I have no idea how while Trump is a) ripping out the underpinnings of constitutional law which, in turn, is all that holds up all other laws (including transactional) in the US AND b) ripping apart the post war Western defense alliance leaving Europe and Australia completely exposed and vulnerable AND c) going to impose global reciprocal tariffs, which are going to kill trade and plunge the country and the world into the greatest economic depression (coincidentally) since the 1930's, how the market isn't down 75% - 90% by this point. Hopes & Dreams? Hallucinogens? Heroin?
What power on earth is allowing Hedge Funds, Banks and Small Investors the justification to keep betting on an underlying business system which is literally being pulled apart at the seams with no real hope of being functional shortly. How is this happening. It's like I'm taking crazy pills every day. The market should look at what Trump's already done (much less what he still promises to do) and say, whoop that's us, we're audi, this is insane, we can't trade our value as a corporation any longer, we don't know where supplies, labor, administration, distribution, sales, or any law governing any of it stands, we have to pull all our monies out, and put them someplace safe like our pockets.
What is happening to keep the market propped up, when literally everything, everywhere that it needs for stability in projected earnings is being hollowed out beneath it?
edit 2/20 : lol edit 2/21: lol
The stock market is up because nothing has fundamentally changed. Tarrifs are only going to hurt the consumer.
The stock market is based on value extraction and as long as everyone keeps on working and consuming at reasonable level it will continue to hum along just fine.
Some markets and industries will be harmed by this the tarrifs but these are small fractions of the overall economy. There is also a ton of uncertainty since Trump has a tendency to pull back any measure that affects the market averages.
The pain will be felt by workers and consumers but people have to work and we cannot stop consuming so affected workers will ultimately shift to new places and consumption will shift to new products and the skim will continue.
Global markets aren't going to get shaken up because the global market is incredibly resilient. Prices will quiver for a bit but in the long run they will simply route around us and new normals will emerge.
The only way things change is if the people cause it to change. Either accidentally or on purpose. But the change has to be sudden and swift because there are tons of levers built into the system to force us to participate.
Something like national strike might not be enough unless it can be sustained indefinitely and it's not clear how that could occur. I suspect will take several events each gaining the momentum of the last and there is little chance of a first event for occurring.
The stock market is indicating it doesn't think we have the fortitude and despite what we may want to be true, they know a lot about us and our patterns. Our predictability is to their profit, literally.
People don't have to work. This is the assumption the entire house of cards is built on. Those at the top need you to work so they realistically don't have to.
People have to work to live. They're working to make money to buy food at the grocery, or at the other end of the spectrum, they're working by hunting and gathering food.
I'm excluding people with enough wealth to buy their food indefinitely from this discussion. At global scale, not many people are in that category.
We're not there yet. The problem is as we approach it, they just skim more so we will reach a point where we should barely need to work but won't know it.
That skim is how the stock market keeps going up in ways that make no sense to the workers. They've figured out how to profit regardless of the struggles of the working class.
As it stands today, we could probably survive by working one day per week, likely less. The amount being skimmed is that insane.