I went 90% cash today.

[spdrun]

Maintaining everyone’s standard of living without much change is stability. Promoting clean energy and durable goods is stability. Planned obsolescence and fossil fools are environmental suicide, if not genocide.

The goal should be a gradually shrinking population (eventual goal: no more than 500 million on Earth) with a stable standard of living. Not consuming all of Gaia’s resources like drunken locusts.

[an]

[quote=FlyerInHi]AN, would Trump being a puppet of Russia worry you?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/11/01/trumps-putin-problem-returns-in-a-big-way/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.977f1b8efbc2%5B/quote%5DNo more or less than Clinton being a puppet for all of her donors. Which means I don’t like it, but the majority seem not to care. So, whatever.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=bearishgurl]For all you “techies” who feel threatened by a Trump presidency, how would you like to see all the “deplorables” from flyover America pack up their station wagons, pickups, and now “U-Hauls” (like they did in the 1940’s) and hightail it to coastal CA and triple up in housing and start applying for jobs? I have no doubt that a large portion of them have college degrees in the various IT specialties.

Why shouldn’t this massive group have living-wage jobs to choose from in their own locales? Why should the vast bulk living-wage jobs in America be concentrated on the West Coast and Eastern Seaboard?

These people are Americans (hundreds of thousands of them are Native Americans, btw). Don’t they deserve to make a respectable living (as YOU do) in their own regions??

The landscape of the US has literally been (financially) “hollowed out” by NAFTA. This doesn’t bode well for any American citizen …. not even the coastal dwellers.[/quote]

Did you say before that, notwithstanding their lack of college education, Trump supporters are doing well in flyover country. They have paid off houses, vacation homes at the lake, toys galore and plenty of savings for retirement.

They should be happy. What are they bitching about? Please give us a list of their grievances, if any.[/quote]I’ve posted here that my OWN peeps are doing well. They are ALL boomers …. plus 3 WWII/silents and 3 Greatest Gen (age 82-90) left. THEY are the ones with the defined benefit pensions, eligible for Medicare (most of them) and bought up residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural land when it was dirt cheap (in America’s former “dust bowl”). THEY are the ones who have inherited quarterly lease and royalty payments from gas and oil activities appurtenant to parcels they inherited. THEY are the ones who are living like your description, above, brian.

Their GenX and millenial kids and grandkids …. um, not so much. Only 2 of them that I know of managed to get fantastic-paying jobs in the oil fields with Halliburton. They are gone from home probably 48 weeks per year (off and on). One of them has already paid off he and his elementary-schoolteacher spouse’s fixer-upper 75 year-old house they bought 3 years ago and is still away from her and their new baby 48 weeks per year working in any one of six states. Oilfield workers can’t spend their whole lives at those jobs because their bodies will wear out and they are isolated much of the time. Much like fashion modeling, these young workers must attempt to qualify for these jobs while they’re 18-20 years old and work them as long as the employer will have them and save all their earnings for homes and to get themselves established. (Halliburton prefers to hire big, strong young men.) The other young man (age 27) working for Halliburton in the oil fields has already paid off two brand new vehicles and is in the process of buying a house. He is also gone 48 weeks per year. One more young man (age 28) had the good fortune to become a CPA and was immediately courted (and hired) by Big Oil upon his graduation from college with a degree in accountancy. The rest of my Gen X/millenial peeps are only still there after HS/College graduation because their boomer and beyond parents subdivided their land, gave them a parcel for a house and even gave them ranch land or other (leased) land with agricultural enterprises on it to work and manage (some of my peeps were getting too old to work all of it). Other general contractors in the family built them houses on those parcels with a very thin profit margin and the construction loans were cosigned by the boomer parents and held until their kids could qualify for a take-out mortgage. If my peeps didn’t do this, their kids would have moved to distant cities which had better wages and taken their children (the grandchildren) with them.

Without a lot of family help to get established, a lot of working-age adults in these flyover states couldn’t make it. Even schoolteacher starting pay there is just over 50% of what it is in coastal CA. All the former living-wage manufacturing jobs in the area and in some cases, even the entire state are gone. Some small towns have been turned into ghost towns when the ONE large employer there closed up shop causing nearly all the residents to eventually flee to places where they could earn a living.

The “golden age of opportunity” (experienced by my generation and above) has been over for the last ~20 years (depending on locale). There is no longer a guarantee of a lifetime job if one performs well and defined benefit pensions are almost non-existent. A HS graduate from a state where its industry has been hollowed out by NAFTA faces a double whammy. Not only MUST they leave home for a post-secondary education or training after HS graduation (and pay for housing to do so as well as borrow for school if their parents couldn’t help), they must often accept their first FT job after graduation far away from their hometowns in order to be able to make any respectable living at all …. or join the military (and many do). There is often nothing at all left for them within an ~80-mile radius of their hometown except scanty minimum wage positions. Even then, the (secondary) city closest to their hometowns doesn’t even have any industry left which pays a living wage.

There is a huge swath of our country which suffers from obsolescence due to large manufacturers who fled the region. What do you expect the affected inhabitants to do if they need a good job and can’t find one and they’re dead broke but living in the only environment they have ever known (near their families)?

[teaboy]

[quote=flu]I’m out..Period. Of the remaining 10%, 5% is in physical metals.
[/quote]

Flu, out of interest what % cash were you before you went 90%? I went from 100% equities to 50% cash / 50% equities (S&P500 ETF) about 3 months ago.
I have been considering selling some more equities to go 75% cash but that would require paying cgt (+ transaction costs) so i’ve been procrastinating.

I’ve not had much luck with timing the market previously, so my default position is to stick to time in the market.
But, you’ve been fairly prescient in the past.

Do I hold and risk regretting not selling or sell and risk regretting not holding?

in two minds,
tb

[Coronita]

[quote=teaboy][quote=flu]I’m out..Period. Of the remaining 10%, 5% is in physical metals.
[/quote]

Flu, out of interest what % cash were you before you went 90%? I went from 100% equities to 50% cash / 50% equities (S&P500 ETF) about 3 months ago.
I have been considering selling some more equities to go 75% cash but that would require paying cgt (+ transaction costs) so i’ve been procrastinating.

I’ve not had much luck with timing the market previously, so my default position is to stick to time in the market.
But, you’ve been fairly prescient in the past.

Do I hold and risk regretting not selling or sell and risk regretting not holding?

in two minds,
tb[/quote]

I was slightly less than 50% in the stock market already. The bulk of it was in index funds that tracked dow, s&p I’ve had for a very long time that I normally don’t touch.

I don’t know. Perhaps I am over reacting. Maybe by next Tuesday it won’t matter. I personally don’t think we will see too many more positive events for the rest of the year to push the markets higher. And any unexpected negative news I think will just be magnified. My transaction costs were $0 for index funds, and 9.95 from Schwab. So it wasn’t an issue. The only issue is I am locked out from.vuying back those index funds from the same account for the next 90days. There are ways around it though.

I did not touch my kids 529 account. It’s split equally 3 ways between domestic stock index, inflated protected short term bonds/treasuries, and international stock index

[teaboy]

flu, thanks for sharing.
by “transaction costs” I meant the buy/sell spread. Per my understanding that’s the main “cost” when I’m buying/selling equities, and how the moneymakers make the bulk of their money. Pls correct me if i’m wrong.

I’ve been sitting on my hands waiting to sell more, since I feel the only way is down (short term; 1-2 yrs) and we’re overdue a stock market correction and economic recession. But my main fear is that after selling I’ll be stressing every day on when to buy back and then will fail at that even if I sell at a reasonable good time.

I’m also thinking of selling my sfh in Poway since i’m sure housing cant keep going up once the recession bites. But I probably wont do anything about it.

tb

[Coronita]

[quote=teaboy]flu, thanks for sharing.
by “transaction costs” I meant the buy/sell spread. Per my understanding that’s the main “cost” when I’m buying/selling equities, and how the moneymakers make the bulk of their money. Pls correct me if i’m wrong.

I’ve been sitting on my hands waiting to sell more, since I feel the only way is down (short term; 1-2 yrs) and we’re overdue a stock market correction and economic recession. But my main fear is that after selling I’ll be stressing every day on when to buy back and then will fail at that even if I sell at a reasonable good time.

I’m also thinking of selling my sfh in Poway since i’m sure housing cant keep going up once the recession bites. But I probably wont do anything about it.

tb[/quote]

The way I plan of getting back into the market is after November ( assuming a steep selloff)…. I plan on just monthly dripping back into index funds. I’ll be happy with a -3%+ correction from this point on. Maybe $5-10k per month, rather than trying to move the entire bulk of my funds in at one shot. That way, regardless of how the market always does, I’m forcing myself to reinvest. If those regular monthly purchases end up being at the wrong time, it will be less damaging that one big wrong time purchase.

I have no plans to sell any homes since I still need a place to live, and the others cash flow well, which would be part of my retirement “pension”

[Coronita]

Dow futures up 220pts
S&P up 26pts

And all it took was the FBI excusing Hillary.

Anyone still think Wall Street would be ok with Trump?

What would be a total shock for the markets is if Trump still ends up winning…

[ltsddd]

[quote=flu]What would be a total shock for the markets is if Trump still ends up winning…[/quote]

Huge sell-off in the first few minutes of the opening of the market. At which point, I will move all in.

[ucodegen]

[quote=ltsdd][quote=flu]What would be a total shock for the markets is if Trump still ends up winning…[/quote]

Huge sell-off in the first few minutes of the opening of the market. At which point, I will move all in.[/quote]
I’m voting for a bit longer on the drop should Trump win. He is a semi ‘unknown’ to the institutional investors, with two very public corporate bankruptcies.

Put options might be a better way to handle it – use them to cover holdings that might be at risk should Trump get in – ie. Medical. Oil and non renewable might be a risk should Hillary get in.

[an]

[quote=flu]Dow futures up 220pts
S&P up 26pts

And all it took was the FBI excusing Hillary.

Anyone still think Wall Street would be ok with Trump?

What would be a total shock for the markets is if Trump still ends up winning…[/quote]I don’t think anyone thinks Wall Street would be OK w/ Trump. Not even Trump’s supporters. That’s the whole point. Trump supporter thinks the system (including Wall Street and the Media) is rigged against them. So, this would just confirm their thinking. As for why Wall Street wants Hillary, it’s all about the devil we know vs the devil we don’t. It’s all about uncertainty that spook Wall Street. Nothing new there.

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=flu]Dow futures up 220pts
S&P up 26pts

And all it took was the FBI excusing Hillary.

Anyone still think Wall Street would be ok with Trump?

What would be a total shock for the markets is if Trump still ends up winning…[/quote]I don’t think anyone thinks Wall Street would be OK w/ Trump. Not even Trump’s supporters. That’s the whole point. Trump supporter thinks the system (including Wall Street and the Media) is rigged against them. So, this would just confirm their thinking. As for why Wall Street wants Hillary, it’s all about the devil we know vs the devil we don’t. It’s all about uncertainty that spook Wall Street. Nothing new there.[/quote]

The irony is that if people REALLY hated wall street, they wouldn’t be so dependent on their 401ks, IRAs, Roths, 529’s, public pensions that invests in Wall Street instruments. Burning down the system is like burning your own house down that depends on the system…

Whether people want to admit it or not…
There is no main street without wall street.
And there is no wall street without main street.

[an]

flu, I think you’re making a big assumption. Keep in mind that most Americans don’t have that much saving. So, it’s unlikely they’ll have 401k/IRA much less 529. So, it’s not really ironic that they want to blow up Wall Street. They collapse Wall Street won’t hurt them much. They’re already hurt. It’s really important to step in their shoes and understand why they feel the way they do.

For my own selfishness, I don’t want anything to change, because I’m benefiting from it, just like you are. But I’m also fully aware of it not benefiting those who are on the bottom rung and sympathetic to why they’re upset, fed up, and just want to blow the shit up. It’s really the crony capitalism that people associate with Wall Street that they want to blow up, not really Wall Street itself. People are just fed up with all the lip service about crony capitalism, yet, neither party did much about it. If anything, Hillary will keep the ball rolling, which is why the hardcore Bernie and Trump supporters really hate her.

There will be main street without wall street, but there won’t be wall street without main street. Main street just will look very different without wall street.

[FlyerInHi]

AN, so why is the right wing base opposed to Wall Street regulations and breaking up the big banks? Bernie and his supporters want to break up the big banks and are for the consumer protection bureau. The alt-right/tea party is not.

Bernie supporters don’t hate Hillary. They are voting for her though they much prefer Bernie. There was a primary and consensus was found in the Democratic Party.

Your attempt at equating Trump to Bernie is like saying a hamburger is the same as a quinoa salad with seared tuna. Both dishes are food all the same, but with huge differences.

[an]

Right wing base != to Trump’s hard core supporter.

Not all Bernie’s supporters are voting for Hillary. If they are, should would be sealing this deal in a landslide already and we wouldn’t be talking about Trump.

When did I say Bernie supporter and Trump supporter are the same? Stop it with the straw man argument. I just said the core of both hate how Hillary is in bed with Wall Street and they both want to blow up Wall Street. What they want to do after Wall Street is blown up is very different, but both don’t like Wall Street.

[Author]

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