It is startling what cheap fuel costs do to the consumers mindset in such a short period of time. I was at the mall on Monday for a few hrs and it was PACKED, I remember it being busy in past years but it was like an Akphi wet dream of money growing on trees.
In just 2 months of low fuel costs you have consumer sentiment hitting an 8yr high. You have a new poll showing optimism about the economy reaching over 50% for the first time in 7 years (up from 38% just a mere few months ago)
In just 2 months of low fuel costs you have consumer sentiment hitting an 8yr high. You have a new poll showing optimism about the economy reaching over 50% for the first time in 7 years (up from 38% just a mere few months ago)
It’s only natural that people will have false sense of euphoria after 6 years of constant bad news.
If the Dow hit 18000 because of a robust economy instead of being propped up by the Fed I’d be optimistic also.
The country is living on borrowed money with no end in sight. When it comes time to pay the piper it will be truly hard times for all.
I’d like to think there are people out there that recognize the folly of how the country is being run, but alas, I’m skeptical.
What if someone as politically engaged as yourself overweights the impact of "how the country is being run" actually effects the economy? Fed can only do so much, it doesn't make the market go up 200% from lows.
I'm not sure what metric you want to go by but most of them tell us things are getting better. What do you people need to crack a smile? utopia?
GDP up
Corporate profits up
Revenue up
Equities up
Fuel costs down
Gronk healthy going into Jan
There are always going to be variables within the economy/society that aren't optimal, thinking it means armageddon is upon us has left people wrong for a long time.
We will have to agree to disagree. The market has been artificially inflated by the Feds money policy.
What do you think is going to happen when it ends?
Or maybe the Fed will continue to prop it up forever and we’ll all live happily ever after.
I’m not an economic genius as some here claim to be but as I see it when the tap is turned off the market will correct itself to a level that is natural based on the economy not the unnatural one that exists today.
We shall see.
Well said. Actually perfectly said. But the doom and gloomers will continue to be doom and gloomers, and we need them to continue to be doom and gloomers, while the rest of us are rakin it in. Fed ain't "proppin" up the market anymore. The day they announced the cessation of it, DJIA was under 17,000. It seems this market is doing just fine without the "proppin". But then anyone without an agenda knew it would, because of the underlying health.
I'm not an expert either. Experts aren't even experts most of the time. If I was I'd just trade leveraged ETFs on margin all day and then buy a pro sports team.
Fed QE ended its tapering process 2 months ago (although global QE still going on with the ECB/Japs)
The next step is for rates to rise. This will likely happen 25 basis pts at a time and be more of a slow burn type deal. I'm not saying there won't be any fallout from it but there are many variables in this equation. I'd expect contraction as rates rise and $ flows back into bonds/savings, risk is flushed out of the system slowly. This is a gradual process though and if things continue to improve it may not be as severe as people think. Will it be a black swan event? I dunno, doesn't seem to be as big a bubble as '08 housing/mortgages but I could be wrong.
The S&P is just shy of 2100 today. If it were to lose a whopping 1/3rd of its value it would be where it was on.....Jan 1st 2013, yes 2 years ago. 1/2 would put it slightly above where it was in 2011. So we're talking a lot of gains here that would need to be wiped out.
There is ALWAYS going to be a looming event that people think is "THE BIG ONE ELIZABETH!".....Like Willie has said before, people have been predicting the next Great Depression since the last one ended.
$ can't stay cheap forever, rates being near 0 is certainly still propping the market up. Question is, how much?
Also then we could get into the whole debate of what is good for the 500 companies in the S&P isn't necessarily the same thing as what is good for our economy/society. They are correlated certainly but these companies are global conglomerates that get almost 1/2 their profits overseas as those economies continue to develop. Their success isn't really dependent on US prosperity.
Take a look…
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
That’s reality…
Can we continue down this path?
I think not.
Its all Fed induced. There is no exit strategy. Its been 6 years of borrowing and printing. So we have completed the easy part by borrowing 10 trillion, printing 3 trillion, and spending it. Anyone can do that part. Of course you get a bump in economic activity, all the wrong kind of course, but now comes the hard part. Who is willing to stand in there and take some pain to unwind this mess? As Obama pounds his chest over what a great recovery this has been, no one seems to question why in six years we haven't been able to raise rates yet? They cant even talk about , let alone do it. The dollar is sitting up it high horse or now , but that's all in anticipation of the rates hikes, that are not coming. Yeh yeh, the Fed is just going to let their portfolio mature, right. Impossible . 2015 will be the year that people realize what has been done, and Obamas legacy will be sealed as the worst president in history
You should've kicked this theory to the guys at fantasydraft, then maybe they wouldn't have wasted 10-15M on a shitty website that was going to fail regardless due to macroeconomic factors way out of their control......
Wow , cheap shot !!! Lol.
As far the " recovery goes" , the delay in the day of reckoning has only been because of the stupidity of the American public to believe the propaganda spit out by the media. You know, things like inflation is too low , we could slip into a deflationary trap, we must spend more !
Now as far as Fantasy Draft, it's brand new site, and yes, they had some issues, but the site looks better each week. I would encourage you to follow them as the grow and improve, and give them another chance when your ready. Trust me, there is big money behind the deal, they have impressive quality people endorsing the site, and they are going after Fanduel hard. I will say also, that winning contests so far also has been easier since the competition is light. If your in, build your network today. The key is the ability to get paid while you play
We have about 100 people in the group now .
So, just for that shot, another shameless plug to get registered
https://www.fantasydraft.com/play/RollOfTheDice
Wow , cheap shot !!! Lol.
As far the " recovery goes" , the delay in the day of reckoning has only been because of the stupidity of the American public to believe the propaganda spit out by the media. You know, things like inflation is too low , we could slip into a deflationary trap, we must spend more !. All nonsense but the Fed is backed itself up against a wall now that the dollar has had this push higher
Now as far as Fantasy Draft, it's brand new site, and yes, they had some issues, but the site looks better each week. I would encourage you to follow them as the grow and improve, and give them another chance when your ready. Trust me, there is big money behind the deal, they have impressive quality people endorsing the site, and they are going after Fanduel hard. I will say also, that winning contests so far also has been easier since the competition is light. If your in, build your network today. The key is the ability to get paid while you play
We have about 100 people in the group now .
So, just for that shot, another shameless plug to get registered
https://www.fantasydraft.com/play/RollOfTheDice
We'll see what happens in 2015. I think after 2007 people think collapses are so easy to predict now. There are a million "other shoes" that could drop and it likely will be like that for the rest of our lifetimes. I'm not even saying the market won't go down, or we won't get a correction. If S&P dropped 20% the first 6 months of '15 it would not surprise me one bit. I just don't think we will get a collapse anytime in the near future.
**nobody read past this point if you don't wanna hear DFS ramblings**
As far as fantasydraft, I hope they succeed. My friend is a pro poker player and knows 1 of the founders, he has said they have deep pockets. More sites the better but so far I'm just not feeling their execution at all.
1. The MLM model is unique and I give them credit for trying to innovate since they will need to if they wanna compete with The Big Two. However, I think it puts too much emphasis on the MLM model and not enough emphasis on the site itself. Almost all of their advertising leading up to the site launch was about that rather than the actual product itself.
2. I have no idea why the site launched in early December, don't they know that pro football starts in early September? Wrong month. NFL is any DFS sites bread and butter. You gotta launch that earlier. Especially since there was an opportunity for a well-funded site to provide an alternative to the big 2 at the beginning of NFL season with a few other sites closing down. That would've been a perfect time period for a site like them to come in, work out the kinks the first few weeks and possibly hit stride by mid-season to build momentup up for the next year.
I know an owner of a now defunct site pretty well so I have some insight into the industry and how that business runs. It is not an easy business at all, whoever wants to break in at this point is going to need atleast 25-50million in venture $ to compete with the bigger sites and I'm just not sure it is possible. Between the overhead, the constant need for acquisition, marketing costs, transaction costs (payment processors), web developers/IT guys, stat provider costs.....it is a very capital intensive business for a startup website. DraftKings has raised and spent over 100M now and they still aren't close to FanDuel which got a 4 year head start on them.
I think most of these sites are just hoping to catch some momentum and then be able to sell at the right place right time and hope a big buyer like ESPN/Yahoo/Cantor gets into. Similar to tech startups during the dot com boom.
Interestingly enough, I don't think we will see a meltdown in the market, even though that is what's needed. Just like the bailouts that occurred in 2008, if the market starts to fall, the Fed will step in again , and reflate asset prices with more Q E . The problem is this time the dollar will the start it's long march back down to record lows, and commodity prices will fly. I would fill up your gas tank if I were you.
Things are going to get very expensive for US consumers when the whole narrative of the FED Having a brilliant exit plan completly falls apart. The game is coming to an end, and the bond market will ultimately call the shots . The longer it last, the uglier it is going to be .
The sad part is, there is no way out. No one has any real solutions. With our trade deficits avg around 40 billion a month, some had hoped ( and it was just wishful thinking ) that we could grow our way out of it thanks to the great fracking revolution. Well, that ain't workin out too well now is it .
The only real solution is to tell people who are owed money, that ain't gettin it. Try getting that guy elected.
As as far as Fantasy Draft, yes thats the guy I know as well. He is a professional poker player as well as a ver successful entrepreneur. Don't discount the power of networking, especially since there is no cost to bring reps in. Robert has already built one where people had to pay 500 for the privilege of marketing for them. They have total control of their marketing costs and it's a fixed predictable expense, as opposed to the other guys who are flushing money into expensive ads that don't even bring in a very loyal customer .All those guys are doing is spending the money needed to create the industry , and develop online players out of the 40 million who play in private leagues .
( only about 800k play online in daily games )
Fantasy Draft and other players can just draft ( pardon the pun) off of Them.
Things are going to get very expensive for US consumers when the whole narrative of the FED Having a brilliant exit plan completly falls apart. The game is coming to an end, and the bond market will ultimately call the shots . The longer it last, the uglier it is going to be .
The sad part is, there is no way out. No one has any real solutions. With our trade deficits avg around 40 billion a month, some had hoped ( and it was just wishful thinking ) that we could grow our way out of it thanks to the great fracking revolution. Well, that ain't workin out too well now is it .
The only real solution is to tell people who are owed money, that ain't gettin it. Try getting that guy elected.
As as far as Fantasy Draft, yes thats the guy I know as well. He is a professional poker player as well as a ver successful entrepreneur. Don't discount the power of networking, especially since there is no cost to bring reps in. Robert has already built one where people had to pay 500 for the privilege of marketing for them. They have total control of their marketing costs and it's a fixed predictable expense, as opposed to the other guys who are flushing money into expensive ads that don't even bring in a very loyal customer .All those guys are doing is spending the money needed to create the industry , and develop online players out of the 40 million who play in private leagues .
( only about 800k play online in daily games )
Fantasy Draft and other players can just draft ( pardon the pun) off of Them.
You sound like you would have a lot of money in the stock market.
Oh, and remember, when a Republican is President, the stock market represents a bunch of greedy bankers breaking the law and making money off the backs of the middle class. But when a Democrat is President, the stock market represents the US economy.
Idiot.
PS: can you tell us what it is like to be poor?
