I have no proof because none is needed because it's obvious and all that and so forth and so on.

Don't forget, the fatcats will be taking the top off your 401k and the Fed is buying stock because it sounds cool.

of it. (Great timing, I might add. I just read they are going after the milk tomorrow).

Do you think the fat cat manipulators are going to go after IRAs next?

Years ago, in a well known daily thread in another group, a particularly clueless-on-a-regular-basis poster was responding to someone who said they were concerned about the performance of a mutual fund they held.

"Here's a way to mimic funds", this genius began,

"Buy stocks that have the potential to rise in the future, and hold them for more than a year"


I. Shit. You. Not.

I did it backwards. I sold all my stocks 15~20 years ago and bought index funds. Is it too late to recover? Too late to buy stocks to mimic my funds?

Well...never too late to undo success and get it wrong!


"Here's a way to mimic funds"

I almost lost my fucking shit when I saw that.

This was way back on DU2 or whatever, so I'm not even sure if the thread can be dragged out of the internet dungeon, but it was a winner, that's for sure.

I had a couple run-ins with that particular moron. He tried to tell me about commodities futures trading (of which I know a tiny bit, but never studied or took the test for the license) and when I asked him something like "If your contract gets exercised, what happens?" he basically, as the Brits have a lovely way of putting it, threw his teddy out of the pram!

The thing that bothers me most in many of the posts is the all or nothing mindset. "Get out before I lose it all." It doesn't work that way.

There are some extremely knowledgeable people that have posted in this group and I'm happy to participate in a group that eschews those kinds of sentiments.

Serious questions deserve serious, well thought out and ACCURATE answers.

And yeah, I knew you were "taking the piss".

so, of course, they will be here.

Second, Whiny Donny, in the beginning of the year, took credit for the major increases and after that remained silent. So of course many will take aim at him.

Especially since some of the reasons were the tariffs, the trade war and, in general, the volatility in the White House.

As wiser people have said: the market does not like uncertainty.

We have been taking RMDs for a couple of years now, which has been less than 4% - just following the tables on the IRS publication.

But, I think, that the rule of 4% withdrawal means that the savings should last 25 years, without major crashes, of course.

Ours kept going up so besides shaking my head, I am taking this in stride.

Glad for the small increase of the Social Security payments because RMDs will be lower, I am quite certain.

Happy New Year to you, and thank you for the steady guide here, even before your "promotion."

I'm with you on the prevalence of the story and it's subsequently being talked about on DU, I'm just astounded by the number of people who say/type things that are just head scratchingly dopey! And it's not new, of course. It's been going on for years.

Here's an example from a long while back;

On a regular thread in another group, a poster said something to the effect "When China calls in its markers", insinuating that "China" had loaned this country money and could demand repayment in full at any time. I tried to politely explain that's not how it works, that "China" in whatever entity you care to point to, had voluntarily PURCHASED US Treasury bonds and they are in no possible way able to demand early redemption. That's just not how the system works.

The poster was having none of it. Told me I didn't know what I was talking about, that they had in fact loaned us cash, just like a bank does when you buy a car.

I finally gave up, because trying to tutor someone on the basics of how the international sovereign bond market operates is not how I wanted to spend an evening!

There are of course, thousands of areas of study I am a complete ignoramus in. And I am by no means an expert in investing or the financial industry, either. But I know what I know, and I can spot bullshit pretty easily.

It would be like me going into the "Open Source and Free Software" group, a subject I am virtually clueless about, and spouting off like I had invented some special code! I mean, I've owned computers since the early 90's, so perhaps I could type a post that looks good on the surface, but would mean absolutely nothing!

As I said, I'm very glad the regulars in this group don't do that sort of thing.

Anyway, again, thanks for the compliment. As I said in the post I pinned, I'm going to be as absolutely hands off as I can, but I think the Border Collie analogy is apt. I'll just do my best to keep the wolves at bay.

I hope your 2019 is joyful and profitable!

Paul

I try to inject some reason into those conversations, but I'm probably wasting my breath, so to speak.

It's especially annoying to see how people crow as if they've won some great victory every time the stock market goes down, even a little bit. There are rarely posts about the up days.

The famous regular thread in another group (! I should come up with an acronym for it.....I'll have to think about that!) was ALWAYS crowing about the down days but when the market was up, none of the regulars would say a bloody word.

It's the old "If it bleeds, it leads" concept. Bad news is more fun to talk about!

"I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
(etc)

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond
Who comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
It's interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry"

Old song, Same shit.

in another group.

Posted 25 minutes after Dec 24's 1 pm ET NYSE close when the Dow lost 653 points, on top of losing 414 points the previous trading day for a total of 1067 points lost in 2 consecutive trading days

Not much consideration for those who have at least some part of their savings in equities and don't want to have to work until they are 95.

Yeah. Posts a daily thread about watching the Stock Market and thinks it's hilarious when there is a down day. The woman posts stats and information every bleeding day that she doesn't even understand!



I wasn't going to post these, but OK....here ya go;

This thread from July of 2013;

https://www.democraticunderground.com/111637599

Then read from post # 2 on down to my first response;

https://www.democraticunderground.com/111637599#post46

And then there's this, from November of 2012;

https://www.democraticunderground.com/111625250#post66

Now granted, both of those threads are over 5 years old, but the sentiment HAS NOT CHANGED, not one iota. What is really interesting is, as I said in that post #46 above, the thread has become a joke.

The number of days it gets zero replies has risen enormously.

It used to get a couple thousand views and dozens of comments day in and day out, but that was also back when "Here's a way to mimic funds" kind of bullshit was common.

That is exactly what I do not want to ever see this group devolve into, Progree. Not ever.


Fucking NEVER.

I determined they were of no value to me and filtered them out. I wondered what you were talking about, not recalling my filter. Your link made it clear.

no matter how ignored or useless or pointless or out of touch it has become.

It's sad, really. I mean, a daily thread titled "Stock Market Watch" could actually be a really good thing if it was monitored during the trading session and relevant news was posted. The key word being "relevant"

The thread went for months and months with a single poster (now banned) putting up post after post of obnoxiously long winded, completely irrelevant bullshit cut and pasted articles from the Journal Economica Obscura (a reference I made in the thread I linked above). It was tedious and banal, and made the thread unreadable.

What seemed to be the case with that thread from the very first days I started paying attention to it, back in '05, was it was handled by people who had absolutely no real investing experience or solid knowledge of securities and the securities industry (as I said, many of them don't know the difference between common stock and livestock) and they just simply think that there is no value to any of it: that it's all a scam or it's rigged or watching the market as it were, was a fools errand, and all they/he/she had to do was wait for a 460 point drop and then put up a post full of ROFL smileys and our point was proven and our day was made!


The current initiator of the SMW thread should just let it die the death it deserves. Quietly. Just give it up already. No one gives a fuck about it enough to even post regularly.


If I had taken it on, I would have stopped posting it a couple years ago.