Is the stock market starting to corecct it self ?

Fuck you jackie. Correct your spelling.

It's only one day over close to 300 market days ina year. Why get bent out of shape on an investment that is suppose to be intended for a lifetime long term comittment? Markets never have gone in a straight line. If you're worried now, you better get your emotions out of investing and cash in and shove it under a mattress.

I thought Juice had all his money invested in trailer parks.

Buy and hold, baby, buy and hold.

Well, if you’d stop investing in craigslist hoes maybe you’d actually make some money.

I thought your Bitcoin profits would counter any loss in other investments.

Most of my own money outside of retirement accounts is in crypto currencies now. Also building up my connections with the hope of working on it full time starting sometime in 2018. Which is not to say the stock market won't do well. I just think crypto-currencies will do even better.

Jewce,yesterday was just a hiccup,it was in no way as severe as a Papi Chulo nosebleed.All my stocks are recovering nicely.I'm telling ya son dividend reinvestment is where it's at.In the words of the great Ron Popeil"Ya just set it and forget it".

Don’t let the drop in the market make you worry. There are swings on many days. We’ve been lucky this year - with some nice gains. This is a bit different than our usual years.

Considering the current Dow numbers - yesterday’s movements weren’t statistically significant.

If either interests rates rise or the new tax bill fails, I'm betting the market is vulnerable. The tax bill could fail. Never underestimate Trump's incompetence.

^^^ A more prudent thing would be to get government spending under control before any reforms, but that seems too simplistic and logical for politicians to understand.

Interest rates are going to rise. Most companies will still thrive. The weak ones will fail. Time to clean out the stable.

I read "random walk" long time ago. Made a big impression; just look at my username.

There are certain periods, like dotcom years, where some amount of market timing makes sense

Stocks held a sale yesterday if you ever wanted more google, amazon, or apple yesterday was the one day white sale.

@RandomMember said "If either interests rates rise or the new tax bill fails, I'm betting the market is vulnerable. The tax bill could fail. Never underestimate Trump's incompetence."

Ok, probably. Interest rates are controlled by the federal government, at least in the short term. And the tax bill will be the product of negotiations between congress and the president. Which means that the market is going to choose a direction based on a bunch of political bullshit. That's scary. I've seen days where a lot of good corporate earnings or strong economic data are announced and the market still goes down because some news story makes tax reform seem to be in doubt. And vice versa. You have to remember back further than 10 years to recall a market that wasn't pegged directly to politics. The American economy is sadly based in DC, now.

Dougster never lets anything like a collapsing stock market slow him down:
http://acurrie.me/wp-content/uploads/201…

SJG

Keep in mind, and I don't know who on here stated to invest strictly into dividend paying stocks, that when interest rates rise it will take its toll on dividend paying stocks. It's one of the reasons why the fed's management with rates is to make a slow transition to normalcy.

The unknown on that is since we've been so abnormal for so long, what kind of whiplash do we experience going forward. Corrections are normal patterns, don't try to get out of their way, just have a strategy to ride them out before they hit. In other words, don't time the market and you'll eventually get the returns you seek, grasshopper!

I treat all of my investments as long term. That’s why I’ve been fully invested in stock index funds for 20 years and will be for the rest of my life. It’s worked out well for me.
In my twenties, I thought I could outsmart the market and I jumped in and out several times. I got burned every time.

Though I have done it in past times, invest in things I have no control or influence over, I would never want to do that today.

My money goes only into the things I and my circle of associates are building. This way the burn rate is lower, the chances of catastrophic failure are lower. Most of all, we are pooling our knowledge and experience, and as we do more things, that knowledge and experience multiplies.

FWIW, usually the only companies which pay dividends are those which have so little growth potential that they can't reward their share holders in any other way. That money then gets taxed twice, once as corporate income, and then again as personal capital gains income. Though I have in past times been involved in such, no way I would want to do that today.

Our own ventures. The greater reward is in what we are doing, not just in accumulating money.

SJG

A higher percentage of inside ownership can also indicate a company which does not need to pay dividends. That is, since the shares are so closely held, shareholders could be getting something else out of it besides dividends. Foregoing dividends means for going a layer of taxation.

I see your point though.

For myself, the last thing in the world I would want to spend my time doing is picking stocks and following the markets. I really could not care less.

All I care about are the companies that I and my team are working to build. That is far more rewarding in every way, and so there is no way I would ever want to put money anywhere else.

And because we do it this way, the money multiplication potential is radically increased.

SJG

Buy more hoes !! What's the worst can happen ?? LOL

SJG,who are you trying to fool here?You don't have the means nor the balls to pull the trigger on a 20k,10k trade.And who are the companies and team you are working with and for what?So at this point I ask you to consume defecation and expire.

Tumblingdice, you don't know anything about me, or about what balls I have. You asked a question and I answered it. If I had wanted to disclose anything further, I would have already done so.

Just to summarize, but difference between putting money in things open to the public which you actually can never know very much about, just gambling, betting against the pro fund managers, as opposed to putting your money into things you and associates are doing yourselves. I only do this latter.

SJG

I rest my fucking case.

So tumbling, the most balls you have is to dump your money into issues you know very little about, and never could actually know much about?

Publicly traded companies don't disclose very much information about themselves, and certainly no neutral information. It couldn't ever be like actually working with people to try and make a company go.

You don't have the balls to put your money into yourself, and into a circle of close associates?

SJG

Yardbirds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9ULMxxl…

Consistent with the other evidence that SJG is a malignant narcissist is his need to control everything and everyone. It explains his necrophilia, sympathy for rapists, and his aversion to the stock market and anything else (e.g. ex-wives) that he can't control.

Who here has the balls to put 80% of their investments in crypto-currencies?

^I'll take that challenge. :)


(I mean what could go possibly rong taking investment advice from an anonymous SC forum? Better than shorting treasuries.)

^Yeah, it's tempting. Just trying to make up for 20 years of lost time in the market. So tempting.

Supposedly someone wrote they thought BTC might rise to $69,000 or $690,000 per coin -- I forget which.

Maybe they meant $0.69.

mdfmk88: "Successful investors think with their brain, not their balls."

They're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes to it takes balls to execute on what your knows is the right thing.

@mdfmk888, is it intentional your usename inverted spells KMFDM, the band, or is that merely a coinsidence? Just curious.

@mdfmk888, "placing 80% of your portfolio into a single asset class is not investing, it's gambling."

There were some individuals who saw the massive imbalances in the real estate market before the financial crisis of '08, and individuals who correctly allocated their portfolios to protect their wealth may have allocated as much as, or more than, 80% of their portfolio to one asset class in doing so. Those individuals, I would say, did not "gamble" by allocating such a large percentage. Therefore, if we can say in hindsight that such an allocation was not "gambling", but was actually prudent action, then it must not be true that ALL allocations of 80% or more are instances of "gambling".

Therefore, in defense of Dougster... suck my dick.

Actually it suggests lighthearted condescension. My investments have actually done well. And I agree with you on everything that you just wrote. I too occasionally check the Shiller PE ratio, and I agree with Keynes famous words. Perhaps you misunderstood me, I wasn't advocating for a mere market timing strategy. I was just pointing out, in general, that you cannot reasonably make the claim that every single allocation of 80% or more is, in principle, gambling, unless you make an equivalency between gambling and even the smallest of risks. But, then, you would consider my driving 5 minutes to my workplace tomorrow as "gambling." No, that's not really a gamble.

If I discover an inexpensive cure for cancer, with little to no side effects, and patent its formulation, and then form a company and sell the cure for a price that is lower than the competing price of cancer therapy, and immediately make the company public and allocate 80% of my money to my own stock... is that really a gamble?

In principle, an 80% allocation isn't gambling. But, given what I know about the market, if I allocated 80% to one asset class?? Yes, that would be a gamble.

Platinum Plus is actually quite a good club, I agree. Going to a few others really made me appreciate it recently. Unfortunately I moved a little further away, so it is no longer a 20 minute drive from home... more like an hour now.

@mdfmk888: Let's put it this way:

Just because you can't time the market doesn't mean there aren't others who can.

Ambrose Bierce said "The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling."

If you're betting on something that you can't control, then it's gambling. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. This idea that it isn't gambling if it's less risky seems silly. Blackjack is less risky than craps. But they are both gambling. Just remember that most forms of investing have been declared illegal at one time and place or another, throughout history. No different than pitching dice in an alley.

Ambrose Bierce was a good writer.

I say that grown men should have better things to do with their time than putting money into things they have no other substantive involvement with, or others feeling that they need to prove to themselves that they have ball.

Every aspect of life has risks. Self employment has risks, but I still say that once one has gotten some basic experience, that it is the best way to go.

And as far as cash, how much better to use it further your own ventures, than to put it into other people's ventures which will never yield you anything except money, at best.

SJG

@BHF, @ Dougster I don’t believe you need to gamble to make money in the market but you do need to be smart and recognize qualities in a business that will make them grow and prosper. Timing is really not as important as endurance and it’s true that you occasionally will need some strong nerves or balls as Dougster put it.
I’ll give you an example Apple if you were a genius and acces to knowledge you might have recognized that their products were better than everyone else’s if you would have gotten in early on you would be sitting on a large profit assuming you just stayed with them, even if you brought in a few years ago your profit wold be nice and they are still going strong returning good profits still season after season. Compare it to Motorola you needed to pay attention to what was happening you lost money if you were still with them.
I guess my point and I could cite numerous examples of intelligent stock picking to back up my claim that it isn’t gambling. I know that loses occur but if you are diligent and diversified that shouldn’t keep you from making more usually much more than you lose.

^^^^^^ Problem is, the people who control the current prices are the pro fund managers. They control something like 50% to 75% of the money. So their actions set the current prices.

So as you say, "smart and recognize qualities in a business that will make them grow and prosper".

Well, you can never know anything that these pro fund managers don't already know and know better. So if they see an issue as good, they will put money into it, but only up to a certain price. Likewise, if they see it running into trouble, they will start selling off, down to a price.

Any of these issues are good, if he price is low enough. And any of them are bad, if the price is too high.

But it is these fund managers who control the prices, and what information you may have has zero predictive ability. It only explains why the current price is what it is.

And then of those who talk about 'balls', all that means is just making impulsive trades.

Whereas, you 25 know better than any what it is like to run your own business, and how you do pay attention to the details and you do what it takes to make it work.

You know the people and you know their strengths and weaknesses, and you calibrate your perceptions and tune your responses accordingly.

But you can never have that kind of info about a publicly traded issue.

On the otherhand, if you continue to put your money into your own affairs and into your own team, the risks are lower and the rewards are greater.

SJG

Looks like tumbling dice did a massive smack down on SJG!!

In true SJG-like fashion he doesn't miss a beat and simply changes the narrative like nothing ever happened to his bitch slapped face. Right?

@BHF - you are correct. Although I think most folks now understand the close similarity between day trading and gambling. When the dot com bubble had yet to burst - it became obvious that some were simply placing uninformed bets.

We like to look at metrics and statistics - and think we are more scientific about our choices of investments - but I still find the markets to be fickle.

I knew the market was going to drop (about 17 years ago) after I saw the guy who serviced my boiler tracking tech stocks (with a pencil and paper - and grease covered hands) while filling my oil tank.

I agree @JimGas. Even when a hit with a major smack down - SJG is unmoved - as he simply doesn’t get it. He operates in a reality that is a few steps removed from our reality - and seems impervious to logic.

@SJG at the risk on getting into a long back and forth you sound like parrot that has been fed propaganda and doesn’t have a rational thought of its own just mindlessly reciting the pap he’s been listening to day in and day out.

@twentyfive, do you know with 100% certainty which stocks are going to go up or down, and when, and by exactly how much? No? Well then it's gambling. And gambling is a good thing! It's not an insult to refer to something as "a gamble." Gambling is what life is about. All of life is a gamble. People don't like to call it a gamble because they don't like to admit that randomness or chance or luck or events beyond their control played any role in their success. But of course it does. And what's so bad about that? Even a savings account is a gamble because the value of the dollar could go to zero overnight, inflation could spike, FDIC could fail, there could be a bank panic which would prevent you from having access to your money for several days, weeks, or even months, etc. But so what? That's part of life. Why does the word 'gambling' offend everyone? How much control does one really need anyway?

@san_jose_guy said "Problem is, the people who control the current prices are the pro fund managers. They control something like 50% to 75% of the money. So their actions set the current prices."

But what does that have to do with deciding whether or not to invest? When you invest, you are gambling on how the market will react to uncertain future events. So why would it matter whether prices are set by a few thousand fund managers or by a few million day-traders and housewives? What difference would it make to the individual investor? The ocean will react the same way whether it's full of whales or guppies.

Besides, more than half of equity fund managers can't beat the market. That's a big advantage that the individual investor has over a fund manager; YOU can't move markets when you place a trade, whereas a billion-dollar fund will affect prices, to its own detriment, with every trade it places.

@BHF. It’s not randomness there is a luck factor but it isn’t random why some business succeeds and others fail sorry my friend ipicking stocks is a learnable skill it is not toss dice or picking a card out of a shoe with 5 Deck’s it is not gambling the way that it is done by the experts.

@twentyfive, I said gambling, I didn't say guessing. You could do everything right and pick the perfect stock at the right price... and then a nuclear war starts the next day. So much for timing. And actually, you might not even know for sure whether a nuclear war would cause your holding to go up or down. That's what I mean by randomness. I didn't say there's no skill involved. Only that there's lots of luck and randomness involved, too. Just like with sports. Professional atheletes are the ones actually playing the game, not merely betting on its outcome, and thus presumably they are at least somewhat in control of what happens on the field, and yet they seem to believe that there's some randomness involved, too. Just look at all their stupid superstitions. I've seen baseball players refuse to shave or change their socks because they are on a winning streak. It's so ridiculous, but it's true. Obviously, the socks and the facial hair have nothing to do with anything, but they are acknowledging that nothing is completely under anyone's control. I say embrace the randomness. Perhaps because I'm still young, randomness just doesn't scare me.

There are research teams out there with $100 million budgets and inside sources. In order to outperform the market, through timing, you’ve got to consistently outperform all those research teams. No individual investor is that smart, or lucky. It’s a fool’s errand.

Juice did you make your money back today?

I think it's just a matter of time before Trump visits South Korea and says something stupid again plunging the stocks I own. The question though is if anyone else cares if he says something stupid and if people believe him. I can imagine him giving a press conference in the Zone near North Korea and giving Kim an ultimatum saying Kim has to give up his weapons or we begin bombing in 90 days. Tomorrow if no one believes him. Then the Dow drops 1000 points as US bombers fly overhead during the news conference and people wonder, maybe he is serious? Then Ford stock drops another 10%. The next day Trump rubs it in by saying the stock market has been doing great while he's been president. Disclaimer, I do not own Ford.

You know you are buying too much stock when the stock price changes because of you. If it's only a few cents and it's not a penny stock, you're still good.

I think that, at the end of the day, @SJG acting like he hates the stock market and is, in general, a liberal revolutionary hero is just him compensating for the guilty he feels for his necrophilia, rape and violent impulses. That and more than a little trolling. No way he sincerely believes anything he says.

As in most conversations we have here, I think it would help if people gave precise mathematical definition we deciding if activity "A" falls under category "B" or category "C". So who wants to do this? What is the mathematical definition of "gambling" and how does it deal from "investing"? Some says it's that gambling is negative expectations. SJG says it's about control. But everything has different degrees of control. You have no control over a roulette wheel and the game is designed such that every bet has equal (negative) expectation. In craps some bets are better than others. In blackjack in some games you can count cards and win. In poker there is even more "control" but it's not complete. If open a business you have more control, but it's still not complete.

Other seems to be imply its risk. Maybe sharpe ratio?

Any of you smarty-pants want to define things a little more precisely or is just going to be all gum flapping?

It's obviously all based on luck. No one can beat the market like Warren Buffet. There are no such things as successful traders.

IMO, a gamble would be a position in which the expected outcome, as determined by physics and/or basic human economics (Austrian economics, not that fake Keynesian crap), is a harmful outcome (loss).

I agree. Negative mathematical expectation = gambling. Positive mathematical expectation = investing.

The market is in a holding pattern right now waiting for the tax reform President Trump has promised. If that doesn't happen, that's when you will see the correction people have been expecting for a while now.

@Dougster, if you say so. Based on your definition, buying derivatives might be considered gambling while buying shares of a stock index fund would be investing. But then, who is to say what a positive outcome is? If you buy a stock and you make a profit that is less than the rate of inflation, is that a positive or a negative outcome? If you make a profit that is substantially less than you could have earned by purchasing an equity index fund, is that a positive or a negative outcome? What if you buy a stock hoping to sell it with a profit within a week, but you end up holding it for ten years; it's still technically a profitable trade, but was this a positive or a negative outcome? It's hard to quantify.

How about this: if it makes everyone feel better to call their financial activity "investing" instead of "gambling," then so be it. Personally, I call it gambling, and I'm happy to be a gambler.

@Futuretrackstar, maybe, but the real Austrian economists would say that we are wrong to even think about applying mathematics to any economic problem.

I didn't say "outcome". I said "expectation". In the mathematical sense. Although I doubt few here know what the definition is. Most will be like "oh, of course you expect to make money. What if you don't?" Bunch of bozos.

@Dougster, fair enough, but Futuretrackstar used the word "outcome" and you agreed. Substitute the word "expectation" for the word "outcome" then. What is your expectation when you buy a stock? And what is your expectation when you spin a roulette wheel? If your answers are "to make money" and "to lose money," respectively, then I would say you're a better stock picker than most.

And I'm not sure that the concept of expectations even applies to the stock market because there are infinite possible outcomes. When you buy a lottery ticket, the expectation should be to win approximately the after-tax lump-sum pot divided by the number of tickets that will be sold. Usually, this expected outcome is a smaller amount of money than the ticket actually costs. Which means that the expected outcome is a loss. But how can you calculate this with a stock investment that has limitless possible outcomes? Therefore, I prefer to think of the whole thing logically rather than mathematically. I.e., it's a gamble because it's not fully under the investor's control.

This thread is becoming stupider with each post everyone has an answer to rebut practical investing is not gambling say whatever you like there is a predictable outcome and you idiots do what ever you like I don’t care my retirement is secure my bills are paid I have legacy and money to do as I please that’s the bottom line

Again, people trying to distinguish between "gambling" and "investing" without offering up definitions of what either is. Of course you are just going to argue in circles if you won't bother to define your terms.

@Burlington: Also dodging mathematical definitions and talking about "expectation" in the colloquial sense. Expectation at Roulette is about -5% on the stock market it's about +10% year.

"Expectation at Roulette is about -5% on the stock market it's about +10% year."
------------------------

So the odds for roulette are based on rigorous 8th grade math and you are guaranteed to lose all your money if play roulette long enough. I guess that's your definition of gambling. Fine.

The 10% stock rule is based on historical averages, which is sort of mathematical, but not at all rigorous or deterministic. So much of stock investing is based on guessing the mass psychology of irrational human beings. It may not fit your precise definition of "gambling" but it sure involves some level of risk.

The Shiller PE is at least an attempt to quantify expected 10-yr returns, and that prediction sure is not 10%-per-yr right now. But the Shiller PE is based on past earnings and not rigorous or deterministic, either.

I'm terrible at spotting trends but I do think some people can time the market and read investor psychology successfully.

@Random: modelling the stock market as a random walk with positive expectation and some standard deviation works very well, but there are observable departures from it.That's why I say the market is positive expectation. So by some people's definition (including mine) that makes the market investing not gambling. It's also means that good blackjack players and good pokers also are merely "investing their time" and not gambling.

@SJG, OTOH, says it doesn't matter as long as you don't have almost control over something it's gambling. So I guess a random walk with even a +20% or +30% yearly return would be gambling to him. Others says it's the amount of risks (standard deviation) that matters.

Or maybe it's the sharpe ratio: expected return divided by standard deviation. Then they could define some number above which it's "investing" and below which it's "gambling".

I just want people to give a clearer idea of what exactly the distinction is. Its one of these situation where everyone thinks their intuitive definition, which they only vaguely understand is the correct one, and everyone else's is wrong, But then we get people not even stating their definition so we can decide who's right and who's wrong.

Speaking of gambling, have you ever noticed that every person who goes to Vegas says they won. The Vegas shooter said he made millions playing video poker. Makes me wonder how the casinos can afford to stay in business.

mdfmk: "A rebalancing approach will achieve market timing automatically, without any luck, or perceived skill."

And that contradicts what you said in the very same post about it being a random walk. The point of rebalancing isn't to "automatically time the market". It's to keep your risk at a certain level.

And again, everybody knows about survivorship bias. Your argument boils down to "Evidence shows few people can time the market. Therefore nobody can." Which you then contradict yourself on a few sentence later by saying "Although nobody can time the market, you automatically can if you do automatic rebalancing".

@Random, sure, the 10% average annual return is based on history... a very long history. I would argue that the rise in stock prices is fundamentally due to the advancement in technology, e.g. the modern techniques of printing on paper is far more efficient than the old printing press, thus a modern printing company is more profitable due to its competitive advantage over the companies that use the obsolete technology. The relative value of advanced technology is greater than that of the obsolete technology, because it affords mankind greater power and thus more free time and reduced effort. In a capitalist society, the human desire for creating a high standard of living (like modern plumbing and stripper ejaculation services) is what drives the growth. I’m rambling now, but the point is roulette will absolutely result in a loss over time, whereas the aggregate efforts and creativity of mankind drives stock prices higher and higher. This is not rocket science! It is plainly obvious why we say “the customer gambles at the slot machines,” and not “the customer invests at the slot machines.” It’s 2017, pick up a dictionary! The man who considers the stock market like he considers a casino is a man filled with doubts and lacking faith.

@mark94 Yep 90% of poker players say they make money. I knew some people in the online poker industry though, and they told me the reality was the opposite: about 10% made money. And that was a long time ago. I bet it's much less now with the rise of bots.

In trading/investing those who can beat the S&P consistently I would estimate is around 1 in 1000.

^^^I have never tried to time any markets, I have always been a value driven investor, over my lifetime of being first a saver in the late seventies and early eighties when the banks were paying first savings accounts 6% to later when CDs paid more than 10% interest and giving extravagant gifts as an inducement to open an account in their branches, to the late eighties when I started with my first mutual fund to the present, I would guess that over all of this time I have probably an average growth rate of 7-8% taking into account years where the losses were significant, maybe as high as 10% and other years where i had super growth in excess of 20% one single thing has remained constant, I have always been diversified and I no longer have a need for significant growth so much of my money is sheltered in protective classes of assets, being satisfied to achieve 3-5%, at this point, keeping pace with my projected spending and needs, and the rest is in very safe bonds and real estate, which while the liquidity may not be as great the value continues to grow, so overall this does not qualify as gambling simply put.
There are elements of risk but truthfully, they are not beyond control and are manageable, There is no tossing of dice or drawing of a card, which is pure chance, yes there are odds that are quantifiable when gambling but the odds reset to zero with each toss of the die, or pull of the card or spin of the wheel or lottery pick, the difference is simple. your first act when gambling has the same risk that the next action in other the odds for gambling are not cumulative they reset as soon as the action is taken, Investing on the other hand your odds improve over the longer term your first stock pick will give you the experience to recognize the next one, and if a lifetime of investing teaches us anything is that the more you grow your wealth the less risky it becomes.

No, @25. You do plenty of market timing. You just aren't aware of it. You take profits when you think a stock has run enough and dump losers. And analyze stocks to make your picks versus throwing darts at a board: e.g. CHK is a dog you would not touch. A person who truly believed the market cannot be timed would say CHK is no better or worse than anything else.

Off topic somewhat, its stated that the "efficient frontier" can be achieved by using only 15 individual large capital stocks. Anything more than that doesn't increase your returns and will provide enough diversification for adequate performance returns, meaning you'll maximize your profits.

However, CFA's are amongst the most intelligent people in investing and about 70-80% of them who work for the fund managers perform below the efficient frontier. What gives? I'm guessing the human elements and our bias always gets in the way of clear decision making.

I can tell you I'm not going to do an hour of homework which is recommended for each stock you own on a weekly basis. I'm not devoting 15 hours a week to investment research, which is why indexing is a popular strategy since 70-80% CFA/investment researchers perform less than the benchmark. However due to choice, you can research fund managers that have a good record and place your faith in them. There are so many choices to make things confusing and that's why people hire advisors.

If you compare the market to a dart board, the majority of market gains come from 25-30% of the stocks. So if you're a stock picker you have to be good at hitting the bullseye. Most dart players can't hit the bullseye with consistency, and neither do most fund managers. Those that do hit the bullseye can only do so for short periods of time, and eventually there aim is off given longer time frames. This is why buy and hold and keeping costs low through indexing has been a more manageable strategy through out a lifetime than tactical investing. But the good thing is you have a choice, and that's all we can say about this topic. Whether you think your choice is better than others is your opinion, but doesn't make you smarter, a better investor, or skillfull. It makes you an investor.

“It makes you an investor.” Right. And not a gambler. /End Thread

Meat72: "However, CFA's are amongst the most intelligent people in investing and about 70-80% of them who work for the fund managers perform below the efficient frontier. What gives? "

I think it's that people who have both big money and brains are able to get a sense of how other positioned. Fundamental they are better poker players in terms of guessing what the other people will do. CFAs are at a particular disadvantage because many of them have to make their analysis public and because they aren't influential. It's essential like a good poker player but forced to play with his cards faced up. Meanwhile the real sharks are able and know better to keep their cards hidden.

The other things, and one of @SJG's few valid observations, is that amount of money by itself in the market like in poker is an advantage all to itself. You can basically force your opponents into "gambler's ruin" situation.

So the CFAs and others real stand no chance. It like they are smart people. But they are playing poker with their cards on the table and with much smaller stacks than the real sharks.

Correction to the above: Should say "CFAs are influential". Which is actually a disadvantage to them when it come to trying to beat the market.

Also I should say that the fact that those with the big money in the market can push those with smaller money around to the point of "breaking" them is the real reason buy and hold does so well.

If you are "buy and hold" you are immune from this. The short term players will get busted out but you won't be affected. Just be sure you aren't levered!

It's also why diversification helps. It makes "buy and hold" easier from a psychological day to day point of view. Your fluctuations are smaller so there is less emotional impact and you won't sell at the wrong time so easily.

The sharks I talked about above are making their money from the short term players who are less smart and/or have less money. They aren't making a dime off those who are buying and holding.

Right Dougster! The CFAs also have other people's backs to scratch, so in the quid pro quo world I've seen them influenced by their managers to put a
Portion of their holdings into a friend's industry or stock. This is way more common than anyone thinks. If you don't go along with a manager's back scratching efforts you'll be finding yourself out of a high paying position. Fund managers are more political than tactical. This is what I mean by bias.

I think instead of debating whether or not the stock market is or is not correcting itself (even though..... didn't the NASDAQ hit an all time high yesterday?) we should shift the the discussion to talk about this:

What quantitative measures are suggestive or indicative of a correction in the market, and what quantitative measures are suggestive or indicate of an economic recession?

I know of only a couple, but I would love to learn about others if they are out there.

mdfmk: Of course your statements are contradictory. And if the space of just a few sentences which makes them particularly funny.

First you say you can't time the market. Then you say you can time it by auto rebalancing. Which is it? Can the market be timed or not?

As for when it's time to exit the market, I stated a few months when Bitcoin was at $2200 in May that I was moving money out of the market toward bitcoin. I was about 50% in by August, and now it's close to 80%. Think I've been reiterating since then that I think crypto currencies are the better investment, but you need alot of balls to be in them.

Also my investment in crypto currencies is going to get even higher than the 80% suggests. Because I'm moving my career from working with investments like stocks and FX to crypto currencies. The amount of volatility there isn't everyone's cup of tea I'll admit it. And in the accounts I manage I've just stuck to by and hold all year, with a bit of quick profit taking on some things that ran up too fast.

Hope that answers your question!

So that will be your chance @mdfmk. I think my track record on calling crypto-currencies has already been stellar, thank you very much. But maybe I just got lucky? 5 months it too early to say. In three years we should know for sure. Would I have done better to stick to stocks or was going "all-in" on crypto-currencies the better play. You'll either get the chance to admit I was right or get to laugh at me. Although, based on past experience, it seems to go more like when I am right three years later the other guy tries to find a way to weasel out of admitting that he was wrong. Let's see if you are that kind of guy or not.

FWIW, I do agree that those who seem to do well, are those who buy and hold, this way they are only getting manipulated, like once. If they hold onto it long term, then that doesn't really make any difference in the long term outcome.

You never really can know much about a publicly traded company, except for its share value history. But that is exactly what the big players want you to go by.

"Look how it keeps going up, better buy in."

"Look how its dropping, better get out."

I would still say though that the people who do the best just money wise, are those who put money in at the beginning, and then get out later on, when it goes public, or is bought by something public. But with such things you can never be buying and selling on a regular basis. Most of the dotcom boom money was just little guy wanna be's helping to make the super rich richer.

But the best still is to put your money into your own ventures, ones which you or close associates will be running. You are probably making money, but you are also building a long term team of trusted and valued associates. You come to know the people's strengths and weaknesses, and so you know how to calibrate what they are saying. And you are also growing and continually testing your own abilities too. What could be better?

I want to respond here to an idea BHO has put forward, that yes it is all gambling and that that is good.

Well, people gamble because they don't see ordinary life as worth living, so they are willing to let go of their money on things where the odds are against them, case in point that wretched Georgia induced California Lottery.

https://www.amazon.com/European-Dream-Eu…

Rifkin chronicles the end of the American Dream in the rise of these state lotteries. People come to live by fatalism.

And then, it really is no different with the rise of stock market speculation.

No, gambling is not a good thing, it is fatalism.

Taking risks in applying your own efforts to do something worthwhile, that is good. But financial speculation is not that, as that is very close to gambling.

So someone like Elon Musk is taking risks in putting his money and his time into ventures like Space-X and Tesla. But this is not just gambling, as he is putting his money, efforts, and reputation into the project, and undoubtedly he is drawing upon past partners who have demonstrated their abilities.

Very different from someone like a @tumblingdice who just says, "I'm going to pull the trigger on a $20k trade because I've got balls". Its really just because he has nothing better to do with his money and because he doesn't have anything better to do with himself either.

Lots of people here on TUSCL who have way more dollars than sense.

SJG

Yardbirds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9ULMxxl…

The stock market is just finger blasting its own ass. No worries, man.

@SJG: I think tumblingdice mentioned that he had made quite a bit of money in the restaurant and construction too, IIRC.

Has Elon Musk disclosed all his financial holding? Is all his money in his own companies he works for? Can you point us at at Musk's disclosure, @SJG just so we are clear on things?

@SJG: "Well, people gamble because they don't see ordinary life as worth living"

Exactly. So nice of you to say something true once in a while. Have you started to see a therapist and taking meds today?

ppwh +25!

tumblingdice has got balls, he's not afraid to put his money down and watch the roulette wheel spin.

As far as Musk, I am planning to read up on him. I find him interesting. Very different from the vast majority of entrepreneurs who people always hear about.

Back when he came out with that early Lotus based 2 seater he said that he was putting all his money and reputation into this.

To me he doesn't seem like someone who would put money into other things. I mean, for one thing, to be able to do that he would have to be selling himself to get that money. Doesn't seem to be the sort of a guy who would do that.

Lots of successful entrepreneurs end up being their own VC's. And there is not only one kind of VC either. The KP sorts draw lots of attention, but I find their approach repellent, and so I don't recommend it. There are lots of other types. One of the people who opened my eyes to this was Vinod Khosla.

SJG

@Dougster I got your point about timing but you need to read what I wrote, I never intentionally try to time my purchase or my sales yes everything is based on timing but if I were to use that as a criteria there would be days that I sold everything and days that I only brought it’s really just an overall view and possibly I hold some timing bias so to speak but it isn’t a vivid factor in my daily decision making. Of course there are people who base everything on timing some of them are quite smart and reap fortunes that way. But if you look at your average day trader thely think timing is everything, and just like poker players only about 10% of them make money the rest eventually disappear into the ether never to be heard from again.

Again, @SJG. My understanding is that @dice made his money in the restaurant and construction business primarily, but also some in the stock market. Sounds like a pattern for lots of people on this board. They own their own business but invest a considerable (though not necessarily majority) of their profits in the stock market. Which sounds like completely the right thing to do.

It's just you saying it has to 100% in your own business for everyone (regardless of your age of other any other circumstances) otherwise you are behaving foolishly or unethically who is insane. But everyone has figured that out about you now.

@SJG your admiration for the VC boys is contradicting your statements they are investors that put money into other people and can’t possibly know everything or control the the businesses that they invest in actually your admiration is misplaced many of them are more like vultures than sharks they make a killing on many failed ventures that they cause to fail intentionally to be able to pick over the bones of and Elon Musk if you actually research his history you will find that his companies are so leveraged they actually operate at a loss when they could have been profitable. Tesla is a perfect example they have yet to turn a profit and one of the reasons is he keeps accepting money from outside diluting the company beyond its actual capacity as a result it operates more like a Ponzi scheme than a company.

Different types of VC's. I have shown nothing but contempt for Kleiner Perkins and their people. And I have not ever advocated being involved in anything which is not being run by either yourself or someone from you circle of close and prove associates.

Musk is doing stuff on a scale that very few others would or could. He would not be able to be getting this outside money if he were just a guy showing he has balls by acting recklessly. No, this is a guy demonstrating vision and tenacity.

SJG

^^^I guess you are a true believer a Muskie time will tell I wouldn’t buy into so much sizzle with so little steak.

I have zero interest in putting any money of mine into his doings. Rather I just think that he is someone worth *investing* some time and energy into learning from.

SJG

Okie dokie. Definition of Gambling: Playing a game of chance for money; Taking a risky action in the hope of getting a desired result.

Definition of Investing: A form of gambling that educated people with money do, while telling themselves that it's not gambling.

Examples: Gambling is when you play cards at a casino where 90% of the players lose money; Investing is when you buy stock in a casino where 50% of casinos in the industry go bankrupt and 50% of the remaining survivors routinely operate at a loss.

On a more serious note, in responding to SJG, yes, I think both gambling and "investing," no matter how you draw the distinction, are great things. You're saying that the average man or woman should invest in his own business rather than gamble on the businesses of others. But the average man or woman is not capable of being a businessperson. Most businesses fail. The average person wouldn't know the first thing about running a business. And, regardless, it's still a gamble whether it's your own business or Elon Musk's or Warren Buffett's, etc. All business is a gamble. It's just a question of whether the odds are with you or against you, and how much of it is perceived to be under your control.

Educated people are able to trick themselves into distinguishing between casino games and business endeavors because the former operate on a binary option basis: win or lose, money or no money. And of course the odds are against you at a casino. All business operates the same basic way, because every transaction is itself a binary option. But they are thinking in the long-term aggregate, which means that there are infinite possible outcomes.

But I digress. Gambling, business, investing, call it whatever you want, it's a great thing. People like Elon Musk, and every participant in the financial markets throughout history, their cumulative action is what holds up the world economy and allows us to keep improving our lives. As Futuretrackstar said, the desire for a higher standard of living drives growth. And our standard of living is now the highest in human history. Poor people in America now live as well or better than kings and queens did a few centuries ago. As for whether or not the individual investor/gambler will win money... I don't know. I hope so. But he has made the world a better place. Even the guy risking money in a casino helps to enrich the casino which helps their stock which helps a fund manager somewhere, etc.

As you can probably guess, the one exception to my general theory of "all gambling is good," are public state lotteries. Lotteries are run by governments and governments have no business being in business under any circumstances.

But putting money into your own ventures, involving yourself and those of a trusted circle of associates does involve risk, but so does any other aspect of life.

But it is not just speculation because you and people you know are working your asses off trying to make it succeed.

And actually I always suggest that people wanting to run their own business decline VC money.

Gambling is not good, ever. Repeal that California Lottery.

SJG

@SJG, but what if you're a total fuck-up? Should you still put money into your own ventures?

@BHF you can keep howling at the moon but all you do is sound like SJG, anyone can go on line, and find a definition in some dictionary some place to prove that the moon is made out of green cheese that doesn't make it so, even though I really don't care all that much, as i'll continue do do as before, and be fine.

@twentyfive, obviously my "definitions" were intended to be light-hearted. If you believe that it's not gambling because you can control the odds through hard work, or because you win more often than you lose, then so be it. Regardless of what you call it, the world is a somewhat better place because of all the risks you took.

Not just control the odds as you call it, they actually improve with time spent learning, unlike gambling the odds are fixed, each toss of the dice has exactly the same chance of winning as the previous throw.

BHF wrote, "@SJG, but what if you're a total fuck-up? Should you still put money into your own ventures?"

:) :) :)

You should work with a team, people who know each other and play to each others strengths will covering for each other's weaknesses.

This is part of the organization I am building now. And our money goes into our own affairs.

SJG

@Burlington: sorry, but your sarcasm does not actually disguise the fact that you are unable to give definitions of the things you are talking about.

@SJG: okay, new argument from you. It's actually okay to give up control of your business to people like VC or the stock market, providing you are doing things on a grand enough scale and truly believe in them. Everyone else, however, is not allowed to.

Again, mdfmk, you are the one who does not understand. The point of rebalancing isn't "buy low, sell high" it's to keep your risk constant. You are the one who lacks understand. Because if you had understanding, you would understand that if it's being used as a market timing strategy, it will actually do the rebalancing too early sometimes. But go learn out there and learn why portfolios are actually rebalanced.

Again your argument boils down to:

"You can't time the market! However if you do automatic portfolio rebalancing you can time the market! "

Might also want to learn how to say things with out contradicting yourself before you post more here. Then, again, it doesn't stop @SJG!

Lol!

@Burlington actually has a good point with that. Yes, if you were into the world with Elon Musk level genius and charisma, you're path through life and investment decisions might be different than if you are born Joe Six Pack.

@Dougster, once upon a time, I worked in finance. The conclusion that I came to from my experiences there was that it was gambling. You may have come to a different conclusion. That's fine. What I noticed was that the people who outperformed and survived were much less likely to conclude that the bourses were gambling, and they also held their activity to be in high esteem. The washouts who didn't survive were much more likely to conclude that it was all gambling and sadly they left with a low opinion of the industry. These are things that people tell themselves to salve wounds and boost egos. I was a unique case, I think, probably because of my political beliefs. I concluded that it was gambling... and that gambling is good. It had nothing to do with my performance.

We can only control what we can control. And whenever we wager on things that aren't perfectly under our control, to me, that's gambling. That's my definition, it doesn't have to be yours. I wouldn't want to discourage any business activity whatsoever. To me, it's all great: Elon Musk's Hyperloop, Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon.com, pork belly futures, the local pizzeria, collateralized debt obligations, The Washington Post, Miramax, a frat boy betting on Red at the roulette table, a bunch of drunks 'pitching bones' in an alley behind the casino, a hooker giving $50 BJs to the drunk who won in the alley... it's all business activity and it's all fine with me. Honest commerce represents humanity at its best.

Okay, let me let you guys in on a little secret. The mathematics behind investing and gambling is all the same. In fact if anyone knows anything about mathematics they would realize that it couldn't be any other way. Some bets, like the stock market, are positive expectation in the mathematical sense, some like roulette are negative expectation. Some have higher deviations on their outcomes: buy and hold S&P, and some lower: buy and hold bonds to expiration. I'm telling people where I draw the arbitrary line. Haven't heard anyone else yet willing to do the same. Just a bunch of allusions to distinction which they can't be precise about and are very fuzzy in their minds. Causing all the contradictions to come out.

@Burlington: "And whenever we wager on things that aren't perfectly under our control, to me, that's gambling. "

Okay, that seems like a consistent viewpoint to me. But there are other consistent definitions as well. I think yours is pretty good.

I would also add that there isn't really anything completely under a person control. And psychologists have found that people vastly over-estimate what they can control and what they can't. In that "Random Walk" book they mention the experiment where a ball or something is taking a random walk, and they have a subject press buttons and ask if can control it at all. Nearly everyone though they had some control, when, in fact, the buttons weren't wired up to control the ball at all.

mdfmk888: "Rebalancing actually accomplishes both of these. "

Provably untrue. What if your stocks fall faster than bonds but they both sell. Then you bought low and sold lower. Also, if the market is a random walk, your rebalancing will hurt your expectation as often as it helps. The only thing it does keep your risk constant (or, more precisely age appropriate).

For the millionth time your argument is still "You can't time the market, but you can if you do automatic portfolio rebalancing because it's automated!". Well I've heard of plenty of strategies that are undeniably market time that are all automated. "Sell in May and go away!" There was one which had a great track record which was very simple, something like buy EUR/USD at the start of the Asian session and sell it at the start of the European session. No top calling, bottom picking discretion of any kind. These strategies all operate on fixed time schedule, no human discretion but are still "market timing".

Again, though, I know that now that you've tangled yourself up in contradictions, all you'll do is talk tough to prove you deny that you have, but refuse to answer the question of whether you think the market can be timed or not.

Also mdfmk, I'm not everyone else should be 80% in crypto-currencies. That's going to depend on things like their age, and, absolutely, on the inherent risk tolerance of their personalities.

You need to believe in the underlying thesis else you are going to shit your pants the first time there is a 20-30% correction in a day and sell at the bottom.

If you aren't that person with the high risk tolerance and deep belief (which I simplify to saying "balls") then please don't invest anything near 80%. Even 8% might be too high if you have weak convictions. (Weak convictions be even worse than a strong conviction that it will crash.)

excellent thread. now i need to digest these posts and apply the 'best' to my next attempt to create wealth. my own attempts have not meet with success.

@Dougster said "I would also add that there isn't really anything completely under a person control. And psychologists have found that people vastly over-estimate what they can control and what they can't."

I totally agree. Emerging research into the concept of free-will basically backs up my experiences with people in the financial industry.

Anyway, if we analyze it to death, it just becomes this crazy deconstructionist concept. The stock market is a gamble. Starting a business is a gamble. Getting a job is a gamble. Going to school is a gamble. Having a relationship is a gamble. Getting laid is a gamble. Taking a vacation at Disney World is a gamble. Crossing the street is a gamble. This is all true. Tomorrow is promised to no one. But that's all part of what makes life interesting. Living in a world without any risk at all would be like living in a world with perfect equality. It may sound superficially appealing, but the reality would be horrible. So, three cheers for risk and inequality!

Anyway, I think mdfmk888's point was that it's hard if not impossible to time the market but, over time, you can still get comparable returns simply by rebalancing at pre-planned intervals. It's kind of like market timing because your 'system' would tell you when to buy and sell and how much, based on a variety of factors (including age, as you point out).

And as for believing in the underlying thesis of your investment, yeah, that helps, but you still need to check and recheck yourself constantly. I like the idea of cryptocurrencies, but I'm afraid to invest in them. There's absolutely nothing backing it, of course, except for the trust that the users have placed in the algorithm. In that regard, it's no different than any other kind of economic activity: it's built on trust and a belief in continuity.

Having said that, you're still somewhat tied to the dollar because it seems to be denominated in dollars and you need to convert it to dollars eventually in order to make a physical purchase. I would also imagine that the government could crack down on it at any time using "legal tender" laws. It reminds me of PayPal. When PayPal first came out, I was excited because I thought this represented a real break from the government-sponsored payment system. But eventually PayPal caved in to government pressure, too, and they basically act like a regular online bank now. That's a shame. Bitcoin doesn't have any real leadership that I know of, and so there's no one for the feds to lean on if they want to exert influence. So that's a positive thing. The downside is, if they can't control it they may try to destroy it instead. I probably just don't have the balls to pull the trigger on any cryptocurrency. Where do you buy it anyway?

@mdfmk888: The point is that you said that rebalancing allows you to "buy low and sell high" but I proved there are situations were it does not do what you claimed. Therefore your claim is proven wrong.

There are other times it going to get you out while the stock market is rising but not done yet. So it cost you there versus not having rebalanced. Same with the bond market.

The point is it does nothing to your expected returns, contrary to your claims. Because it's not designed do. It does the one thing it was designed to do: keep your risk constant (*age appropriate).

Please learn what you are talking about before blathering a bunch of silly contradictions on here. "Although you can't time the market, portfolio rebalancing allows you to time it automatically. No, I didn't just contradict myself".

@Burlington: One of the jokes they like to make in the Bitcoin community, is that the USD has been crashing steadily versus real money (BTC) nearly all year.

"Where do you buy it [Bitcoin] anyway?"

GDAX is one place. If you want to do it more anonymously you could try "LocalBitcoins" but you'll probaby get gouged on the spread.

I recently got on GDAX. Soooo much lower fees than Coinbase.

Sorry, mdfmk888, but you whole argument fails around the first sentence. I didn't advise anyone to invest 80% in crypto-currencies. I was just saying that's what I'm doing. And asked if anyone believed in it so much they are doing the same thing.

The million other sentences in your post: All a big strawman attack. But I would expect nothing less from a guy who contradicts himself---obviously in just a few sentences regarding market timing, and then can't even admit what he did.

I told you what I did do with the accounts I managed this year. Not very much buy and hold. Sold some winners that gained very fast. Bought a little NVDA and AMD.

But, hey you just stick to contradicting yourself and attacking your strawmen if that makes you feel good.

I saw a car's rear window that had written on it,"Buy Bitcoin"!

I wonder why would somebody promote that on their car? My guess, the young kid is just learning about investing and made a profit and is looking to entice others to drive it higher. Doesn't really work that way, but I couldn't think of another good reason a kid driving a 2002 Kia would do that.

^^^ He probably wants a nicer car.

For some people Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are more than an investment. They tie in with political beliefs.

@Meat72, @Dougster, yeah, a lot of the former Ron Paul kids seem to be big on Bitcoin.

Rand, too?

@Meat72, unfortunately there were no Rand Paul kids. That's why he dropped out after Iowa. Most of his dad's supporters went to Cruz, Trump, and even Bernie Sanders.

Bacon!!

More on a possible stock-market correction:

(1) I would think a good portion of the Trump rally was based on the expectation of a big cut in the corporate tax rate.

(2) The proposal that just came out cuts the corporate rate from 35% to 20%. Good for the market, but it's not nearly revenue-neutral. Best estimate that it pumps up the debt by $1.5T over 10 years.

(3) Since its not revenue-neutral, it requires 60 votes in the Senate. In it's present form it may not even get a a majority in the Senate.

So as things stand, it may flame out like Obamacare repeal. If the tax bill fails, the market could tank.

At least the new Fed chair is halfway decent. Thought we might get Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer or some other dipshit.

Sorry, but I had to out on CNN and MSNBC just to hear what that side of the media was retorting, and Randumb's comments above are directly stolen from both those network's scripts.

Technology is definitely helping make money easier. So much of our youth has grown up in times where they don't see parents going off and doing manual labor, because technology has outsourced much of manual labor.

Maybe SJG is right when stating you should invest in yourself and your own things? You can definitely cut the middle
Man out if you know how to do a few things on your own. Maybe I'm a convert to SJG's church of one! Nah, I like pussy too much and basically afraid of seeing any cock other than my own.

Random: they passed a budget with a $1.5 Trillion item for a tax cut, so this tax bill can be done under reconciliation with 51 votes.

LOL! No need to feel threatened there, @Meat. I have a great record of getting the stock market ass backwards.

However, just as a snapshot of things as they stand today, I wouldn't be surprised if the tax bill goes into a flaming defeat, just like Obamacare repeal. My understanding of the Senate rules is that you can't use "reconciliation" if it affects the debt beyond a 10-year window. And a permanent cut in corporate taxes would almost certainly mean that 60 votes are needed in the Senate. They can re-write the bill to and use reconciliation.

The bill is going to get a lot of flak from the homebuilders, the realtors, and blue-states where housing prices, property taxes, and state taxes are high. But who knows, @Meat? Go ahead and stick your head in your ass; maybe things will work out in favor of the stock market.

The House passed a budget resolution on Thursday that served as the first step toward Republicans passing a massive tax reform plan.

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 219 to 206, included in it instructions for what is known as budget reconciliation. Reconciliation allows a bill to pass the Senate without being subject to a filibuster, a crucial hurdle for the GOP to move eventual tax legislation.

I'm not going to keep arguing this point, @Mark93. Look up the "Byrd rule"' You can't use reconciliation if it increases the debt beyond a 10-yr window. If the corporate rate cuts are permanent, reconciliation can't be used in the Senate. The bill can be re-written.

There are ways around the Byrd rule.

Pence has the ability to work around the parliamentarian. It is the president of the Senate, not the parliamentarian, who makes the ruling on what is permissible under reconciliation and what is not, a historian at the U.S. Senate Historical Office told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The parliamentarian has a purely advisory role.

Should Pence decide to preside over the Senate during the tax reform proceedings, he could put forth a bill that offers key concessions to his Republican Senate colleagues that would ensure the bill would get to 50 votes. The Senate parliamentarian would not have to analyze the bill, since Pence, acting as the presiding officer, would be the one making the ruling as to what is permissible under reconciliation rules.

Aww.....the ol' Pence-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-he-wants rule. Never heard of that one, @Mark93; you're truly a master of the Google search. Didn't seem to make much difference in Obamacare repeal.

"I wish more of these girls had people skills"

Yanis Varoufakis on Global Capitalism & How Trump’s Tax Plan is Class War Against the Poor
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/3/y…

SJG

Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite (lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky_gh14b…

"I wish more of these girls had people skills" == oops. from another thread

Yanis Varoufakis on Global Capitalism & How Trump’s Tax Plan is Class War Against the Poor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinwuzZV…

SJG

^^^^^ exhausted it's capacity to reproduce itself through tax cuts on the wealthy.

SJG

Trump screwed up the Obamacare repeal. He trusted Congress to get job done. He learned from that.

Tax Reform will go through, then they will finally repeal and replace Obamacare in the Spring. Then, infrastructure.

If all that happens, we’ll see 3-4% growth for the next decade.

First of all let me repeat I am not pro-republican, rather I'm more anti-liberal due to their emotional stances without much logic guiding their decision making skills.

It's always been the democrats argument that any tax cut always will benefit the rich, so in doing so cuts will be made to left leaning interests that support more government spending. Now factor in the fact that rich people pay more taxes and you see the conundrum for the left anytime tax cuts are proposed.

This time, all contributing tax payers will get a break, even if you're single and only claim $12k or married claiming $24k income! That definitely benefits the lower class, poor, and makes the higher paying citizens in higher paying states get less of a tax break than middle America. All those gun toting states have to buy extra ammunition to protect the range!! (Insert Sarcastic wit)

If you truly are going to argue against this tax reform, you're totaling playing into partisan politics, because this proposal has the makings of kickstarting Another round of quantitative easing. Random is right that the market will briefly take a good hit in all likelihood if this doesn't pass through the Senate, but I've been hearing a few democrats could cross against party lines. We shall see.

And and even greater separation between rich and poor, expanding every year.

That is, unless our Capitalist system no longer has that capacity. But either way, the results are not good. Asking for economic expansion is not what we need.

Also, around the start of this new year is about when Presidents run out of steam. Even their own party will no longer support them, as they want to get re-elected.

SJG

I don’t know when a correction will definitely happen and neither does anyone else but using history as our guide, it took George W. Bush a term and a half to kill the market that was on the move up after Clinton balanced the budget, my guess is Trump isn’t going to make a second term might not even finish his first, so I would think somewhere in the middle of next year because everything seems to be accelerating. I’m not talking politics here in just evaluating the market from my humble vantage point.
Another point no one here seems to get is no president is completely responsible for the economy good or bad he inherited untill his first term, is over that’s how long it takes for the nuances in the market to work their way through.

The stock market has gone straight up since Trump was elected. Thank you Obama !

GDP growth was below 2% during 8 years of Obama. Obviously, Bush’s fault !

GDP growth just jumped over 3%. Thank you Obama!

ISIS has been defeated. It must be because of Obama’s Plan !

Wow, too bad we couldn’t give Obama another term.

@SJG's head is full of rocks!

LOL!

@RandomMember, what mark94 means is that they can use reconciliation *because* they passed a budget. The budget includes a 10-year deficit projection. As long as the tax cuts don't cause the estimated deficit to be any bigger than that, then they can and should be made permanent. The Bush tax cuts didn't have the desired effect on the economy because they were temporary. Temporary cuts give you a 1 or 2 year boost, and nothing more.

Having said that, let's say the cuts do pass. Why would the market go up at all? Remember, the market looks to the future, not the past or the present. I'm not making bets but I would think the market would move sideways or go down eventually regardless. I know it's scary for them, but Wall Street might actually have to think about corporate earnings growth and not merely politics.

@mark94 said "Trump screwed up the Obamacare repeal. He trusted Congress to get job done."

Who do you think he should have trusted to get the job done? The Kardashians? The NBA? Ted Nugent?

"Tax Reform will go through, then they will finally repeal and replace Obamacare in the Spring. Then, infrastructure."

Hope springs eternal, eh? So far it's just tepid tax cuts, not real reform. And it will be watered down further, wait and see. I wouldn't hold my breath on healthcare. And I absolutely guarantee that infrastructure will suck. Guaranteed. It will be full of union giveaways, it will cost a fortune, and it will take forever. Watch.

"The stock market has gone straight up since Trump was elected. Thank you Obama !"

Well... the market kinda sorta went up during Obama's term, too.

"ISIS has been defeated. It must be because of Obama’s Plan !"

Yeah, but most of this actually happened during Obama's presidency. And it was mostly Arab armies that eventually handed Isis its ass (with our help, but still).

@twentyfive, just so you know, Bill Clinton did NOT balance the budget. He was there when it happened, but he was actively working against it. Even just saying that he *helped* to balance the budget would be the equivalent of saying that the Dodgers helped the Astros to win the World Series.

(Of course that didn't stop Clinton from taking all the credit after the fact.)

BHF: you missed my point on OCare repeal. Trump stood back and didn’t put much effort into repeal. With tax reform, he is hands on. That’s the lesson he learned. Don’t trust congress to act with urgency. Get personally involved and lead the process.

@mark94, I hear you, but I don't think he could have done much more than he did. He talked and tweeted about it every single day and he had lots of meetings with congressmen. Beyond that, I don't know what he could have done. He had a hard time articulating exactly what he wanted the bill to have in it, partly because he doesn't seem to know very much about healthcare. Most people don't, and Trump is no exception. The real problem is that the Republicans weren't unified... and they weren't unified because they are really three parties pretending to be one. This is a problem that's too big for Jared Kushner to handle on his own, don't you think?

@mark94 you really have no sense of history do you , everything you post is purely partisan. I don’t think you even remember the reason that the Tea Party’s existence. Flash for you, their one and only issue was debt and deficits, now that they got a bunch of seats they are ignoring the issue that they originally ran on. Yet the cut taxes crowd has never balanced a budget, the last Republican to actually balance the budget was Eisenhower and he raised taxes to create the interstate highway system. Sorry buddy being uninformed as you are I don’t believe your claims about making any money in the market you just spout off a lot of useless bullshit. You really don’t know what you are talking about.

I’m primarily a libertarian though, as we’ve discussed, that can mean different things. I believe in individual liberty and a less intrusive federal government. So, don’t measure the consistency of my position against the Tea Party, Republicans, or Klingons for that matter.

Trump has made progress on that front, even though the democrats and many republicans are fighting to keep the status quo. Regulations have been cut, freeing up business. The number of federal bureaucrats have been cut in the EPA, State Department, Education, and other agencies. Tax reform would ease the complexity of rules. This increase in freedom is being reflected in the stock market and the optimism of the American people about the future.

It took 100 years for this federal behemoth to grow and it will take at least 20 years to scale it back. We are 10 months into that process but the early results are promising.

I forgot to mention the courts. Trump is nominating judges who are textualists and originalists. In 8 years, the federal courts at all levels will be dominated by judges who believe that much of what the federal government does, such as regulating commerce, is not constitutional. That alone will shrink the intrusiveness of the federal bureaucracy.

^^^ Nice!! However I can't recall when congress has shrunk their spending. It's easy to expand government, but very difficult to shrink it. This will be very difficult, just like repeal Obamacare.

@mark94, I think what twentyfive means is that you're kind of a Trump fan-boy. You seem to only see the positives, not the negatives. Yes, it's great that Trump is deregulating and pushing for some tax cuts. We should support him on that. And many of his appointments in the cabinet and the courts have been very good. But being a libertarian means more than just deregulation and tax cuts. It also means free trade, free(er) immigration, not allowing the government to discriminate, not allowing the government to pick winners and losers, opposing eminent domain, supporting gun rights (including automatics and bump-stocks), scaling back wars overseas, ending torture, ending warrantless wiretapping, stopping the drug war, reforming and hopefully ending entitlement programs, CUTTING SPENDING, etc. Trump has been bad on most of these issues. We should support him when he does the right thing and oppose him when he does the wrong thing (which is often). After all, Obama tried to end the Tennessee Valley Authority, and he opened up trade and travel to Cuba. That was good, but it didn't make Obama my hero, because he did a ton of awful stuff, too. In general Obama was terrible.

Also, conservative judges are fine, but many of them also subscribe to the philosophy of Judicial Deference, which basically means that the other two branches of government can do whatever they want with no judicial oversight. That's bad from a libertarian perspective. So just because a judge is a appointed by a Republican that doesn't mean we should automatically be supportive.

I admit, I am slightly prejudiced against Trump because I know his political history so well. But to be honest, what bothered me the most was when he said that the GOP was going to be transformed into a "Worker's Party." Now THAT was troubling! How can a libertarian wholeheartedly get behind someone who says things like that?

On reflection, I guess I’m a Trump fanboy because he is doing some things that no other President, other than Reagan, has even tried to do. Shrinking government is a 20 year project

Trump has done his 5% in his one year in office. That’s way more than the Bushes ever did. The trend is our friend.

There are different types of libertarians. I’m on the nationalist end of the spectrum rather than the open border end.

The most recent version of health reform would have pushed control down to the States. That fell one vote short. If Menendez is convicted in the next couple weeks, and a Republican named, suddenly the control of a huge part of our economy shifts from DC to the states. I don’t think any shift like that has ever happened, with the possible exception of welfare reform.

Using an executive order or series of them is no way to govern,anything accomplished by executive order can be undone by the next president the same way. Obama did this as well that's how Trump is able to reverse a lot of it, but Obama's signature achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act is not going to be undone, it may be improved (I hope) but the Republicans just don't have the votes sorry, Trump fanboys he's not impressing me by being a rude jerk.

@mark94,

As for being a nationalist libertarian... that isn't really a thing. Nationalists seem to believe their country is the best just because they live there. It's not a very libertarian sentiment. Still, I do know what you mean. You're not in favor of liberalized immigration. For the record, I'm not in favor of true open borders either, as I told you.

You've quoted Milton Friedman before. Anti-immigrant folks often quote Friedman as saying that we can't have open borders as long as we have a welfare state. Yes, he really did say this. But of course, he said it at a time back when immigrants really were eligible for welfare. Today, things have changed. They are now barred from getting welfare for a period of many years. Things have changed for the better in this regard since Friedman's time and I think he would have approved. Also, Friedman was against mass LEGAL immigration, but he was in favor of mass ILLEGAL immigration. He thought that illegal immigrants were good for the economy because they would undercut the minimum wage and keep inflation down (and they wouldn't get welfare, I like legal immigrants in Friedman's time). Any thoughts?

Also, like I said, the deregulation thing is good. But Jimmy Carter passed sweeping deregulation, too, and we know how you feel about him, right? Regardless, I promise you that the size of the federal government will be bigger at the end of Trump's term than it was at the beginning, as will the national debt. And Reagan didn't really even try to shrink the size of the government because democrats controlled congress throughout most of his presidency. George W. Bush never bothered even when he had a republican majority.

I hope Menendez is convicted. But if Christie appoints a replacement you can bet he'll suck. I don't know how much you follow NJ politics, but the replacement will probably be much closer to Jeffrey Chiesa than to Steve Lonegan. (In other words, more like Susan Collins than Ted Cruz.) If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. We'll see. Plus Christie may decide to take no action. We're going to have an election here this Tuesday and that commie Phil Murphy is probably going to win. Christie may rationalize that it's Murphy's right to appoint a new senator.

Lastly, devolving healthcare to the states is not such a great solution. It still leaves healthcare in the hands of the government, except now it's 50 of them instead of just one. We should want healthcare to be in the hands of the consumer, not 50 sets of bureaucrats.

nationalists don't believe their country is the best, they want the best for their country

BHF:
1. What anonivone said. I want what’s best for the country.
2. Illegal immigrants are barred from getting benefits ? Quick, somebody tell California. They attend public school, get subsidized college, and a long list of other costly benefits.
3. Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines. That may the only good thing he did. Reagan struck a deal with the democrats to shrink government in exchange for a modest raise in taxes. They never delivered. It is not true that Reagan never tried to shrink government. He was betrayed.
4. Putting decisions in the hands of the states, where it’s closer to the voters, is vastly better than the feds controlling everything. It has the added benefit of being constitutional.

What is a country?

@mark94,

1) That's a patriot, not a nationalist. We all want what's best for the country, we just have different ideas about what is best. I think you can be patriotic and pro-immigration at the same time, just like Reagan was.

2)  Yes, as I've said, public education is the big exception. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, do get public education. I don't know how you feel, but I'm basically against public education. But as long as it exists, I don't think there's a solution to the problem you're describing. You might as well argue that poor Americans shouldn't have children because they'll eventually end up in public education and therefore on the public dole. Do you really believe that anyone would risk everything to come to this country just to enroll their kids in our shitty public schools? That's not believable.

And come on, let's be honest, the overwhelming majority of actual welfare recipients are native-born Americans. Let's say we were somehow able to keep every single immigrant out of the country... wouldn't welfare still be a huge problem? Using welfare to argue against immigrants is just lazy. The welfare would still be a problem even without a single immigrant. They don't change the calculus much.

3) Carter deregulated more than just airlines. He also did trucking, shipping, beer production, and a bunch of other industries.

As for the spending cuts, you may be thinking of George H.W. Bush. The democrats promised Bush that spending cuts would materialize in exchange for tax hikes, but they lied. I wasn't aware that they did the same thing to Reagan. I could be wrong. What I do remember is then-congressman Ron Paul leaving the GOP in disgust in the mid-80s because he felt that Reagan had only paid lip service to spending cuts. He wrote a letter about it to the chairman of the party.

4) Yes, it's more constitutional. But the voters are just as bad as the politicians. Why do you think the politicians act that way in the first place?

Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by promoting the interests of a particular nation, particularly with the aim of gaining and maintaining self-governance, or full sovereignty, over the group's homeland. The political ideology therefore holds that a nation should govern itself, free from unwanted outside interference, and is linked to the concept of self-determination. Nationalism is further oriented towards developing and maintaining a national identity based on shared characteristics such as culture, language, race, religion, political goals or a belief in a common ancestry. Nationalism therefore seeks to preserve the nation's culture. It often also involves a sense of pride in the nation's achievements, and is closely linked to the concept of patriotism.

Yes, but Nationalism taken to extreme means oppression of minorities and the enforcement of conformity. It is every bit as bad as rule by an outside power.

SJG

Children of the Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVqWS-c…

Illegal immigrant families received nearly $1.3 billion in Los Angeles County welfare money during 2015 and 2016, nearly one-​quarter of the amount spent on the county’s entire needy population.

The data was obtained from the county Department of Public Social Services -- which is responsible for doling out the benefits -- and gives a snapshot of the financial costs associated with sanctuary and related policies.

The sanctuary county of Los Angeles is an illegal immigration epicenter, with the largest concentration of any county ​in the nation, according to a study from the Migration Policy Institute. ​The county also allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

SJG: Anything taken to an extreme can be dangerous. I am advocating nationalism, not Nazism.

^^^^^^ Okay.

SJG

But what DJT is advocating is definitely racist, anti-minority, and intended to capitalize on zeno-phobia. It is fascism.

SJG

In 1982, Reagan ultimately made the deal with Democrats urged upon him by the establishment Republican leaders in Congress, “to support a limited loophole-closing tax increase to raise more than $98.3 billion over three years in return for their agreement to cut spending by $280 billion during the same period… we never got those cuts,” Reagan later wrote ruefully in his biography.

When President Reagan finally relented and did “compromise” and agree to raise taxes in return for spending cuts, to “show the financial community we were serious about reducing the deficit,” Congress reneged on the deal.

"But what DJT is advocating is definitely racist, anti-minority, and intended to capitalize on zeno-phobia. It is fascism."

Bullshit. Your proof ? Incidentally, it's xenophobia.

DJT plays to a widespread hatred of immigrants and minorities, and also of poor people. Just listen to his campaign appearances and his similar stuff since. And this is exactly how the Nazi's came to power.

Now true, it would not work if that were not already present in the populace. But for a politician to pander to it is beyond belief.

SJG

TJ Steet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp3jB6ej…

SJG: I call bullshit on your proof. Granted, he has spoken harshly about ILLEGAL immigrants. Give me a quote where he spoke with hatred about poor people, minorities, or legal immigrants. Just like the Nazis, my ass. Hitler killed millions of innocents. You dishonor and minimize the Nazi victims by making that statement.

The immigration laws have always been rooted in racism. DJT was just fanning the flames. He always spoke against the minority Islamic religion, even those who had served in the US military. He doesn't support the concept of protecting the minorities from the majority. The majority protects itself. Minorities need public protection. This is well understood.

The military sees no reason for a gay ban, but Trump wants it to stigmatize a sexual minority.

Trump in not Hitler yet. But our economic system will eat alive anyone who allows themselves to be stigmatized.

SJG

More bullshit. These are allegations and inferences.

“ He doesn’t support the concept of protecting the minorities “.

When did he say this and when ? Or, as I suspect, is this just what you’ve conjured up in your mind ?

What does any of this have to do with when the stock market is due for a correction? Fuck Trump I don’t give a flying fuck about the courts or your political shit business is pragmatic not dogmatic, as business people we need to deal with what ever reality is happening now stay on the topic if you will.

@mark94

1) You said "Nationalism is further oriented towards developing and maintaining a national identity based on shared characteristics such as culture, language, race, religion, political goals or a belief in a common ancestry."

Well, most of that sounds really creepy to me. I don't want us to all have shared political goals, etc. And you can see how this can lead to racism in extreme circumstances, right? Despite what some nut-jobs say, Trump is not Hitler. Not even close. But the Nazi party WAS a nationalist party (with a socialist wing). We agree on that, right?

2) I read the Fox news release you're referencing about welfare payments to immigrants in LA, too. In a way, I have been playing fast-and-loose with the facts here, and I apologize. At times I’ve been defining welfare as cash payments, and at other times, I’ve defined welfare as anything of value received from the government. I should have been more consistent.

To be clear, yes, immigrants of all types do get benefits related to their children. It’s always about the children: Food stamps for children and their parents, public education, school lunches, etc. But I am not aware of actual direct cash payments to anyone who is here illegally or to recent legal immigrants. They stopped doing that when they reformed welfare. If an article says otherwise, it is misleading you.

And while it is true that I’ve played fast and loose with the facts, so did the Fox News article. You’ll note, for example, that the article quotes the Heritage scholar who describes welfare as “education, police and fire, medical, and subsidized housing.” The medical thing refers to EMTALA, which immigrants can take advantage of, but which isn’t directly paid for with tax dollars. Having said that, LEGAL immigrants are immediately eligible for Obamacare, but illegals are not (the ones with children can get “aid to parents and dependent children,” which covers medical care. Again, it’s always about the children). Illegal immigrants are not eligible for subsidized housing but legal immigrants with children generally are. And the cost of police and fire? Ok, that’s a real stretch to refer to that as welfare. If that’s how you define welfare then we are all on welfare. When an unemployed person drives on a public street, he’s on welfare. That’s a real stretch.

Once again, the solution to all of this is to build a wall around the welfare state, not around the country. Better yet, let’s just end all welfare immediately. It would be just as hard to end all welfare as it would be to curtail immigration. So if you choose to fight immigration rather than to fight welfare, then it’s either about racism or economic protectionism… either way, those don’t sound very libertarian to me.

3) I honestly didn’t know this about Reagan. My apologies, I was wrong. Apparently the Democrats tricked both Reagan and Bush with the same lies.

SJG: I get frustrated by the lack of logic ( classicly defined ) in arguments against Trump.

Nazis were Nationalists, therefore Nationalists are ( essentially ) Nazis.
Trump opposes illegal immigrants, therefore Trump is anti-immigrant.
Trump disagrees with things I believe, therefore Trump is stupid.
Everyone I know says Trump is racist, therefore Trump is racist.

Look, there are enough things wrong with Trump that his opponents could defeat him if they didn’t go too far with this unsubstantiated hyperbole.

BHG: A nation’s strength and prosperity, even its existence, relies on there being “something we all believe in “. Without that, there is no nation.

The common belief might be as simple as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As long as we share some common belief, we can have different religious practices, backgrounds, maybe even languages ( the Swiss and Canadians manage it ) and still succeed.

You are young, so I expect you’ve been taught the wonders of multi-culturalism. News flash, it’s a lie. Or, maybe it just was exaggerated. There are parts of the world falling apart because their citizens share nothing with each other. That’s how genocide starts. Look at the Middle East or the break up of Yugoslavia or the Ottoman Empire as examples.

For 240 years, honoring the flag was something we all believed in. I guess that’s gone now.

@mark94, A nation's strength relies on freedom. Nothing more. That's why Hong Kong and Singapore and Liechtenstein, which are just specks on the map, are rich, while India and the entire African continent are dirt-poor despite all their natural resources. Freedom is what leads to prosperity, which leads to more freedom in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Everywhere on earth, a nation is just a piece of dirt where people have agreed to live under a common set of laws. But here in America, it is something different. America was founded on the idea of freedom... the very thing that leads to wealth and strength and security is the animating force behind our country's existence. But freedom means that we tolerate people who don't even believe in freedom. That's the point. Everyone is free to express themselves and we let the marketplace of ideas work itself out. We don't all need to believe in freedom or in anything else. The framework is already in place.

As for multiculturalism, I don't believe in it. I never have. The ideals of the enlightenment, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, Republicanism, civic virtue, scientific inquiry, individualism, free markets, tolerance, etc., these are part of the heritage of the Western World. The West is better. America is better. Our ideas are superior. We are superior for allowing these ideas to flourish. Parts of the world that have imitated us have succeeded. Parts of the world that haven't imitated us have been hit or miss, at best.

Immigrants come to this country with lots of stupid ideas in their heads, thanks to their upbringing and culture. But the immigrants who come here, both legal and illegal, are nonetheless some of the best people from their respective countries. How do I know this? Because they came here. They uprooted themselves, they took risks, they left everything behind, to come to a foreign place where they couldn't even speak the language, and all so that they could better themselves and their family's situation. They are winners. Most of the people they left behind in their birth countries are losers. The people who choose to stay in Mexico, China, Bolivia, Russia, etc., when they could take a risk and come to America, they are not entrepreneurial. But the people who came of their own free will should be welcome here. They are the essence of America because they are doers, achievers, risk takers. You can't crush that spirit just by giving their kids free school lunches.

Description of the Byrd rule and why the tax plan needs 60 votes unless the bill is modified. For @Mark93 and @Burlington:

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop…

Also for @Mark93: SNL skit with Trump over at Manafort's house taking a shower with Pence and Sessions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spkfIpPm…

So, some think tank believes 60 votes are needed. As I explained, Pence will be the one who determines whether 51 or 60 votes are needed. Pence trumps the Tax Foundation.

I remember when SNL was a comedy show.

Well, the senate can also vote to overturn the filibuster rule. Wake up.

If the Republicans have 51 votes, how do the dems overturn anything ? Woke !

We'll see what happens. Trump's alienated three key GOP senators already. What actually gets through will likely be a watered-down version of what we have now.

BTW, your prediction of Trump's 50% approval rating didn't hold up so well. About 38% as a write this -- the worst of any president in 7 decades. LOL!

It’s 43% on Rasmussen. I made my bold prediction of 50% based on Trump getting a major piece of legislation through. Give it time. Give it time.

You were wrong about 60 votes being needed. So, I guess you needed some misdirection to save face.

Yes you cherry-picked one of the polls. Average of all polls is more like 38%:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/tru…

Congrats, @Mark93 -- I know you spent hours Googling some obscure rule that nobody has ever heard of. I really doubt it will be used; if the Senate is going for the nuclear option, they'll just vote away the filibuster rule, which is also unlikely.

Misdirection to save face is Trump's primary agenda, however. LOL!

538. Speaking of bias.

Hours googling ? More like 2 minutes. That’s because I know much of this, including the right terms to use to get detail or documentation.

The fact that the President of the Senate makes rulings is not obscure. It’s an essential part of how the Senate works. What, you didn’t know that ?

@RandomMember,

If the Senate parliamentarian concludes that the tax cuts conform to the budget that they just passed then they'll only need 51 votes. I trust the Tax Foundation, but they're not right about everything. I know Trump has alienated lots of GOP senators, but I'm not worried. Jeff Flake will vote for tax cuts, he's hard core.

Personally, I think they should eliminate the filibuster. It's not in the constitution. Besides, the democrats will get rid of it the instant they win the white house and gain control of both chambers. Frankly, the US Senate itself is redundant now that they have direct elections of Senators. It's contrary to the founders' intent. They no longer serve any purpose.

And that was a cute video, thanks.

i love polls. I especially love how all the MSM sponsored polls claimed Trump had 0% chance of winning. just goes to prove polling bias is fake news

@mark94, I don't know, man. I agreed with you when you said that Trump's numbers would go up eventually, but it doesn't seem to be happening. The tax cuts themselves have a dismal approval rating and that's a little concerning to me. I believe the Bush tax cuts and the Kennedy tax cuts were popular before they were passed. I know the Reagan cuts were popular. I'm not sure why the Trump cuts are so unpopular.

In a similar vein, I will note that I've been here defending immigration, but not one of the alleged liberals have weighed in. There are at least 3 or 4 of them here on TUSCL. (Granted one of them is crazy, but still.)

Taken together, this is why I've long believed that the libertarian project is doomed to failure... which is something I've believed since roughly the moment I realized that I was a libertarian LOL.

[Donna] Brazile even pointed out that Bernie was more popular than Clinton, saying: “I did not trust the polls. I told [Sanders] I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere.”

If you look at the polls about feeling optimistic about the future compared to Trump favorability, there’s a wide gap. That’s unusual. I think it means Trumps policies are popular and expected to reap benefits, but Trump’s personality troubles many. Eventually, Trumps numbers will catch up if his policies stay popular.

If the tax bill goes through, it guarantees 3-4% growth for many years. It likely guarantees reelection for Trump.

It looks like Donna Brazile is distancing herself as fast as possible from Hillary. It makes me think Brazile knows something about coming legal consequences.

mark, doesn't sound like you're aware that all the polls showing trump is unpopular are being manipulated, usually through oversampling of democrats and independents, just as they did all through the primaries

I knew that about most polls, but I think Rasmussen is closer to accurate. The Donald still has a way to go.

Rasmussen is about the only group who didn't oversample. That's why worrying about what polls say is pointless. You're wasting your breath by even mentioning them.

Guys, come on, the polls weren't THAT far off. They predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote and she did. The state polls that predicted she would win were mostly well within the margin of error. Trump only won by about 70,000 votes spread over three states. That's not much in a country with 300+ million people. By the summer of 2016 several outlets said that Trump's odds of winning were essentially the same as the odds of an NFL placekicker missing a field goal... and sometimes they do, in fact, miss field goals. If someone has an 80% chance of winning, that's the same as saying they have a 20% chance of losing. That means that if we ran the same election over and over again with the same conditions, the underdog would win once in every five times. 20% odds isn't the same as 0% odds.

Our immigration laws are based on racism. Cracking down on 'illegal immigrants' means enforcing laws in such a way that legal ethnic minorities are being treated as second class citizens.

SJG

Sorry, upon review, it looks like no one was talking about the election polls, only the approval polls. My bad. Still, I don't really see any reason to be skeptical about these, either.

@BHF - Read the quote above from Donna Brazile. Minus the dead voters, minus the illegal aliens, minus the bused in multiple voters, Hilary lost the popular vote. Go watch the videos from Project Veritas. She couldn't even win the nomination from Bernie Sanders in a fair fight.

@san_jose_guy,

Thanks, I appreciate the help. You may well be insane... but I agree that there is clearly some racism in our immigration laws and it does seem to spill over somewhat in the treatment of especially Mexican-Americans who are here legally.

both the election polls and the current popularity contest polls are being rigged by the same lying shills. open your eyes. it was obvious during the primary Hilary's support was non-existent. Donna Brazile has said so herself, and she was at ground zero. go watch the unedited footage of the democratic convention. she had no support

@anonlvone, I just don't agree with that. I think Hillary would have beaten Sanders even without assistance from the DNC. But in typical Clinton style, they try to rig a game that they are going to win anyhow. The only state where it looks like Sanders might have really won without the DNC's thumb on the scale was Iowa.

As for the voter fraud, again, I don't agree. Usually the simplest explanation is correct. No conspiracy needed. Trump controls the DOJ. I'm sure if there were real evidence of bused-in voters, Jeff Sessions would be all over Hillary's ass like Bill on an intern. It would be the perfect distraction which they really need right now. And it would get Sessions back into his boss's good graces, which he really needs right now, too. I know it's not the standard libertarian position, but I strongly support voter ID laws, and I feel that implementing them would help put these kinds of controversies to rest.

Anyway, I'm with you in the sense that I can't stand Hillary either. She may have been a legitimate danger to the American system. The only other person who ever seemed almost as bad was Trump. Last year, it seemed like one candidate didn't know what was in the constitution and the other one didn't care. Luckily, Trump hasn't been horrible yet. I don't think we would have been so lucky had Hillary been elected.

I really try and stay out of politics..... I do...but sometimes because of what I come in contact with and work with every day and thus know first hand versus what people spout I simply can't help it.....it's like allowing someone to try and pee in a corner when they are stuck in a round room..........there is no doubt none. zip nada that the media was doing anything and everything they could to provide a false sense of what was really going on in this election--first with Bernie and then with Trump....the angles of video of the rallies was so edited and over the top. to show her rallies as huge ( when they were not) and again Bernie first and then Trump in the general election were shown to have less support by using the same trickery than there. I had people I have known for decades at rallies that told me the damn things were packed but go to NBC and they looked as if they were in small arenas, etc. The polls....questions asked were meant to skew the vote.....people vote for a front runner, especially the uninformed and sadly many of our populace is badly uninformed and will vote for a winner or at least a perceived one.

Up until two weeks before the election I thought Trump had no chance as well and then I took a business trip through the Midwest--four states five days and saw a few things, and heard a few as well and I realized to what extent the manipulation was going on. Brazile was part of the problem.....she only came clean now.....because she got slammed and lost her job and her reputation.

Hillary backers can claim all they want she won the popular vote.....which is the same as claiming I had the most hits in a baseball game ( not runs) SFW first and foremost. Secondly I don't necessarily believe it anymore I do that Gore really won in 2000......yeah I'm that old and recall the real story behind that BS as well.

@BHF You're clearly misinformed. I also notice you are refusing to acknowledge Donna Brazile's remark. So you think your opinion, sans any evidence to back it up, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary, carries more weight than the on the ground opinion of the head of the DNC? Really? I'm not going to respond to you any further until I see some indication that you've at least watched the Project Veritas videos.

As for Sessions, he is clearly compromised. He's worse than useless. He had no reason to recuse himself from the so called Russia investigation, and absolutely none to recuse himself from Uranium One. If I were Trump I would fire him, then prosecute him, preferably for treason.

@anonlvone, you're right, I haven't seen the Project Veritas videos yet. I am however well aware of Donna Brazile's comments and her book. But did Donna Brazile actually say that Bernie would have *beaten* Hillary Clinton without the DNC's help? No, not to my knowledge. What she said is that the DNC helped to rig things because Clinton's tentacles were deep within the roots of the organization. That seems obvious and there's no disputing it. I have long acknowledged this... since before Hillary Clinton even announced that she was running! But what I'm saying is that she would have beaten Sanders anyway even without help. The only state that would probably have had a different outcome was Iowa. I'm my opinion, the only way Sanders could have beaten her would be if there were 16 "establishment" candidates with a lot of support, just like in the GOP field. That would have split the establishment vote and Sanders would have won the Democratic nomination as easily as Trump won the GOP nomination. These are just my opinions.

@Warrenboy75, let me try this a different way... Most of the mainstream media is ideologically closer to Bernie Sanders than they are to Hillary Clinton. Many of them are moderate socialists, they are skeptical of free trade, and they have been against the Iraq war for years. Sounds like Bernie Sanders, right? So they thought that Sanders might win unless they helped rig the election to make her look more popular than she really was with polls and camera angles... why would they do this? Why would they hurt the candidate who is closer to their views and who has a real chance of winning? Doesn't that seem far-fetched to you? They would have to be totally incompetent

Do you remember when the young staffer for Hillary was murdered ? Later, there were rumors that he was the one who stole Hillary’s emails, not the Russians. There were further mumbling that the Clinton people were behind his murder. The campaign ridiculed that theory as Republican insanity.

In Donna Brazile’s book, she says she was scared for her life when the staffer was killed. That statement raises questions.

Are you referring to Vincent Foster, at the start of Bill Clinton's presidency?

Close to the Whitewater matter, and seemingly in possession of a Mafia drop gun, death considered a suicide, but highly suspicious.

SJG

No @Mark93 is talking about Seth Rich which is another right-ring horseshit conspiracy theory. I would say @Mark93 and @Analvone are in the top five TUSCL nutty conspiracy theorists, although @Analvone is far nuttier and far more paranoid.

The latest vessel for Vince Foster paranoia is the story of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was found shot to death last year, while Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president.

As with Foster, local authorities have tried to dispel rumors that politics played a role in Rich's death. In this case, D.C. police believe he died in a random robbery attempt.

Relatives have also begged rumormongers to lay off. On Tuesday, a family spokesman decried an erroneous Fox News report suggesting Rich was involved in leaking Democratic Party documents before his death. Fox's story was later retracted.

But Foster's family had tried that, too — both men became conspiracy victims anyway. The Fox News story continues to collect comments like "Seth Rich has joined Vince Foster in the pile of bodies that follow Hillary Clinton around." The Twittersphere is full of the same.

The 538 study is careful to point out that Rasmussen polls likely voters whereas some of the others poll all adults. Nate Silver has a really terrific reputation as a modern statistical-based reporter.

The very best data-science PhDs in the business got the electoral college wrong for the reasons that @Burlington mentioned. There's no conspiracy theory or manipulation. LOL!

Many believe that the killing of Foster was a way of sending a message to the Clinton's.

SJG

I was willing to admit that Seth Rich was a nutty theory until Brazile made her statement. Now, I’m not so sure.

@mark94, from the articles I read in the Washington Examiner and the Washington Post, it seems that Donna Brazile was concerned about her safety after Seth Rich's murder, but that it was the Russians she was worried about, not the Clintons. I think if she really did believe the Clintons were capable of murder she wouldn't be talking about it now. All her friends in the media and the DNC would shun her for life and brand her as a nut-job. That would be a bridge too far.

The thing is there are so many REAL scandals with the Clintons that we don't need to make any more of them up. Whitewater was real. Travel-Gate was real. Trooper-Gate was real. Juanita Broaddrick was real. Monica Lewinsky and lying under oath was real. The thing with the cattle futures was probably real, and it's certainly believable. Even the call that Bill Clinton placed to Donald Trump urging him to enter the GOP primary in 2015 to make mischief and make the Republicans look insane, that was real, too. I'm sure the Clintons would kill lots of people if they could get away with it, but then again, so would other people. I really don't believe the Clintons have ever killed anyone themselves or ordered the deaths of any Americans.

The important issue to address, which I haven't as I'm lacking for time, is whether the Seth Rich murder happened before or after Donna Brazile's decision to not replace Hilary on the ticket due to ill health (and yeah, she confirmed that conspiracy theory" too). Amazing how suddenly Donna Brazile is a Russian agent too. Man those pesky Russians are literally everywhere and all powerful.

Seth Rich was murdered, as I've exhaustively detailed. Julian Assange and other high-ranking Wikileaks members who were in personal contact with the source have stated it was not a Russian but rather someone in DC. In addition to that, at least two hackers have provided detailed and irrefutable proof that the hackings were done internally and not over the Internet. Then you have a string of murders which are connected to the Seth Rich investigation. I'm just gonna stop here because I don't have time to rehash old ground.

/me waves to RandomMember

Don't have the exact quote but Donna Brazile is on record stating people who crossed the Clintons had a habit of turning up dead.

Why would they hurt the candidate who is closer to their views and who has a real chance of winning? Doesn't that seem far-fetched to you? They would have to be totally incompetent

With politics when in doubt what is the number 1 rule? Follow the money........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/eri…

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-m…

So what does the money trail say?

@Warrenboy75, I understand what you're saying, but...

The first article talks about networks failing to disclose ties between Clinton and commentators/talking heads. That sounds accurate. But for the entire network to make decisions about camera angles and polls, that would require much more than a few guests not admitting that they had done work for Clinton.

The second article talks about how people network personnel had donated to Clinton's campaign overwhelmingly. But unless I missed something the article is talking about the general election, not the primary. Obviously these people were going to prefer Hillary to Trump. They're left of center and so is she. Those were their only two real choices. But I thought you were talking about the primary and how they allegedly favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders despite being ideologically closer to him than to her. I still don't see any evidence and the article doesn't address this.

Besides, the second article even says that employees of Fox News donated more to Obama than to Romney or McCain. Obviously they mean the executives and staff, not the producers and on-air talent. So does it seem to you that Fox News was biased in favor of Obama?

@mark - could be wrong, but i thought i remembered a story about hillary clinton publicly shouting at donna brazile at the top of her lungs, cursing her and calling her an idiot or something, and this was after donna had given her the answers to some of the debate questions, that gives donna motive to spill the beans i'd say

Listen, I understand why there are so many conspiracy stories about Hillary Clinton. She functioned as a "co-president" in an administration that seemed obviously corrupt. Her husband actually launched strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq that seemed perfectly timed to distract the voters from the Lewinsky scandal and the looming impeachment proceedings. Operation Infinite Reach and Operation Desert Fox were suspiciously timed, but obviously no one can prove anything. As if that wasn't bad enough, their Secretary of State once openly said that the deaths of 500,000 children were worth it to accomplish their policy goals.

Plus he campaigned as a centrist but then immediately tried to pass socialized medicine and an "assault" weapons ban. Then he pivoted right back to the center as soon as it looked like he might lose in 1996. He fought against spending cuts but then took all the credit for a balanced budget when it finally happened. He looked straight into the camera and lied about Monica Lewinsky (among many other things) before ultimately reversing himself and telling the truth to the camera. Hillary was unleashed as an attack-dog to ruin the reputation of anyone who accused her husband of anything, always claiming that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was behind all their problems. And then, as a finishing touch, they both left the White House broke, but now they're probably worth $100 million dollars. Oh, and Hillary Clinton got elected to the Senate as a carpetbagger.

With creatures like these, it's easy to believe almost anything bad about them. But some things are far-fetched. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Once in a while, there is a real conspiracy. It does happen. Lincoln was assassinated as part of a conspiracy. Watergate was a conspiracy. The CIA has undermined foreign governments. The Obama Administration spied on journalists, etc.

But most conspiracies theories prove to be fake. Men really did land on the moon. The Bush Administration didn't knock the World Trade Center down. AIDS wasn't invented by the government. GMO foods are harmless. And the Clintons probably aren't actual murderers. (And they certainly never ran a child sex ring either, BTW. LOL)

The Clintons and Clinton Foundation remind me of the Lex Luther family in Smallville and superman stories, when you know the family or Clinton foundation is behind all kinds of sneaky devious things, you know everything is not ethical. People die if they have any plans on talking and have information. Maybe the Clintons aren't behind the murders. Maybe Clinton sympathizers are behind the murders. The public does not know why everyone ends up dead or has a sudden suicide. Obviously if a few people die here and there, the opinion of the Clintons is "what does it matter?" Enough said. Someone dies on your watch and you say that about it?

Even recently I've read about plans to get Chelsy Clinton a congressional seat as senator or House member in years to come and eventually get her to be president with almost no experience. Heaven help the US if that happens. Supposedly this was a future a time traveler was trying to prevent because he said it was an awful future and Chelsy Clinton became president some years later after Hillary. Supposedly this guy said all this back 10 to 15, or 20 years ago or so. I remember reading it back then and thought the guy was bonkers even suggesting Hillary Clinton as president.

In other strange mail, I thought it was entertaining getting weird snail mail saying the Clinton goon squad wasn't going to get him. Supposedly someone was going to talk, he claimed they killed everyone including the guy who was going to testify against the Clintons by crashing his plane while in Europe and making sure everyone on board was dead. Supposedly before anyone could investigate, all bodies were cremated to ensure no one could find evidence of murder. Then the guy said they were going to impeach Mr Clinton, I thought once again, what kind of crazy snail mail is this?

Ron Brown?

Must be nice to live in a world where politicians never have anyone killed, and Hollywood moguls never rape actresses, and you don't need police forces or intelligence agencies because no one EVER plans or carries out criminal conspiracies. Because you know that's just impossible.

Wonder how much of a waiting list there is to get into that ward, erm, world.

6:39 "They don't know what it's like to bury a child, I did, Seth Rich"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…

translation? i participated in the coverup of the Seth Rich murder. I know where the bodies are buried. Don't fuck with me

@anonlvone, well it's certainly possible. I would never say that politicians aren't power-hungry and power-hungry people do lots of bad things. It's important to keep a watchful eye over them at all times. I don't think anyone is ever going to accuse me of being a Hillary Clinton supporter - just look at all the stuff I wrote. All I'm saying is that I doubt the Clintons ever literally murdered anyone. It's hard to keep anything a secret for long nowadays. If they really did do anything like what you're describing we'll know about it from reliable sources. And we have a Republican DOJ now. They would prosecute her. If Jeff Sessions is as compromised as you say and if Trump can't do anything about it, then electing Trump was a waste of effort, right? Elections are supposed to have consequences.

As for the thing about movie moguls raping actresses, I'll say this: the NYPD now says they believe they might have a case against Weinstein. I trust them a lot more than I trust Rose McGowan. Still, if anyone was raped, they really should have lodged a complaint immediately if they don't want people to doubt their story a decade later. That's my view.

And I would never advocate eliminating police forces; we obviously need them. But I think we can live without the CIA and the NSA. Military intelligence should be doing the jobs that the CIA and NSA currently do, minus the regime change and domestic spying.

I have one thing to say about the Clinton's. Ha ha!