Top Billionaires make nearly $64B in post-Trump election stock surge | Hacker News Reader

Top Billionaires make nearly $64B in post-Trump election stock surge

theregister.com

24 pointsrntn60 comments

This is an extremely low effort post. It's just a stock market surge - a lot more than 10 people benefit from them, and they are not just tied to elections.

The market also tanked a few times during his previous presidency and no one was handing him laurels for reducing inequality when they happened, so it would be silly to do the inverse.

It’s absurd that 10 people can make that much money in a couple of days. No one should have as much wealth as those 10 people do.

That's true, but you're not likely to get much support for such on a site that's basically built on capitalist ideals.

I fully expect the downvotes. America since Reagan has largely embraced the greed is good mantra. American evangelicals who profess to follow the Bible would downvote a comment that quoted the Bible by saying that the love of money is the root of all evil

>the greed is good mantra

people on this site are frequently very interested in compiler optimization, processor and instruction set optimization, faster clocks, pipelining, datapaths, effective utilization of cache, etc. etc. That's what "greed is good" means, greed drives people to try to improve, to get the most out of what they have.

The use of that line in the film was very clever, it had two meanings, but you don't seem to get the subtle one. There is nothing wrong with greed, greed is good.

what there is something wrong with is envy and jealousy; all cultures and ethical traditions recognize that.

There is nothing wrong with greed, greed is good. what there is something wrong with is envy and jealousy; all cultures and ethical traditions recognize that.

Supply side Jesus appreciates you.

greed drives people to try to improve, to get the most out of what they have.

Salk was not good at what he did because of greed. Leonardo was not great becuase of greed and being more greedy would not have made him better.

Greed is not good. All ethical traditions recognize this. Your view is pathetic. The actual Jesus does not appreciate you.

I’d like to think it was just an unfortunate reality of this period in human history that a VC fund had to do okay for HN to exist, in the same way an industrialist might patron MOMA.

Two servers and a handful of mods to run something so unique and powerful seems…cheap.

It is absurd, but also the miracle of modern wealth is that it's not a zero-sum game.

Even if you are in favor of redistributing wealth or ending extractive institutions, a rising tide raises all boats.

a rising tide raises all boats.

The analogy to tides is not apt.

A rising tide that lifts boats higher the bigger they are would be more apt.

Or even simpler, most people can't afford boats.

"a rising tide..." ummm are you paying attention to the last 40 years in the US? wealth disparities rivaling the Gilded Age

The billionaires own all the boats.

Why is this news? Also why is this hackernews! Stock markets bounce for hundreds of reasons and crash just as often. Are we going to be reading updates about Bezos's net worth every time it shifts because it seems like an excellent way to get clicks by playing into the crowd's rubbernecking instincts?

don't ask questions, just be mad.

The divide between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow. I imagine the general population on HN has 1 or more retirement/brokerage accounts, and odds are they got a bump in their accounts today.

A lot of people got no bump at all because they don't have a 401K/IRA/Brokerage account..

Edit: typo

What a way to make something good (stock market is up) into something bad.

"Stock market is up" is bad for most people. It means the effort they put into producing something didn't get paid to them, instead it got captured by a parasite. [this does not apply if wages increase proportionally, but they never do]

Now yes, if there is a real productivity boom that can be good both for people and the stock market, but otherwise they are uncorrelated.

that's not what "stock market is up" means. It means that expectations for the future have improved, and they improve for everybody, more work, higher paid work, more job security, etc.

That would be great if the "higher paid work" actually materialized in proportion to the shareholder value.

that will make sense when wages go down when the stock market goes down. the price of equities going up is the reward for putting your money at risk.

What risk? The markets have only averaged up for the last 150 years and crisis situations lead to bail outs (2008, covid).

Trump's primary economic policies are to start the mother of all trade wars and conduct mass deportations, which would have a devastating impact on the domestic economy in general and American consumer spending in particular. The only reason markets are so excited is because they don't believe Trump will actually do either of those things, at least not to the extreme degree he has repeatedly threatened.

Why do you think they would go up at all?

Because they know for certain that Republican control means tax cuts remain and more tax cuts will come. It's the only priority Republicans routinely deliver on.

Though the cuts are only permanent if you're rich or a corporation, if you're poor they expire--or rather, they choose to pass a law that also raises your back up again later when you won't expect it and might blame a different set of politicians. It's the gift that keeps on taking.

Unless you're talking about the SALT cap, which was set to expire... but maybe now not so much.

>It's the only priority Republicans routinely deliver on.

would that mean that the only priority Democrats routinely deliver on is tax increases? or are Democrats also delivering on other promises which are not being undone?

The record is mixed overall for both parties and you are free to research it. But when Republicans take power, they pass tax cuts and those cuts usually favor the wealthy and corporations overwhelmingly. Tax cuts don't first require tax increases.

contrary to what you say, and in practice if you look at the history of tax cuts, you will see that cuts are balanced by a history of tax increases, and progressive tax increases require regressive tax cuts to balance the accounts, it's simple arithmetic.

but don't lose sight of the fact that with or without the cuts, the rich pay most of the taxes

In 2021, the top 50% of earners contributed 97.7% of federal income tax revenue. The top 5% of earners — people with incomes $252,840 and above — collectively paid over $1.4 trillion in income taxes, or about 66% of the national total.

My take would be they are pricing in the likely currency expansion that Trump and his ilk will perform. Last time before the pandemic the money supply increased roughly 16% over four years.

Basically they're pricing in cheap money.

I'm guessing we'll have good stocks for a while, and then probably a bailout because of god knows what this time.

And in four years your money will be worth half again, so try to double your salary and savings. Hope I'm wrong but you know what they say about planning for the worst.

You seem rather optimistic actually.

Then we can elect a Democrat and blame the inflation on them! It's a beautiful cycle.

The president doesn't control the money supply. Though it's possible that they're banking on Trump being able to change that, as he has threatened to do.

Since the two terms before oversaw a 27% and 26% increase, why would we expect that? At most, the slope is roughly the same since 2009 to 2020, so if you factor out COVID, at best they'd see it as the baseline.

Mind boggling that musk is still so rich after buying twitter

A lot of his assets are still used as collateral for debts. I am not sure if these net worth calculators take into effect the liquidity of the wealth or how much of it is (essentially) mortgaged.

the reaction to Musk buying Twitter is such a marker of political class membership

I don't understand the optimism driving the stock market. Tariffs and mass deportations and trade wars may be good for the American economy in the long term but even Elon Musk acknowledges that they are bad in the short term.

There's also no doubt that they are terrible for the global economy. These are global companies. They only make a small part of their profit in America. A boost in profit from America will be swamped by the loss of sales in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Then there's the spectre of retaliation. When Trump slaps on his tariffs, other countries are going to retaliate. When Trump put a tariff on steel, the EU retaliated with a tariff on American icons close to Trump's heart: Harley Davidson and Jack Daniels. This time I bet the number one target will be Twitter, with Amazon, Apple & Google not far behind.

And the economy is super fragile right now. It is in no position to withstand a trade war. The yield curve has been inverted for a record 2.5 years. Yield curve inversion has always been a signal for recession. Tariff-induced inflation will limit the ability of Fed to lower rates to compensate.

I'm selling. Luckily this insane bounce has made it much easier.

I think the markets are just happy that it was a decisive outcome, so there's no risk of extended confusion and uncertainty, a J6-style uprising, or worse. If Harris had won decisively there would also have been a bounce.

How is this posted here?

By the normal mechanisms, I assume.

> Yesterday's stock market bounce after the election of Donald Trump has added billions to the pockets of the tech elite, although apparently Mark Zuckerberg failed to cash in.

I know Mark is trying to play nice but I just don't see a world where Meta gets along with this administration, Maybe if they can stay out of the news, but liberal movements better not go viral on instagram/threads or he's screwed. I think Mark is trying to be more firm about a libertarian approach to governance, and the administration is too fundamentally socially conservative, and I imagine it will be painful, because facebook is likely the size it is because of it's hands off approach. Any attempt to regulate Meta could probably dramatically impact it's userbase.

I think it'll boil down to: "If you're really my friend, then what gift do you have for me today?"

Suitcases of bribe-cash aside, Zuckerberg/Meta will have a hard time balancing regular gifts with not alienating portions of the user-base.

The FB userbase is thoroughly alienated. Same thing is happening to the site formerly known as twitter. Same thing will happen to IG in the next five years. You can't make red line go up every quarter without showing more ads, taking more deals, promoting paid posts, etc and each change drives more users off the site. No one below a certain age uses FB anymore except to keep in touch

I mean politically alienated, not just abused in a generically enshittified bipartisan fashion.

Why do people always say its just billionaires who are making money now that Trump was elected? If you had money in the market, you won too.

Got a 401K?

Dabble in crypto?

Invested in Tesla?

Invested in ANY stocks?

You ALL won:

The Trump trade is soaring as bitcoin, dollar, bond yields surge https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-trade-...

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed as much as 21 basis points to 4.48%, the highest since early July. The two-year yield — the most directly sensitive to Fed monetary-policy changes — gained nine basis points to reach 4.27%.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was up as much as 1.7%, the most in four years, hitting its highest level since November 2023. The greenback climbed against every G10 currency, including gains exceeding 1.7% against both the euro and yen.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones industrial average, and Nasdaq 100 climbed to fresh record highs.

Founder and CEO Elon Musk has been an outspoken Trump supporter. Shares of Tesla spiked as much as 15% on Wednesday on expectations the electric automaker will be a major beneficiary of Trump's presidential return.

Why is it we continually have to have this class warfare? Its not just the ultra wealthy benefiting here, its everybody. Whatever happened to the "rising tides lift all boats" mantra? Its like people can't seem to get out of their way with their hatred for a man who just by winning an election set the markets on fire again in a single day.

Isn't that GOOD thing regardless of what party he represents? Its just unreal people continually cannot see the forest for the trees.

“Everyone” skips the ~83% of folks who have no exposure to any of these. Get clue.

I think because people see that the top 1% own 50% of stocks, so it's distributed unevenly.

If you invested in private prison stocks, you've made +42%, even more than Tesla!

> Whatever happened to the "rising tides lift all boats" mantra?

Even within the metaphor, most don't own boats, most of the boats aren't seaworthy, and most people can't swim.

Are you stupid? Most people don't have any money invested in anything.

Nice leftist spin!

No one need hold any will towards these people. They worked hard and reap the reward, and we get to reap the rewards too. Woke up the last two days to lovely bounces in my portfolio.

ZIRP was great for my portfolio as well, we should do that again!

I'm sure someone will decide, but America's markets doing well is good for everyone. Not sure why this is controversial.

Hell yea brother, as long as the line goes up, everything is good.

Spending money at a restaurant that is on the stock market helps those with stock. Spending money at a local restaurant helps the local community. Restaurants on the stock exchange actually symphony out money from the local economy. The stock market is not an overall indication of a good local economy.

I go local and try not to buy products and services from organizations on the stock market, when I can.

> America's markets doing well is good for everyone. Not sure why this is controversial.

Tossing off that second sentence so casually is what makes me concerned I've fallen for satire.

"After the news, the markets rallied by 10%, led by Confederated Slaveholdings, Missiles & Munitions, Plague Insurance, and Broken Window Fallacy Repair. This rise was only slightly tamped-down by sharp losses like Affordable Health Centers and the Lead Substitutes Laboratory. As all of our viewers are aware, high market numbers are good news for everyone--yes, even that homeless guy under the overpass--and I simply can't imagine how anyone could object to such a simple universal truth."

__________

P.S.: Or, for those who need things spelled-out, some of the independent problems with that claim are:

1. Average stock price goes up does not mean every stock price goes up.

2. A stock price going up is only good for some people.

3. Investing more into a company that repairs/treats a problem doesn't mean suffering is going down.

4. Some activity is actually making harm on other people, especially if there's an imperfect justice system or externalities.

5. Marginal good is not holistic good. Serfs getting more food-scraps from the king's feasting is obviously better than fewer food scraps, but perhaps there's something even better than expanding the kingdom.

That sounds a lot like the "I've got mine", just without the rude first-half.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com