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Comment by gargs | Hacker News Reader

High corporate profits and high inflation are all a result of government's fiscal policies, though. The point is that this is not just because Wall Street has had a mood swing.

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You can also attribute those to supply chain issues. Government fiscal policy can't be the scapegoat for issues affecting the entire world (not arguing they don't have influence).

That's very true, but in the end fiscal policy is how the government regulates corporate profits (taxation) and inflation (spending/social security/subsidies). Before the supply chain issues, inflation was on no one's mind and the primary concern was a recession caused by the virus. So, governments pumped unseen amounts of money into the economies to keep them chugging, this after they'd not pulled back from the stimulus that was put into effect after the 2008 recession.

High corporate profits?

Are we looking at different stock markets?

What does corporate profits have to do with the stock market?

High corporate profits = higher share price ???

Actual profit is a backwards looking statistic, stock prices are a prediction of future profits.

"stock prices are a prediction of future profits."

No better prediction of future profits, than current profits.

If that was true you wouln’t see such wildly different P/E ratios. Current profit isn’t irrelevant, but it doesn't tell you much especially if the company just lost money.

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