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DooDahMan says

Fed must ‘inflict more losses’ on stock-market investors to tame inflation, says former central banker. ‘Fed will have to shock the market’ if financial conditions don’t tighten: former N.Y. Fed chief Dudley

So weird to read this sort of shit, because I remember when the USSR's "centrally planned economy" was constantly pointed to as an example of a bad idea. And it was a bad idea.

I wonder if the Fed doesn't intend to inflict the most damage possible on people? I'm paranoid enough to think they would. They can do that by raising interest rates to say, 5%, or even 10% - that would kill just about everybody, except the banks that get to borrow as much money as they wish from the Fed at about 0% interest rates.

It would crush the housing market, destroy the stock market, and there would be a rush to buy the dollar. Everybody that has debt without a fixed interest rate would be screwed. It would cause calls on the stockmarket as margins get tighter. Hmm, we'll see.

KgK one says

Stocks reacting by making market down.

They say bottom is near. Feel like another 20% more yo go

SP up about 83 points since the date of the original post.

Up about 2%, - annual rate of about 7%.

The Sky Is Falling Down.

Never assume that a disastrous policy decision is the result of a mistake and not intentional design. Democrats especially use “stupid” policies which sound “well-meaning” to create awful situations that benefit themselves and their people greatly while harming the country. They aren’t that stupid. It’s on purpose.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Up about 2%, - annual rate of about 7%.

Below the rate of inflation?

The W5000 is down 7.92% so far this year.
I don't think that the number above counts dividends.
The stock market doesn't like rising interest rates, but I have my fingers crossed.

For the next 10 years I'm hoping for an average of 7-8% return.

I'm going to convert some of my IRA to a Roth IRA while it's down a bit.

How to proceed:
Sit back and continue to collect dividends.

I’m probably not going to be a very happy camper for a while.

Oh well, I’ve still got my health 🤬

clambo says

I’m probably not going to be a very happy camper for a while.

I thought you were one of those who bought lots of Apple long before the massive run-up. A little bit of a retreat shouldn't be so bad.

Buy select sector stocks only after lots of DD. Biotech for example. Portfolio is near al time high, doing better than it did during the boring fed ramp decade of 2009-2019. Biotechs stocks are cheap right now with ibb and xbi, russell around 52 wk lows

But housing is insulated from price declines because no NINJA and it's different this time.

Headset, my Apple shares are okay but my mutual funds are down 15% from January.
I sure liked it when AAPL was $182/share.
I bought some BABA on a whim but my Shanghai friend assured me it was a good investment.
I neglected to sell my WFC and that was a bad move.

Because I don’t work anymore, I am more obsessed with my investments than before.

This is a double edged sword; when things are going up, I feel great and even generous, but when things go down I worry about my plans not working out.

It’s all in my head because I’m not busy enough.

DooDahMan says

We have made a ton of progress in terms of profitability, setting a target for $5 billion in Adjusted EBITDA in 2024, but the goalposts have changed. Now it’s about free cash flow. We can (and should) get there fast.

So, you're pining for Uber?

not touching till bloodbath ends.

DooDahMan says

Uber will never ever turn a profit - ever.

Correct. Uber's stated business model is to eventually go to driverless cars. Nice BS to fool investors, but if Uber gets rid of the driver, they get rid of the one who pays for the car, the gas, the insurance and all maintenance. Uber would then hemorrhage even more money.

HeadSet says

DooDahMan says

Uber will never ever turn a profit - ever.

Correct. Uber's stated business model is to eventually go to driverless cars. Nice BS to fool investors, but if Uber gets rid of the driver, they get rid of the one who pays for the car, the gas, the insurance and all maintenance. Uber would then hemorrhage even more money.

I agree with your take. Uber could turn a profit though even with human drivers. It's the leeches of SV. And the investors. I invested and now it's time to get unqualified Billy a job. I know a few business owners with 20+ employees. Their number one mistake is nepotism or allowing nepotism from underlings that you manage and not hiring the best. When you hire the best, you have to hire less. Family and friends are the leeches. I'd never go into business with family or allow them to work for me. Done it once and never again.

Uber seems like a beta frat party. They got the money, but don't have the friends or people to throw a good party, aka make money.

Uber and Lyft are great for consumers! Lower prices, more convenient, and better service than government-monopoly taxi services. Last I looked from my house to SJC airport costs the same in a group white van thing as the Uber or Lyft and 1/2 as much as a taxi. Uber and Lyft are much more reliable, too. Once I got picked up by one of those van services 3 hours before my flight. The 15 minute drive turned into literally 2 hours of driving around picking up others, so I barely made my flight. Never again as long as Uber and Lyft are running.

Uber is so much better than a cab ride.

DooDahMan says

WineHorror1 says

So, you're pining for Uber?

Never used Uber or Lyft - they lost their ass today - bigly. I would never put a dime in stock from these companies. I do not understand or comprehend how companies that lose millions every month stay in business.

Uber will never ever turn a profit - ever. Hopefully when the dust settles from this latest market meltdown - a few of these companies will be something people read about in the future and other will be happy to forget about.

I don’t understand why UBER can’t be profitable. Once you build the software which is like 10 years old now… what expenses are there beyond marketing? Shouldn’t it be a passive income generating machine? Tesla doesn’t need marketing so why does Uber? Hire some engineers to maintain the software and take 30% of each ride? Fire everyone but a small team to keep the software running well. How can that not be profitable. They provide a pretty awesome service if you need it. My twenty year old self would use them every weekend I hit the bars up.

clambo says

Oh well, I’ve still got my health

Then you have everything

Pull out to cash, sheesh. There's no way we're not headed into a recession, even if Republicans win the house (in which case the media while pretend the entire shitty economy began in November 2022).

DooDahMan says

FYI - The 29th installment of the Uber saga was released on 11 February 2022 when it was announced they lost 31 billion even with price increases for service.

What's so ridiculous about this is that Uber COULD make money. All you need to to is make an app for a person to show up to drive a person from A to B - allow the driver to pick the fare, and then pick off a small amount of money to do the service. It's trivial.

Fine - we'll eventually get self driving cars, but we're a ways away from that yet, wait for the technology to become available. Hell, when it becomes available, allow people to rent out their self driving car for a bit while they are at work or sleeping.

Uber is trying to sink the competition, pay its workers as little as possible, and soak up as much money for the executives as possible while they work on pie-in-the sky technology.

DooDahMan says

richwicks says

Uber is trying to sink the competition, pay its workers as little as possible

This was my take years ago when they first got rolling - a new monopoly to replace an old monopoly (taxis)

That’s the thing, the demand for Uber is obvious. It’s a great service that people want. Greed to corner the market, pay executives, and promise angel imvestors the world is why they lose money. The fundamental passive income of taking a percentage of each ride is profitable if you cut out all unnecessary jobs. Long term they wouldn’t survive without investment into self-driving cars but they stopped working on those for a dumb reason. A car killed a transient jaywalker walking on a highway at night. (Probably suicidal). It wasn’t a fault in self driving cars. 99% of people driving would have hit that woman also.

BoomAndBustCycle says

Long term they wouldn’t survive without investment into self-driving cars

Who cares? No company survives forever.

They could easily be profitable.

The problem today is that there's no attempt to make money, there's only an attempt to push the stock price up. A ton of companies are scams here.

BoomAndBustCycle says

I don’t understand why UBER can’t be profitable.

Do not leave out political bribes and legal fees. Uber is essentially an unlicensed taxi service that paid off a multitude of local politicians to circumvent existing laws. Uber also has substantial legal bills for operations like fighting California AB5. AB5 would be a law that requires business to classify as employees any people who are working in the companies main line of business. Since Uber's main business is transporting people, the Uber drivers are performing Uber's main business.

When is good time to buy stocks.

Snp 500 max 4700 based on fibonachi 2900 is when I start buying.

It's always a great time to sell.

Nobody ever went broke selling too soon and taking a smaller profit. Many went broke hoping for a reversal and more profit.

DooDahMan says

Uber will never ever turn a profit

It blows my mind that they haven't figured out a way to turn a profit. How is that possible? What is their biggest expense...coders?

S&P 500 closed today down 16.9% from all time high of 4818. I see one very bad day this week of a 4% or 5% drop will take us to the 20% mark.
Seems like it is more than likely this will happen.

Now once it drops to this 20% mark, then officially we are in a bear market. We likely will not remain that long in a bear market.

And I think once it reaches the 20% market, it will easily reach between the 25% to 30% mark within one or two weeks.

Look how the S&P 500 crashed within a couple of weeks by about 33% back in March/April 2020 and then quickly recovered.

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SunnyvaleCA says

government-monopoly taxi services

The "medallion" racket was really getting out of hand. I'm surprised that Uber and Lyft were even allowed to run, given their threat to that unearned income stream.

DooDahMan says

Wall Street is heading into a summer from hell — and top investors say it's going to bring a near-biblical reckoning to the market

a lot of major tech stocks and ETFs like Google, Intel, AMD, Amazon, Facebook, JETS, SLV, etc are down at least 25%

other stocks and ETFs like Ebay Palantir, Paypal, Ebay, ARKK, etc are down at least 55%

so there already has been a lot of proverbial Wall Street blood on the streets

S&P 500 is down nearly 17% :-/

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Chinese tech stock composite ETF (MCHI) is down more than 40% from highs reached in January 2021. This has all the big names you will recognize in it's top 10 holdings.

JP Morgan called these stocks "un-investable over the next 6 to 12 months" about 3 months ago. Yesterday they put out a piece advising to overweight the big names in this index. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/jpmorgan-upgrades-its-view-on-chinas-alibaba-tencent-and-meituan.html

By any reasonable measure of valuation all of these are screaming buys - the problem being, can you trust the numbers (probably not), and is the CCP finally done f_cking around with this sector (same answer).

I like this one (MCHI : ER .57%) and for domestic tech IUSG (ER .04%) as a low cost way to own a basket of the biggest tech companies in the two superpowers. I expect both to keep dropping but I continue to nibble on the way down. I still have a 10+ year time line and am not exposed to single stock worries with ETF's. I do worry that a hot war with China will make MCHI worth zero so I do not "overweight" it.

I once dabbled in Emerging Market stocks; they sucked and I got out forever.

Then, I dabbled in a mutual fund of Asian stocks ex-Japan called New Asia Fund (T. Rowe Price).

I got out of that too, never again. However, I made money over the time I owned it.

Later still I bought some piece of shit called BABA; a girl I used to date was from Shanghai and recommended it to me.

I'll never buy a Chinese stock again either. I'm waiting to see if I can sell BABA without losing too much money. Someday I'll throw in the towel and sell it at a loss.

I wish I had a job sometimes; I would be buying more USA and developed foreign stock mutual funds now. I would also add to my Swiss stock ETF FLSW.

DooDahMan says

The S&P 500 slumped 4% on May 18

S&P 500 down 18.6% from all time high. I expect it will reach the 20% level this week during intraday trading. Once it reaches that level then technically we are in a bear market.

Look at the blood bath with Dollar Tree, Walmart and Target. Dollar Tree is at $133. It was $115 back in January 2018.

And Walmart is down 25%. I have never seen it drop more than the S&P 500.

And Disney is down 45% ! ! ! It is at $104 and same price as it was in February 2015 ! ! !

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However, valuation is not that bad. The S&P 500 PE ratio is 19.8

It bottomed around 15 in 2011. Steadily climbed and peaked to around 37 in 2021.

It peaked to 44 in 2000 and 123 in 2009.

https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio
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How I wish I had a source of new cash, I would buy buy buy.

Let's Go Brandon!

SunnyvaleCA says

Uber and Lyft are great for consumers! Lower prices, more convenient, and better service than government-monopoly taxi services.

I for sure pick Uber or Lyft before a taxi service, unless in another country that doesn't allow rideshare. But that's usually leisure so I'll just hire a car service as most countries allow having a drink in the car to the hotel or house while in the car and it's substantially cheaper than limo services stateside. For my distance to Midway it's about $350 with tip. Same distance in Mexico is $125 with beers or champagne.

So...I'm planning on going long on AZZ because it's AZZ!

Seriously, looking at buying more UNFI, SJT, RNLX, AMRS and maybe something somebody recommends on this board with good fundamental reasons.

Tempted to buy KHC.

Stocks can go down further with recession. Buying some at this level can not be too bad. Buy again if they go down further. Make sure to buy long term money making companies.

TheSameAD says

And Walmart is down 25%. I have never seen it drop more than the S&P 500.

And Disney is down 45% ! ! ! It is at $104 and same price as it was in February 2015 ! ! !

Walmart cancelled MyPillow for bullshit reasons, they won't even have it on the .com site. So fuck them, they were the chief outsourcer of US Manufacturing in the 90s and 2000s.

Should be disturbing when going into a recession, they're suffering. They drove out all the competitors in many places, and are now the lone general goods/supermarket in much of rural America. Now they drive up prices to a captive audience.

Also, they never pay jack shit for distribution centers; almost all of them are wholly subsidized by the local government.