This is because a mad king and his enablers in technology are intentionally crashing the global economy so they can control the aftermath.
In completely unrelated news, a good friend of POTUS runs a struggling American car manufacturer. I think it’s called Tesla or some such?
In either case it’s really dumb but hey it’s not like we all didn’t at some point ruin an economy or two.
It would have been better if Trump gave advance notice before shaking everything up on a dime. I predict he'll reverse some terrifs without warning, thus creating another insider trade opportunity.
Of course, he's wrong, but nobody with the power to stop him is willing to call him out on it yet. It will probably take a lot of pain before they do (they being Congress).
I think I get that DJT wants to do (I live in the EU so I didn't vote for neither). Stocks are going down? VOO/VOOG/etc. going down? Good! My (small) monthly investment will buy 'so much' more. And when 'that thing' rebounds then even better.
In cases like that I feel sorry for the people who have to 'close'/sell their assets because they want to buy a house (why do people put it in the markets if they want their money out in less than 1-2 years?), or are retiring (no need to sell everything, sell small and slowly - it will rebound) and drops like this, or the COVID-time drops mess their plans.
There is no master plan other than "Trump likes tariffs".
That's it. That's all it is.
He's been talking about tariffs for decades, it's a thing that he likes, and he now has unchecked power. Hence, tariffs.
The tariffs he put in place don't even make sense. They're a Thanos snap on every country, and makes about as much logical sense as that fictional character's evil master plan did! I.e., none.
I seriously doubt Elon likes that Europe will enact retaliatory tariffs on Tesla car imports, halving his market overnight. "Yay! Less sales! Crashing stocks! Woo!"
I very seriously doubt that other billionaires -- who's net worth is tied up in stocks and bonds -- are ecstatic that these are plummeting in value. All of the Reddit memes of "they just want to buy the dip" presupposes that these billionaires all "got out of the market", converted their stocks to something like gold or Bitcoin, and will then buy back in at a multi-trillion-dollar scale. Other than Warren Buffet, nobody has done this. The market would have crashed months ago if they had all sold off simultaneously!
This is WallStreetBets nonsense.
What a moron for backing these people…
Elon is so blasted on drugs and his own fawning internet echo-chamber maga apologists I don't think he's capable of thinking that far.
Berkshire's had $334 billion cash at the end of 2024, double the previous year. This is still only 30 percent of their total assets (see link). So while there were some preparations for a major decline (perhaps more so than most companies), they are still very exposed to the market turbulence.
https://www.investmentnews.com/rias/berkshire-hathaway-is-pi...
Also because whatever Fox News says is truth to these people. They could tell people it’s raining on a sunny day and they will carry and umbrella and call people without one sheep
I honestly think he is dumb and the people he has surrounded himself with are also dumb. It’s just hard to believe that someone this dumb is the POTUS so we have to make up conspiracy theories to reason with it.
It's pretty easy to think of how they could take more effective action against Trump if they were more against Trump than they currently are.
The US government bought a lot of equities? If yes, isn't crashing the stock market bad for the government?
If no, then what does that mean, exactly? The government spends a lot of money buying stuff from companies in the S&P 500? Enough to send their prices sky high? How does crashing the stock market fix that?
In the type of consumer economy I saw "recover" after the Nixon Recession did its permanent damage, it became possible for the Feds to juice the economy more than ever (after stability was finally achieved), by adjusting interest rates and increasing spending in the right areas it would be amplified and they effectively gained more and more control of overall prosperity, more than any other one entity.
This couldn't have happened earlier until the wealth held by the government was beyond a certain ratio to that held by the combined population. In simplest terms disregarding important things like liquidity or absolute net worth. It wouldn't have been so bad except people got a lot poorer and vast opportunities were lost forever in a few short years. Government money had a much stronger seeding effect after that which was then relied on heavily ever since, but gradually squeezing the whole time.
Biden unleashed a bit of this and it still worked to some degree, just not enough people ended up feeling more prosperous before it was too late. Really helps the economy most if the ultimate beneficiaries are ordinary working people and are widely dispersed, but a lot of it does not come back to the Treasury and builds up as debt.
In a less-stable environment, increased government spending is less likely to hit its intended target, plus a great abundance of consumers have been tapped out and don't have the resources to amplify it and collectively bail out anything this time, which was the leverage that worked in the past.
1) Debt isn't bad in itself, running a deficit isn't bad in itself. (though they can be bad in some situations!)
2) The US is in the position to "fix" the debt problem in a lot of creative ways (I mean, some pro-tariff are arguing this too, right? just that the creative way is tariffs).