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Comment by hanoz | Hacker News Reader

I'm convinced that the markets, which, let's remember, were high on the hog all throughout the obvious impending catastrophe of this virus sweeping in from the east at the beginning of this year, until the moment reality was shoved in their faces in the form of an outbreak in Italy, have not yet absorbed the enormity of the long tail of this pandemic and the lockdown.

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What percent of public stocks are owned by funds in 401K accounts? Remember, price is driven by supply and demand. So long as there are more buyers than sellers the prices are going to keep rising. People blindly put money in funds every month. fund managers have to spread it around. Or in the case of index funds spread it by fixed formula. Sure there are good/bad companies and good/bad times, but so long as people keep pushing money in things will generally go up.

If CoViD had put white-collar people out of work, there wouldn't be any buyers and things would tank.

This is overly simplistic and, pretty damningly given the topic, fails to account for the market drop between Feb 20 and Mar 20.

When the traditional investors (as opposed to the automatic ones) sold in volume?

I think this is a great point. Retirement dollars come in a steady stream and but a consistent bid in the market. If that money flow stops, what are the implications for that buying impact. You could dig further and look at unemployments rise and see whether those who have lost their jobs typically save for retirement.

It did put white collar people out of work.

That is....one long sentence

Very tangentially, my favourite long sentence book is The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez. It was very hard to put down, not because it would've been especially gripping, but because I'd like to pause at end of a chapter, or at the very least at end of a sentence, and those sentences just went on and on for page after page.

Is it a worse place to put your money than USD or housing? Where do you suggest we put our investments?

Fair point. It is difficult to fairly price a thing in terms of a debauched currency.

Not giving official financial advice here because I would need to understand your individual circumstances, but if you have the view that equities on the whole are going to fall, you can buy bonds, uncorrelated assets (think gold, but calculate the correlation yourself), low beta stocks, delta-neutral option strategies

There’s really a lot you can do

Bonds when interest rates are near zero?

Corporate bonds, not treasurys

VLGSX(Vanguard Long-Term Treasury Index) has actually had really good ytd returns. Dunno how long it will last.

If you expect equities to fall, zero sounds real good.

The problem is timing markets is extremely tenuous business. You may correctly time the downturn, but you may miss an opportunity when the economic picture improves. Missing just 10 good days over a span of 14 years can have an enormous impact on your returns [1].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-crash-will-come-and-thats-ok-...

Missing just 10 bad days can improve your fortunes too. But hey, if you keep putting money on the blackjack table you're bound to make some money eventually. As long as you don't need that money for anything, the stock market is harmless entertainment. But as a small-time investor, I remember that the house always wins.

> remember that the house always wins.

In a casino, it's the impetus of the establishment to make money. In the stock market, it's the impetus of the shareholders to make money. If the house always wins[1], shareholders are the house.

1. This is a tenuous metaphor for the stock market--true in the US over long periods of time, but perpetual growth is not guaranteed.

In the case of equities timing, imo the house is not the shareholders, it's the investment bankers, hedge funds, and other major traders.

Right. My ability to trade as a small investor is after all of the quants and algorithms take their cut trading the noise of the market. Meanwhile I have an account I can look at a few times a day at most. And then I have most of my assets 401(k) that can trade once a day, at most, at a time chosen by the company the next day in funds chosen by the company.

I'm new to it myself, but I have noticed that BTC has recovered completely.

Cash? Deflation is coming?

bitcoin, just make sure you sell it after the next big rally that all the money printing sparks

> ... have not yet absorbed the enormity of the long tail of this pandemic and the lockdown.

I keep seeing retrospective rationalizations on Reddit saying the market "is priced in" based on a perceived mismatch between market gains and reality. I don't understand how this is true when each corner yields something unexpected.

Or they might have and are now so distorted by Fed money. You can't underestimate the power of govt money, especially in an election year.

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