That comment reminds me of something funny. My dad was a database programmer, and his dad (my grandpa) was a machine shop (metal lathe) operator. A few years into his career, my dad told him about the job. My grandpa said “They’re paying you that much just to sit on your butt and type??”

Hang in there ya savages. Gotta be close to the bottom… 340-360.

Ya, just about everyone who shows up to do some work is unshaven, chubby with a soft creamy handshake

Maybe short term. But if interest rates don't slow down things are probably going to roll over even more. They're going to drain the liquidity from everything and wipe out these zombie companies.

There are like 600+ companies in the Russell 3000 that are zombie companies, just eeking by due to cheap refinances. Higher rates will probably send almost all of them under.

This is what was needed 10 years ago during the GFC, a wipeout of some bad companies. Instead we just kicked the can down the road again.

3.2% on the 10 year was the no bueno zone. It blew right past that this morning. If that doesn't stop and keeps going, there's way more downside in my opinion.

Looks like we should get a big and predictable bounce today.

Enjoy the relief rally.

First off, we're a small town, people know each other so your second paragraph has no relevance here as no one was complaining to anyone. $17/hour to work fast food? What in the hell is going on in this country right now? Where did people get the idea they can make more than health care workers in food service? You can volunteer to pay more but I won't, it's ridiculous and nothing more than virtue signaling.

Secondly, bring on automation, bring it on completely... That's the counter balance to labor who has drastically overestimated it's worth in the marketplace. Robots won't get orders wrong, they don't call in sick, they don't whine about wages, they don't take vacations, they just do the job. Period.

Jeff

You are confusing capitalism with virtue signaling, when employers cannot fill positions at the wage level they are offering, the market forces them to pay employees more. This is a good thing, it tells an employer they are undervaluing their workers and need to raise wages.

Consider a different scenario to your opinion: You are drastically underestimating the worth of employees in the marketplace and have been isolated from the market based on your location, age or profession and don't realize how much the price of goods and wages has gone up over the past 8 years. I live in a busier market and hire for entry level positions, I feel like I probably am more clued into the wage market. We start people at $16.70 and here both fast food workers and health care workers have been making alot more than you think they should for quite some time. Wages are often the slowest thing to increase after the cost of food, housing, gas, etc. have risen, but rest assured, wages have gone up, and the mass retirements that have happened during the pandemic have helped create such a need for employees that simple supply and demand is raising wages further.

I'm not sure why anyone would think this is a bad thing. We don't want Walmart employees also needing government support because they are paid so low. We don't want so many Americans living below the poverty line. We pine away for that time in the past when one man could support his wife and kids on his car factory job. And we live in an era where corporate profits and CEO paychecks reach new historic highs every year, yet the middle class is shrinking and more Americans fall into poverty, which leads to more crime and drug addiction. The route to more happiness and lower crime is through the economic success of more Americans. We should be championing higher wages, they are good for America and Americans and they are good for our economy.

CEOs do. For a long time now corporate america has been honest about how they require a desperate class of citizens to maximize profits off of. If people had less-precarious access to health care, weren't existing beneath the poverty line despite working 2-3 jobs, etc, they might get the funny idea that they have value, and that's bad for shareholders.

*spits tobacco*
*ding*
why that sounds like comusmism!!!

I can't imagine typing this and thinking that it's workers who are the problem.

I think you really have to question your moral fiber if you are spending a bunch of time whining on the internet about how entry level working class employees are overpaid and how you hope their jobs get replaced by robots. That just seems mean and un-American.

I typed like 5 different replies but none of them quite captured how ridiculous I think your post is. Do you not understand how hyper wage inflation leads to inflation everywhere and how that erosion of buying power effects literally everyone? Or are you so caught up [removed] that you can't see this?

I'll never understand [removed] when it comes to wages, ever. It's like the concept of "buying power" doesn't seem to register at all. When you let the bottom end of the wage scale go insane like it is now, the cost of goods and services will increase faster than the wages do meaning your buying power doesn't really change at all. Oh by the way you've now made everything more expensive for everyone else as a result, awesome...

So no, I don't champion higher wages. It actually hurts the lower end of the wage scale more than it helps.

Jeff

I can't imagine looking at the labor market and thinking people aren't being paid enough... But whatever.

Jeff

Is this Stock talk or Labor Talk?

Fair enough, I'll cease to discuss. My apologies.

Jeff

When was the last time you hired for an entry level position or hired anyone at all? How many staff do you manage? How big is your salary budget? I'm trying to understand how you are so out of touch with the wage market and how wages have increased over the past decade, my guess is you don't really know. I have 25 entry level hourly employees on my staff along with 15 salaried employees. My entry level positions crossed the $14 an hour mark 8 years ago... there has been no hyper wage inflation, it's been slow and steady and now is at $16.70 to start. That's only a $2.70 increase in 8 years, nothing hyper about it. You falsely believe the costs of good and services follow wages, that's wrong, the cost of good and services go up first, wages are always the last thing to increase. I don't know why you brought up politics, you have a poor understanding of capitalism and our economy and it has nothing to do with politics.

So you'd take a pay cut? Or does that only apply to those lowly workers beneath you? Do you ask for raises? Clearly you make too much money if the current economy isn't an issue for you.

In the grand scheme of things it is all tied together. You can't talk stocks in a vacuum unless you are day trading and just looking at technicals at that moment.

If someone says 'there's a problem with the market', it helps to know what their outlook on life is to explain why they think that. If someone is telling me, 'people are making enough, they should stop whining', they clearly aren't someone I'm going to listen to for stock advice because they are only looking at a narrow piece of the puzzle.

Awesome, luckily for you I'm not here giving stock tips then...

Jeff

I think his point is that when you force up the minimum wage the companies aren't eating that cost. They just kick that to the consumer, and cut costs in other areas.

What they are all forgetting is that there is a reason there is a minimum wage. Because as someone stated earlier, only hard workers built this country, not all those people working for nothing or close to nothing. While everyone's idea of 'how much is enough' is different, I don't see why anyone should be telling anyone else how much any particular job should pay. The market defines it. They love it when it works to their advantage and bitch when it doesn't. The reality is this is the first time in....well probably forever, where the employees actually have the upper hand and it really doesn't make them happy. The caveat to that though is that yes, there are some really bad/lazy workers out there, and like everything they float to the top in these situations.

I'll chime in here and say that McDonalds here has recently gone to $15 per hour. At about the same time as this raise, the order kiosks came so I am now working with a touchscreen instead of a person. The same thing is happening at the Royal Farms gas stations... more and more check out lanes at the grocery store and local Wal Mart are self checkout. So... automation is replacing these clearly replaceable workers. Congratulations! You have higher wages... if you can get that job now.

The market will be disappointed with anything less than a 0.75 rate hike tomorrow. The economy is a long way from bottoming, but keep in mind that the stock market bottoms well before the economy and tech/growth normally bounces first. I think the bottom comes before the end of the summer.

I don't think we were discussing forced min wages, but rather the market controlling wages and he not liking the wage increases the market is dictating. Colorado's min wage is $12.56 and he was complaining that Sonic couldn't find enough employees when offering $15 and hour. That's a simple supply and demand issue, and it's not because all workers are lazy and don't want to work, it's because they have better job opportunities and Sonic isn't paying enough.

Yea, but that road was already under construction before 2020. What we should be doing is stop rewarding companies for bad policy (such as, quit buying their stock) but as has been pointed out to me many times in this thread, people are just 'looking out for themselves' and trying to make money.

There are solutions to some of these problems, but we can't discuss here.

McDonalds started adding self-ordering kiosks about 8 years ago, long before they increased wages. McDonalds has been automating processes for decades and automation has been coming for quite some time across most industries... do you think it's being driven solely by entry level wages increasing? I'd bet the tech advances and the price of automation coming down also has something to do with it.

I'm scared to even touch tech any time soon until the dust settles. I am so far in the red on most of it.

I think the fed balance sheet is the wild card here, we haven't experienced this much of a load to dump. They probably won't be able to do it and I wonder how long this will go on. Also they have been chatting about the strong consumer with a large savings from the stimulus, but i think they are full of sh!t. Maybe some people stuck it away, but the spenders have long ago blown out their excess cash.

Bingo. The govt is looking at net worth and equating people saved the stimulus. They didnt, their real estate appreciated, which is unrealized gains. Thats where the household “wealth” is. But its only on paper, which means the whole figure is suspect. Wait for the margin calls to begin when people mortgaged their houses to pay for stocks and crypto, the whole house of cards will fall.

LOL, it isn't virtue signaling, it's literally how capitalism works. You've just been led to believe you're entitled for it to work in your favor.

My balance probably contributes to this problem but it is from selling my pin collection at sky high prices, not from saving....

Ugh... Sonic was an example and the situation is the same with all restaurants here...

Jeff

Companies will automate when it's feasible from a cost and technology standpoint. I hope they do automate some of those jobs, it will help the tight labor market and create more jobs in robotics and automation.

Some companies have not been paying the 'fully loaded' cost of employees for a long time (maybe ever?) and we have been subsidizing that shortfall in various ways including medicaid, housing assistance, food assistance, etc. It's about time businesses started paying enough for people to afford these things on their own. I would like to see a drastic reduction in corporate welfare programs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html

I agree - I think they need to go 0.75 or even a shock awe 1% hike.

I honestly think the market would love it.

I bought more yesterday, blue chips and oil, I'm still shying away from tech. I plan on buying every 2 weeks as I always have, but I'm not ready to jump back into tech, I think it has more to fall. I'm not great at trying to time the market, but will shift back into buying tech at some point soon.

I don't think the pressure will come off tech until we see a signal from the Fed that the end of rate hikes is at least in sight.

You can pick away but it's probably best to wait.

I saw this on Reddit and wanted to share some optimism.

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https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-rise-of-the-mutual-fund-is-reducing-corporate-competition-and-hurting-consumers

Interesting read. And stock related. Makes me feel good about picking individual stocks.

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Yeah, I'm bleeding all over, my portfolio is down approx. 38%. I feel we're headed even lower, the layoffs are just starting. I sold all of my energy stocks and keeping the proceeds in my cash account, waiting for a signal of the bottom, I think it'll come later in the year.

my guess is November

Wonder what the bounce will be in 2 hours after fed release.
If they only go 50, the rest of the day will be ugly.

That's optimistic. Thinking April 2023.

When the Fed signals an end for rate hikes - market will turn up. Always forward looking 6-12 months.

Faster rates go up the better - 0.75% should give you a nice rally this afternoon if the language is right. Less might be a disaster.

That's what the talking heads are all saying. Faster we raise, the sooner we get to rate cuts at the end of next year.

Put me in the conspiracy theory camp with a tin hat, but rates will be set up to cut not at the end of 2023, but early to mid 2024. All stops will be pulled to make the economy seem good immediately prior to the 2024 election.

Fed raising rates 0.75%. Is that about what was expected? Curious if this makes the dip take a pause, reverses the last few days, or turns this Green Day red.

That's what I read on Monday.

Yes - was indirectly relayed to the market

The Fed is way too busy keeping the wheels from falling off this bus to conspire against a political party.

I think historically the interest rate changing doesn't have a corellation to the stock market getting better or worse. But if the long term interest rate gets too high stock gains tend to end...around 1972 and the decade that followed are examples of interest rates bringing growth to a halt. I'm thinking rates above 6.5% is the breaking point. We're well below that still so likely no long term impact on stocks.

Looks like another dive on the open. Hold on to your hats!