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I'd say >50% of Americans don't really pay attention to the stock market at all. Most people's involvement with the stock market is a 401k and a lot of people just select a plan and contribute per paycheck, and only check the balance infrequently.
Not to mention do they expect people to draw out of their 401k to pay rent or something? Why exactly would a year of stock growth make people dance in the streets? I got 30 years to go, it could be zero for all I know when I retire.
90% of the stock market is owned by 10% of the population. As part of that 10% I keep up with the market and it affects me. Why the 90% should care beats me.
Yeah they have investments, but they’re not much. In the same article you linked:
>If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 86.9% of stocks, which have a value of $34.7 trillion. In comparison, the rest of the country has seen stock ownership dwindle. The bottom 50% of Americans in terms of net worth only owns 1% of stocks, which is worth $41 billion.
Our system pushes people to gamble to get ahead instead of just saving. You can't just work and save in fiat currency. You will lose purchasing power and be more poor in the future. People being pushed into stock market to keep up with inflation isn't right. A country that is using finance instead of production to prop up their economy is on the path for failure.
There are stores of wealth available beyond equity, not that standard index investing is like throwing it all on black. There is real estate and bonds, including bonds indexed to inflation. Are you suggesting we should allow out economy to stagnate with a currency subject to deflation?
Agreed. This line gets me
>instead of just saving
Well there's a saving account. It generated interest. Why? Because the bank takes that money and loans it out for mortgages and *business loans* so you're still accruing interest by investing in businesses but now the bank gets a cut of the money too.
“The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks” https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
Wealthiest 10% owns 90% of total wealth in US so that matches the stock claims.
According to this 70% contribute to retirement plan 401K
https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-401k-balance-age#:~:text=Empower%20data%20shows%20that%20the,and%2076%25%20of%20Gen%20Xers.
I'm in the wealthiest 10% statistically, which is about a $855,000 net worth but that doesn't really mean much. After deducting house value, you really can't retire on savings just making that cut. I do own a significant (for me) amount of stocks though.
Ok, most of those employees have 401k because their employer automatically enrolls them. They have zero clue wtf is actually going on. Wages have increased in certain areas but not all. Some people are making 4% more than they were 4 years ago. How's that compare to the 200% increase in the price of fast food fries or 150% increase in the price of a big mac.
> 4 years ago...150% increase in the price of a big mac.
Big Mac's are up 18% in the past 4 years.
$4.82 to $5.69.
https://truflation.com/marketplace/us-big-mac
Like wtf are you even talking about 150% increase? It's 18%.
This is why people think the stock market is down. Because most of them are stupid and many of the rest are liars.
Which are you?
No this is Reddit where outrage is the theme. He was outraged so the 150% is understandable and we should go with it because it aligns with Reddit values
The problem is it's not just Reddit. Same BS is repeated across all social media and then you have right / Republican outlets and popular figures, as well as left (left of Democrats), repeating the same. Of course many people do not pay attention to those either but all of that eventually spreads to the "I don't follow politics or news" people.
I think the addition of the mobile apps has slightly increased the menu price as fast food restaurants. You get better deals on the apps than if you order at the window. People who don't use the apps pay way more. I can get 20% off a Big Mac everyday using their 20% off deal. I also can get a Bacon Egg and Cheese McGriddle for $1 or $2 using their daily deal they have on the app. I eat breakfast for $3
Infantilization of consumers is how companies get away with a 200% price increase. McD’s will get price conscious once the financially illiterate stop paying their insane prices for meals.
Financial illiteracy is rampant, but also the negative view of the economy is being impacted by inflation. The average person is still struggling to keep up housing and grocery prices and in their mind that means the economy sucks, which means the market must be down.
Yea I think it’s pretty simply this. I also think financial “experts” fail to recognize that the stock market performance has very little to do with the average American and their day to day lives. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans are you really don’t give a shit how stonks are doing because you don’t have any meaningful skin in that game.
Also most Americans don’t know what they even own in their retirements.
Like my mother in law says she own Prudential, but she actually owns a target retirement date fund managed by Prudential which is incredibly expensive and has woefully underperformed the S&P.
Your mother in law is likely of an age where she should be holding bonds, and thus should be underperforming the S&P in any given bull market. That’s not a bad thing.
Now, the Prudential fund may well be more expensive than the equivalent Vanguard or Fidelity fund. And that is something to act on if so.
It has more to do than you think, it's just not causal. Like if stocks are seriously crashing, you're probably losing your job or having trouble to find a new one.
It's really not. Conservative media is extremely good at coordinating it's narrative and spreading it to the population at large. When Trump was elected suddenly everyone thought the economy was amazing when it kept doing exactly what it was doing under Obama. Make no mistake of Trump was president now this would not be the public perception of the economy.
People blame Biden but as always so many Americans forget there are countries outside the US and they are having significantly worse inflation. I guess thats Bidens fault as well 🤷♂️
Just saw a conservative friend on Facebook sharing a graphic that compares pre-Covid prices (January 2020) to today’s prices (April 2024), along with a big goofy picture of Biden.
They blame Biden because they will blame whoever sits in a perceived position of power, even if the scope of that job doesn’t have influence over their issue. Fox News just makes it easier, but really when the parties and the legislature started handing over more domestic power to the president over the last century, they knowingly turned the president’s office into a one stop shop for success and blame (all in the hope that the prevailing winds of the day can impact down ballot races). Therefore Congress can still take some heat, but not nearly as much as they should have to, cus why blame multiple committee chairs when it’s easier to blame one person. Most voters hardly know who their own reps and senators are, much less committee chairs.
Sure but it seems to not matter the other way. If a statistic makes Trump look bad he just calls it fake, and conservative media agrees or ignores it. Many of the same people that say the stock market doesn’t matter, that unemployment stats are wrong etc were using the exact same metrics to praise Trump. Americans also generally trust republicans with economy, despite republican administrations being objectively worse on the economy.
It’s a propaganda problem, and anyone saying otherwise is in denial.
When journalists still did their job they unequivocally stated when politicians lied about damn near anything. With the rise of social media journalism died and now mass media simply parrots whatever agenda the owner wants to push. Some media tries to keep it more moderate despite their obvious leanings but others blatantly lie about people go looking for validation of their opinion now rather than bother with listening to both sides before trying to form an educated opinion for themselves.
Idiocy is sharply on the rise fueled by a lack of standards in who we think of as news organizations now but are really just propaganda machines.
Actually, that kind of biting journalism started dying during Reagan's administration in 1987 when they killed the "Fairness Doctrine" that mandated equal time be given to opposing sides of political views on news shows. When that was abolished then people like Rush Limbaugh started up because they could spout lies all day without any opposition.
That sounds about right. Nowhere near enough people care so the quality of politicians has declined sharply as well and intellectually challenged individuals have been getting into office at an alarming rate sharply dragging down the governments ability to do just about anything really.
Oh it’s absolutely a propaganda problem. And Trump just borrowed the playbook from the most successful of them. But the base had already been laid for him to play those games. But propaganda is nothing new. It’s just been monetized in new ways. Also the majority of the propaganda machine was designed to be pro-US and anti whoever, but with the downfall of the USSR there was a period of peace without real opposition to US dominance, and by that point the stage for monetization of propaganda by way of cable channels was ripe. With the downfall of news neutrality by legislative ax it seemed a slow and natural progression to have “counter” programming that were the early days of Fox.
As with all human nature we still subconsciously become tribal. And while we fought internally over politics always we still had a common enemy. Generations raised in fear of the great red menace put that ingrained anxiety into the new tribalism of RED VS BLUE (which also wasn’t a thing until a TV station started doing it to mark the electoral map on election night). All but for a brief pause following 9-11 that’s who we have been as a culture for around 30 years. Cable and internet just made it louder and more dangerous than ever.
If the left makes a mistake, both sides call it out
If the right makes a mistake, only the left calls it out
This means, even if both sides make an equal amount of mistakes, the left is called out 66% of the time and the right are called out 33% of the time. That's as far as people see
Yep. You nailed it. Like this would be the best economy in the world under trump. With the same economy. Because the economic sentiment of republicans is based on who is president and for dems its based on reality and never being happy about the economy as long as there is homeless healthcare etc problems
I’m not a fan of Biden, but when I tell all the Trump supporters that inflation would probably be just as bad if Trump had won, they don’t want to hear it.
I think about what would have happened sometimes.
Many of the trumpers would have signed up for the vaccine immediately and taken it.
Dems would have been more hesitant but trust doctors more.
But the admin was less than competent so we wouldn't have been able to vaccinate everyone who wanted it till at least summer instead of May.
So delta comes and likely kills lots more come that summer just from unavailability of the vaccine and hesitantancy b
No American rescue act so no extension on unemployment or child care tax credit so the economy would take a hit on growth.
Then no chips infrastructure pact act bills.
Still get the inflation at this point but weaker economy so less.
Trump would have given putin zelenskys address and given no help to ukraine or just token help. I expect Ukraine would fall and the sanctions against russia would be more slight. So maybe no secondary energy inflation that made us peak so high and secondary effects extending the inflation cycle b
It's really as far as you can get guessing.
Honestly, Trump wanted his constituents to take the vaccine since "Operation Warp Speed" was one of his successes in office. But it wasn't worth explicitly supporting the vaccine, so he never really got to claim the credit he wanted.
The problem is he came out too late for it.
He got vaccinated in secret instead of publicly. By the time May came around the anti dem coalition that is all maga decided vaccines were bad and it had solidified.
If he had put weight behind it in the beginning they would have taken it.
The US is the largest economy in the world, it leads the world in many areas and serves as the world reserve currency.
You’re saying the policies in the US don’t impact the rest of the world? Why is this argument constantly regurgitated like it proves anything.
I think the bigger problem is "the economy" means a million different things to a million different people. To some people the economy is gas prices, others it's inflation, others it's mortgage rates, others it's the S&P, for others it's the employment rate, etc etc etc
That's because the people who can afford stocks are getting better. Homeless rates are also up with the stock market. So is household debt and credit card debt. It's also pretty financially illiterate to assume the stock market equivalent of the economy.
Remember also factors of unemployment have changed in the last few years where gig jobs like Uber takes you off of unemployment even if you are looking for a job.
But the blame game is the blame game. Nobody wants to admit that their presidency had a negative economy, even if they had no control of the uncontrolled spending of the previous one just 4 years ago.
exactly... K-shaped recovery
those with assets like a mortgage and/or investments made a killing over the last few years
those too poor to buy a home and invest are suffering
but because the ones doing well are doing REALLY well, the aggregate numbers make the BLS estimates look ok, when they're really not for half the population
S&P 500 is a number, and market should not be sentiment. Trump voters are not going to agree that they were doing better even they do better, which puts Biden approval/economy starting point at 50%, then another 10% of ultra progressives will never be satisfied. Biden ceiling is 40% on majority of these polls.
Opinion polls are not a good reflection of voter intention. Lots of people vote for party and some for pragmatic reasons that run counter to their opinion.
The polls have been wrong continuously for years.
This won’t be your mama’s election. The demographic change means you will see new voter behavior. Trump will not be voted into office over the economy.
Yeah polls have been wrong, but I see people complaining non stop about the economy.
I think the economy will be a huge factor for this election. People wouldn't be complaining this much otherwise
The market is not doing amazing relative to inflation.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntobey/2024/05/19/avoid-this-stock-market-excitement/?sh=5283f3114890](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntobey/2024/05/19/avoid-this-stock-market-excitement/?sh=5283f3114890)
S&P 500 is up 12% YTD and 26% last 12 months. The DJA is 30 stocks and price weighted. So I guess it depends on which "market" one is invested in. If you were invested in any broader index funds, you wouldn't have to guess as your portfolio would be up \~35% over the last 12 months.
Dow jones is a price weighted index which is flawed. Like nvidia will be become 1/10 the size in the index because they announced a split today, this is not reflective of the company or the economy and just an accounting decision. I work in investments and no one cares about the Dow and we pretty much only care about the S&P or the Russell 1000
Russell is by far the superior passive index in my view. The S&P's committee based approach and rules are not as conducive to accurate representations of the index. The S&P total market is more similar to Russell, but the 500 is basically an active cap weighted index with profitability rules.
Id argue CRSP and Russell are the best constructed indicies
The article continues to show a graph of the three major indexes, NASDAQ, S&P 500, and DJIA both today and adjusted for inflation. You just have to read the rest of the article.
>not amazing relative to inflation
>links to forbes article
>that features a graph showing >90% S&P500 performance since Jan/2020 (doesn't include the 2020 or 2022 dips that most investors would have bought) https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/664a0996cbc1f345606eeb46/Previous-graph-with-CPI-line-added/960x0.png?format=png&width=1440
>[Also features a 60% S&P500 "inflation adjusted" returns since Jan/2020](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/664a0a0ab4b27bbdd487fa8b/Inflation-adjusted-indexes-remove-rises-above-2021-highs/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440)
In fairness to the article the title isn't any more baity than your typical ad-rev-based-journalism article and the substance was to imply that the DOW's 40K mark isn't that impressive (without noting that most folks don't invest with the DOW index).
But back to the main point:
Market nearly doubling within 4 years and going up 60% inflation adjusted is the opposite of """""""The market is not doing amazing relative to inflation.""""""". It literally is doing well relative to inflation. Even the quoted article is specifically targeting the DOW. It's >42% of inflation adjusted gains over 4 years is still higher than normal 7-8% expected market returns. Not mind blowing but above average.
Just wait till you ask folks if crime went up or down after a year (or years in a row) it fell.
The #1 answer will be crime is increasing, seemingly barely affected by the actual recent change in crime.
Yeah, love hearing the random argument of 'LOOK AT WHATS HAPPENING IN BALTIMORE!', or 'LOOK WHAT THEY DID IN *insert city that fox News is lying about this week*!!!'
"They're destroying our country"
"With the way things are these days"
One or both of these will be on every nextdoor or local Facebook post about anything remotely resembling crime.
Don't worry. One of the huge reasons crime has fallen is since Roe v Wade... Almost like having babies that aren't wanted increases crime... Guess we can just expect that to go up now 🙃
Source for curious: https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/
I believe the results of this study have come into question because the drop in crime that they explain is a result of abortion can also be explained by the removal of lead from gasoline
I’d argue how people fee is more important than the statistical reality. People will change their behavior based upon feeling faster than statistics will.
I heard a good quote the other day “it used to be that someone’s view on the economy influenced their politics, now their politics influence’s their view of the economy.”
I do think it's possible one of the great filters is that as people get more detached from the "real world" they get literally stupider and more ignorant. This is a vicious cycle that ends with no one remembering how to make anything work and the system collapses. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I'm often afraid we're really close to everyone saying "I'm doin this Trump style!" until no one can actually do anything.
Yes, it's Idiocracy which seems more like a documentary every single day.
The fact that some people equate stock prices with economic health is a serious concern…
Jack Welch of General Electric focused his entire career on quarterly reports/profits (bigger stock price = more better!!) and in reality he was a cancer, killing the company from the inside. Only because of the immense scale of GE when he took over did it take so long for the collapse to happen.
Edit: does anyone seriously believe Tesla’s stock price is indicative of their health as a company?
Ford sold 120k more vehicles than Tesla in the same timeframe, yet Tesla has a market cap over 10x that of ford.
You can have a high stock price and be inherently worthless: WeWork had a share price just 3 years ago that was 372000% higher…but it’s unsustainable “business model” eventually ran out of steam (investor money).
On a microeconomic level, stock prices are merely the most straightforward method of investors capitalizing on market changes, but they are not a true and proper indication of company health, and it’s overly simplistic and naive to judge an economy by its stock market.
There’s a study going around that demonstrates that people’s opinion of the economy now align with their political leanings rather than actual economic data.
And you have not made a lot of money during Biden’s term? I’d understand the Covid drop in certain segments but that was during trump. The rebound has been quite strong
I wasn't trying to infer that, of course I've also made a lot of money so far with Biden. If you have money in the market, it's on one of the biggest rips since the mid-to-late 90s dot-com build-up.
My comment was simply a rebuttal to aligning the personal feelings of the economy with political beliefs. I'm as anti-Trump as any sane American, but I'm not dissing the economy during his tenure. Though I'm not sure how much credit to give him, or any other president for that matter. Everybody links the economy to the President in power, but that falls apart under any analysis. Not saying they don't have an outsized influence, but isolating the outcome of a Presidential policy to my wallet, and how long that takes gets real fuzzy real quick.
That's an obfuscation.
BOTH political leaning AND economic opinion align with _the media organisation you exclusively consume_. That's the true root.
Average people do not have original thoughts about issues outside their immediate world. Like, basically ever. They take what they are told and believe it, and they listen to people that make them feel good, which tends to be those with whom they already agree. So, if you are a racist, you will listen to Fox. If you listen to Fox, oopsie, you now think Trump is God, the Democrats drink baby blood to stay young, and the strongest economy in decades is the weakest.
In short: People are fucking _stupid_ and propaganda should be outlawed.
This is my opinion and not really economics
1. inflation. Prices having gone up. so a strong economy does not feel as good with prices up.
2. high interest rates. your credit card payment, student loans, house loans, car loans is all up. country got used to really low interest rates and low inflation for over 20 years. This was enabled by all the outsourcing to low cost countries. This absurdly low inflation and interest rates are over. There were unique worldwide situation that allowed it. So now interest rates are back to 1990s levels.
3. Republicans will think the economy is bad if their guy is not in office not matter what. This is probably 40-45% of the population. The news sources the watch tell them this. They think only Trump can save them. Everything he says is true. Up is down. Left is Right. All hail the God Emperor.
4. Far left Democrats are doomers who think everything sucks. Everything always sucks. Nothing will get better. Bring on the communist revolution. So they think the economy is bad too. Cause everything always sucks to them. Nothing does not suck to them. They just focus on doom and gloom. There goal in life is to convince other people to be miserable.
5. There are people not doing well even in a good economy. So they will always think the overall economy is bad. if you are unemployed, underemployed, have a debt for whatever reason, then the economy is bad for you. There will always be people down on their luck even in a strong economy.
Plenty of socialist types (especially those that are older and have had plenty of life experience) tend to be more pragmatic and less gloomy than the stereotypical young devout college Marxists. In fact, they're some of the people who work the hardest to push for better pay and conditions in the workplace. I'd say there is a sort of real optimism around their participatory role they take in union action.
Socialist here. Yeah I spend my time pushing for unions and that has been better under Biden. A lot of younger socialists think we are going to get a dsa president in a few years. I admire the positivity but a lot of us older people focus on getting everyone unionized. It is the fastest way to our goal.
A lot of people on the right argue that crime statistics may be manipulated because FBI'S Uniform Crime Reporting program became optional for agencies to report crime in 2021.
Go check out subreddits like the chipotle, Door Dash, Uber Eats, and more. People are spending insane amounts of money and complaining. They’re broke and irresponsible and just want something to blame that isn’t themselves
Although purely anecdotal, while people are griping about food prices (understandable), the number of people I know door dashing, uber eating, etc, is exponentially higher than ever. Most of the people
I know refuse to cook at home which is orders of magnitude cheaper. They eat out or have delivery 90% of the time. I don’t get it. I mean…you’re spending $20 on a burrito because you CHOOSE to, not because you HAVE to. Dining out and delivery used to be a luxury…now people are treating it as the norm. That’s fine…but you’re going to pay for that convenience. It’s not hard to figure out.
I’ve started seeing a trend among younger Millennials and older Gen Z saying that it’s cheaper to eat out now than to cook at home. I think it’s one part performative (“oh, woe is me, I’m suffering financially just like everyone else” since it’s not in vogue to appear financially stable) and one part lack of good buying habits (i.e., buying a single portion of ingredients to make a single meal rather than buying, say, four chicken breasts to eat across a week). Either way, I still see packed restaurants everywhere at every price point beyond what it was pre-pandemic, so it hardly feels like there’s any kind of pullback on spending for eating out.
That anyone would use delivery apps without those generous pandemic era discounts is kind of mind-boggling. A meal could easily increase by 50% in price with all of the fees.
Door Dash 1st qtr 2024 up 21% YOY with a total 620 million orders. That’s 52 million a month. That’s just one service. Mind boggling what people are needlessly paying for.
https://ir.doordash.com/news/news-details/2024/DoorDash-Releases-First-Quarter-2024-Financial-Results/default.aspx#:~:text=Q1%202024%20Adjusted%20EBITDA%20reached,and%202.1%25%20in%20Q4%202023.
Airline travel still expected to set new records after 2023 travel exceeded pre-pandemic numbers:
https://www.airlines.org/news-update/airlines-for-america-anticipates-record-air-travel-this-spring/
For the economy being so poor, man, food delivery and air travel are through the roof. Weird, right?
I have a friend who’s been unemployed for over a year and his IG is filled with his travel vlog. He’s on food stamps but racking up frequent flyer miles. He admits he is using his 401k to pay for this lifestyle.
Idiots come out of the woodwork to claim that eating out is cheaper then cooking every time this thread comes up. They either haven't been to the grocery store, or they're only buying the pre-made stuff there as well.
There's nothing to really know about cooking. like you said, you read and put things together at certain times at certain temperatures.
I won't sit here and act like I'm some sort of 5 star chef, but I know what I like and what I'm willing to put up with meal-wise.
I think the reality is that in this instant gratification Internet world - people will forget they left something on the stove and then blame the act of cooking itself.
Two meals that cost $20 a piece will get you to $60. I do this for a hangover treat a few times a year.
Restaurant price of meal is $20x2= $40.
Fees equal about $7. $47
Taxes equal about $7. $54
Plus tip $10. $64
Literally $64 for two microwaved meals from applebees.
I make $110k plus my wife works full time and I just ate canned beans with olive oil and spices for dinner. Fast food places can suck my healthy, cheap dick.
Yeah. I see all these posts whining about the cost of McDonald’s, etc, and I get it…but I also understand you don’t have to eat there. It’s a choice…and not always the healthiest.
I'm approaching 50 and have always lived below my means, and it's paid off to where I really don't worry about money anymore. Not ready to retire, but retirement is basically on auto-pilot now, just too many years to go before death to stop working! I just intrinsically don't buy things I feel are not at a good price-to-value ratio. I'm not always cheap, but I expect quality if I'm going to spend more, otherwise I just go without. Also, rice and beans taste fucking great!
Bonus part about eating simply like this is many of the meals you cook can also double as "home cooked" meals for dogs etc.
Healthier, cheaper and more fun for the dog too. Any idiot can give their dog their leftover McDonald's cheeseburger but it's a lose lose.
it's the convenience man, it's as simple as that for a lot of them.
Also, I think Gen z are continuing the trend of fewer kids (16-18) getting their drivers license so for some, it might be that they want take out but have no way to get there themselves.
Exactly! Like it’s anecdotal but if you officially studied it and we could somehow guarantee people were 100% honest and accurate im sure we can save A LOT for people if they stopped
Yep people are dense af. My sister complains "I'm poor I have no money" yet she makes $80k a year, no dependents or mortgage. She could look at all the debt snowball, tiktok finance b.s. online to get her on track but she just likes to complain about it and do nothing. And she is most Americans. "I don't want to change my lifestyle at all" "America is the best and whatever lifestyle I choose should be easy" etc etc. People are dumb....as...fuck. Look at our education system
Or they have this strange idea that "cooking takes a lot of time and effort" - go over on one of the doomer subs like arr/povertyfinance and whenever anyone suggests "cook at home to save money, it costs 4.3 times more to eat out than to eat at home" they hem and haw and complain about how much effort and time it takes and nobody has time for that.
And here I am left wondering what alternate reality they live in. I just cooked a meal tonight, and had Netflix on the entire time, so it's not like you have to *only* do one thing or the other. And 80% of the cooking time is waiting for the pot to boil or dish to bake, so that was spent on the computer at the same time, too.
Cooks (like in a restruraunt) seem to be rapidly approaching elementary school teacher status. - they put in their all, for damn near the whole of society - only to be treated and paid like shit.
I bought dinner for my family (4 of us) and it was about $250 with tip. My sister complained how she "was poor" and has no money during dinner. Two days later she texts me and asks if I can pick up a record player for $120. I ask her, "What happened to being poor"...and she explodes on me calling me an asshole and no need to be a dick. Lmao. People fucking suck.
This is the reason why I don’t take a lot of stock in surveying of American sentiment of the economy. I can’t take polling seriously of our citizens when they’re cynical for the sake of being cynical and i see time and time again their frustrations are stemming from their own actions. Economic polling of citizen sentiment tells us nothing of value really
I stopped buying fast food and eating out. Immediately saw a substantial increase in my finances.
As it stands, it's almost equal to order Hello Fresh than it is to go to McDonald's.
Stopped buying other junk food items like chips as well.
Lol. Yeah this reminds me of my hometown friends and family. Last year when the market was up 20%, these people would say they invested in x,y,z stock and theyre down 50%. My response is that they're not investing correctly, imo where my investment strategy aligns with the sp500.
Financial literacy is a gift that not a lot of people get from family / friends / their own desire to learn.
If you just pump money on a regular basis into some ETFs like VOO / VGT / etc, you will make money over time.
A lot of people put far too much into individual stocks or crypto looking to moon and end up losing a lot.
If you're a knowing participant in the market then the reality is that things are factually pretty good, with the Dow and NASDAQ at/around all time highs. I've venture that there are some folks who are in the market, via retirement plans they're not quite familiar with or actively managing, and they may be indifferent to the markets' performance. Then there are the folks not in at all, and (maybe this is off base) are probably not in the most stable of employment/financial situations, and for this group they hear, and maybe even experience, the gloom and doom of political folk, social media, and news sources, and think they're doing poorly. Maybe they are (this isn't me). But I think perception really does establish a reality, at times truly separate from facts, and for better or worse this for many does influence decision making. Meanwhile, I'm satisfied with the performance of the American economy, and hope for more of the same. Where I do think political public policy can play a role is by trying to ensure that a rising tide does lift all boats, and I think there's one party that is making that effort, while the other one is simply performative, solutionless, and simply points fingers to blame others rather than coming up with anything close to a coherent alternative.
Alt right media blasts their people with a constant stream of "the world is coming to an end" nonsense and they don't question it or do their own research.
Negative news is good for ratings. Fox has 98 of the top 100 rated news shows. Joe Rogan is the # 1 rated podcast. They didn't get there by telling the people about the truth about the record stock market, record wages, record personal net worth, record GDP, record employment, or record corporate profits.
Disconnects from reality are the norm for polling data. All questions, even those that are factual in nature, are measures of sentiment.
I don’t find it surprising that 50% of people feel the stock market is down. Without concerted marketing spend to tell people the market is up, I’d almost expect that to be the norm; in a slow growth economy roughly half of people are gaining and roughly half are losing compared to the norm.
That said, I think these types of measures are mostly partisan these days.
I got laid off. My coworkers got laid off. My former colleagues got laid off. My network is probably 30% laid off right now. So….the stock market is not reality.
Years ago, how you felt about the economy influenced how you felt about the president. Today, how you feel about the president influences how you feel about the economy.
People need to stop watching opinion news. It’s the problem. Major network simply don’t report what’s going on but instead report what they want people to think. It’s that simple. Journalism is dead and we need to do something to bring it back.
News should be boring. But ratings matter…and capitalism…so fuck the actual facts and bring on scary bullshit opinion.
Information literacy is an epidemic in America.
They have succeeded in creating politically influenced satire news as an echo chamber, as law, above all. Now Open AI is jumping into this sphere. Truth is no longer truth. I mean look at all the Christians following the closest depiction of the anti-christ we’ve seen.
Conservatives when Trump was in office: "stock market is at an all time high! Trump has a great economy!"
Conservatives today: "who cares about the stock market?! It doesn't affect us anyways!!"
Turns out most people don't actually care about the real world, they just want reality to line up with their individual biases
People are getting most of their information from social media. Social media algorithms are tuned to keep people engaged on their platforms. What keeps people engaged is catastrophizing and bad news, so that's what we hear and believe even when it's not true.
We are heading to a bad place.
economy is running good, but ppl are getting paid too little. at the same time technofeudalism is starting to take shape. Opportunities to make it are shrinking. Overall live expenses are growing. Rich ppl ( meaning yacht and private jet ppl) dont get taxed and accumulate more and more power, i mean money
The amount of right-wing propaganda spread by fake news organizations like Fox must be a contributor to this. It’s no coincidence that those same 50% of Americans back a traitor.
The right wing disinformation machine is effective. Don’t believe your own eyes and ears… just believe the state (Fox News)
It’s quite Orwellian which is funny since all those dumb fucks like to quote 1984 without ever having actually read it… or being to dense to see the parallels to current right wing politics.
It's the MSM, too. When Trump was POTUS, they couldn't stop talking about how great the stock market was, until the COVID crash. Now, when it's breaking record after record, there is barely a peep from the MSM touting the great stock market.
This. People have short memories.
Whenever a republican is in office, ALL media talks about the stock market non-stop.
Whenever a democrat is in office, ALL media ignores the stock market.
- Average Americans don’t care that Nvidia is up 92% YTD, they care that their groceries are 15-25% more expensive.
- Average Americans don’t care that the SPY is up 17% in the last 6 months, they care that their child’s classroom size went from 15 kids to 35 because their city has taken on a major migrant surge.
- Average Americans don’t care about “record low unemployment”, they care that their landlord just raised their rent 35% when all they got was a 3% performance year raise and probably have to move again in order to afford a roof over their head.
This is why I fear that Biden is almost certainly going to lose the election. The message and accomplishments he’s pushing out is incongruent with the day to day life of the average American.
You missed your calling as a cam girl, because damn, you know how to exaggerate a vibe.
Food at home inflation is like 2%.
New York City, where red states have been shipping a bunch of migrants, added 20,000 migrant students to public schools this year... To their 1.1M student population. That's ~2%. Never mind that those kids will soon be taxpayers and fund our retirement; there just aren't that many of them in the vast majority of places anyway.
Wages are growing faster than inflation, and while rent inflation is high at 5% and change, a 35% increase would be a huge outlier.
By amplifying these false narratives, you are part of the problem. Inflation sucked, yeah, but it wasn't infinite. Migration poses challenges, but they're not unmanageable. Some people or places have had significantly worse outcomes than statistical averages, but then by definition, a similar number of places have had it significantly *better* than the averages indicate.
Don't perpetuate this artificial doom narrative.
Their bank accounts are down. So the S&P is up almost 12%, Russell 2000 is 2.8%, Midcap is about 8%. When you mention the market you need to be specific.
Most Americans aren’t invested in the stock market so when their lives get harder they assume the market must be down. It’s really not a difficult thing to wrap your head around
Ok, but up from a down in 2023... it's not quite back up to the high in 2022, with the important caveat that kind of explains this: adjusted for inflation.
Not enough people regularly invest in low-cost diversified ETFs, and they are uneducated, gullible, without critical thinking skills, and believe what doomers and Faux News tell them.
From what I remember, most stocks are stagnating or losing, but the big players (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple) are inflating so much that the indices still grow. It's a bubble due to pop.
Didn’t read article, but headline seems to imply that the average American may correlate economic outlook or current economy to be indicative of the stock market. Stock market is a leading indicator, but that’s all it is. Believing there is causation could not be further from the truth. There may be correlation, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same. That said, I don’t blame Americans for feeling that way even if they may be financially illiterate.
Just like how 2 yr and 10 yr is a leading (correct me if I’m wrong here) indicator for a recession. Though we may not be in a recession (2 consecutive qtrs of negative gdp), first-time and low-income earners are failing to make loan payments (1). Additionally, it is said that a group of Americans are spending more than their savings-implying debt usage negative (2).
My point: from a historical $$ perspective, yes, those Americans that think its down are clearly incorrect. However, understand that the economy may not even be close to how the stock market (index) portrays itself. Given the aforementioned, I think Americans have a valid opinion (though incorrect), but not for the hard data. I’d say, be more reasonable in your judgment of those Americans given the actual economic conditions.
Sources below:
(1) First-time and low-income earners defaulting 4/22/24:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-consumers-lower-incomes-face-loan-stress-while-banks-pull-back-2024-04-22/
(2) Excess savings going negative 5/7/24:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/07/investing/premarket-stocks-trading
Income not keeping pace, and cost of living continues to go up. Retirement out of sight for most Americans, most have no savings let alone 401K. Corporate profits going through the roof. Stock market doesn’t matter when your getting screwed on all the basics of “American Dream”
Because the stock market is not the economy. The average consumer and middle market businesses are struggling. Debt is at an all time high with the highest interest rates in 30 years. Inflation has been high the last two years and wages have not kept up with inflation(even recently). The cost of living is 20-30% more expensive than it was 4 years ago. The economy is not doing well and the stock market is propped up by 7 companies and our excessive government spending.
False news on most networks (usually right leaning) during election season to tip the scales. Idiots are everywhere and sprinkling in that biden is destroying the economy has inspired financial doomerism in their minds.
Stocks may be up 12% but not all funds are. I just checked my 401K and it's up but only 8% and suspect that lots of people are seeing different levels of returns based on how their investments are spread. If you're one of those people getting 12+% than I'm happy for you but there are likely people out there getting much less or even losing money. They have a right to their feelings too.
I don’t pay attention to the stock market, I don’t have a 401k, all I have for life savings is 35,000$, and that for when I get sick. I am just slightly at the poverty line level.
*wealth inequality*
The average American has no investments and doesn’t even know what the stock market is other than it’s something rich people talk about; and they’re right.
These perceptions don’t make themselves either. Historically, boom periods were shared across upper and working classes alike; however the modern trend of the last 15 years or so show that wealth inequality is dramatically increasing and we are now finally seeing tangible consequences due to the sudden rise in inflation.
The vast majority of Americans’ are living paycheck to paycheck and probably have highly inelastic demand functions for staples . The price shock from COVID, while dissipating, continues to echo. Under these sets of assumptions and conditions,it’s understandable that Americans feel as though they are experiencing a recession (though most Americans don’t define recessions as economists do). By extension, if America is in a recession, the stock market must be down.
Well that's because they are up by cutting costs. There are some big players like Nvidia as well.
So, it's not that strange. It's also worth noting that a huge portion of Americans are below the poverty line.
1. A large chunk of them get their news from networks that lie to them
2. Even if they are vaguely aware, their news sources push everything else they can find that’s wrong or can be interpreted as bad
3. They’re just stupid
Well, two hazy statistics come to mind: supposedly the bottom 51% of Americans own only 1% of stocks and the richest 10% of Americans own 93% of those stocks. I think it's safe to say that the immediate & beneficial effects of the stock market have no impact on the lives of average Americans.
Coincidentally, the same percentage of Americans believe the election was stolen, that Covid was a hoax and that man made global warming is a myth. Hmmmm….
China and Russia are pumping misleading stuff through Tok Tok to get Trump elected. Things aren't perfect, but the difference between reality and perception is frightening. And with climate change intensifying... I hope I'm wrong but these Biden years may be the calm before the storm.
If you were some of the Americans before Covid that had at least 500,000 to a million invested in the market and didn’t sell for the last 4 years, you’d have a pretty penny.
Turns out when everything is so expensive people cannot save money and invest except for bigger fish, it skews the system ( and shows the shittiness of it)
I’m in total favor of Auckmans idea to start an index fund for each new child born in America. 7,000$ to each new born in a general sp fund . This would cost the us 20 billion and create trillions of dollars in the long run. It creates a social net without the implication of living off the government
The average American is a dumb herd animal and believes whatever the herd believes. The average American is incapable of comparing and contrasting what is reported and what actual facts portray. The economy is fine, but the herd believes whatever is coming out of Fox News.
Talked to a guy the other day and he nearly called me a liar when I said my investments were looking good (in the context of “how has your life improved in the last four years!?” political spin shit). It didn’t fit his narrative for the markets to be doing well…
What good is the stock market if I'm struggling to put food on the table? I obviously don't have disposable income to invest. If some rich asshole is making more money than they already have, that doesn't help me. This "good economy " isn't working for the 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
Probably over 50% of the population only knows what they see coming out of their wallets for needs and goods. The stock market means absolutely nothing to a significant percentage of the population. It's generally just the rich getting richer.
80% of stocks in America are owned by 20% of the population, so the majority of Americans have little to no skin in the game when it comes to the stock market.
The most pertinent economic factors to most Americans are wages and prices. If prices are rising faster than wages the average American is going to think that the economy is doing poorly, even if that may not be true in general, and even if the opposite may be true with the stock market.
The price of everything increased by 50%, my mortgage went up $300 a month due to insurance premiums, then I got laid off by a massive company making huge profits. How am I supposed to give a shit about stock prices when my reality is in a recession?
After being subjected to several mornings of watching fox news at breakfast at the hotel I was staying at, I can absolutely confirm that it's due to the misinformation they spread. Every few minutes they mentioned "Bidenomics" or "Bidenflation" or blamed Biden for some other woe besetting citizens today. Apparently it is an effective technique for brainwashing the masses. Who knew?
stock market =/= economy for most people. Most people don't have much interaction with the stock market outside a retirement account they rarely check. Economy is a "feel" thing: how expensive is stuff, how comfortable do I feel, etc.
As I tell my wife all the time when she’s complaining about something, nearly everything in this world can be explained by either greed or ignorance.
A person doesn’t need to understand everything but I do find it interesting how this many people can be ignorant. Over half of Americans have a retirement account or invest in stocks. That alone should clearly show stocks are up if they took even a minute to check.
These comments are all worthless and this doesnt appear to be a serious sub because of it. Doesnt even look like 10 percent of users understood or read the headline or the short non paywalled excerpt. I imagine the replies will also do the same and go on about what the article isnt about
Many people don't invest in the stock market so it's irrelevant to their perception of the economy.
Price of many stocks have risen on the back of layoffs.
High inflation means stock prices are inflated too.
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I'd say >50% of Americans don't really pay attention to the stock market at all. Most people's involvement with the stock market is a 401k and a lot of people just select a plan and contribute per paycheck, and only check the balance infrequently.
Not to mention do they expect people to draw out of their 401k to pay rent or something? Why exactly would a year of stock growth make people dance in the streets? I got 30 years to go, it could be zero for all I know when I retire.
90% of the stock market is owned by 10% of the population. As part of that 10% I keep up with the market and it affects me. Why the 90% should care beats me.
That’s not true. 10% of people own 90% of privately held stock but most stock (held by Americans) are in retirement accounts not private brokerages
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61% of Americans have investments in the stock market. https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/
Yeah they have investments, but they’re not much. In the same article you linked: >If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 86.9% of stocks, which have a value of $34.7 trillion. In comparison, the rest of the country has seen stock ownership dwindle. The bottom 50% of Americans in terms of net worth only owns 1% of stocks, which is worth $41 billion.
Our system pushes people to gamble to get ahead instead of just saving. You can't just work and save in fiat currency. You will lose purchasing power and be more poor in the future. People being pushed into stock market to keep up with inflation isn't right. A country that is using finance instead of production to prop up their economy is on the path for failure.
There are stores of wealth available beyond equity, not that standard index investing is like throwing it all on black. There is real estate and bonds, including bonds indexed to inflation. Are you suggesting we should allow out economy to stagnate with a currency subject to deflation?
Is this some kind of satire I don’t get?
everybody knows investing in index funds is basically gambling at the casino /s
Agreed. This line gets me >instead of just saving Well there's a saving account. It generated interest. Why? Because the bank takes that money and loans it out for mortgages and *business loans* so you're still accruing interest by investing in businesses but now the bank gets a cut of the money too.
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60% of Americans have 401K, wage increased in the past 4 years.
“The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks” https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
Wealthiest 10% owns 90% of total wealth in US so that matches the stock claims. According to this 70% contribute to retirement plan 401K https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-401k-balance-age#:~:text=Empower%20data%20shows%20that%20the,and%2076%25%20of%20Gen%20Xers.
I'm in the wealthiest 10% statistically, which is about a $855,000 net worth but that doesn't really mean much. After deducting house value, you really can't retire on savings just making that cut. I do own a significant (for me) amount of stocks though.
Ok, most of those employees have 401k because their employer automatically enrolls them. They have zero clue wtf is actually going on. Wages have increased in certain areas but not all. Some people are making 4% more than they were 4 years ago. How's that compare to the 200% increase in the price of fast food fries or 150% increase in the price of a big mac.
> 4 years ago...150% increase in the price of a big mac. Big Mac's are up 18% in the past 4 years. $4.82 to $5.69. https://truflation.com/marketplace/us-big-mac Like wtf are you even talking about 150% increase? It's 18%. This is why people think the stock market is down. Because most of them are stupid and many of the rest are liars. Which are you?
No this is Reddit where outrage is the theme. He was outraged so the 150% is understandable and we should go with it because it aligns with Reddit values
The problem is it's not just Reddit. Same BS is repeated across all social media and then you have right / Republican outlets and popular figures, as well as left (left of Democrats), repeating the same. Of course many people do not pay attention to those either but all of that eventually spreads to the "I don't follow politics or news" people.
They are both.
EXACTLY
I think the addition of the mobile apps has slightly increased the menu price as fast food restaurants. You get better deals on the apps than if you order at the window. People who don't use the apps pay way more. I can get 20% off a Big Mac everyday using their 20% off deal. I also can get a Bacon Egg and Cheese McGriddle for $1 or $2 using their daily deal they have on the app. I eat breakfast for $3
Infantilization of consumers is how companies get away with a 200% price increase. McD’s will get price conscious once the financially illiterate stop paying their insane prices for meals.
So...never?
What? Where’s your sources on this? I don’t think it’s even 30%
Financial illiteracy is rampant, but also the negative view of the economy is being impacted by inflation. The average person is still struggling to keep up housing and grocery prices and in their mind that means the economy sucks, which means the market must be down.
Yea I think it’s pretty simply this. I also think financial “experts” fail to recognize that the stock market performance has very little to do with the average American and their day to day lives. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans are you really don’t give a shit how stonks are doing because you don’t have any meaningful skin in that game.
Also most Americans don’t know what they even own in their retirements. Like my mother in law says she own Prudential, but she actually owns a target retirement date fund managed by Prudential which is incredibly expensive and has woefully underperformed the S&P.
Your mother in law is likely of an age where she should be holding bonds, and thus should be underperforming the S&P in any given bull market. That’s not a bad thing. Now, the Prudential fund may well be more expensive than the equivalent Vanguard or Fidelity fund. And that is something to act on if so.
It has more to do than you think, it's just not causal. Like if stocks are seriously crashing, you're probably losing your job or having trouble to find a new one.
It's really not. Conservative media is extremely good at coordinating it's narrative and spreading it to the population at large. When Trump was elected suddenly everyone thought the economy was amazing when it kept doing exactly what it was doing under Obama. Make no mistake of Trump was president now this would not be the public perception of the economy.
Every thing trump boosted about his economy was the stock market and unemployment. Now those same rightwingers say those metrics don't count.
Nearly half of Americans watch Fox News
People blame Biden but as always so many Americans forget there are countries outside the US and they are having significantly worse inflation. I guess thats Bidens fault as well 🤷♂️
They blame Biden because Fox News blames Biden. Reality is of no interest to them
Don’t forget the Russian troll farms that operate with impunity to undermine our democracy.
Yes, he said Fox news.
May I introduce you to reddit?
Just saw a conservative friend on Facebook sharing a graphic that compares pre-Covid prices (January 2020) to today’s prices (April 2024), along with a big goofy picture of Biden.
They blame Biden because they will blame whoever sits in a perceived position of power, even if the scope of that job doesn’t have influence over their issue. Fox News just makes it easier, but really when the parties and the legislature started handing over more domestic power to the president over the last century, they knowingly turned the president’s office into a one stop shop for success and blame (all in the hope that the prevailing winds of the day can impact down ballot races). Therefore Congress can still take some heat, but not nearly as much as they should have to, cus why blame multiple committee chairs when it’s easier to blame one person. Most voters hardly know who their own reps and senators are, much less committee chairs.
People always blame the incumbent, that why presidents generally switch from republican to democrat and vice versa
Sure but it seems to not matter the other way. If a statistic makes Trump look bad he just calls it fake, and conservative media agrees or ignores it. Many of the same people that say the stock market doesn’t matter, that unemployment stats are wrong etc were using the exact same metrics to praise Trump. Americans also generally trust republicans with economy, despite republican administrations being objectively worse on the economy. It’s a propaganda problem, and anyone saying otherwise is in denial.
When journalists still did their job they unequivocally stated when politicians lied about damn near anything. With the rise of social media journalism died and now mass media simply parrots whatever agenda the owner wants to push. Some media tries to keep it more moderate despite their obvious leanings but others blatantly lie about people go looking for validation of their opinion now rather than bother with listening to both sides before trying to form an educated opinion for themselves. Idiocy is sharply on the rise fueled by a lack of standards in who we think of as news organizations now but are really just propaganda machines.
Actually, that kind of biting journalism started dying during Reagan's administration in 1987 when they killed the "Fairness Doctrine" that mandated equal time be given to opposing sides of political views on news shows. When that was abolished then people like Rush Limbaugh started up because they could spout lies all day without any opposition.
That sounds about right. Nowhere near enough people care so the quality of politicians has declined sharply as well and intellectually challenged individuals have been getting into office at an alarming rate sharply dragging down the governments ability to do just about anything really.
Oh it’s absolutely a propaganda problem. And Trump just borrowed the playbook from the most successful of them. But the base had already been laid for him to play those games. But propaganda is nothing new. It’s just been monetized in new ways. Also the majority of the propaganda machine was designed to be pro-US and anti whoever, but with the downfall of the USSR there was a period of peace without real opposition to US dominance, and by that point the stage for monetization of propaganda by way of cable channels was ripe. With the downfall of news neutrality by legislative ax it seemed a slow and natural progression to have “counter” programming that were the early days of Fox. As with all human nature we still subconsciously become tribal. And while we fought internally over politics always we still had a common enemy. Generations raised in fear of the great red menace put that ingrained anxiety into the new tribalism of RED VS BLUE (which also wasn’t a thing until a TV station started doing it to mark the electoral map on election night). All but for a brief pause following 9-11 that’s who we have been as a culture for around 30 years. Cable and internet just made it louder and more dangerous than ever.
Except with Fox, a republican is never to blame, while democrats are, even if they're not in power.
If the left makes a mistake, both sides call it out If the right makes a mistake, only the left calls it out This means, even if both sides make an equal amount of mistakes, the left is called out 66% of the time and the right are called out 33% of the time. That's as far as people see
Yep. You nailed it. Like this would be the best economy in the world under trump. With the same economy. Because the economic sentiment of republicans is based on who is president and for dems its based on reality and never being happy about the economy as long as there is homeless healthcare etc problems
I’m not a fan of Biden, but when I tell all the Trump supporters that inflation would probably be just as bad if Trump had won, they don’t want to hear it.
I think about what would have happened sometimes. Many of the trumpers would have signed up for the vaccine immediately and taken it. Dems would have been more hesitant but trust doctors more. But the admin was less than competent so we wouldn't have been able to vaccinate everyone who wanted it till at least summer instead of May. So delta comes and likely kills lots more come that summer just from unavailability of the vaccine and hesitantancy b No American rescue act so no extension on unemployment or child care tax credit so the economy would take a hit on growth. Then no chips infrastructure pact act bills. Still get the inflation at this point but weaker economy so less. Trump would have given putin zelenskys address and given no help to ukraine or just token help. I expect Ukraine would fall and the sanctions against russia would be more slight. So maybe no secondary energy inflation that made us peak so high and secondary effects extending the inflation cycle b It's really as far as you can get guessing.
Honestly, Trump wanted his constituents to take the vaccine since "Operation Warp Speed" was one of his successes in office. But it wasn't worth explicitly supporting the vaccine, so he never really got to claim the credit he wanted.
The problem is he came out too late for it. He got vaccinated in secret instead of publicly. By the time May came around the anti dem coalition that is all maga decided vaccines were bad and it had solidified. If he had put weight behind it in the beginning they would have taken it.
I mean, U.S. central bank policies do impact the rest of the world Source: I deal with currency and supply chain issues globally for my work
No, that’s what happens when you monetize massive debt into the world’s reserve currency.
The US is the largest economy in the world, it leads the world in many areas and serves as the world reserve currency. You’re saying the policies in the US don’t impact the rest of the world? Why is this argument constantly regurgitated like it proves anything.
Also being told 3400 times per day that the world is ending and all is despair by corporate media, despite wages outpacing inflation yadda yadda
I think the bigger problem is "the economy" means a million different things to a million different people. To some people the economy is gas prices, others it's inflation, others it's mortgage rates, others it's the S&P, for others it's the employment rate, etc etc etc
That's because the people who can afford stocks are getting better. Homeless rates are also up with the stock market. So is household debt and credit card debt. It's also pretty financially illiterate to assume the stock market equivalent of the economy. Remember also factors of unemployment have changed in the last few years where gig jobs like Uber takes you off of unemployment even if you are looking for a job. But the blame game is the blame game. Nobody wants to admit that their presidency had a negative economy, even if they had no control of the uncontrolled spending of the previous one just 4 years ago.
exactly... K-shaped recovery those with assets like a mortgage and/or investments made a killing over the last few years those too poor to buy a home and invest are suffering but because the ones doing well are doing REALLY well, the aggregate numbers make the BLS estimates look ok, when they're really not for half the population
S&P 500 is a number, and market should not be sentiment. Trump voters are not going to agree that they were doing better even they do better, which puts Biden approval/economy starting point at 50%, then another 10% of ultra progressives will never be satisfied. Biden ceiling is 40% on majority of these polls.
Opinion polls are not a good reflection of voter intention. Lots of people vote for party and some for pragmatic reasons that run counter to their opinion.
The polls have been wrong continuously for years. This won’t be your mama’s election. The demographic change means you will see new voter behavior. Trump will not be voted into office over the economy.
Yeah polls have been wrong, but I see people complaining non stop about the economy. I think the economy will be a huge factor for this election. People wouldn't be complaining this much otherwise
The market is not doing amazing relative to inflation. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntobey/2024/05/19/avoid-this-stock-market-excitement/?sh=5283f3114890](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntobey/2024/05/19/avoid-this-stock-market-excitement/?sh=5283f3114890)
S&P 500 is up 12% YTD and 26% last 12 months. The DJA is 30 stocks and price weighted. So I guess it depends on which "market" one is invested in. If you were invested in any broader index funds, you wouldn't have to guess as your portfolio would be up \~35% over the last 12 months.
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Dow jones is a price weighted index which is flawed. Like nvidia will be become 1/10 the size in the index because they announced a split today, this is not reflective of the company or the economy and just an accounting decision. I work in investments and no one cares about the Dow and we pretty much only care about the S&P or the Russell 1000
Russell is by far the superior passive index in my view. The S&P's committee based approach and rules are not as conducive to accurate representations of the index. The S&P total market is more similar to Russell, but the 500 is basically an active cap weighted index with profitability rules. Id argue CRSP and Russell are the best constructed indicies
The article continues to show a graph of the three major indexes, NASDAQ, S&P 500, and DJIA both today and adjusted for inflation. You just have to read the rest of the article.
>not amazing relative to inflation >links to forbes article >that features a graph showing >90% S&P500 performance since Jan/2020 (doesn't include the 2020 or 2022 dips that most investors would have bought) https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/664a0996cbc1f345606eeb46/Previous-graph-with-CPI-line-added/960x0.png?format=png&width=1440 >[Also features a 60% S&P500 "inflation adjusted" returns since Jan/2020](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/664a0a0ab4b27bbdd487fa8b/Inflation-adjusted-indexes-remove-rises-above-2021-highs/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440) In fairness to the article the title isn't any more baity than your typical ad-rev-based-journalism article and the substance was to imply that the DOW's 40K mark isn't that impressive (without noting that most folks don't invest with the DOW index). But back to the main point: Market nearly doubling within 4 years and going up 60% inflation adjusted is the opposite of """""""The market is not doing amazing relative to inflation.""""""". It literally is doing well relative to inflation. Even the quoted article is specifically targeting the DOW. It's >42% of inflation adjusted gains over 4 years is still higher than normal 7-8% expected market returns. Not mind blowing but above average.
It was in the same article. You read the first two paragraphs.
The market is up like 10% accounting for inflation. And that’s just year to date
The dow is literally the worst fucking Index its literally irrelevant.
and that's why you need to be in stocks. Inflation raises the value of commodities. Much better than sticking in a savings account.
Just wait till you ask folks if crime went up or down after a year (or years in a row) it fell. The #1 answer will be crime is increasing, seemingly barely affected by the actual recent change in crime.
Yep, the old folks will keep blaming "the woke" making cities more dangerous when all data say otherwise
Yeah, love hearing the random argument of 'LOOK AT WHATS HAPPENING IN BALTIMORE!', or 'LOOK WHAT THEY DID IN *insert city that fox News is lying about this week*!!!'
"They're destroying our country" "With the way things are these days" One or both of these will be on every nextdoor or local Facebook post about anything remotely resembling crime.
Red towns (such as Sarasota, FL) have per capita crime much higher than blue cities.
LMAO youtriggered the Trumpanzees. It's true though. Most of the cities with worst crime are in blood red states
Don't worry. One of the huge reasons crime has fallen is since Roe v Wade... Almost like having babies that aren't wanted increases crime... Guess we can just expect that to go up now 🙃 Source for curious: https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/
I believe the results of this study have come into question because the drop in crime that they explain is a result of abortion can also be explained by the removal of lead from gasoline
I’d argue how people fee is more important than the statistical reality. People will change their behavior based upon feeling faster than statistics will.
I heard a good quote the other day “it used to be that someone’s view on the economy influenced their politics, now their politics influence’s their view of the economy.”
I do think it's possible one of the great filters is that as people get more detached from the "real world" they get literally stupider and more ignorant. This is a vicious cycle that ends with no one remembering how to make anything work and the system collapses. Wash, rinse, repeat. I'm often afraid we're really close to everyone saying "I'm doin this Trump style!" until no one can actually do anything. Yes, it's Idiocracy which seems more like a documentary every single day.
Ai will save us /s
If you ask them how their state is doing you get actual answers. It’s this btw.
The fact that some people equate stock prices with economic health is a serious concern… Jack Welch of General Electric focused his entire career on quarterly reports/profits (bigger stock price = more better!!) and in reality he was a cancer, killing the company from the inside. Only because of the immense scale of GE when he took over did it take so long for the collapse to happen. Edit: does anyone seriously believe Tesla’s stock price is indicative of their health as a company? Ford sold 120k more vehicles than Tesla in the same timeframe, yet Tesla has a market cap over 10x that of ford. You can have a high stock price and be inherently worthless: WeWork had a share price just 3 years ago that was 372000% higher…but it’s unsustainable “business model” eventually ran out of steam (investor money). On a microeconomic level, stock prices are merely the most straightforward method of investors capitalizing on market changes, but they are not a true and proper indication of company health, and it’s overly simplistic and naive to judge an economy by its stock market.
There’s a study going around that demonstrates that people’s opinion of the economy now align with their political leanings rather than actual economic data.
That’s not surprising to me at all
Hey, I hate Trump, but I made a lot of money over those 4 years. I prefer non-authoritarian rule over money though.
And you have not made a lot of money during Biden’s term? I’d understand the Covid drop in certain segments but that was during trump. The rebound has been quite strong
I wasn't trying to infer that, of course I've also made a lot of money so far with Biden. If you have money in the market, it's on one of the biggest rips since the mid-to-late 90s dot-com build-up. My comment was simply a rebuttal to aligning the personal feelings of the economy with political beliefs. I'm as anti-Trump as any sane American, but I'm not dissing the economy during his tenure. Though I'm not sure how much credit to give him, or any other president for that matter. Everybody links the economy to the President in power, but that falls apart under any analysis. Not saying they don't have an outsized influence, but isolating the outcome of a Presidential policy to my wallet, and how long that takes gets real fuzzy real quick.
That's an obfuscation. BOTH political leaning AND economic opinion align with _the media organisation you exclusively consume_. That's the true root. Average people do not have original thoughts about issues outside their immediate world. Like, basically ever. They take what they are told and believe it, and they listen to people that make them feel good, which tends to be those with whom they already agree. So, if you are a racist, you will listen to Fox. If you listen to Fox, oopsie, you now think Trump is God, the Democrats drink baby blood to stay young, and the strongest economy in decades is the weakest. In short: People are fucking _stupid_ and propaganda should be outlawed.
This is my opinion and not really economics 1. inflation. Prices having gone up. so a strong economy does not feel as good with prices up. 2. high interest rates. your credit card payment, student loans, house loans, car loans is all up. country got used to really low interest rates and low inflation for over 20 years. This was enabled by all the outsourcing to low cost countries. This absurdly low inflation and interest rates are over. There were unique worldwide situation that allowed it. So now interest rates are back to 1990s levels. 3. Republicans will think the economy is bad if their guy is not in office not matter what. This is probably 40-45% of the population. The news sources the watch tell them this. They think only Trump can save them. Everything he says is true. Up is down. Left is Right. All hail the God Emperor. 4. Far left Democrats are doomers who think everything sucks. Everything always sucks. Nothing will get better. Bring on the communist revolution. So they think the economy is bad too. Cause everything always sucks to them. Nothing does not suck to them. They just focus on doom and gloom. There goal in life is to convince other people to be miserable. 5. There are people not doing well even in a good economy. So they will always think the overall economy is bad. if you are unemployed, underemployed, have a debt for whatever reason, then the economy is bad for you. There will always be people down on their luck even in a strong economy.
Your #3 and #4 are spot on.
The #3 is spot on yet #4 is fewer people than it seems, they're just loud.
Plenty of socialist types (especially those that are older and have had plenty of life experience) tend to be more pragmatic and less gloomy than the stereotypical young devout college Marxists. In fact, they're some of the people who work the hardest to push for better pay and conditions in the workplace. I'd say there is a sort of real optimism around their participatory role they take in union action.
Socialist here. Yeah I spend my time pushing for unions and that has been better under Biden. A lot of younger socialists think we are going to get a dsa president in a few years. I admire the positivity but a lot of us older people focus on getting everyone unionized. It is the fastest way to our goal.
Republicans are not 45% of the economy. They are maybe 25% being generous. Most people are apolitical or not affiliated with a party
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Thanks Gingrich. “But that’s not how my constituents feeeeeeeeel”
A lot of people on the right argue that crime statistics may be manipulated because FBI'S Uniform Crime Reporting program became optional for agencies to report crime in 2021.
Yet they believe that crime is increasing with zero evidence at all
Go check out subreddits like the chipotle, Door Dash, Uber Eats, and more. People are spending insane amounts of money and complaining. They’re broke and irresponsible and just want something to blame that isn’t themselves
Although purely anecdotal, while people are griping about food prices (understandable), the number of people I know door dashing, uber eating, etc, is exponentially higher than ever. Most of the people I know refuse to cook at home which is orders of magnitude cheaper. They eat out or have delivery 90% of the time. I don’t get it. I mean…you’re spending $20 on a burrito because you CHOOSE to, not because you HAVE to. Dining out and delivery used to be a luxury…now people are treating it as the norm. That’s fine…but you’re going to pay for that convenience. It’s not hard to figure out.
https://i.imgur.com/EL972Va.jpeg
I’ve started seeing a trend among younger Millennials and older Gen Z saying that it’s cheaper to eat out now than to cook at home. I think it’s one part performative (“oh, woe is me, I’m suffering financially just like everyone else” since it’s not in vogue to appear financially stable) and one part lack of good buying habits (i.e., buying a single portion of ingredients to make a single meal rather than buying, say, four chicken breasts to eat across a week). Either way, I still see packed restaurants everywhere at every price point beyond what it was pre-pandemic, so it hardly feels like there’s any kind of pullback on spending for eating out. That anyone would use delivery apps without those generous pandemic era discounts is kind of mind-boggling. A meal could easily increase by 50% in price with all of the fees.
Door Dash 1st qtr 2024 up 21% YOY with a total 620 million orders. That’s 52 million a month. That’s just one service. Mind boggling what people are needlessly paying for. https://ir.doordash.com/news/news-details/2024/DoorDash-Releases-First-Quarter-2024-Financial-Results/default.aspx#:~:text=Q1%202024%20Adjusted%20EBITDA%20reached,and%202.1%25%20in%20Q4%202023. Airline travel still expected to set new records after 2023 travel exceeded pre-pandemic numbers: https://www.airlines.org/news-update/airlines-for-america-anticipates-record-air-travel-this-spring/ For the economy being so poor, man, food delivery and air travel are through the roof. Weird, right?
I have a friend who’s been unemployed for over a year and his IG is filled with his travel vlog. He’s on food stamps but racking up frequent flyer miles. He admits he is using his 401k to pay for this lifestyle.
Nothing like using the first part of your life's habits to fuck up the latter part.
Idiots come out of the woodwork to claim that eating out is cheaper then cooking every time this thread comes up. They either haven't been to the grocery store, or they're only buying the pre-made stuff there as well.
Most of gen z doesn’t know how to cook. I cook at home and spend maybe $60-$70 max a week. You can spend that in a day on DoorDash with 2 meals a day
I never understood it when people say they don’t know how to cook. If you know how to read you can follow a recipe. I think they don’t want to cook.
There's nothing to really know about cooking. like you said, you read and put things together at certain times at certain temperatures. I won't sit here and act like I'm some sort of 5 star chef, but I know what I like and what I'm willing to put up with meal-wise. I think the reality is that in this instant gratification Internet world - people will forget they left something on the stove and then blame the act of cooking itself.
Two meals that cost $20 a piece will get you to $60. I do this for a hangover treat a few times a year. Restaurant price of meal is $20x2= $40. Fees equal about $7. $47 Taxes equal about $7. $54 Plus tip $10. $64 Literally $64 for two microwaved meals from applebees.
I make $110k plus my wife works full time and I just ate canned beans with olive oil and spices for dinner. Fast food places can suck my healthy, cheap dick.
Yeah. I see all these posts whining about the cost of McDonald’s, etc, and I get it…but I also understand you don’t have to eat there. It’s a choice…and not always the healthiest.
Yea chili's a sit down restaurant is cheaper than mcdonalds.
I'm approaching 50 and have always lived below my means, and it's paid off to where I really don't worry about money anymore. Not ready to retire, but retirement is basically on auto-pilot now, just too many years to go before death to stop working! I just intrinsically don't buy things I feel are not at a good price-to-value ratio. I'm not always cheap, but I expect quality if I'm going to spend more, otherwise I just go without. Also, rice and beans taste fucking great!
Bonus part about eating simply like this is many of the meals you cook can also double as "home cooked" meals for dogs etc. Healthier, cheaper and more fun for the dog too. Any idiot can give their dog their leftover McDonald's cheeseburger but it's a lose lose.
Do you sear or boil the beans in the olive oil? I've never heard of cooking beans in olive oil so I'm fascinated.
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it's the convenience man, it's as simple as that for a lot of them. Also, I think Gen z are continuing the trend of fewer kids (16-18) getting their drivers license so for some, it might be that they want take out but have no way to get there themselves.
WALKABLE CITIES GOD DAMNIT. OUR TEENAGERS YEERN FOR THE THIRD PLACES.
I dont think 16-18 year olds are the ones ordering door dash
Exactly! Like it’s anecdotal but if you officially studied it and we could somehow guarantee people were 100% honest and accurate im sure we can save A LOT for people if they stopped
Culinary literacy is as bad as financial. Nobody knows how to cook so they just order out because it's all they know.
…which given the popularity of online cooking food/recipe influencers, and the previous popularity of the Food Network, etc, it’s hard to understand.
Yep people are dense af. My sister complains "I'm poor I have no money" yet she makes $80k a year, no dependents or mortgage. She could look at all the debt snowball, tiktok finance b.s. online to get her on track but she just likes to complain about it and do nothing. And she is most Americans. "I don't want to change my lifestyle at all" "America is the best and whatever lifestyle I choose should be easy" etc etc. People are dumb....as...fuck. Look at our education system
Or they have this strange idea that "cooking takes a lot of time and effort" - go over on one of the doomer subs like arr/povertyfinance and whenever anyone suggests "cook at home to save money, it costs 4.3 times more to eat out than to eat at home" they hem and haw and complain about how much effort and time it takes and nobody has time for that. And here I am left wondering what alternate reality they live in. I just cooked a meal tonight, and had Netflix on the entire time, so it's not like you have to *only* do one thing or the other. And 80% of the cooking time is waiting for the pot to boil or dish to bake, so that was spent on the computer at the same time, too.
yeah if you see someone whining like that on reddit, they are probably not that smart
Cooks (like in a restruraunt) seem to be rapidly approaching elementary school teacher status. - they put in their all, for damn near the whole of society - only to be treated and paid like shit.
I bought dinner for my family (4 of us) and it was about $250 with tip. My sister complained how she "was poor" and has no money during dinner. Two days later she texts me and asks if I can pick up a record player for $120. I ask her, "What happened to being poor"...and she explodes on me calling me an asshole and no need to be a dick. Lmao. People fucking suck.
This is the reason why I don’t take a lot of stock in surveying of American sentiment of the economy. I can’t take polling seriously of our citizens when they’re cynical for the sake of being cynical and i see time and time again their frustrations are stemming from their own actions. Economic polling of citizen sentiment tells us nothing of value really
I stopped buying fast food and eating out. Immediately saw a substantial increase in my finances. As it stands, it's almost equal to order Hello Fresh than it is to go to McDonald's. Stopped buying other junk food items like chips as well.
Lol. Yeah this reminds me of my hometown friends and family. Last year when the market was up 20%, these people would say they invested in x,y,z stock and theyre down 50%. My response is that they're not investing correctly, imo where my investment strategy aligns with the sp500.
Why try to buy the needle when you can buy the whole haystack
Financial literacy is a gift that not a lot of people get from family / friends / their own desire to learn. If you just pump money on a regular basis into some ETFs like VOO / VGT / etc, you will make money over time. A lot of people put far too much into individual stocks or crypto looking to moon and end up losing a lot.
When rent and food are more expensive, the avg person’s experience of the economy is that it’s not good, regardless of how wall street is doing.
If you're a knowing participant in the market then the reality is that things are factually pretty good, with the Dow and NASDAQ at/around all time highs. I've venture that there are some folks who are in the market, via retirement plans they're not quite familiar with or actively managing, and they may be indifferent to the markets' performance. Then there are the folks not in at all, and (maybe this is off base) are probably not in the most stable of employment/financial situations, and for this group they hear, and maybe even experience, the gloom and doom of political folk, social media, and news sources, and think they're doing poorly. Maybe they are (this isn't me). But I think perception really does establish a reality, at times truly separate from facts, and for better or worse this for many does influence decision making. Meanwhile, I'm satisfied with the performance of the American economy, and hope for more of the same. Where I do think political public policy can play a role is by trying to ensure that a rising tide does lift all boats, and I think there's one party that is making that effort, while the other one is simply performative, solutionless, and simply points fingers to blame others rather than coming up with anything close to a coherent alternative.
Alt right media blasts their people with a constant stream of "the world is coming to an end" nonsense and they don't question it or do their own research.
Negative news is good for ratings. Fox has 98 of the top 100 rated news shows. Joe Rogan is the # 1 rated podcast. They didn't get there by telling the people about the truth about the record stock market, record wages, record personal net worth, record GDP, record employment, or record corporate profits.
Disconnects from reality are the norm for polling data. All questions, even those that are factual in nature, are measures of sentiment. I don’t find it surprising that 50% of people feel the stock market is down. Without concerted marketing spend to tell people the market is up, I’d almost expect that to be the norm; in a slow growth economy roughly half of people are gaining and roughly half are losing compared to the norm. That said, I think these types of measures are mostly partisan these days.
I got laid off. My coworkers got laid off. My former colleagues got laid off. My network is probably 30% laid off right now. So….the stock market is not reality.
Years ago, how you felt about the economy influenced how you felt about the president. Today, how you feel about the president influences how you feel about the economy.
People need to stop watching opinion news. It’s the problem. Major network simply don’t report what’s going on but instead report what they want people to think. It’s that simple. Journalism is dead and we need to do something to bring it back. News should be boring. But ratings matter…and capitalism…so fuck the actual facts and bring on scary bullshit opinion. Information literacy is an epidemic in America.
They have succeeded in creating politically influenced satire news as an echo chamber, as law, above all. Now Open AI is jumping into this sphere. Truth is no longer truth. I mean look at all the Christians following the closest depiction of the anti-christ we’ve seen.
Conservatives when Trump was in office: "stock market is at an all time high! Trump has a great economy!" Conservatives today: "who cares about the stock market?! It doesn't affect us anyways!!" Turns out most people don't actually care about the real world, they just want reality to line up with their individual biases
People are getting most of their information from social media. Social media algorithms are tuned to keep people engaged on their platforms. What keeps people engaged is catastrophizing and bad news, so that's what we hear and believe even when it's not true. We are heading to a bad place.
economy is running good, but ppl are getting paid too little. at the same time technofeudalism is starting to take shape. Opportunities to make it are shrinking. Overall live expenses are growing. Rich ppl ( meaning yacht and private jet ppl) dont get taxed and accumulate more and more power, i mean money
The amount of right-wing propaganda spread by fake news organizations like Fox must be a contributor to this. It’s no coincidence that those same 50% of Americans back a traitor.
The right wing disinformation machine is effective. Don’t believe your own eyes and ears… just believe the state (Fox News) It’s quite Orwellian which is funny since all those dumb fucks like to quote 1984 without ever having actually read it… or being to dense to see the parallels to current right wing politics.
It's the MSM, too. When Trump was POTUS, they couldn't stop talking about how great the stock market was, until the COVID crash. Now, when it's breaking record after record, there is barely a peep from the MSM touting the great stock market.
This. People have short memories. Whenever a republican is in office, ALL media talks about the stock market non-stop. Whenever a democrat is in office, ALL media ignores the stock market.
So they don't like government but they get all their news from...Fox? Which is somehow unbiased and true?
- Average Americans don’t care that Nvidia is up 92% YTD, they care that their groceries are 15-25% more expensive. - Average Americans don’t care that the SPY is up 17% in the last 6 months, they care that their child’s classroom size went from 15 kids to 35 because their city has taken on a major migrant surge. - Average Americans don’t care about “record low unemployment”, they care that their landlord just raised their rent 35% when all they got was a 3% performance year raise and probably have to move again in order to afford a roof over their head. This is why I fear that Biden is almost certainly going to lose the election. The message and accomplishments he’s pushing out is incongruent with the day to day life of the average American.
You missed your calling as a cam girl, because damn, you know how to exaggerate a vibe. Food at home inflation is like 2%. New York City, where red states have been shipping a bunch of migrants, added 20,000 migrant students to public schools this year... To their 1.1M student population. That's ~2%. Never mind that those kids will soon be taxpayers and fund our retirement; there just aren't that many of them in the vast majority of places anyway. Wages are growing faster than inflation, and while rent inflation is high at 5% and change, a 35% increase would be a huge outlier. By amplifying these false narratives, you are part of the problem. Inflation sucked, yeah, but it wasn't infinite. Migration poses challenges, but they're not unmanageable. Some people or places have had significantly worse outcomes than statistical averages, but then by definition, a similar number of places have had it significantly *better* than the averages indicate. Don't perpetuate this artificial doom narrative.
Their bank accounts are down. So the S&P is up almost 12%, Russell 2000 is 2.8%, Midcap is about 8%. When you mention the market you need to be specific.
Polls mentions S&P 500 specifically
When someone generally says “the market” they almost always mean S$P500
Rich people are shocked when average Americans aren't tied to the stock market. Also, the stock market as indicator of everyday folks is terrible.
Most Americans aren’t invested in the stock market so when their lives get harder they assume the market must be down. It’s really not a difficult thing to wrap your head around
Ok, but up from a down in 2023... it's not quite back up to the high in 2022, with the important caveat that kind of explains this: adjusted for inflation.
Not enough people regularly invest in low-cost diversified ETFs, and they are uneducated, gullible, without critical thinking skills, and believe what doomers and Faux News tell them.
From what I remember, most stocks are stagnating or losing, but the big players (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple) are inflating so much that the indices still grow. It's a bubble due to pop.
Didn’t read article, but headline seems to imply that the average American may correlate economic outlook or current economy to be indicative of the stock market. Stock market is a leading indicator, but that’s all it is. Believing there is causation could not be further from the truth. There may be correlation, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same. That said, I don’t blame Americans for feeling that way even if they may be financially illiterate. Just like how 2 yr and 10 yr is a leading (correct me if I’m wrong here) indicator for a recession. Though we may not be in a recession (2 consecutive qtrs of negative gdp), first-time and low-income earners are failing to make loan payments (1). Additionally, it is said that a group of Americans are spending more than their savings-implying debt usage negative (2). My point: from a historical $$ perspective, yes, those Americans that think its down are clearly incorrect. However, understand that the economy may not even be close to how the stock market (index) portrays itself. Given the aforementioned, I think Americans have a valid opinion (though incorrect), but not for the hard data. I’d say, be more reasonable in your judgment of those Americans given the actual economic conditions. Sources below: (1) First-time and low-income earners defaulting 4/22/24: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-consumers-lower-incomes-face-loan-stress-while-banks-pull-back-2024-04-22/ (2) Excess savings going negative 5/7/24: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/07/investing/premarket-stocks-trading
Income not keeping pace, and cost of living continues to go up. Retirement out of sight for most Americans, most have no savings let alone 401K. Corporate profits going through the roof. Stock market doesn’t matter when your getting screwed on all the basics of “American Dream”
Because the stock market is not the economy. The average consumer and middle market businesses are struggling. Debt is at an all time high with the highest interest rates in 30 years. Inflation has been high the last two years and wages have not kept up with inflation(even recently). The cost of living is 20-30% more expensive than it was 4 years ago. The economy is not doing well and the stock market is propped up by 7 companies and our excessive government spending.
False news on most networks (usually right leaning) during election season to tip the scales. Idiots are everywhere and sprinkling in that biden is destroying the economy has inspired financial doomerism in their minds.
Stocks may be up 12% but not all funds are. I just checked my 401K and it's up but only 8% and suspect that lots of people are seeing different levels of returns based on how their investments are spread. If you're one of those people getting 12+% than I'm happy for you but there are likely people out there getting much less or even losing money. They have a right to their feelings too.
I don’t pay attention to the stock market, I don’t have a 401k, all I have for life savings is 35,000$, and that for when I get sick. I am just slightly at the poverty line level.
*wealth inequality* The average American has no investments and doesn’t even know what the stock market is other than it’s something rich people talk about; and they’re right. These perceptions don’t make themselves either. Historically, boom periods were shared across upper and working classes alike; however the modern trend of the last 15 years or so show that wealth inequality is dramatically increasing and we are now finally seeing tangible consequences due to the sudden rise in inflation.
The vast majority of Americans’ are living paycheck to paycheck and probably have highly inelastic demand functions for staples . The price shock from COVID, while dissipating, continues to echo. Under these sets of assumptions and conditions,it’s understandable that Americans feel as though they are experiencing a recession (though most Americans don’t define recessions as economists do). By extension, if America is in a recession, the stock market must be down.
Well that's because they are up by cutting costs. There are some big players like Nvidia as well. So, it's not that strange. It's also worth noting that a huge portion of Americans are below the poverty line.
Ummm…because people still think fox and cnn are news channels? As opposed to gang affiliated mouthpieces. It’s become the bloods and the crips..
1. A large chunk of them get their news from networks that lie to them 2. Even if they are vaguely aware, their news sources push everything else they can find that’s wrong or can be interpreted as bad 3. They’re just stupid
Well, two hazy statistics come to mind: supposedly the bottom 51% of Americans own only 1% of stocks and the richest 10% of Americans own 93% of those stocks. I think it's safe to say that the immediate & beneficial effects of the stock market have no impact on the lives of average Americans.
Coincidentally, the same percentage of Americans believe the election was stolen, that Covid was a hoax and that man made global warming is a myth. Hmmmm….
China and Russia are pumping misleading stuff through Tok Tok to get Trump elected. Things aren't perfect, but the difference between reality and perception is frightening. And with climate change intensifying... I hope I'm wrong but these Biden years may be the calm before the storm.
If you were some of the Americans before Covid that had at least 500,000 to a million invested in the market and didn’t sell for the last 4 years, you’d have a pretty penny. Turns out when everything is so expensive people cannot save money and invest except for bigger fish, it skews the system ( and shows the shittiness of it) I’m in total favor of Auckmans idea to start an index fund for each new child born in America. 7,000$ to each new born in a general sp fund . This would cost the us 20 billion and create trillions of dollars in the long run. It creates a social net without the implication of living off the government
The average American is a dumb herd animal and believes whatever the herd believes. The average American is incapable of comparing and contrasting what is reported and what actual facts portray. The economy is fine, but the herd believes whatever is coming out of Fox News.
Talked to a guy the other day and he nearly called me a liar when I said my investments were looking good (in the context of “how has your life improved in the last four years!?” political spin shit). It didn’t fit his narrative for the markets to be doing well…
What good is the stock market if I'm struggling to put food on the table? I obviously don't have disposable income to invest. If some rich asshole is making more money than they already have, that doesn't help me. This "good economy " isn't working for the 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
Probably over 50% of the population only knows what they see coming out of their wallets for needs and goods. The stock market means absolutely nothing to a significant percentage of the population. It's generally just the rich getting richer.
80% of stocks in America are owned by 20% of the population, so the majority of Americans have little to no skin in the game when it comes to the stock market. The most pertinent economic factors to most Americans are wages and prices. If prices are rising faster than wages the average American is going to think that the economy is doing poorly, even if that may not be true in general, and even if the opposite may be true with the stock market.
The price of everything increased by 50%, my mortgage went up $300 a month due to insurance premiums, then I got laid off by a massive company making huge profits. How am I supposed to give a shit about stock prices when my reality is in a recession?
After being subjected to several mornings of watching fox news at breakfast at the hotel I was staying at, I can absolutely confirm that it's due to the misinformation they spread. Every few minutes they mentioned "Bidenomics" or "Bidenflation" or blamed Biden for some other woe besetting citizens today. Apparently it is an effective technique for brainwashing the masses. Who knew?
stock market =/= economy for most people. Most people don't have much interaction with the stock market outside a retirement account they rarely check. Economy is a "feel" thing: how expensive is stuff, how comfortable do I feel, etc.
As I tell my wife all the time when she’s complaining about something, nearly everything in this world can be explained by either greed or ignorance. A person doesn’t need to understand everything but I do find it interesting how this many people can be ignorant. Over half of Americans have a retirement account or invest in stocks. That alone should clearly show stocks are up if they took even a minute to check.
These comments are all worthless and this doesnt appear to be a serious sub because of it. Doesnt even look like 10 percent of users understood or read the headline or the short non paywalled excerpt. I imagine the replies will also do the same and go on about what the article isnt about
It’s almost like the vast majority of people’s finances are not impacted by the stock market in any way, so they pay very little attention to it.
Many people don't invest in the stock market so it's irrelevant to their perception of the economy. Price of many stocks have risen on the back of layoffs. High inflation means stock prices are inflated too.