I can’t see why, but still, if for some reason, markets do go up on Monday, I will be buying more puts.

If it goes up again after the Fed cuts rates, I will be buying some more than giving it a week to see how it all goes.

Next week WILL be very interesting indeed.

Also, while 50% of the people may own stock, they dont own much compared to the top 1%. And over 50% of the stocks being traded each day are not owned but are borrowed, with orders being sent from the Cayman Islands and other tax havens where the equivelant of 1/3 of global GDP is being hidden.

I now have a new observation to follow. Never trust a guy who works inside the beltway with armored black Suburban to really know what f*** is going on in the real world. Hell, I could say there was no inflation too, if I lived in the incubator of stupidity called D.C.

I would love to be a fly on the wall as they sit and praise themselves on jobs well done.

Jesus H. Christ….

“Stock prices are and should be one among many pieces of data that the Fed looks at. Why? Because when 50% of the population holds stocks their performance cannot help but affect people’s spending habits and thus the economy.”

It’s understandable why one could draw such a conclusion, but that statistic, although true, does not mean what people think it means.

That “50% of the population” that “holds stocks” has more value in the vehicles parked in their driveway than they do value in their stock portfolio. The vast overwhelming percentage of ownership of stock and bond securities remains with a tiny percentage of the wealthiest people and/or families.

An argument can be made that the increasing or decreasing value of the homes that 66% of population owns has more of a ramification on “people’s spending habits and thus the economy“, but certainly not stock ownership.
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It was obvious with the last rate cuts that Bernanke was a whore for Wall Street.
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“The meek will inherit the earth, but not on the Fed’s watch. Monetary policy in the United States is an instrument of
subsidy as well as of macroeconomic management, and the subsidized class seems always to be the feckless one. When risk is
mismanaged, or speculation fails, or the bottom drops out of the S&P 500, it’s the savers who take a pay cut. . . .”

Is the Fed too sensitive to falling equity prices? Yes.

The stock market is not the economy, and it is frightening that in the last 10 or 20 years it has been given that status of be all, end all. The Feds actions are only decreasing confidence. And rating agencies, “ha”. This is the same period of time that traditional pensions started being replaced with defined contributions, along with a lot of other financial inventions/derivatives. WS got it hands on a lot of money. Is WS the only thing that matters in our economy?

Wasn’t it at one time, that a company could raise money through equity or issue bonds. That’s why companies went public, to raise money. Although today, they don’t have to because of the large growth in private equity and foreign buyers. But in those days (i.e., 2 decades ago maybe), the company actually made something or provided a valuable/needed service. And the investors received a nice dividend, and in the long-term, because the company was successful (and inflation) the stock price appreciated. It treated it workers nicely, as it did the community and customers, had a strong and ethical board, and solid business practices. The focus today seems more on the stock, and less on the company and the economy. And the fed keeps proving that time after time. Are we measuring the right things for a strong, solid, healthy, sustainable economy for the majority.