncertainty about the next relief bill, elections coming up etc.?

I honestly don't know but I've got a nice refund coming and wondering if I buy into the market or keep it in cash.

I'm leaning towards adding to my core VDIGX and SCHD (I'm a dividend growth strategy guy).

My guess is that it will do something unpredictable.

Tough earnings report for the company today:

The most difficult financial quarter in our 94-year history, with a net loss of $1.6 billion, and an adjusted net loss of $2.6 billion. Total operating revenues were down 87.1% year-over-year, on an 87.8% decrease in capacity year-over-year.

So I use Robinhood for small local stock purchases. With the CZR merger I bought some when it was low and now it's listed at the merger price and it says it's no longer active. Grabbed at avg price of $3.75.

Does this mean I just sell my shares or is it being converted to a new stock involving El Dorado (I thought they were keeping the name with the stock conversions according to conf calls). According to Robinhood this stock is no longer active there.

It all depends on the terms of the acquisition. You should get a cash payment (as in, if it's private) or shares in the new company, but as I said, it's all in the terms. Might take a while to settle.

1.4 million new unemployment claims in mid-July. The weekly number never broke 700k during the Great Recession.

And the GOP is getting fixated on cutting off federal spending. Economically, this can still get worse.

GOP members of Congress are anticipating a President Biden.

I wish that the Dem members of Congress would do the same thing.

We don't know who's going to win in November, but Biden right now is more likely than not.

The Dems should anticipate the very real possibility of winning the presidency but not gaining the Senate. They should refuse to sign any relief bill right now that does not include automatic stabilizers. The economy should gets the help it needs until it no longer needs it. And neither party should be allowed to hold it hostage. The GOP is already tightening up on the possibility that a Dem might win. What do we think they are going to do if a Dem does win?

The news over the weekend made it seem actually likely that this stimulus bill would expire without a replacement.

The markets are unmoved.

Either they anticipate that this is just politics and that a compromise will be reached. Or they just don't care about a stimulus being passed one way or the other.

(There's also a bit of both ways causation here. If the markets tanked on anticipation of no stimulus, that would inspire Congress to pass a stimulus to stop the bleeding. But if the markets seem OK, then that reduces the pressure to pass a new stimulus.)

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

SI

GDP -32.9% for the quarter. Futures are "only" down -236 or .89% so figure much was already factored in.

I've had a pretty good run the past couple of months, up over 60% on my personal portfolio. I've mostly just been day trading the same 3-4 stocks - very little tech. I rarely hold anything over night but I would be up substantially more if I had the guts to do that.

https://imgur.com/WybL3Vo

That's annualized (as in they project what would happen in the next three quarters if they continued on the same path). GDP is down 9% from quarter to quarter. It's still scary as fuck, mind you.

Thanks for the clarification.

Yup, still scary as fuck.

I am sure there is a legit strategy here but I don't understand Apple's 4-to-1 split. Supposedly up 5.8% or so after hours because of this.

I'm not complaining, I know my MAGA stocks (Apple, Google, Amazon) has helped me for the past 4-5 months. And I believe Apple will continue to do well with next gen iPhone 12.

Rooting for them to be first $2T company. Well deserved for shaping the market the past 12-13 years and understanding what we want even before we know what we want.

Now the next few weeks are going to be especially volatile. In all senses of the word.


No unemployment insurance

No Stimulus. (yet)

No eviction protection

Continued partisan fracturing (The President's sending federal forces into multiple cities, continued perceived-as-racist moves (I'm not going to go into whether they are by-the-book to everyone as definition of racist, I'm just going to say "perceived as racist by at least a significant minority to a majority of americans)

The hottest weeks of summer.

The high levels of COVID-19 cases

A lot of people will have no money to spend. A lot of people could be out on the streets. During a health crisis. During the hottest time of year. During a time of inflamed racial tensions.

What I'm trying to say is.. if you can't stand volatility in the stock market, stay far away from it. In fact, if you can't stand volatility in the news, now may be a very good time to stop doom-scrolling your phone :)

And election season is the season of bad causation analysis by the media.

"Markets went down almost 5% today in response to the President hinting that he might fire Dr. Fauci . . . "

"Markets rose this morning on overnight news that Joe Biden has settled on Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential pick"

"Markets responded well to Vice President Pence's speech today in which he laid out a plan to end what he termed 'urban violence' in America's cities."

Splitting the stock makes it easier for small investors to buy in and then hopefully continue to push the price higher. It's much easier financially and mentally for an average person to buy a share at $100 than $400. I mean what regular person could afford a share in Berkshire Hathaway at $290k but if they had split the stock over and over again throughout time lots of us would buy in at $100 a share.

I have to say that I am really happy that I let my money ride in my investments. I don't know how it's up as much as it is considering where the world is at, but if I had taken money out, I would have lost a bit of growth and opportunity. The market disconnect is clearly driven, in a big chunk, by government spending to prop the economy up and the advance of negotiations on another stimulus. But what happens afterward?

Probably a vaccine or another stimulus.

Dems and GOP starting to play a bit of blame game "If the other side won't make a deal, then that's their fault," which seems to indicate that a second stimulus is less likely than it was a few days ago.

Markets seem unmoved, which means they don't care or they remain confident that it is coming.

I still think that the GOP has too much to lose to walk away with no stimulus. I think they are just flummoxed that the Dems seem to understand that and are negotiating from that position of strength.

I assume you are investing for retirement, so it is always smart to just sit on things.

The market is going to recover. It is just matter of time.

I'm not an expert though. This is stuff people who know what they are doing tell me, so...

I am sure that there's lots of numbers on this, but I wonder how much passive buy-and-hold investors affect the market.

For decades, lots of us have been getting the (good) advice of "find a low cost index fund, set up automatic contributions, and don't even think about it until ~10 years from retirement when you might want to start slowly converting to safer investments."

It occurs to me that, as much as I notice the markets as a news story, all of our invested money is in retirement account or college account index funds. I haven't even contemplated changing the balance of those.

Do the active institutional investors still have the power to move the markets like we think they do? Or is there a point at which there will be a disconnect between the underlying equities and their value based solely on so many people passively owning index funds?

Yes, and that's why it hasn't been touched. I have 20 years to go. But even that aside, I'm up almost 9% ytd. That's hard to fathom given the state of things.

I was talking with someone about how many small businesses are cancelling their retirement match. I wonder if, in dollar terms, we'll see enough to hurt the market over the next year.

Then you factor in the potential for Biden and the d's to win and it'll start to flag heavy. trump will point to the market and say "see, they love me! Look how bad it's going to be with Biden! Only I can run the country."

The Fed will print another trillion and pump it into corporate ETFs.

lol

Fed Discloses More Corporate Bond and ETF Purchases - WSJ

Although the unemployment rate is at 12% right now, the housing market continues to chug along. The inventory of homes for sale remains below average, which has helped to stabilize the market.

The Great Recession of 2008 hit all sectors of the economy, and the unemployment rate was high among nearly all occupations. The big difference in the pandemic is that a high percentage of people who are out of work are blue collar/hourly wage employees who tend to be renters. The people who are qualified to buy homes tend to have jobs that have adapted to telecommuting, and a much lower percentage of these people have lost their jobs so far.

It remains to be seen if this stability in the housing market can continue until a vaccine is readily available in early 2021.

Wow, Vic. That is a good point I have not thought about. My business is very much tied to real estate, and I have been surprised at the volume of sales still going on. The difference in the job situation between owners and renters does make sense.

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We fell into that category and decided to make the jump in May after looking off and on for a couple of years because we didn't think we'd ever beat the 2.99 rate we were offered.