>>Yhe whole thing is smoke and mirrors...
It’s not so much smoke and mirrors as a herd mentality. There’s very little diversity in the algorithms, they all make similar buy/sell decisions based on the same inputs, using the same metrics, even a lot of the code is shared.
Algorithms are lemmings, which is why there are circuit-breakers in the markets.
“Yhe whole thing is smoke and mirrors...”
I agree. The problem is, for a small potatoes guy like me, there aren’t a lot of options, (no pun intended).
P
You Bet! And BlackRock in in possession of the Keyboard.
Buy low, sell high.
No smoke. No mirrors.
Dividend stocks pay to wait it out
It doesn’t help that the market cap of the top 10 companies by market cap constitutes roughly 34% of the total stock market cap.
Top 25 companies by market cap are roughly 50%.
So there is going to be hard correlation between certain stocks and the overall indices.
There are a lot of assumptions in your post ...
The DOW, S&P 500, and NASDAQ have all pretty much mirrored each other for a very long time.
Because the whole damn thing is FAKE AS HELL..earlier today it was up almost 1,000 points based on some BS rumor about Trump having a 90 day freeze on tariffs except China, then the second the White House said “Yeah thats total baloney” the stock went back down 800 points so what does that show, its all crooked phony nonsense
All I know there is now MEGA tons of cash sitting somewhere....
Funds were pulling out their money, near the end of summer, and into the fall. Plenty of recommendations and suggestions followed that.
W. W. Granger investors pulled back, weeks ago.
“Experts” said, that Nvidia valuation was in trouble (though NVDA has a very good profit margin), while “experts” kept chirping about Boeing (BA) that is overvalued and overpriced (more than NVDA), and without a profit margin.
News headlines stirring the pot for calamity: TARIFFS! . . . that are negotiable.
Hair on fire “stock momentum” in a tailspin: Financial Engineering, “Making a Market.”
I was wondering the same thing. What’s the actual volume of sales compared to normal volume? Volume is higher than last week’s average.
You bet.
The scourge of index funds, which are programmed not to make value judgements, just go with the market trend, and with 20% of the buys and sells programmed to go with the trend of the index each day, that’s 20% of the change in the market that had nothing to do with anyone making valuations of companies - just keep the portfolio in proportionate sink with an index(es) (When the Dow Jones Industrial Index is selling down, DJIA index funds have to sell to keep in sync with the index, and if more real value traders decide to sell more, DJIA index funds have to sell more as well. )
I have a pension fund that became highly invested in index funds. Many of us recommended that index funds not have a massive share of the portfolio but be used as a hedge, while traditional investors made more traditional valuation decisions on significant parts of the portfolio. We made that argument because before the pension fund went so heavily into index funds its inhouse investment departmwent for over forty years produced returns better than than major stock market indexes. We understood the cost of inhouse investors was greater than the costs of index funds, but the history of the fund showed it had not suffered for it.
Becuase my pension fund is now weighted so heavily by index funds now, If the tariff war keeps up, my pension income could take a significant hit as early as this fall. I will survive that. But, multiply that by millions of retirees like me, the question becomes will Trump’s ability to push his agenda survive, or will economic factors cost the GOP the House and Senate in 2026. Biden lost on the economy; so can Trump. Trump needs to rapidly get real (not formulaic) tariffs agreed to, and the sooner the better.
By some measures, the market reached capitulation at today’s close, which historically has been a good buying opportunity. But...who knows?
check this out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yB_gOhxlgMc
I’ve been of the opinion that the stock market has been rigged since shortly after 9/11 (no pun intended).
The entirety of statistics on the US economy are fudged.
It’s appalling, but a correction is underway.
Absolutely. A retail investor really can’t compete with the pros, especially in times like these I watched the Dow today jump 100+, then fall 100+, and jump 100+ again all in about 10-15 seconds