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Comment by whoitwas | Hacker News Reader

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Please take a day or ten to think your decision through as emotionlessly as possible. You could seriously affect your financial health if you make this decision based on feelings that may not align with reality.

You should check out Reddit, people are talking about leaving the country, stockpiling weapons to protect their lgbtq+ family members, I even saw one women saying she was scheduling a hysterectomy so she doesn't die due to lack of reproductive care.

They are probably all just temporary dramatic outbursts, but still, everyone needs to take a breath. If you didn't have any media you probably wouldn't have even noticed the Trump -> Biden transition.

The guy literally has never conceded defeat from 2020. They marched in the capitol building with confederate flags. He has an enemies list and a clear agenda to avoid prison. He has compliant congress to back him and everyone is on board with the crazy. He won the popular vote FFS.

Yeah you wouldn't know any of that if you hadn't viewed it through a screen. The capitol insurrection had 0 effect on you other than making you angry when you saw it on TV.

This is a bad take. You're essentially making the claim that you shouldn't care about something unless it happens within your immediate vicinity or you are directly affected. Replace "viewed it through a screen" with "read it in a newspaper" or "heard about it from a friend" and the statement is more bad.

Revolutions have happened over less. The King of France lost his head because a small group of angry women marched on his palace, changing the course of history. Even if the net impact of this event is small, it is still _important_ and worthy of awareness.

Trump almost lost his head when they kept trying to assassinate him. His head almost got exploded on live TV and it was barely a news cycle. Dems joked about how they're mad the shooter missed, then went back to pretending they're saving democracy. That's so much worse than the guys walking around the capitol building and shuffling papers, yet people only remember the date of the great January 6th nothingburger because it's the one convenient to the establishment.

I clearly cannot speak to others. I can say that in my friend circles (very left) the _two_ trump assassination attempts were taken quite seriously and we were pulling up live feeds of it within 5 minutes of it being announced.

I generally don't subscribe to the "this event is more important than the news cycles let it be" thought. Its argument boils down to strawman or quickly circles to "news bubbles are a problem".

> That's so much worse than the guys walking around the capitol building and shuffling papers, yet people only remember the date of the great January 6th nothingburger because it's the one convenient to the establishment.

I don't think that's a fair characterization of the day. Security personnel were _murdered_ in the _capital building_. Six people died. President Trump himself labeled it as the "Save America Rally". The _stated_ goal was to defraud an election. I'm sorry, I don't subscribe to your view that it was an event blown out of proportion. It is very much just as noteworthy as every Revolution Precursor I have ever heard.

As an aside, I find the comparison of the Trump Assassination Attempt and the Jan 6 Uprising as if one is more important than the other is false. Both are very much reprehensible acts of political violence aimed at destabilizing the American institution. Bluntly, they both terrify me. That one seems "overblown" says more about your political beliefs than you think.

The only way to be affected by something is to physically be present for it, right.

Liquidating stock isn't like it's going to "affect financial health" if they're at an all-time high.

Sure, but will it still be considered an all-time high in a year? Will the alternative investment even beat inflation? All I'm saying is be careful. I have experience here, having parked money outside of the market for a few years because of a gut feeling that never materialized. If you don't need in the money in the short-term, the conventional wisdom is "time in the market beats timing the market".

I assume the markets will do great in the short term until MAGA takes power and starts breaking everything. I'll miss the volatility and fade any stress. I've made a bunch of money and have no worries.

Yes it will. Just because the stock market is at all time high now does not mean it must crash down.

Paying capital gain taxes will.

Yes, and after that, buying back the same stocks at a higher price because there is nothing else to do with fiat currency.

Make 4-5% in a high-yield savings account. . .

Like by having money to do things. It might be better to put it into DJT for a couple years, but careful with the risk. I'm sure the markets will be fine short term ... until they aren't. Just as it was before ... and how it is every time modern GOP has power. They crush the economy. All red states are in the shitter. Blue states swim in $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

It's also true that MAGA wrecked our economy from 2016-2020

I hope you're not basing this off of the stock market because it was the exact opposite.

The stock market is not an accurate reflection or proxy for the economy as a whole.

All time highs don’t matter if a significant and growing percentage of the population can’t afford basic necessities of life.

The HN bubble is disproportionately impacted positively when the markets are high.

He spent like crazy to pump the market, it collapsed soon after he was out of office. Dems have fixed it like always and we're at all time highs again.

yeah im perplexed with anti-trump people state sweeping facts that are easily disproven in 5 seconds of searching

idk what you mean. trump wrecked the economy with spending. he created the largest deficit in history and doubled the debt. this caused an inflationary bubble that popped and has been repaired since. now he's back to borrow more money and double the debt again

what powers does the president have to create a deficit? what specifically did he do that doubled the debt?

i ask this rhetorically, because of course the president doesn't have these powers.

i'm not defending trump, i wish he didn't win, i just think hyperbole is contributing to people wanting to support him, because people feel lied to constantly

every single bill and order he put his name on. he literally sent checks to each citizen with his endorsement. he signed off on all the spending again to reiterate. it's all on him, especially the fraud ppp loans.

you mean the checks that both parties voted unanimously for, and the act that allowed for PPP and was also voted for unanimously, is only trump's fault? we're pinning that on him when literally every single person in the senate voted for it?

can you see why this rhetoric is tiring?

He also plans to end social security and medicaire which most seniors rely on. That's terrifying and why I've already donated to charity today.

he's still bragging about the tax cuts that cost a lot. he could have negotiated or not signed the bills and orders. they did increase debt big league.

Maybe it wrecked the economy but all my US stock done extremely well over that span of time, even excluding the big crazy bump a bunch of them had over the first year of covid.

I expect the stock market to bloat like hell for a year or two at the expense of pretty much everything else.

GE did great under Jack Welch.

The Republicans strategy is the same, extract record profits and leave everything a hollowed out piece of trash

Unfortunately I agree. With things like climate policy out of the way US stocks could end up doing very well over the next couple years at the expense of future generations, and probably the world.

Its really hard to parse out why stock prices are higher when the currency has been debased so aggressively through money printing. When adding trillions each year in new money you could easily see prices go higher simply because (a) the dollar lost value and (b) most of that new money ends up in the hands of major corporations.

You can look to CPI and inflation data to say that stocks have out competed inflation, though at least right now many Republicans and MAGA supporters don't trust anything coming out of the federal government so the CPI data isn't a metric they would use for comparison.

In my experience, there's been a surprisingly large number of conservatives the last few years that deeply distrust our monetary system. Stock prices just don't mean anything with that view.

It’s because companies in the S&P 500 have pricing power, meaning they can raise their prices to outpace inflation.

Which means if their revenue growth was going to be X regardless of inflation, it’ll still be X in an inflationary environment if you adjust for inflation.

It’s really that simple. The stock market growth always outpaces CPI growth, unless Big Business is under some other kind of threat.

Since this round of inflation came from printing money, not from extrinsic shocks (although there was a brief energy shock two years ago), you’d expect the S&P 500 to outperform CPI, which it did. It’s not ^too^ mysterious.

While I get the market effects you're talking about, it still hinges on CPI as a goal post. My point was that there's a surprisingly large number of people that completely distrust CPI or any other data coming out of the federal government.

And honestly I do understand many of the technical concerns with CPI. Dig into how the calculations are made and how much room they have to manipulate numbers between changing the basket of goods and adjusting prices to account for various factors that they deem explanatory for a portion of price changes and the CPI begins to look a lot less reliable as a long term metric.

I'd suggest prices are higher 1) because they are printing money creating the illusion of wealth 2) other countries are printing money at a faster rate 3) prices on everything are high so might as well invest in the stock market 4) the next generation can't afford a house so park money in their broker for later.

I definitely agree on the first two, less sure about the later two.

Those with plenty of money may be choosing to park it in stocks, but higher prices mean more people don't have that expendable cash. I'd be really surprised if younger people feeling the most pain from housing prices have a broker at all.

I agree but if you zoom out far enough, it's always up and to the left. Always. Consider when you might actually need that liquid capital available before panic selling everything. Hedge your bets. All that jazz.

I'm pretty much panicking over another Trump presidency, but simply selling every stock you own is almost certainly a bad idea.

First, there's a pretty good chance that whatever else goes wrong the Republicans absolutely care about keeping stock prices up.

Second, even if the market does crash, having an index fund is at least a good way to insure that you more or less keep up with everyone else. E.g. it prevents a scenario where you get dropped into a worse economic situation and then left there when things eventually improve.

And buying etfs? You’re insane if you think any dip will last more than a few months. The powers that be won’t allow it.

Stocks and ETFs are the same. I don't think the markets will dip now. They will soar until they crash.

One of the finance blogs that I read published this stat yesterday:

"Here are the total returns from the past four presidential election dates:

Election day 2008 +675% (14% annualized)

Election day 2012 +400% (14% annualized)

Election day 2016 +207% (15% annualized)

Election day 2020 +81% (16% annualized)"

-- https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/11/some-things-i-dont-...

As he says in that article, "You can believe what you want to believe about politics but those beliefs have no place in your portfolio".

here's a picture of the idea https://i.redd.it/z0ok6udsg5zd1.jpeg

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