This is starting to remind me more and more of the late 80's.
Higher taxes will almost certainly have to come within 5 years to offset the debt that is building.

Correct. TARP made the government around 15 billion in profits.

Looks like all their bailouts combined back then made a profit of 121 billion:

https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

So that would be dozens of dollars?

Iceman is 100% right with don't fight The Fed.

All I can say is that Trump and company know how to "stretch a dollar."

First, it is announced that all kinds of money is going to be pumped into the economy.

But it will be 3 weeks or so before the money can start flowing.

Then the country is going to be open for Easter April 12.

Then 4-12 gets pushed back to 4-30.

And now today's announcement.

This makes me wonder what they will come up with next.
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Nobody has got an unemployment check yet. Some states' antiquated systems do not seem to be up to the task.

No small business owner has gotten any money, yet.

People cannot pay their rent. And landlords are not being very forgiving. There will be riots in the streets over this.
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So far, it is all words from the government. I am not knocking it. It has been a nice game plan, IMO.

Half the time the world is managed with bullshit. But the absolute last thing you want is for your leadership to run around acting like its hair is on fire--even if it is on fire.

You can agree with what is gong on, or you can disagree, but I must say that I am impressed, for the most part, with how it is being handled. There is no room for Monday Morning quarterbacking because a new play book is being written every day.

They'll also use this to fuel the argument that we can no longer afford "entitlements" like social security and medicare, even though the government can pull $2 trillion out of its rear end every couple of weeks.

I Accidentally put this in the 'rona topic:

Coming in 2022:

There should be plenty of SS money with all of these old-timers dying off. But some 95 year old dude checking out is not much help; He has already bled the system dry It needs to be the 62 to 70 years old passing on without having the time to have collected too much.

This debt is borrowed at such low rates the runway will be much longer than 5 years. A few trillion here or there is nothing these days. LOL

And btw, that's the actual COST of saving 60,000 people. Not to be crass or insensitive.

But undoubtedly, if you aren't taking advantage of doing Roth Conversions while taxes are on sale, up to the 24% marginal bracket, then you can't see the higher taxes on future RMD train coming down the track!

Plan accordingly, we have done a ton of Roth conversions for clients that are eligible, not beyond the 24% income bracket, pay taxes while equities are down AND get the tax free ride back up.

KPG is long now! Blew through 23,700 resistance. All in brother?

Probably tens of thousands more than that in the country. Hell, maybe that many just in NY. What do you think would have happened without shutting down NYC?

Crass?

My understanding is that I cannot convert to a Roth in the TSP. I also am not sure how that would help when I am making a lot of income now as compared to when I would be retired and only getting a small pension and social security and a very low tax bracket in comparison.

Once again the government is playing market god. Iceman is so right, never fight the Fed! How many billionaire and millionaire insiders knew this was coming, which explains the irrational move up for the last 5 trading days. This is what you call buying an election with tax payer money and the average American is too stupid to understand it. We will have low interest rates for eternity and a 30 Trillion dollar debt load. We are setting up the greatest bubble in history.........Damn I hate all politicians both the Democrats and Republicans. What ever happened to fiscal responsibility.

Claiming bankruptcy is considered 'genius'. That's what happened.

What I can’t wrap my head around is that we are literally in a National Emergency but it feels like the markets sold off harder at the beginning of 2019.. still trying to figure out what makes this shit tick.. I am guessing it is unknowable.

I will say I can't see all the people out of work dumping more money into the market right now...so what's left?

It has to be all the big money institutions guiding the market. They are the ones with market changing money amounts. They do this for a living and us average Joe's are just along for the ride unfortunately.

You're referring to the 'if everyone says things are great, get out?' 'if everyone says the sky is falling, get in?'

I'm not clear on which of these we are....seems pretty split...

Everybody posting but Ice is on the sidelines waiting for it to go down. That doesn't sound contrarian to me. That money on the sidelines should act as support on declines.

Oh, like my folks. So for the long term gain of the federal govt, we need to bring back smoking.

I bailed on OXY today, bought at $13.30 and sold at $17.91.. I will look to rebuy later.. thanks for the tip KPG

I wrote that post in jest. Figured it would worth some thumbs down.

Boy, was I wrong.

Oil...So uh..hooray for price fixing? smh... I know there's lots of oil lovers out there, but this is bull.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/opec-agrees-deep-oil-output-151440841.html

OPEC has always manipulated oil prices. We're only a few weeks away from running out of storage worldwide for the oil being pumped.

I said somewhere the other day that, after 40 years of the U.S. driving at OPEC to keep the prices down, that we are now partners with OPEC and Russia to get the prices up. It is jobs, of course, but more importantly, it is the 38 electoral votes that the state of Texas holds.

The whole thing started when Russia would not cut back because Putin wants the US to cut back, as well. Can't say I blame Putin. Why should he cut back just so the U.S. can keep pumping?

So, now that the U.S. is exporting oil we will be the new partner with OPEC.
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Best week for the DOW in 82 years (and it was only a 4 day week).

US needs to cut back too, but I don't think the individual companies can legally agree to as that's price fixing. Maybe they will do it with a wink and a nod.

Yeah, i've seen El Erian's commentary the prior several weeks. I wish i would have heeded his warning at the outset of this downturn. He's been pretty silent since the end of March.

Allianz keeps a tight conservative reign on Pimco and subs, it's their German nature . "Bond King" Bill Gross found out the hard way, but his arrogance did him in and El Erian ultimately won that battle.

I like Santoli, he had a good chart on the S&P today. Pointing to a breakout above this level, but, i'll believe it when i see it. I'd prefer some consolidation and side ways action or a drifting lower.

We are about to get quarterly commentary from these companies, the problem is it might be meaningless, except in the case of Disney's recent type news, they are all pulling their "forward guidance".

3rd and 4th quarters we pull out of the "technical recession" dramatically. It seems so far away and fear and panic still grip this country and the markets. That should create further opportunity. We shall see!

Have a great weekend fellas!

That's what I was just looking at, the movement this week (and even last) is massive....

I went to 100% cash in my and my wife's Roths at the close. They were pretty conservative and they were back to flat on the year with this weeks move. Planning to switch those from mutual funds to ETFs in the coming weeks for more flexibility.

Other accounts are still pretty close to fully invested. They've recovered about 75% of their losses now. I used this week to raise a little cash and sell a ton of calls against most of the holdings in those accounts. I feel better than I have since February now. At the lows on that Monday two weeks ago I was down about $175k.

Oh shit.. market closed tomorrow? I didn't even think about that. It doesn't really affect me too much, I'm just picking days to make contributions to kid's college accounts. I wish I had more money to throw at stuff for fun.

The best that money can buy!

Sold my RRGB stake for a 1% loss and bought oxy at the close. Still holding on to CBRL. At a 10% loss there but Its something I think Id like to keep.

Hope no one really did cash out their 401k (or even switch to safer investments with 5+ years to work) when the DOW was around 18,000 as these past two weeks prove why such an action is not advisable.

This rally is impressive, mostly because the key stock market driver over the last few years has been stock buybacks. Those are dead now. So it’s all the fed for the time being.

Every country is in the same boat. “How we pay for it” is the same way we paid for it during the last crisis. Higher debt to GDP. The entire world is basically Japan now. It sucks because this means we won’t see investment in infrastructure or anything that really adds value... just a more fragile economy in more debt at the end of the day.

Not at that level but right around here. Looking for a pull back to get back in.

starting to look like covid is not going to be as bad as first expected. devil's advocate.... what if there is no major pull back, when would you get back in?

questions like that make me hold forever and keep on buying regularly.

I think a couple people posted that they did. Go read through the thread 20-25 days ago. Hopefully they got back in.

Does anyone think that the S&P at 2790 right now is priced even more richly than it was at 3390 a month and a half ago?

Priced for second quarter 2020 earnings? Absolutely. It's probably like a 40 PE. Priced for fourth quarter 2021 earnings? It's probably quite a bit cheaper.

It’s still so early in the ballgame. But even so, 10,000 dead Americans and 16 million having filed for unemployment over the last four weeks is BAD. LOTS of businesses will have closed and there won’t just be 16 million people rehired once we have a solution. This is a slog; it’s going to be at least a year before the stock market is not in a bear market minimum.

Things like this doesn't give me a warm fuzzy, and is completely contradictory with the recent market action, which looks more like a dead cat bounce.

JP Morgan has sharply revised down its already dark forecast for second quarter economic growth. It now expects U.S. gross domestic product will shrink a staggering 40% in the second quarter on an annualized basis.

That’s down from an estimate of -25% just a couple of weeks ago.

“Over the last few weeks forecasters have been operating in a fog,” wrote JP Morgan economists in a research note. “More recently, however, we are starting to get some shreds of data on the magnitude of the economic crisis.”

The revision was in part due to the sharper-than-expected spike in weekly jobless claims, which have climbed a cumulative 16.8 million in just three weeks.

“With these data in hand we think the April jobs report could indicate about 25 million jobs lost since the March survey week, and an unemployment rate around 20%,” they said.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2020/04/09/jp-morgan-now-sees-40-plunge-in-gdp-unemployment-surge-to-20/#141a245a436c

Dow down from 30k to around 24k.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/imf-sees-world-in-worst-slump-since-the-great-depression/ar-BB12nW4g

Can't help think a ton of irrational exuberance right now.

If you look at what is really going on, markets are just priced too high.

I don't know where they will go from here but going long feels brave indeed.

Many people were saying it was going to be 1.3-2 million Americans. Even the Feds said 230,000 dead in months.

Yes, if we did nothing 2 million deaths. We shut the economy down, so we are going to see less deaths. But I think 230k dead is still in play.