The J-school jackholes are running around like headless chickens because "ZOMG! Stocks Reeling: Dow PLUMMETS 500 points!"
(And this, in no small part, is pure TDS, to try any means possible to get people to de-couple from Trump, after 500 failed schemes to date, while the economy chugs along at pre-Obama heights undreamed of since 2007, mainly by the merest throttling of government interference.)
IANAEconomist, I just blitzed my math SATs, and learned long division back when there were right answers and wrong answers, and the math test didn't care how I "felt" about that.
The Dow is bouncing around 24,000: stocks "plummeting" 500 points is the equivalent to you or me of gasoline or milk prices going up - a nickel.
Shut the fuck up about that, journalism retards.
When the DJIA plummets to 10,000, or 2,000, give a holler.
The idiots invested deep into that rigged bullshit scam should probably pay attention then.
When stocks cease to be wild speculation and manipulation, and return to being an investment managed over time, I'll give a wet fart again.
Meanwhile, your dollar today buys what 2¢ bought in 1932.
About that calamity: not a peep.
Journalists: the SJW students too stupid to get into sociology or victim studies departments.
So it's all about ratios and perspectives.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the analogies.
(By my own admission I've always kind of sucked at Math)
I work at a university that includes a large journalism school, and have overheard many conversations between journalism students and their TAs.
ReplyDeleteAesop's parting remark is spot-on.
I concluded many years ago that journalists are innumerate, after reading an article in a NYC newspaper in which the writer reacted with shock and horror that 50% of NYC public school children read below average. Not below grade level, below average.
ReplyDeleteAnd the definition of "average" IS? Bueller? Bueller?
(Yes, math folks, I know, that's the definition of the midpoint. For reading scores the mean, midpoint and median will all be close enough to the same point as to make no practical difference. It's the high point on the bell curve.)
Mark D
That's one of my favourite games, getting lefties to demand all whatevers are above average 😂
DeleteI'm a crank. I have no market exposure whatsoever. The stock market is a rigged game where information is power, and guess who has all the information? Not little ol' me or you, be sure of that!
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time you could invest in a company, risk your invested capital, and if you chose wisely reap returns when the venture succeeded. Back in the day you could buy shares of a ship expedition, or a bridge construction, or any number of profit-expecting capital-requiring ventures. That's investing, as in vestments, as in clothes, as in wager the shirt on your back that the activity you're funding will produce profit.
Today we don't invest. We speculate. We buy shares of existing corporations and hope we can turn around and sell it to some other damn fool for a higher price when the time is right. Prices are divorced from company performance; social media companies that have never run a profit sell shares for wild amounts of money. Prices instead are based on feelings and manias and trends. I refuse to put my money into an asset that can lose its value because idiot stockbrokers spook and stampede like a herd of unruly cattle frightened by a raincoat flapping on a fence.
It's a zero-sum system where you can't make money unless somebody else is losing money. If everybody was equally informed and rational in their investing, no money would change hands. I refuse to profit on the misery of others. When I stand before God at my judgement I have quite a lot to answer for already, I don't need to explain a life of hurting other people for profit. The stock market has the same economic and moral validity as a game of poker.
"The stock market will give you 8% return, historically" say people who want me to invest. Maybe on paper, now correct for inflation and currency devaluing and see that you're making just about 2% real return.
"it's where all the rich people put their money, they won't let the system fail" say people who want me to invest. The system has to fail. You can't expand forever, contractions and corrections will occur. Idiots don't understand that the rich insiders will know full well when the crash is to occur. They'll have most of their assets sheltered, and be poised to snatch up great gobs of other assets for pennies on the dollar after the crash wipes us little people out. You saw this in 2008, you'll see it again, the "too big to fail" insiders are bailed out at taxpayer expense and us little people get the shaft.
I invest in land. You can't print more of it. It can be taken away from me, but I can stand on it and defend it. In extremis, I can grow food on land. Land has real value.
I invest in productive machinery. A man who can make things on a bridgeport and lathe, and weld, and do woodworking, need never go hungry.
I invest in skills. See above.
I invest in companies. Local guys that I know are stand-up fellas and hard workers, who need small amounts of capital to get their small local business up and running. Even if their business venture fails and I lose all the money I put into it, I can't lose the social capital of a capable man remembering I did him a solid. Local, local, local, Meatspace Baby! You'll need community in the coming times, that's the best investment you can make.
Ain't just journalists that don't understand the stock market, as fun as it is to throw rocks at those retards.
Don't forget these:
ReplyDelete1. The DOW (Dow Jones Industrial Average), which is all of the stock market that most of the media mentions, is only 28 companies, a tiny slice of the total American stock market. These 28 companies are NOT evenly weighted - in some cases, noticeable movement of ONE company can swing the DOW.
Forget what the DOW is doing - look at the S&P 500, the Russell 5,000, or another larger index.
2. Ignore moves over a month or a couple of months; the market always moves around - look at years long trends. The only exception is, as mentioned above, if the moves is over 10% of the index AND it is in a short time - less than a week. Otherwise, just stick along for the ride.
@Mark D,
ReplyDeleteJ-school lumpkins are both illiterate and innumerate. (I'm not absolutely certain, but I have a strong suspicion that's an entry requirement; nothing else explains its universality.) If your example had merely been conversant in Garrison Keillor, he could have aced the story statistically and grammatically by noting that NYFC schools are the exact opposite of Lake Woebegone, because in NYFC, "all the children are below average".
This post is going to be hilarious when the next Recession hits. Not funny "ha ha" but still.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Recession hits, everyone in the market will know what everyone outside it already knows: Ponzi schemes and con game scams never pay off.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, yapping and yammering about the equivalent of a nickel-a-gallon shift in the price of milk or gasoline is proof that journalists can't do math, with or without shoes.
Can't trust journalists to do anything right. Maybe they should make basic math a requirement for journalism school.
Delete