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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

Bad quarter for certain, but to keep things in perspective, the S&P is still up 13% over the past 12 months (likely 14% as soon as the market opens in 20 minutes). There's nothing magical about a "quarter". Had Q1 2025 ended 4 days later, it would have been significantly worse than this, but then the market went on to have a huge rally after that.

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Well the thing is -- when you have rampant inflation, the cost of everything in USD goes up -- be it houses, eggs, or even stocks. So when you subtract out how much the value of the USD has gone down relative to other currencies it's basically another 10% drop.

Eggs are pretty cheap right now. Housing and healthcare are why Americans struggle with affordability. Food, gas, etc. are all just drops in the bucket.

Eggs may be cheaper than when they were during culling/avian flu, but food sure isn't. Where I am most grocery items are now 50-70% more expensive than last January. The milk I buy weekly at the grocery store has increased 67% since then. Beef is roughly 50% more, and I haven't even had steak since late 2024 at this point. That isn't sustainable.

> Beef is roughly 50% more, and I haven't even had steak since late 2024 at this point.

Sadly, the nebraska wildfires guarantee that situation isn't getting better anytime soon (and may actually get worse).

Post-Covid I was shocked that skirt steak was $17/lb at my grocery store. Today it is $19/lb.

Why did you go to 'eggs'? -- An avian flu issue, not an inflation issue. We're struggling not just because of healthcare or housing but because everything is being optimized/maximized for value extraction. Variable pricing, rampant plagiarism, counterfeiting, fraud in every industry, in every political office. the stocks are being propped up with the promise of value that has circular investing, monopolies are basically encouraged. Gas and food is relatively benign even with shrinkflation and petrol dollar (not for long) preference.

It's not the biggest expense, but adding another $100 a month to gas when Americans are already relying on debt to cover bills doesn't spell a good omen.

A year ago was exactly the market bottom due to tariff drama. 13% up from that isn't exactly a shining achievement.

Go back another couple months to when Trump took office and the total gains have been ~3.5%. A couple more random missile strikes and it'll go into the negative.

The only people making money in today's market are those with insider info about US economic and military actions (aka Trump and his associates).

SPX performance since 2024, with all the AI hype, was 32%. Gold was 155% in the same period.

Even if you ignore this disastrous quarter, SPX is up mostly in nominal terms only.

> There's nothing magical about a "quarter".

There isn't. But everyone knows the US stock market is about run off a cliff. Or rather, it already has.

Everyone is looking at the quarters because they're waiting for Wile E. Coyote to look down.

What's that old saying?

Be greedy when others are fearful, or something like that?

Do bear in mind the context of that Buffett quote is to not blindly chase market sentiment and the numbers, neither directly nor inversely; Berkshire Hathaway's got quite the pile of cash right now.

Never heard that one, but my off the cuff thought was "sounds like something a so-far-lucky gambling addict would say".

I have a feeling Warren Buffet would accept that label, with a chuckle and a smirk!

But I also think Buffet wouldn't characterize the current environment as particularly fearful. We haven't seen a whole lot of panic aside from a couple 1-2% daily swings, which is nothing.

That’s why I really don’t like these stats… they’re pretty meaningless.

“S&P had its worst X since Y”

Worst quarter in four years. Worst week since 2018. Worst 3 days since 2008.

It’s all kind of silly.

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