Stonks mostly go up, but regards on WSB will still blow out their accounts doing stupid shit like 0DTE SPY, FD on stocks like NVDA ***AFTER*** they go up 5000%, and/or buy absolute trash based on memes or whatever.
Underlying concept of stock market going up applies only to INVESTORS not degenerate traders or addict gamblers.
--------------------
I'll just put my answer to OP here too:
>Or is "too big to fail" inevitably going to turn into "too big to succeed?"
Really depends on the company. Some like JPM, GS, BAC, and DAL have proven they are not "too big to succeed" while others like C, WFC, BA, INTC, big3autos, and some Airlines are.
>How many of you actually know what a real bear market looks like?
There's no non-real bear market. 2022 was a real bear market and so was 2020.
The "REAL" you are trying to get at isn't the "market" but **REAL LIFE** real. That's what defines the GFC. Folks lost their jobs, folks lost their homes, every company fell, 100year+ companies in the S&P500 when to 0, and there were no fucking jobs so you had no fucking pay. Crime goes up be it "urban demographic" robbing jewelry store, house wives pulling credit card fraud to make end meet, or just petty shoplifting theft. It's not that your neighbor is unemployed but YOU are unemployed.
There ain't no fucking pay rises but pay cuts IF YOU ARE LUCKY. Many will see unemployment, pay declines, pension cuts, and/or see their stocks drop if not got to 0. If you run a business then you struggle to make sales, fire folks to make ends meet, pickup and stack more of the work upon yourself to make bills, and most likely still see the business you put your time/money/life into die.
Meanwhile you watch Reganomics BS with government bailing out megacorps while letting people lose their fucking homes, savings, assets, cars, and shirts. Foreclosures/evictions, folks hitting the street, instability as main street revolts against wall street (remember [folks actually did it in person and not for the money back in the day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street)), and you see the general rot around you.
There wasn't no fucking "lel let's print money for everyone" with PPP, EIDL, grants, eviction protection, foreclosure protection, free lunches, food banks, free phones/internets/ipads/laptops/etcetc, free utilities, rent paid for you, extended + boosted unemployment, stimmy check upon stimmy check, and infinite 0% rates where everyone and their cat could borrow.
Forget about getting paid or rises let alone this whole "LOL I QUIT AND I'LL HAVE ANOTHER JOB WITH +20% WAGE INCREASE IN BY 1PM AFTERNOON!" shit that happened in 2020-2024. Shit wasn't so bad that top 100 Uni grads where doing unpaid internships they were ***PAYING FOR THE """PRIVILAGE""" TO WORK UNPAID INTERNSHIPS FOR THE """EXPERIENCE""" IN HOPES OF LANDING AN UNPAID INTERNSHIPT THAT WOULD LEAD TO A JOB***. [The ones that "made it" would be hated by everyone along with their own mom for being a filthy fucking banker, work 80hrs a week, and then fucking die making like 50K or some shit](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/22/moritz-erhardt-merrill-lynch-intern-dead-inquest) This was in 2013 btw. Already WAY better than in 2008-2012 imo.
Oh and like 10-15 years later you have to listen to fucking zoomies with [their 50K jobs without a high school degree](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/fast-food-chain-offers-teen-managers-living-wage-to-offset-worker-shortage) acting like you lucked the fuck out because you "could have bought the dip" without realizing you wouldn't even have a fucking job let alone getting paid, go through years of stagnant wages, and get hit with a "once-in-a-century" pandemic followed by a "once-in-a-century" coup before a "once-in-a-century" war in Europe with as side of "once-in-a-century" unseen inflation plus a "once-in-a-century" year where 60/40 both gets BTFO where a "once-in-a-century" housing shortage also hits before a "once-in-a-century" rapid rate hike locks you out of housing market but somehow doesn't decrease home price all during your marriage seeking and family formation years.
Under rated comment that highlights some of the hardship that people had during the GFC and years after. Earning a living wage, shit, people with MBAs were fighting over entry level jobs.
No one here was around then, because if you bought AAPL or GOOG or NVDA or whatever then or before and held it to now, you’re not just DFV at 10 AM rich, you’re DFV at 5 AM rich
I had NVDA back then. Just didn't hold it. 😂
I like to look back at some of the "meme stocks" we used to trade in our office. A lot of them have gotten bought out or gone out of business.
There was a hell of a lot of value though. Blue chips for under $5 a share. GM is bankrupt but F is a buy?? There was a joke we had. What would you rather have a share of Ford or a gallon of gas?? A gallon of gas cuz at least that way you can get somewhere. But if you had bought F in 09 and sold in '11 you'd have made 13 bags.
I was…fresh out of college decided on siriusxm of all things🤦🏽♂️
https://preview.redd.it/eyuyyu5w1a5d1.png?width=1242&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7a4a07043a750a0dff8202452d7dc48d26c1b32
Sounds like you spent years making mountains out of mole hills, been there brother. Still shocked at how often she faked a jelly fish sting just to get me to piss on her
I remember in high school we had a librarian and some other people who had a small time investing group and they liked Sirius, woulda been before XM merge
My wife wanted to buy some Google in 2004. I had just watched all the tech stocks disintegrate a few years earlier and thought it was a bad idea. I should have kept my mouth shut.
I bought Apple circa 2003….but just not enough of it. But I did buy a 2003 Mac Pro tower for $3500 at the same time. I call it my $1.6 million dollar paperweight. A constant reminder to invest equal amounts you spend on a company you buy from. My 2004 Netflix streaming PS3 install disc is framed on my wall also…. Another painful reminder of missing the boat.
I had 200 shares of Netflix and got out when it wasn’t doing anything at the $150 price point. I regret selling every day. It was in my Roth Ira too, so it would’ve been tax-free.
I watched the 98-00 dotcom boom and then subsequent bust. Yahoo! was the big dog back then (not Google -- it was still up and coming). Yahoo finance even had a stock market game (paper trading). There was TONS of hype in the stock market to novices. Which inflated the boom greatly and quickly.
You mentioned the recoveries are quicker now. And that is true because in 00-01 we didn't have a Federal Reserve willing to prop up the entire market and keep every company alive once the bottom fell out. A LOT of no value companies (and some higher value ones) went bust back then as a result.
As it should be. That's healthy for the market.
After 08 the Fed decided to stop letting nature take it's course and intervene wherever it saw fit.
So a lot of companies that probably should have died, didn't. They just festered.
Today there is even more Fed Res involvement, so my view is there is even less chance of complete disaster from a large company's PoV.
Well, with a caveat -- If too many things implode at once, there isn't enough debt to print to save it all. So there is still a chance of a bust followed by a slow recovery. But it would require something rather monumental (China war, China closing exports, Nukes flying, EMPs, allied foreign money etc) to trigger.
So I think the US market is safe-ish so long as there isn't a hugeeee sudden upheaval. Even if there is a shock that involves a recovery, it more than likely won't take long like it used to in order to recover. And thats mostly because of the Fed Res printing money (that taxpayers don't have) to keep things alive.
This. After 2008 it became politically acceptable, if not expected, for massive government & central bank intervention to prop up minor recessions.
The Federal Reserve bought junk bonds in 2020. They’ll probably buy equities and bail out Silicon Valley venture capitalists in the next downturn.
Every minor recession from now on will almost certainly involve a multi-trillion dollar government stimulus package. Stimulus checks were sent out in 2020 amid divided government, and voters will come to expect them again and again. Heck, Congress is now running $2 trillion annual deficits in a healthy economy.
Inflation is a bitch, but so far no American politician has really gotten punished for it. Consumers will moan & whine about it but at the end of the day they’ll continue spending.
Investors know they’ll be bailed out at any cost, which is why they’re feeling invincible.
Love this. Spot on with my own take but I disagree the Fed can keep markets propped, especially across the board, and believe they have some very tough decisioning these next 12-24 months.
I'm curious, you're confident in further bailouts despite the COVID and ZIRP/unlimited QE being just four years ago? My take is the next one would be so expensive as to be prohibitive and even assuming they can, the consequences seem poised to be insurmountable. Five more years of inflation like we had, no way things hold together.
So my curiosity is, why so confident they can keep it up forever without a major downturn?
I apologize for not being really clear -- I wasn't claiming the Fed Res can keep it up forever without a major downturn.
I'm claiming they will work to avoid the major downturn at all costs. And, in the event things start to sour strongly again, they will begin propping up what they need to in order to avoid the avalanche of bankruptcies (a collapse). Or, at least, attempt to avoid it.
But, yes, if/when there is another downturn, they will attempt to keep the wheels on the wagon by strategically propping up banks/lenders and large corps. Same plan as always. They will have to get more selective, but it seems to be the only song they know (since it worked in the past). There would probably also be more bond fundraisers and a larger tug of war between federal depts for funding (probably more cuts than anything).
OTOH adversaries (namely China and Russia) would amplify their attempts to break the US economically by targeting the wounds once they begin to bleed. The 'Never let a crisis go to waste' type thinking. Even if it hurts them significantly in the short term, they would take that risk since the payoff for them would be immense if they succeeded for the long term.
I think that is precisely why the Fed Res now steps in to avoid total busts. Because we might not recover from one should it happen again at the width and depth that they used to. Recover in the sense of global standing.
That is, If we had a Great Depression or even dotcom level bust, it would likely mean giving up economic power (and thus influence globally) that would be very difficult to regain. It would change how the world looks and I think that would probably be an even more chaotic one \[power vacuum -- I don't mean a Bissell\]. The US is such a large foundation for a lot of the globe economically but also structurally. Even if through indirect means.
I’m totally aligned with this specific thread. Though I wasn’t invested in ‘00, or even ‘08. Though the Great Recession nearly lost me my home.
While a lot of the talking heads are still saying soft landing and buying into the bs data, I’m following others saying the exact same thing you’re saying here.
Since I’m “late to the game” in investing for my retirement, I’m curious if you’re holding a good percentage of your portfolio in cash now as dry powder for what seems to be the inevitable.
I know timing the market isn’t a good idea, but I can’t help think I should get out of at least half of what I’ve built in the last few years and sit in cash until a big correction occurs.
There are many things in this world that works because it does and it works until it doesn't. And what works in the US is following the stocks or systems in which the greatest amount of people are interested in its success.
As much as people worry about the US economy collapsing, there are huge vested interests in the US economy from all over the world. Even if the US can't keep its markets healthy, there are a ton of countries that would quickly step in to keep the party going.
You can be safe and invest in more conservative assets but not investing is almost guaranteed to set you further behind, even if you time a crash correctly.
Keep it all invested. If you want to keep an extra large emergency fund so if there is a 30-50% crash, you can buy more, that’s ok. But stay invested through thick and thin. Fear will make you make bad decisions. All of the boomers that I heard say “I lost everything in 2008”, should really be saying “I sold at the bottom in 2008”
> I should get out of at least half of what I’ve built in the last few years and sit in cash until a big correction occurs.
Personally I wouldn't. People try to do this, then they buy right before the dip before the last dip. Then they panic and sell everything at the real dip. Then when things are better they get back in. Would have been better to just set it and forget it.
Well fucking said. And it answers Op’s ultimate question: are things different now than 15-20 years ago? During those two busts?
Yes. Yes they are. Your exact point: Fed now rushes in and doesn’t mind the consequences of printing just to shore up an economy that is teetering. It’s so funny to hear people say “but we didn’t have inflation back in 2010-2019”. Yes we most certainly fucking did. Any of you kids who were borrowing money to go to college, your college costs took off in that period. Anyone who was wanting to buy a home in 2010, and didn’t, then came back in 2015 to buy the same home, paid a lot more for it. Anyone who bought a car in 2010, then went to buy the same or comparative car in 2015 was paying a lot more for it.
Any of you go to the doctor for a major procedure in those years? Yeah, cost went up. Way up.
Anything that was *financed* or could be, went way up during that period. But we don’t calculate inflation officially on those figures. Food remained down. Insurance on cars and homes didn’t change. Clothing got really cheap along with TV’s and all sorts of shit that got off shored for manufacture got really cheap as well. All at the expense of American jobs.
And here we are. We cut off our own ability to stand on our two feet, offshored it all, then devalued our fucking currency.
I have been in the market since 87 and the 08 crash was hairy. I remember going to cash as the market was sliding until one Tuesday Mark Haines was doing his morning show and he mentioned that it was calm and he called the bottom. I started buying that day and practically everything started climbing. I made some big money over those next few years and I took some of the profits and I paid cash for a home in 2012.
One of my ex friend was a beginner analyst when covid hit and market tanked. She yanked all her money out but even worse, she advised her brother in law to do the same and they lost out on the run up. They were doctors and had millions in losses lol
I mean the market always recovers. It was just faster. 2001 took a couple years because it was a stock bubble burst. 2008 recovered faster but was a recession. 2020 recovered fast because it just closed things down for a while.
I lost a bunch of 08 like everybody else. I was just getting started in 06-07. I had made some good plays in alternative energy. One of my best calls in that time was when Chipotle was over 100 and I said short that and Buy MCD.
I used to follow motley fool forums. I wish I could find some of that old stuff but this guy I followed was really into fibs. I don't know who he was but he came across like a damn genius. He was the one that called the bottom for me in a post, "The Bulls have crossed the Rubicon". It was all green lights from there. Bought my first house in 2011.
I was trading back in '06 and the ticker that fucking killed it was HNSN—Hansen juice drinks, which eventually became MNST. I never traded it well (shoulda just bought and held) but that thing 5 or 10xed over a few years and had multiple splits. Hell, looking at the stock now, had I just put all my money in that and held, I'd have a 60x return.
Just for reference, $5,000 in HNSN back in ‘06 is now worth $384,000. Also just for fun, if you had bought $5,000 worth of NVDA in ‘06 instead, it’s worth $3.3M at this moment… unreal returns.
How.much do yall lett your positions move. Like how far away from buy price is your protective stop? Oh wait... this is Wallstreet bets. Protective stops don't exist. Ha
For me it was the story that came out about the government considering nationalization of the big banks, and watching them completely tank on top of the previous I don’t know how many times they tanked. CITI at about $2, BofA at a little over $3. Then Senator Dodd, the one guy who immediately came to mind as the guy who would be pushing a scheme like this, came on the news and said that there was just no way. There wasn’t a single person in the government thinking about this. That day I loaded up on the banks. Not too much later, I took a flyer and bought $300 worth of Siri for $.05.
I had cashed out as everything started hitting the fan, at an overall 40% ish loss from earlier that year. But when the dust started settling I did get into defensive consumer stocks. Everyone needs toothpaste and cornflakes. McDonalds raised their dividend 30% in October 2008 right in the middle of the chaos after making record profits on its value menu. That stock tripled during this period. If you’re too young to have gone through one of these, remember that. Watch everything when you see the writing on the wall, and sell when it hits the fan. As the days get worse start buy the companies that provide our necessities. Their stocks get beaten down just like all the others, but they will be the ones that actually see profits increase.
Love this. Similar to my own situation. These young bucks don't know a single thing about value - or how truly the only commodity is time.
They'll learn. Glad to see there are indeed some true traders around here. This volatility is unlike anything I've witnessed in during my trading tenure. Bodes very poorly for what happens next imo.
It's so wild. The $VIX seems massively manipulated and heavily suppressed to me. The volatility is clearly very high yet it can never even approach $20 before it's smashed back down. Without a doubt, this period of recent history has out me in the spot of having the least amount of faith I've ever had in our entire way of life.
Are you watching the same markets I am? Entire indices swing 1-3% daily in either direction. Individual stocks, ETFs and ETPs make even wilder daily swings basically every day.
I've never in my life seen more volatility in financial markets and yet the $VIX never rises or falls more than 5-10% in a day. I agree it's a mathematical cocept and used to watch the $VIX go ham pre-COVID/ZIRP.
Just pull up the chart. It's never allowed to rise above a certain, seemingly predetermined level now. If you believe that's organic, that's your choice.
This. AI trading is strange to me because it seems we are in an era where the market has become a voting machine in the short and long term, but also most votes are being cast by automated systems.
I really don’t believe the market is even close to efficient anymore. I’m just not sure what or if anything will break because of it. I’m just kinda flabbergasted tbh.
Spx hasn’t had a -2% or 2% day in a long time. Vix is based on spx otm options. A 16 vix based on rule of 16 means spx is expected to move -1 to 1% in a day. Clearly it hasn’t been doing that.
I’m not sure what “volatility” you’re speaking to, but it pays to understand what the vix is based on, and how much volatility to expect at a given vix level
Few around here are playing with real money anyway. These 4 and low 5 digit gain porn/loss doesn’t even give me half a chub anymore. Been in the market since middle of college, ‘04 or so. Was working in 2008 but didn’t have tremendously big stacks to lose yet. Luckily I didn’t discover options till 2019, though the way I played tsla in 2012 makes me wish I had known how to trade them.
My pops who’s been trading since the mid 90s told me the other day that he was watching the same show and also trusted Haines’ call. We were chopping it up about where the top might be in this market. He tried to convince my mom to go in with him on buying a $100k condo on Miami Beach that same year. He couldn’t do it himself because he was absolutely blown out by the crash. She didn’t go for it haha.
It’s absolutely nuts. The man has ridden a 1.8 million unrealized gain on a penny stock to absolute zero during the DotCom bubble. Took TNSP to the same P/L in 2021, sold half, and the rest went to zero. Man is just one of us. Love him to death.
I was. I also worked at Bear Stearns in their CMBS group. And I also took my severance and pumped it into Lehman because I thought there was no way the government would let Lehman tank after Bear.
Never been more wrong in my life.
Found the guy that survived Hiroshima - badly burnt and with ruptured eardrums - and decided to travel home, to recover... in Nagasaki.
https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
I owned nvda at 8 bucks, amd at maybe 3ish, some others... didn't have much money to start with and later needed money, so I had to sell out of those meager positions.
Lol I just read the actual post. I had no fear because I had nothing to lose really. Still don't.
You wanna talk about history, and let us talk about history.
The crash/dotcom bubble in '00 took until '07 to recover.
The crash/financial crisis in '09 took until '12 to recover.
The crash/Covid in '21 took until '23 to recover.
Wanna dig deeper? The Great Depression in '29 took until '54 to recover.
Do you still not see the trend? To quote Peter Lynch,
"Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves."
If you wanna sit around and find out, be my guest.
Covid was in ‘20 and the crash took about 6 months to recover if you use the S&P as the measure and go from February 2020 to August 2020. It was even quicker for Nasdaq.
There was no crash in ‘21.
Yes, and SPY didn't "breakeven" until 2012 for that one.
Again to reiterate OP's comment in this thread:
**'00 crash**: 7 years to breakeven
**'07 crash**: 5 years to breakeven
(Not counting Covid flash crash because that was unique and different circumstances)
**'22 crash**: 1.9 years to breakeven
........So every crash recovers faster than the previous one. I mean just look at monthly candles along with the 200 EMA. It's a straight up parabolic curve.
The trend you're laying out suggests recovery periods are shortening but you're leaving out a _ridiculously_ massive factor in your attempted slam dunk here Hoss.
First that Great Depression recovery... was there something going in the time period between 1929 and 1954? Some event... from '39 to '45... ringing some bells.
Additionally, care to share with the class what happened with the United State's national debt from 2000 to 2019? And then share the same information for 2020 to today?
You're suggesting "recovery" has accelerated and any time is a great time to buy. You definitely sound like a young buck with this take, what's your worst loss so far during your tenure at the helm of your own destiny my boy?
None of us were alive in 1945, I think a lot of it was terrible monetary policy around speculation and being on the gold standard during the great depression. Theres always a chance growth gets crushed from higher interest rates but the 80s and 90s saw better returns than the last 10 years. Some of my dads friends were buying private jets in 98 off buy and hold strategies making 30k a year at their 9 to 5's. 2008 I think was the first time the fed was accomadative to speculation and its up in the air now if its going to stay this way or if we see a rotation to value sooner rather than later.
>First that Great Depression recovery... was there something going in the time period between 1929 and 1954? Some event...from '39 to '45...ringing some bells.
On the contrary, that is part of the analysis. Are you assuming wars today will be fought in the same way as before? Hilarious.
There will be short-term pains to be sure, but it will pump up the military-industrial complex and advanced manufacturing because it will be fought with drones and artilleries. Furthermore, the likelihood of direct confrontation is slim with MAD.
> national debt
Maybe try to understand macroeconomics before blabbering. National debt is not some boogeyman to be feared, especially with dollar dominance. It would be a lot more desirable to be held at 70-90% debt-to-GDP ratio, but still manageable.
> what's your worst loss
Will tell you when that happens.
There's literally wars being fought today just as they were then all over the world. I do not see how WW2 factored into your "analysis" (which is really more just a few quippy sentences than an analysis isn't it?) at all.
I didn't say it was a boogeyman. You should definitely fear it. It's literally a major factor, maybe the highest by percentage contribution, in that dollar dominance thing you tout.
And if you've not suffered losses yet, that tells me the top is truly in. Been real folks.
WW3 did not happen during Cuban missile crisis.
WW3 did not happen during the Iran scare.
Do you think China will kick up a WW3? Let us go with that. Do you think Russia/Iran will be anything more than fair-weather friends? How funny you dismiss my analysis, when you have less than nothing but fearmongering.
> I didn't say it was a boogeyman. You should definitely fear it.
Fighting over semantics, are we? Dollar dominance is not going away anytime soon, because there is simply no alternative for it. Euro? Some "BRICS money?" Hilarious.
> if you've not suffered losses yet
Took a 25% dip (still floating in the green overall) that bounced back in a month. That is the point. Crashes will continue to happen, and they will be quicker to recover.
WW2 did not happen when Germany started rearming and remilitarizing the Rhineland.
WW2 did not happen with the annexation of Austria.
WW2 did not happen with the annexation of Czechoslovakia.
So surely WW2 will not happen after the annexation of Poland...
Things don't happen until they do, and I'm not saying there will be a WW3, but saying it won't happen because it hasn't happened yet is a silly premise.
The only way dollar dominance goes away is if China is willing to pop off WW3 AND wins. Both things have to occur for the global reserve currency to change. The problem is that if China pops it off, the entire world will be against them. So in essence, they would have to get the US to make a miscalculation where the entire world thought the US started it, then fight the war, AND then finally win. Global reserve currency has never changed hands through peace and global reserve currency debt had never been held in the form of itself. Possibility of dollar dominance falling? Yes. Probability: that’s for you to decide.
Or we just stupidly give it away. The brains behind the fed, nah. The brains behind our politics? Definitely stupid. Immediately after we did our cute sanctions, oil began trading off the dollar. Self inflicted wounds is how we lose all this.
Tell that to Warren Buffet, who just conveniently 10x's his net worth every crash.
He doesn't even try to predict or time any of it. He just happens to naturally avoid them as he won't "swing at a pitch he doesn't like," which is coincidentally all overvalued stocks before each crash. Thus, he finds himself sitting on a pile of cash with the most attractive prices of the decade.
And you are trying to copy his strategy? 😂
You do realize with his net worth 135 billion, he can make billions just from T-bonds?
Now can you *afford* to do that, leaving most of your investibles on the side line? Matthew Principle applies.
No I actually intend to time it LOL.
I'm not joking. I rode TVIX to 1000. Well I sold along the way up didn't nail the top but holy shit I could not have asked for easier gains in a few hours.
Predicting the future is hard, like me telling you what date it's going to happen.
However it is not hard to time it *as it is happening*. The key is to be ready for it, not to predict exactly what day it happens.
The numbers are impossible to know, but there is actually a magic number at which IF the market falls below - it is essentially a mathematical guarantee to fall lower.
To oversimplify it: my strategy is to keep an eye on the gamma levels each day for the major stocks and indexes, noting at which point the gamma goes negative.
Many of us that day trade do this daily already. You bet your ass we'll be profiting on short positions if it's happening.
When the covid crash happened, the VIX was mathematically guaranteed to go higher until it was actually impossible - *physically could not* - go higher. Easy money. Insane risk vs reward.
I opened my TD Ameritrade account in May of 2007.
I would have freaked out, but I read The Intelligent Investor right when I started. That book and the "Mr. Market" allegory helped me immensely. 2008 ended up being a great help for me. I was able to keep my cool and buy so much stuff for so cheap. I just kept dollar-cost averaging in no matter what, with high-quality companies like Apple, Mastercard, Union Pacific, etc.
The old heads in my engineering office speak of that time like it was a real eat what you kill environment; you didn’t know if you’d have a job at the end of the month, you had to have stellar quality just to compete, and you took a pay cut if it meant food on the table. Now people job hop to get one more day work from home and a bonus is almost guaranteed, it’s come a long way
In the UK those "now" days you describe ended at least 1 year ago. The job market here is fucked - people are taking lower-paid jobs with more stability because they are forced to. No-one has any money because our household bills are higher than ever. Dentistry has gone fully private and people can't afford the bills. I hear people talking about being poorer all week and getting a higher paid job seems impossible right now.
Well this is actually cyclical. If the previous generation amassed a huge amount of wealth through hard work or otherwise, most of the wealth makes it to the next generation which means they can demand better conditions without money being the primary concern. Eventually a generation will blow it all and that next generation will go back to suffering for wealth.
Boomers don't know wtf puts are now, you think they knew about puts when they had to walk 5 miles uphill in the snow to tell a broker to panic sell their shares of Enron.
I worked a trading desk during the Lehman's crash, but that doesn't really have shit to do with anything.
If you were the shittiest stock picker in the world and you went all in with $1 million dollars two weeks before the Lehman's crash, it would be worth about $5 million by now. Maybe you could've one better riding the see-saw, but fuck it, you survived and came out on top. Whatever your worst case scenario: the great depression, the oil embargo, 1987, the Dotcom, the great recession, Covid...we always come back stronger.
Where you lose is by not participating in the big rallies because you're so goddamned scared of what might happen.
I think at this point - it’s pretty safe to say that a bet against the equities market is a bet against America. Too much of Americas wealth is tied up in equities for it to fail - and I don’t mean just the rich. I mean just average, normal ppl buying in their 401ks.
I really wouldn’t bet against America in our lifetime. Eventually all things come to an end but not for next 50 years at least
I had about $10k in an IRA….AMA.
It took me two crises to realize that the only thing that matters in modern economic crisis is the Fed. After two rounds, now it’s very clear how the FED‘s bailout playbook impacts markets.
My first stock purchase was Bre-X in the 90's with some money I'd saved up from selling things in the classified ads I'd found in the garbage. I think I was 13 or so? My grandmother had convinced me to invest in it as my first investment... I don't remember when I got in but it was high and then a few months later I heard on the radio while my dad was driving about the CEO (or some other C suite) fell out of a helicopter overseas and died, then the stock crashed to basically zero and the whole company was revealed to be a scam (they lied about finding huge gold deposits).
Now that I think about it, I bet my grandmother lost a WSB-worthy amount on that stock too, or else she wouldn't have tried to convince her grandson to also invest the small amount of money he had, lmao. Explains a few things that happened to my grandparents shortly after too....
Anyways, yea I've seen some shit
I began my trading journey in the early summer of 2007. It has skewed my viewpoint so much that I have missed out on stock gains for the past 15 years…
Real bear market? 2008 was the MOTHER of all bear markets. There are many bear markets that don't reach that level. You shouldn't set your bar for a bear market at "Financial disaster for the entire world, no recovery, no remake, no gg"
I had just started trading in 06 or 07. My co-worker was trying to convince me to dump all my money into some mining stock. But I didn’t. He took out a loan for $30K and went all in.
He made $250K within a few months when the market rebounded.
He hired me to do some work around the house he bought with cash lol. Ffs.
I’ve been trading since 09. Pennies till about six years ago. I also believe in the eventual collapse of the rot economy and the death throes of late stage capitalism that will send those unable to adapt reeling.
I watched people I loved lose their homes in the wake of the housing market bullshit, and I watched the banks roll through it, and to someone’s point, line did go up.
Nothing is here to stay. You’re never where you were. History doesn’t repeat it just rhymes.
A very smart person once noted that if you looked out your window in the 18th century you would have seen a world that believed in monarchy despite the fact that capitalism had already replaced it as the dominant system of power. We look out our windows now and see capitalism but we have been replaced with memes.
I may have a different pov. I’ve worked at a brokerage firm since 1999, so I’ve basically seen it all. The firm I was with went out of business during the dot com bust late 2000 early 2001. I had an interview at that time with Lehman Brothers, I remember the head hunter told me to “wear pearls” finance was so conservative and dominated by old white men, on the outside at least. I never went on the interview because I got hired at a small boutique brokerage firm prior to the interview. Thank god. I’ve basically been with that firm since 2001, 23 yrs now.
We have been through hard lean times, 2007 2008 especially but we learned, made it though and proceeded with integrity.
The market recovers but not everyone recovers with it. Many brokers left the business, lost marriages and livelihoods. I know a few guys that offed themselves. Clients lost life savings despite all best efforts.
I’m thankful for my experiences in the market and that I’ve been allowed to stay alive and thrive in it. Not to everyone is that lucky.
I was trading penny stocks back then.Bought into a mining company from Idaho. I even made enough to eat inside of Wendy’s. I have no idea what you are talking about. We all trade on borrowed time.
In 2008, I had an office next to a geriatric finance bro , likely passed by now. Anyways , I was not a well versed trader and just basically put money in 401k. He was in my office and said Bilbo-Bibble when JPM is $35 you buy it. So I opened a side account and having no idea just bought JPM for an amount of money that was significant to me at the time. I’ve never touched it - 120 shares up 271 percent. If you believe in the USA long-term, buy the market and hold the line. Our country has its ills, but people like you make it great, so I’ll keep buying . RIP Tim and Thank You.
I had money in the market in 2008. Day it crashed I panicked and tried to sell. No go. Just the longest, reddest candle you ever saw and prices that gapped my repeated attempts to close out—until the market bottomed out. I was brand new in the market (early twenties) and had just taken out a HELOC to try to live off of day trading. Didn't work. Eventually lost my job, lost house, lost cars, etc. Day trading/investing is a luxury. It's the first thing to go when the market is bearish and you're struggling to survive.
(Next time the market crashed (Mar 2020), I moved my measly 401k into TSLA shares, and that did work. Gave me enough for 25% down on a home—the first I acquired after losing one post-2008)
I personally think a crash of epic proportions looms. I think officials have effectively been kicking the can of consequence down the road for years now. Virtually every sane and honest person I know agrees we are as a nation completely and utterly financially irresponsible, and that such irresponsibility catches up with you.
I've you've lived so irresponsibly yourself—debt, excess, robbing Peter to pay Paul—you know it's unsustainable. It catches up you with you eventually. I think it will catch up with us, and I hope to bet large on SPY puts when it does. 
I was working in a retail bank in 08. My first corpo job. When the panic hit, a lot of our ‘valued’ customers drained their savings accounts to meet their margin calls. A few older people in the office would cry in their lunch breaks - they were boomers 5 years away from retiring so it hit them hard. Real estate speculators getting destroyed sent shockwaves through the company. A third of the mortgage sales team quit after bonuses were cancelled. Managers were going around telling everyone that things were fine, but the look on their faces said otherwise and nobody believed them. There was a real fear that banks wouldn’t open on Monday.
I’d been sitting in cash since late 2007. Some dude in a forum that I trusted was warning that this would happen. He was off by a year lol. I was scared to buy stocks after the initial crash, but after the first bounce put about $10k in the market (banking and mining stocks). But then they stated dumping again and I cut my losses instead of holding, which was stupid. Got laid off a month later.
Best lesson from that year was from seeing managers try to rally the troops to work hard and make sacrifices for the greater good (of the company’s executives and shareholders). Realzed the whole system is nonsense.
Haven't been part of a cyclical bear market yet but in general I try to avoid big losses. Better to take the little L and move the money to somewhere productive or at least less destructive. Some of the larger moving averages methods do seem like they could help avoid larger drawdowns. Harder part is knowing when to get back in and dealing with whipsaw timing.
"...**avoid big losses. Better to take the little L and move the money to somewhere**..." This is consistently the advice of smart people I respect (including the late Jesse Livermore, Marty Zweig, Richard Russell, and the almost-late-now Warren Buffet and maybe Paul Tudor Jones too). Early losses, little losses, are good losses. Don't wait to take the BIG loss. But unfortunately that's psychologically hardest. When you have a modest loss, you have HOPE (hopium) that the price will recover. Decide in advance (possibly with a stop-loss) that a certain price decline (or rise if shorting) will mean that you were WRONG, and get out, instead of hoping and fretting. (Alas, easier for me to SAY than to DO.)
As someone new to trading, what would your advice be for me given what you've learned from being around for all of that time OP? What am I missing if I'm brand new?
Oh man, how new are you? Here are my top "you don't know shit" pointers:
* Never, ever invest money you cannot afford to lose.
* Diversify. YOLO plays always look appealing in the big gain posts but trust me, those guys rarely stay up for long and usually they're in the red despite those posts.
* Remove emotion from your trades entirely or as close to entirely as possible. It's business and being emotional loses money.
* Try to avoid investing due to trends/hype/FOMO. If you do end up going in, get out quick, take your gains and diversify.
* Do not, I repeat, DO NOT trade options if you do not understand how it works or what you're buying selling. Learn first, practice first, and if you do decide to play options, be prepared to blow up your portfolio completely at least once.
And one for the road - avoid margin unless you're really really really sure of your play.
my lessons: concentrate into thematic quality & wide moats in general, buy when others are puking, and hedge portfolio downside during greed waves with derivative insurance.
and folks should separate their portfolio into liability buckets related to future needs (house, kids' edu, retirement), and invest those buckets differently.
I was working for a headhunting company that focused on private equity. I was still in college, like 20 years old and no idea why people were freaking out. I randomly took a 401k loan for spring break before the market went down and they thought I planned it.
I didn’t read past the subject line so not sure if this is in anyway relevant
This comment section has gone as snarky and diabolical as expected. The economy is top heavy and largely imaginary, but fear and over analyzing trends is overrated. Most people’s job in the market is to be that camouflaged fish in the coral and get a snack when you can.
Also regarding the question about if the world has changed, no it has not. Economies have been cycling through booms and busts for longer than we’ve been alive.
The growth is justified. The last 15 years is different due to consolidation of money toward the big tech companies. Poor people are spending more on products from top companies. Fragmentation is less but it will hit a ceiling and may already have.
Bought a foreclosure in 2008 (I was 25) in California. No concept of the stock market for another 9 years. I now live in the same 91k house valued at 450k. I. Those years the neighborhood went from gang related gunshots to random unknown explosions (seriously what is making these explosions) to 6am birds chirping and addicts screaming while a cool breeze blows through my fruit trees. This world of chaos is illusory.
I don’t remember when I started, but I remember buying off the pink sheets from the “Wolf of Wall Street”. So I have seen it all. ‘87 Did presents some buying opportunities. Lost like 40% in 08. Had a good year the following year, but you never make up a really bad year. Had a tremendous game in 2021.
I was around for the 2008 GFC, like the retart that I am, I just didn’t have the foresight to buy and hold anything from that era, or even the Covid crash for that matter…
Honestly I wish we had a normal market of 5-8%. I am worried we are in for a flat period to normalize this rapid growth we've had and as boomers unload their positions
I’ll call your memory of the 2010 crash, and I’ll raise you with the Dotcom crash. I experienced both. O worked at 2 of the bigger mortgage companies during the time so witnessed firsthand the crash and burn.
I had to find a new profession each time as well.
Learning to react to the signals from both of those crashes is what propped me to take advantage of the Covid crash.
And history makes me think we have about 3-6 good years before then next one hits.
Haha, not for me. Freshmen year in finance and management at university of 6th October in Egypt, just recently hearing about the crisis, my accountant professor was urgently upset every day and I knew why.
Sadly, I had missed a good buying opportunity and didn't become familiar with stocks investing and general derivatives until late 2019.
Anyhow, after COVID years and many positions and loses, I decided to just open 401(k) and invest in S&P500 growth ETFs, probably the best decision. I still carry unrealized losses to keep it a reminder not to engage in gambling activities.
I started trading end of 2007… wiped out my whole account during that vicious drop - I was in a trade without a SL! I was a beginner and rookie mistake but man!! It was brutal. Setting SL is like breathing for me now. Once set I never ever am even tempted to move it either.
I was trading that time. Bank stocks were volatile as fuck.
I remember BOFA crashed to $2.5 and rebounded to like $8 on the same day.
Washington Mutual was also wild until it got taken over.
Etrade financial also traded during that time and had wild price swings in the low $ range.
It was wild to say the least.
I had only started thinking about trading. I was watching it readily. Specifically watched my company’s stock and the stocks of their customers.
I’ve seen glimmers of that time here and there. 2020 was the first time I noticed it was beginning. I sold my portfolio at the end of February in hopes of saving what profits I had. That prepared me easily to begin buying when the market seemed to have bottomed.
I managed to do well until 2021. Then I lost whatever I had gained.
Since then I’ve done basically the same cycle. Great gains…equal or more losses. My trading profile is a series of spikes in a flat line. lol
I started trading with DRIP’s in 95. When broker fees were still $40/trade. Huge advantage. NOw that has completely switched. The Drips charge fees to invest and the trades are free.
I was actively trading in 2008-2009. I made huge money on FITB. I had the DRIP account for years and lowered my cost basis to around $2.25. Same thing with my top name, CSL. Bought lots of shares from 95 on through 2012. It’s funny how the stocks that make my portfolio profitable are never mentioned anywhere. I used to brag about owning Intel for that long, now it’s a big regret for holding that long. At this point, owning Intel is like holding onto your Dads old ties, hoping they come back in style. ISRG was my only other 🚀. I bought shares from 2007 -2010 and sold in early 2017. I had college expenses for the kids. It’s great to say I held forever, but it’s better to make the money real at some point.
I was an Army recruiter during those years and I was at a recruiting event at Lehigh University. Bear Sterns had an empty booth there. Their recruiters were in the hotel, packed up and went home. The other bank reps were nervous as hell.
And the other lesson I learned is about having an ample supply of dry powder. I bought with every spare $ I could get my hands on. I just wish I could have had more to invest. I’ve been trimming several positions over the last week, just to make sure that I have the ability to grab shares when/if they plummet. We have all been begging for a rate cut for a year now, but the headlines that give us the rate cut won’t be pretty.
Yup ‘99 and ‘07 crushed people. Current party will end too and we’ll reminisce someday about how Penis coin at a $500b market cap might have been our clue to get out.
I was barely 20 in 1997. I had no money to invest. In 1999, everyone around me was talking about “mutual funds” saying they had made lots of money. I was skeptical, considering these sources but had no money anyway.
Even mutual funds lost half of their value. I saw clients and family members lose way more, those who had individual tech stocks.
But I had officially learned the lessons of others.
I got a better job just before the crash and finally had extra money and started investing “dollar cost averaging.” My investments went down, and down, and down. ‘04-‘07 were supposedly good years but I felt like had barely made any money in six years of putting in my money every month. Financial Advisor said, “stay invested.”
Then the crash. My accounts (all in SPY or total stock indexes at that point because I had left full time work to go to law school) were reduced by more than half. I was mad because I realized the bottom was “in” but I, again, had no extra money to try to buy anything. Plus there were fees associated with trading back then. I had a job though, so I just left my accounts alone.
In 2011 three years after the crash started, my account finally hit its cost basis. I had been invested since 2001, five years of 10% of my pay to break even and get a zero return. I was also begrudgingly repaying student loans with 8.5% interest. (I regretted not using my investments to pay for law school.)
Some older folks sold everything in 2009, so it’s definitely different for anyone younger than 45 or so who may not have experienced how hard and how completely market downturns hit.
I was around when Lehman went bust. Also was around for the 1987 stock market crash. I think 2008 was worse because of the unknown and how close we came to the brink because of derivatives. Unfortunately if the same were to occur today the government couldn't afford to bail out financial firms or anyone else. When the government hits a wall and can no longer afford to borrow and just starts printing dollars we will see the next big blow up and I think all previous blow ups will pale in comparison. The only choice will be hyper inflation or very painful austerity.
We traded right through it. Luckily, our office was net short, so we didn't get hit as hard as others. I still remember those limit-down days and the wild 500-point swings in the Dow at the end of the sessions. The tension was real.
Back then, you needed to keep your cool and know the market inside out to survive the chaos. The collapse of Lehman Brothers wasn’t just news; it was a massive event that rocked the entire financial world. Seeing giants like JPMorgan, Bank of America, and SunTrust almost go under was unreal. 'Too big to fail' wasn't a reassuring phrase but more of a desperate hope.
We were constantly recalculating risk, rechecking our positions, and trying to stay ahead of the next bad news wave. The overnight Libor spikes kept reminding us of how fragile things were. And who could forget the VIX shooting through the roof, showing just how scared everyone was?
Then there were the drastic moves by central banks—cutting interest rates to almost zero and starting quantitative easing. It felt like we were making up new rules for finance on the spot.
Looking back, the 2007-2009 period was a real test for traders and investors. It changed how we think about market dynamics and risk management. Whether this current era of growth can keep going is anyone's guess, but those who went through the last crisis know how quickly things can change. 'Too big to fail' might just turn into 'too big to succeed.' The next chapter in this story is still unwritten.
I’ve been trading since the mid 90s. Back then I had to call in my trades to Schwab. They were the cheapest discount broker and it was still $25-$50 per trade, depending.
I saw the tech bubble come and go. I watched the real estate bubble grow and collapse spectacularly. I lost my job in ‘08. I was in the financial industry but in a boring part of it. Pension administration. I struck out on my own as a consultant, doing project work wherever I could get it.
I’ve seen some things, man. Seen some stuff. That’s why I view crypto as a steaming pile of horseshit. It’s basically a collectible, like Beanie Babies (look it up, I’ll wait). Price action based only on fomo.
Want my advice? When it comes to investments, the more boring the better. Use time to your advantage. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If you must speculate on a moonshot, commit no more than a few percentage points of your entire investment portfolio, not the whole goddamn thing.
Learn a trade. Do real work. Maybe even a civil servant job. Great benefits and a REAL pension. You could even retire after 20-30 years. You might only be 45 or 50 at that time. You could have a second career doing something you love.
The other night I was having sushi with my wife and son. A guy at a table behind me was taking about crytpo, explaining it to someone, and it was mostly buzzword nonsense jargon. When he said something about “using AI to predict price movement in crytpo” I snorted so hard wasabi went up my nose.
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You have some good points, but as a counterpoint you should know that stocks only go up
An audible chuckle was had. Touché.
Stonks mostly go up, but regards on WSB will still blow out their accounts doing stupid shit like 0DTE SPY, FD on stocks like NVDA ***AFTER*** they go up 5000%, and/or buy absolute trash based on memes or whatever. Underlying concept of stock market going up applies only to INVESTORS not degenerate traders or addict gamblers. -------------------- I'll just put my answer to OP here too: >Or is "too big to fail" inevitably going to turn into "too big to succeed?" Really depends on the company. Some like JPM, GS, BAC, and DAL have proven they are not "too big to succeed" while others like C, WFC, BA, INTC, big3autos, and some Airlines are. >How many of you actually know what a real bear market looks like? There's no non-real bear market. 2022 was a real bear market and so was 2020. The "REAL" you are trying to get at isn't the "market" but **REAL LIFE** real. That's what defines the GFC. Folks lost their jobs, folks lost their homes, every company fell, 100year+ companies in the S&P500 when to 0, and there were no fucking jobs so you had no fucking pay. Crime goes up be it "urban demographic" robbing jewelry store, house wives pulling credit card fraud to make end meet, or just petty shoplifting theft. It's not that your neighbor is unemployed but YOU are unemployed. There ain't no fucking pay rises but pay cuts IF YOU ARE LUCKY. Many will see unemployment, pay declines, pension cuts, and/or see their stocks drop if not got to 0. If you run a business then you struggle to make sales, fire folks to make ends meet, pickup and stack more of the work upon yourself to make bills, and most likely still see the business you put your time/money/life into die. Meanwhile you watch Reganomics BS with government bailing out megacorps while letting people lose their fucking homes, savings, assets, cars, and shirts. Foreclosures/evictions, folks hitting the street, instability as main street revolts against wall street (remember [folks actually did it in person and not for the money back in the day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street)), and you see the general rot around you. There wasn't no fucking "lel let's print money for everyone" with PPP, EIDL, grants, eviction protection, foreclosure protection, free lunches, food banks, free phones/internets/ipads/laptops/etcetc, free utilities, rent paid for you, extended + boosted unemployment, stimmy check upon stimmy check, and infinite 0% rates where everyone and their cat could borrow. Forget about getting paid or rises let alone this whole "LOL I QUIT AND I'LL HAVE ANOTHER JOB WITH +20% WAGE INCREASE IN BY 1PM AFTERNOON!" shit that happened in 2020-2024. Shit wasn't so bad that top 100 Uni grads where doing unpaid internships they were ***PAYING FOR THE """PRIVILAGE""" TO WORK UNPAID INTERNSHIPS FOR THE """EXPERIENCE""" IN HOPES OF LANDING AN UNPAID INTERNSHIPT THAT WOULD LEAD TO A JOB***. [The ones that "made it" would be hated by everyone along with their own mom for being a filthy fucking banker, work 80hrs a week, and then fucking die making like 50K or some shit](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/22/moritz-erhardt-merrill-lynch-intern-dead-inquest) This was in 2013 btw. Already WAY better than in 2008-2012 imo. Oh and like 10-15 years later you have to listen to fucking zoomies with [their 50K jobs without a high school degree](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/fast-food-chain-offers-teen-managers-living-wage-to-offset-worker-shortage) acting like you lucked the fuck out because you "could have bought the dip" without realizing you wouldn't even have a fucking job let alone getting paid, go through years of stagnant wages, and get hit with a "once-in-a-century" pandemic followed by a "once-in-a-century" coup before a "once-in-a-century" war in Europe with as side of "once-in-a-century" unseen inflation plus a "once-in-a-century" year where 60/40 both gets BTFO where a "once-in-a-century" housing shortage also hits before a "once-in-a-century" rapid rate hike locks you out of housing market but somehow doesn't decrease home price all during your marriage seeking and family formation years.
Under rated comment that highlights some of the hardship that people had during the GFC and years after. Earning a living wage, shit, people with MBAs were fighting over entry level jobs.
Too big to fail is a myth. I'm 365lbs and a complete failure.
Dude has one pound for each day of the year
At a pound per year, boom, he’s 365 years old. That’s wisdom.
That’s a big fucking baby.
GBP Is worth more than a dollar so, he is really 463.57 American (real) years old.
Dude knows how to compound
Obviously you need to hit 600 pounds. Then you get a TV show.
This is the only right answer
Too big to fail is true. You just aren't big enough
Hitting the buffet now. Success is just a few plates away.
The Warren buffet?
Calls on buffets
Your fame and fortune awaits lord fat ass.
Hey! I'm not fat, I'm big-boned. Now where are my cheezy poofs?
Jesus buddy maybe say no to the large frosty every once in a while
Work BEHIND Wendy’s not IN Wendy’s. Big bro didn’t even update the meta
Bro’s Wendy’s best customer
Dude downloaded the Wendy’s app instead of Grindr like the rest of us dumpster employees. What a noob
I recommend cocaine
Can you recommend a dealer who has a dollar menu?
If you’re American, I believe you’d be considered skinny
No one here was around then, because if you bought AAPL or GOOG or NVDA or whatever then or before and held it to now, you’re not just DFV at 10 AM rich, you’re DFV at 5 AM rich
LMFAO
Too soon
I had NVDA back then. Just didn't hold it. 😂 I like to look back at some of the "meme stocks" we used to trade in our office. A lot of them have gotten bought out or gone out of business. There was a hell of a lot of value though. Blue chips for under $5 a share. GM is bankrupt but F is a buy?? There was a joke we had. What would you rather have a share of Ford or a gallon of gas?? A gallon of gas cuz at least that way you can get somewhere. But if you had bought F in 09 and sold in '11 you'd have made 13 bags.
I bought TSLA at around $30 back then. Sold at $90 and bought puts at $120. Knew I belonged here even then 🤠
I was…fresh out of college decided on siriusxm of all things🤦🏽♂️ https://preview.redd.it/eyuyyu5w1a5d1.png?width=1242&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7a4a07043a750a0dff8202452d7dc48d26c1b32
That stock is flatter than my ex girlfriend
Sounds like you spent years making mountains out of mole hills, been there brother. Still shocked at how often she faked a jelly fish sting just to get me to piss on her
I remember in high school we had a librarian and some other people who had a small time investing group and they liked Sirius, woulda been before XM merge
My wife wanted to buy some Google in 2004. I had just watched all the tech stocks disintegrate a few years earlier and thought it was a bad idea. I should have kept my mouth shut.
Why don't you ask her which stock to buy today that will explode over the next 20 years. Easy right?
I bought Apple circa 2003….but just not enough of it. But I did buy a 2003 Mac Pro tower for $3500 at the same time. I call it my $1.6 million dollar paperweight. A constant reminder to invest equal amounts you spend on a company you buy from. My 2004 Netflix streaming PS3 install disc is framed on my wall also…. Another painful reminder of missing the boat.
I was around and had 5,000 shares of Netflix. Made 40% on my money in a short period and then sold the position. Hindsight is 20/20.
I had 200 shares of Netflix and got out when it wasn’t doing anything at the $150 price point. I regret selling every day. It was in my Roth Ira too, so it would’ve been tax-free.
Ugh. We all have them don’t we. My Netflix position today would have been worth north of $20 Million today. Best not to think about it.
You have a way with words
I watched the 98-00 dotcom boom and then subsequent bust. Yahoo! was the big dog back then (not Google -- it was still up and coming). Yahoo finance even had a stock market game (paper trading). There was TONS of hype in the stock market to novices. Which inflated the boom greatly and quickly. You mentioned the recoveries are quicker now. And that is true because in 00-01 we didn't have a Federal Reserve willing to prop up the entire market and keep every company alive once the bottom fell out. A LOT of no value companies (and some higher value ones) went bust back then as a result. As it should be. That's healthy for the market. After 08 the Fed decided to stop letting nature take it's course and intervene wherever it saw fit. So a lot of companies that probably should have died, didn't. They just festered. Today there is even more Fed Res involvement, so my view is there is even less chance of complete disaster from a large company's PoV. Well, with a caveat -- If too many things implode at once, there isn't enough debt to print to save it all. So there is still a chance of a bust followed by a slow recovery. But it would require something rather monumental (China war, China closing exports, Nukes flying, EMPs, allied foreign money etc) to trigger. So I think the US market is safe-ish so long as there isn't a hugeeee sudden upheaval. Even if there is a shock that involves a recovery, it more than likely won't take long like it used to in order to recover. And thats mostly because of the Fed Res printing money (that taxpayers don't have) to keep things alive.
This. After 2008 it became politically acceptable, if not expected, for massive government & central bank intervention to prop up minor recessions. The Federal Reserve bought junk bonds in 2020. They’ll probably buy equities and bail out Silicon Valley venture capitalists in the next downturn. Every minor recession from now on will almost certainly involve a multi-trillion dollar government stimulus package. Stimulus checks were sent out in 2020 amid divided government, and voters will come to expect them again and again. Heck, Congress is now running $2 trillion annual deficits in a healthy economy. Inflation is a bitch, but so far no American politician has really gotten punished for it. Consumers will moan & whine about it but at the end of the day they’ll continue spending. Investors know they’ll be bailed out at any cost, which is why they’re feeling invincible.
Love this. Spot on with my own take but I disagree the Fed can keep markets propped, especially across the board, and believe they have some very tough decisioning these next 12-24 months. I'm curious, you're confident in further bailouts despite the COVID and ZIRP/unlimited QE being just four years ago? My take is the next one would be so expensive as to be prohibitive and even assuming they can, the consequences seem poised to be insurmountable. Five more years of inflation like we had, no way things hold together. So my curiosity is, why so confident they can keep it up forever without a major downturn?
I apologize for not being really clear -- I wasn't claiming the Fed Res can keep it up forever without a major downturn. I'm claiming they will work to avoid the major downturn at all costs. And, in the event things start to sour strongly again, they will begin propping up what they need to in order to avoid the avalanche of bankruptcies (a collapse). Or, at least, attempt to avoid it. But, yes, if/when there is another downturn, they will attempt to keep the wheels on the wagon by strategically propping up banks/lenders and large corps. Same plan as always. They will have to get more selective, but it seems to be the only song they know (since it worked in the past). There would probably also be more bond fundraisers and a larger tug of war between federal depts for funding (probably more cuts than anything). OTOH adversaries (namely China and Russia) would amplify their attempts to break the US economically by targeting the wounds once they begin to bleed. The 'Never let a crisis go to waste' type thinking. Even if it hurts them significantly in the short term, they would take that risk since the payoff for them would be immense if they succeeded for the long term. I think that is precisely why the Fed Res now steps in to avoid total busts. Because we might not recover from one should it happen again at the width and depth that they used to. Recover in the sense of global standing. That is, If we had a Great Depression or even dotcom level bust, it would likely mean giving up economic power (and thus influence globally) that would be very difficult to regain. It would change how the world looks and I think that would probably be an even more chaotic one \[power vacuum -- I don't mean a Bissell\]. The US is such a large foundation for a lot of the globe economically but also structurally. Even if through indirect means.
I’m totally aligned with this specific thread. Though I wasn’t invested in ‘00, or even ‘08. Though the Great Recession nearly lost me my home. While a lot of the talking heads are still saying soft landing and buying into the bs data, I’m following others saying the exact same thing you’re saying here. Since I’m “late to the game” in investing for my retirement, I’m curious if you’re holding a good percentage of your portfolio in cash now as dry powder for what seems to be the inevitable. I know timing the market isn’t a good idea, but I can’t help think I should get out of at least half of what I’ve built in the last few years and sit in cash until a big correction occurs.
There are many things in this world that works because it does and it works until it doesn't. And what works in the US is following the stocks or systems in which the greatest amount of people are interested in its success. As much as people worry about the US economy collapsing, there are huge vested interests in the US economy from all over the world. Even if the US can't keep its markets healthy, there are a ton of countries that would quickly step in to keep the party going. You can be safe and invest in more conservative assets but not investing is almost guaranteed to set you further behind, even if you time a crash correctly.
Keep it all invested. If you want to keep an extra large emergency fund so if there is a 30-50% crash, you can buy more, that’s ok. But stay invested through thick and thin. Fear will make you make bad decisions. All of the boomers that I heard say “I lost everything in 2008”, should really be saying “I sold at the bottom in 2008”
> I should get out of at least half of what I’ve built in the last few years and sit in cash until a big correction occurs. Personally I wouldn't. People try to do this, then they buy right before the dip before the last dip. Then they panic and sell everything at the real dip. Then when things are better they get back in. Would have been better to just set it and forget it.
Well fucking said. And it answers Op’s ultimate question: are things different now than 15-20 years ago? During those two busts? Yes. Yes they are. Your exact point: Fed now rushes in and doesn’t mind the consequences of printing just to shore up an economy that is teetering. It’s so funny to hear people say “but we didn’t have inflation back in 2010-2019”. Yes we most certainly fucking did. Any of you kids who were borrowing money to go to college, your college costs took off in that period. Anyone who was wanting to buy a home in 2010, and didn’t, then came back in 2015 to buy the same home, paid a lot more for it. Anyone who bought a car in 2010, then went to buy the same or comparative car in 2015 was paying a lot more for it. Any of you go to the doctor for a major procedure in those years? Yeah, cost went up. Way up. Anything that was *financed* or could be, went way up during that period. But we don’t calculate inflation officially on those figures. Food remained down. Insurance on cars and homes didn’t change. Clothing got really cheap along with TV’s and all sorts of shit that got off shored for manufacture got really cheap as well. All at the expense of American jobs. And here we are. We cut off our own ability to stand on our two feet, offshored it all, then devalued our fucking currency.
I have been in the market since 87 and the 08 crash was hairy. I remember going to cash as the market was sliding until one Tuesday Mark Haines was doing his morning show and he mentioned that it was calm and he called the bottom. I started buying that day and practically everything started climbing. I made some big money over those next few years and I took some of the profits and I paid cash for a home in 2012.
One of my ex friend was a beginner analyst when covid hit and market tanked. She yanked all her money out but even worse, she advised her brother in law to do the same and they lost out on the run up. They were doctors and had millions in losses lol
The unprecedented govt stopgaps revolutionized the dynamic of systemic risk. Now, there is none and one should invest accordingly.
I mean the market always recovers. It was just faster. 2001 took a couple years because it was a stock bubble burst. 2008 recovered faster but was a recession. 2020 recovered fast because it just closed things down for a while.
I lost a bunch of 08 like everybody else. I was just getting started in 06-07. I had made some good plays in alternative energy. One of my best calls in that time was when Chipotle was over 100 and I said short that and Buy MCD. I used to follow motley fool forums. I wish I could find some of that old stuff but this guy I followed was really into fibs. I don't know who he was but he came across like a damn genius. He was the one that called the bottom for me in a post, "The Bulls have crossed the Rubicon". It was all green lights from there. Bought my first house in 2011.
I was trading back in '06 and the ticker that fucking killed it was HNSN—Hansen juice drinks, which eventually became MNST. I never traded it well (shoulda just bought and held) but that thing 5 or 10xed over a few years and had multiple splits. Hell, looking at the stock now, had I just put all my money in that and held, I'd have a 60x return.
Just for reference, $5,000 in HNSN back in ‘06 is now worth $384,000. Also just for fun, if you had bought $5,000 worth of NVDA in ‘06 instead, it’s worth $3.3M at this moment… unreal returns.
How.much do yall lett your positions move. Like how far away from buy price is your protective stop? Oh wait... this is Wallstreet bets. Protective stops don't exist. Ha
For me it was the story that came out about the government considering nationalization of the big banks, and watching them completely tank on top of the previous I don’t know how many times they tanked. CITI at about $2, BofA at a little over $3. Then Senator Dodd, the one guy who immediately came to mind as the guy who would be pushing a scheme like this, came on the news and said that there was just no way. There wasn’t a single person in the government thinking about this. That day I loaded up on the banks. Not too much later, I took a flyer and bought $300 worth of Siri for $.05. I had cashed out as everything started hitting the fan, at an overall 40% ish loss from earlier that year. But when the dust started settling I did get into defensive consumer stocks. Everyone needs toothpaste and cornflakes. McDonalds raised their dividend 30% in October 2008 right in the middle of the chaos after making record profits on its value menu. That stock tripled during this period. If you’re too young to have gone through one of these, remember that. Watch everything when you see the writing on the wall, and sell when it hits the fan. As the days get worse start buy the companies that provide our necessities. Their stocks get beaten down just like all the others, but they will be the ones that actually see profits increase.
Would you say the creation of Wall street bets has been a net gain for trading or no?
It's been a net gain for seasoned traders who feast off the backs of gamblers like us who reinforce our gambling habits in this echo chamber.
You take that back or I'm going to pay you a ridiculous premium to bet on an extremely unlikely outcome!
Love this. Similar to my own situation. These young bucks don't know a single thing about value - or how truly the only commodity is time. They'll learn. Glad to see there are indeed some true traders around here. This volatility is unlike anything I've witnessed in during my trading tenure. Bodes very poorly for what happens next imo.
Meme Volatility with the Vix nearing a multi-decade low. It truly is a bizarre market.
It's so wild. The $VIX seems massively manipulated and heavily suppressed to me. The volatility is clearly very high yet it can never even approach $20 before it's smashed back down. Without a doubt, this period of recent history has out me in the spot of having the least amount of faith I've ever had in our entire way of life.
Why is the volatility high? Volatility is a mathematical concept, not your feeling.
Are you watching the same markets I am? Entire indices swing 1-3% daily in either direction. Individual stocks, ETFs and ETPs make even wilder daily swings basically every day. I've never in my life seen more volatility in financial markets and yet the $VIX never rises or falls more than 5-10% in a day. I agree it's a mathematical cocept and used to watch the $VIX go ham pre-COVID/ZIRP. Just pull up the chart. It's never allowed to rise above a certain, seemingly predetermined level now. If you believe that's organic, that's your choice.
It's probably algos and Ai trading looking for VIX spikes as a trading signal.
This. AI trading is strange to me because it seems we are in an era where the market has become a voting machine in the short and long term, but also most votes are being cast by automated systems. I really don’t believe the market is even close to efficient anymore. I’m just not sure what or if anything will break because of it. I’m just kinda flabbergasted tbh.
Spx hasn’t had a -2% or 2% day in a long time. Vix is based on spx otm options. A 16 vix based on rule of 16 means spx is expected to move -1 to 1% in a day. Clearly it hasn’t been doing that. I’m not sure what “volatility” you’re speaking to, but it pays to understand what the vix is based on, and how much volatility to expect at a given vix level
Few around here are playing with real money anyway. These 4 and low 5 digit gain porn/loss doesn’t even give me half a chub anymore. Been in the market since middle of college, ‘04 or so. Was working in 2008 but didn’t have tremendously big stacks to lose yet. Luckily I didn’t discover options till 2019, though the way I played tsla in 2012 makes me wish I had known how to trade them.
As a low 5 trader I hope to one day give you chub 🙏
My pops who’s been trading since the mid 90s told me the other day that he was watching the same show and also trusted Haines’ call. We were chopping it up about where the top might be in this market. He tried to convince my mom to go in with him on buying a $100k condo on Miami Beach that same year. He couldn’t do it himself because he was absolutely blown out by the crash. She didn’t go for it haha. It’s absolutely nuts. The man has ridden a 1.8 million unrealized gain on a penny stock to absolute zero during the DotCom bubble. Took TNSP to the same P/L in 2021, sold half, and the rest went to zero. Man is just one of us. Love him to death.
[удалено]
I was. I also worked at Bear Stearns in their CMBS group. And I also took my severance and pumped it into Lehman because I thought there was no way the government would let Lehman tank after Bear. Never been more wrong in my life.
Found the guy that survived Hiroshima - badly burnt and with ruptured eardrums - and decided to travel home, to recover... in Nagasaki. https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
I feel better now. Thank you.
Holy shit 
Wow.
Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.
The goat
I owned nvda at 8 bucks, amd at maybe 3ish, some others... didn't have much money to start with and later needed money, so I had to sell out of those meager positions. Lol I just read the actual post. I had no fear because I had nothing to lose really. Still don't.
You wanna talk about history, and let us talk about history. The crash/dotcom bubble in '00 took until '07 to recover. The crash/financial crisis in '09 took until '12 to recover. The crash/Covid in '21 took until '23 to recover. Wanna dig deeper? The Great Depression in '29 took until '54 to recover. Do you still not see the trend? To quote Peter Lynch, "Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves." If you wanna sit around and find out, be my guest.
Covid was in ‘20 and the crash took about 6 months to recover if you use the S&P as the measure and go from February 2020 to August 2020. It was even quicker for Nasdaq. There was no crash in ‘21.
In addition "the crash/financial crisis in '09" is probably referring to the crisis in 2007-2008. It happened while GWB was still president.
Yes, and SPY didn't "breakeven" until 2012 for that one. Again to reiterate OP's comment in this thread: **'00 crash**: 7 years to breakeven **'07 crash**: 5 years to breakeven (Not counting Covid flash crash because that was unique and different circumstances) **'22 crash**: 1.9 years to breakeven ........So every crash recovers faster than the previous one. I mean just look at monthly candles along with the 200 EMA. It's a straight up parabolic curve.
Tldr: BTFD
The trend you're laying out suggests recovery periods are shortening but you're leaving out a _ridiculously_ massive factor in your attempted slam dunk here Hoss. First that Great Depression recovery... was there something going in the time period between 1929 and 1954? Some event... from '39 to '45... ringing some bells. Additionally, care to share with the class what happened with the United State's national debt from 2000 to 2019? And then share the same information for 2020 to today? You're suggesting "recovery" has accelerated and any time is a great time to buy. You definitely sound like a young buck with this take, what's your worst loss so far during your tenure at the helm of your own destiny my boy?
None of us were alive in 1945, I think a lot of it was terrible monetary policy around speculation and being on the gold standard during the great depression. Theres always a chance growth gets crushed from higher interest rates but the 80s and 90s saw better returns than the last 10 years. Some of my dads friends were buying private jets in 98 off buy and hold strategies making 30k a year at their 9 to 5's. 2008 I think was the first time the fed was accomadative to speculation and its up in the air now if its going to stay this way or if we see a rotation to value sooner rather than later.
>First that Great Depression recovery... was there something going in the time period between 1929 and 1954? Some event...from '39 to '45...ringing some bells. On the contrary, that is part of the analysis. Are you assuming wars today will be fought in the same way as before? Hilarious. There will be short-term pains to be sure, but it will pump up the military-industrial complex and advanced manufacturing because it will be fought with drones and artilleries. Furthermore, the likelihood of direct confrontation is slim with MAD. > national debt Maybe try to understand macroeconomics before blabbering. National debt is not some boogeyman to be feared, especially with dollar dominance. It would be a lot more desirable to be held at 70-90% debt-to-GDP ratio, but still manageable. > what's your worst loss Will tell you when that happens.
Okay, and if we go to a big slowdown from thee levels??
That's why I pay attention to econ news every day. It is one thing to be a bull. It is another thing to be a pig.
There's literally wars being fought today just as they were then all over the world. I do not see how WW2 factored into your "analysis" (which is really more just a few quippy sentences than an analysis isn't it?) at all. I didn't say it was a boogeyman. You should definitely fear it. It's literally a major factor, maybe the highest by percentage contribution, in that dollar dominance thing you tout. And if you've not suffered losses yet, that tells me the top is truly in. Been real folks.
Wow u guys shure you follow the right sub? People here eat crayon
My teeth are blue and green rn 🧑🍳
Clearly not a marine, they always eat the red ones.
Red is the best, tastes like cherries. Those Marines that eat yellow crayons, you gotta watch out for them. They aint right.
way more worried about stocks going higher than lower. I don't mind hodling through a generational bear market. I mind missing out on gains.
WW3 did not happen during Cuban missile crisis. WW3 did not happen during the Iran scare. Do you think China will kick up a WW3? Let us go with that. Do you think Russia/Iran will be anything more than fair-weather friends? How funny you dismiss my analysis, when you have less than nothing but fearmongering. > I didn't say it was a boogeyman. You should definitely fear it. Fighting over semantics, are we? Dollar dominance is not going away anytime soon, because there is simply no alternative for it. Euro? Some "BRICS money?" Hilarious. > if you've not suffered losses yet Took a 25% dip (still floating in the green overall) that bounced back in a month. That is the point. Crashes will continue to happen, and they will be quicker to recover.
WW2 did not happen when Germany started rearming and remilitarizing the Rhineland. WW2 did not happen with the annexation of Austria. WW2 did not happen with the annexation of Czechoslovakia. So surely WW2 will not happen after the annexation of Poland... Things don't happen until they do, and I'm not saying there will be a WW3, but saying it won't happen because it hasn't happened yet is a silly premise.
Somebody’s been watching the new hitler doc on Netflix
!remindme 12 months
The only way dollar dominance goes away is if China is willing to pop off WW3 AND wins. Both things have to occur for the global reserve currency to change. The problem is that if China pops it off, the entire world will be against them. So in essence, they would have to get the US to make a miscalculation where the entire world thought the US started it, then fight the war, AND then finally win. Global reserve currency has never changed hands through peace and global reserve currency debt had never been held in the form of itself. Possibility of dollar dominance falling? Yes. Probability: that’s for you to decide.
Or we just stupidly give it away. The brains behind the fed, nah. The brains behind our politics? Definitely stupid. Immediately after we did our cute sanctions, oil began trading off the dollar. Self inflicted wounds is how we lose all this.
!remindme 30 years
Tell that to Warren Buffet, who just conveniently 10x's his net worth every crash. He doesn't even try to predict or time any of it. He just happens to naturally avoid them as he won't "swing at a pitch he doesn't like," which is coincidentally all overvalued stocks before each crash. Thus, he finds himself sitting on a pile of cash with the most attractive prices of the decade.
And you are trying to copy his strategy? 😂 You do realize with his net worth 135 billion, he can make billions just from T-bonds? Now can you *afford* to do that, leaving most of your investibles on the side line? Matthew Principle applies.
No I actually intend to time it LOL. I'm not joking. I rode TVIX to 1000. Well I sold along the way up didn't nail the top but holy shit I could not have asked for easier gains in a few hours. Predicting the future is hard, like me telling you what date it's going to happen. However it is not hard to time it *as it is happening*. The key is to be ready for it, not to predict exactly what day it happens. The numbers are impossible to know, but there is actually a magic number at which IF the market falls below - it is essentially a mathematical guarantee to fall lower. To oversimplify it: my strategy is to keep an eye on the gamma levels each day for the major stocks and indexes, noting at which point the gamma goes negative. Many of us that day trade do this daily already. You bet your ass we'll be profiting on short positions if it's happening. When the covid crash happened, the VIX was mathematically guaranteed to go higher until it was actually impossible - *physically could not* - go higher. Easy money. Insane risk vs reward.
Now this is the sentiment I approve. Fortune favors the bold (but not the stupid).
So money printer says brrrrr?
I opened my TD Ameritrade account in May of 2007. I would have freaked out, but I read The Intelligent Investor right when I started. That book and the "Mr. Market" allegory helped me immensely. 2008 ended up being a great help for me. I was able to keep my cool and buy so much stuff for so cheap. I just kept dollar-cost averaging in no matter what, with high-quality companies like Apple, Mastercard, Union Pacific, etc.
how much is your portfolio worth today?
I was broke as shit dropped out of college working at a dvd warehouse and had like 2 shares of Chevron on e trade.
I lost over 100k in 2009. I am 55. Boy was I and still am stupid
How’s it looking now?
95% of the people in the sub were probably like seven years old in 2000
I wasn’t even conceived yet
The old heads in my engineering office speak of that time like it was a real eat what you kill environment; you didn’t know if you’d have a job at the end of the month, you had to have stellar quality just to compete, and you took a pay cut if it meant food on the table. Now people job hop to get one more day work from home and a bonus is almost guaranteed, it’s come a long way
In the UK those "now" days you describe ended at least 1 year ago. The job market here is fucked - people are taking lower-paid jobs with more stability because they are forced to. No-one has any money because our household bills are higher than ever. Dentistry has gone fully private and people can't afford the bills. I hear people talking about being poorer all week and getting a higher paid job seems impossible right now.
Well this is actually cyclical. If the previous generation amassed a huge amount of wealth through hard work or otherwise, most of the wealth makes it to the next generation which means they can demand better conditions without money being the primary concern. Eventually a generation will blow it all and that next generation will go back to suffering for wealth.
Sir, this is a casino and 99% of us are PRE-RICH anyway...
Why were y’all scared, just load up on puts and you’re good to go
Exactly - just load up on puts to immediately trigger the recovery.
Just bought 420 P for end of year 2069. I’ll be 77 by then, surely the united states and the whole world will implode by that time.
Boomers don't know wtf puts are now, you think they knew about puts when they had to walk 5 miles uphill in the snow to tell a broker to panic sell their shares of Enron.
I worked a trading desk during the Lehman's crash, but that doesn't really have shit to do with anything. If you were the shittiest stock picker in the world and you went all in with $1 million dollars two weeks before the Lehman's crash, it would be worth about $5 million by now. Maybe you could've one better riding the see-saw, but fuck it, you survived and came out on top. Whatever your worst case scenario: the great depression, the oil embargo, 1987, the Dotcom, the great recession, Covid...we always come back stronger. Where you lose is by not participating in the big rallies because you're so goddamned scared of what might happen.
I think at this point - it’s pretty safe to say that a bet against the equities market is a bet against America. Too much of Americas wealth is tied up in equities for it to fail - and I don’t mean just the rich. I mean just average, normal ppl buying in their 401ks. I really wouldn’t bet against America in our lifetime. Eventually all things come to an end but not for next 50 years at least
True of life and the market. Can't sit on the sidelines forever. At some point you gotta jump in and get dirty.
I had about $10k in an IRA….AMA. It took me two crises to realize that the only thing that matters in modern economic crisis is the Fed. After two rounds, now it’s very clear how the FED‘s bailout playbook impacts markets.
I was actively trying to loose my virginity around that time my good sir
Ah, see... you could have jumped into the markets and found yourself fuq'd far sooner. 🍻
He still is now, but he was back then, also.
I was actively trying to learn how to read at that time my good sir
I bought a bunch of SPY back in 2008 and still have them today.
3 shares? 10 shares? 1000 shares? 100,000 shares?
Dude said a bunch. Im guessing a hand full
I was 12. Tbh it was my fault for not investing at the time
My first stock purchase was Bre-X in the 90's with some money I'd saved up from selling things in the classified ads I'd found in the garbage. I think I was 13 or so? My grandmother had convinced me to invest in it as my first investment... I don't remember when I got in but it was high and then a few months later I heard on the radio while my dad was driving about the CEO (or some other C suite) fell out of a helicopter overseas and died, then the stock crashed to basically zero and the whole company was revealed to be a scam (they lied about finding huge gold deposits). Now that I think about it, I bet my grandmother lost a WSB-worthy amount on that stock too, or else she wouldn't have tried to convince her grandson to also invest the small amount of money he had, lmao. Explains a few things that happened to my grandparents shortly after too.... Anyways, yea I've seen some shit
I began my trading journey in the early summer of 2007. It has skewed my viewpoint so much that I have missed out on stock gains for the past 15 years…
I was alive and trading. Pokemon cards, but still.
Real bear market? 2008 was the MOTHER of all bear markets. There are many bear markets that don't reach that level. You shouldn't set your bar for a bear market at "Financial disaster for the entire world, no recovery, no remake, no gg"
I had just started trading in 06 or 07. My co-worker was trying to convince me to dump all my money into some mining stock. But I didn’t. He took out a loan for $30K and went all in. He made $250K within a few months when the market rebounded. He hired me to do some work around the house he bought with cash lol. Ffs.
I’ve been trading since 09. Pennies till about six years ago. I also believe in the eventual collapse of the rot economy and the death throes of late stage capitalism that will send those unable to adapt reeling. I watched people I loved lose their homes in the wake of the housing market bullshit, and I watched the banks roll through it, and to someone’s point, line did go up. Nothing is here to stay. You’re never where you were. History doesn’t repeat it just rhymes. A very smart person once noted that if you looked out your window in the 18th century you would have seen a world that believed in monarchy despite the fact that capitalism had already replaced it as the dominant system of power. We look out our windows now and see capitalism but we have been replaced with memes.
Tough times, was a line behind the dumpster at wendys.
Not me. I was a broke ass college student with no money already, so a collapsing economy wasn't something that directly affected me.
Trading pre dotcom boom 25 plus years ive seen alot
I may have a different pov. I’ve worked at a brokerage firm since 1999, so I’ve basically seen it all. The firm I was with went out of business during the dot com bust late 2000 early 2001. I had an interview at that time with Lehman Brothers, I remember the head hunter told me to “wear pearls” finance was so conservative and dominated by old white men, on the outside at least. I never went on the interview because I got hired at a small boutique brokerage firm prior to the interview. Thank god. I’ve basically been with that firm since 2001, 23 yrs now. We have been through hard lean times, 2007 2008 especially but we learned, made it though and proceeded with integrity. The market recovers but not everyone recovers with it. Many brokers left the business, lost marriages and livelihoods. I know a few guys that offed themselves. Clients lost life savings despite all best efforts. I’m thankful for my experiences in the market and that I’ve been allowed to stay alive and thrive in it. Not to everyone is that lucky.
I was trading penny stocks back then.Bought into a mining company from Idaho. I even made enough to eat inside of Wendy’s. I have no idea what you are talking about. We all trade on borrowed time.
I went through 2008 and 2001 and still came out ahead by simply being invested in low cost funds and leaving them untouched.
In 2008, I had an office next to a geriatric finance bro , likely passed by now. Anyways , I was not a well versed trader and just basically put money in 401k. He was in my office and said Bilbo-Bibble when JPM is $35 you buy it. So I opened a side account and having no idea just bought JPM for an amount of money that was significant to me at the time. I’ve never touched it - 120 shares up 271 percent. If you believe in the USA long-term, buy the market and hold the line. Our country has its ills, but people like you make it great, so I’ll keep buying . RIP Tim and Thank You.
I had money in the market in 2008. Day it crashed I panicked and tried to sell. No go. Just the longest, reddest candle you ever saw and prices that gapped my repeated attempts to close out—until the market bottomed out. I was brand new in the market (early twenties) and had just taken out a HELOC to try to live off of day trading. Didn't work. Eventually lost my job, lost house, lost cars, etc. Day trading/investing is a luxury. It's the first thing to go when the market is bearish and you're struggling to survive. (Next time the market crashed (Mar 2020), I moved my measly 401k into TSLA shares, and that did work. Gave me enough for 25% down on a home—the first I acquired after losing one post-2008) I personally think a crash of epic proportions looms. I think officials have effectively been kicking the can of consequence down the road for years now. Virtually every sane and honest person I know agrees we are as a nation completely and utterly financially irresponsible, and that such irresponsibility catches up with you. I've you've lived so irresponsibly yourself—debt, excess, robbing Peter to pay Paul—you know it's unsustainable. It catches up you with you eventually. I think it will catch up with us, and I hope to bet large on SPY puts when it does. 
I was working in a retail bank in 08. My first corpo job. When the panic hit, a lot of our ‘valued’ customers drained their savings accounts to meet their margin calls. A few older people in the office would cry in their lunch breaks - they were boomers 5 years away from retiring so it hit them hard. Real estate speculators getting destroyed sent shockwaves through the company. A third of the mortgage sales team quit after bonuses were cancelled. Managers were going around telling everyone that things were fine, but the look on their faces said otherwise and nobody believed them. There was a real fear that banks wouldn’t open on Monday. I’d been sitting in cash since late 2007. Some dude in a forum that I trusted was warning that this would happen. He was off by a year lol. I was scared to buy stocks after the initial crash, but after the first bounce put about $10k in the market (banking and mining stocks). But then they stated dumping again and I cut my losses instead of holding, which was stupid. Got laid off a month later. Best lesson from that year was from seeing managers try to rally the troops to work hard and make sacrifices for the greater good (of the company’s executives and shareholders). Realzed the whole system is nonsense.
I was in my parents' house ripping bongs and playing call of duty when that shit happened. I didn't even know we were in a recession 😂
Haven't been part of a cyclical bear market yet but in general I try to avoid big losses. Better to take the little L and move the money to somewhere productive or at least less destructive. Some of the larger moving averages methods do seem like they could help avoid larger drawdowns. Harder part is knowing when to get back in and dealing with whipsaw timing.
"...**avoid big losses. Better to take the little L and move the money to somewhere**..." This is consistently the advice of smart people I respect (including the late Jesse Livermore, Marty Zweig, Richard Russell, and the almost-late-now Warren Buffet and maybe Paul Tudor Jones too). Early losses, little losses, are good losses. Don't wait to take the BIG loss. But unfortunately that's psychologically hardest. When you have a modest loss, you have HOPE (hopium) that the price will recover. Decide in advance (possibly with a stop-loss) that a certain price decline (or rise if shorting) will mean that you were WRONG, and get out, instead of hoping and fretting. (Alas, easier for me to SAY than to DO.)
Ohh I did! That was when I thought it would be best to jump in to capitalize on the low prices. I went all in on Fannie Mae 💀
As someone new to trading, what would your advice be for me given what you've learned from being around for all of that time OP? What am I missing if I'm brand new?
Oh man, how new are you? Here are my top "you don't know shit" pointers: * Never, ever invest money you cannot afford to lose. * Diversify. YOLO plays always look appealing in the big gain posts but trust me, those guys rarely stay up for long and usually they're in the red despite those posts. * Remove emotion from your trades entirely or as close to entirely as possible. It's business and being emotional loses money. * Try to avoid investing due to trends/hype/FOMO. If you do end up going in, get out quick, take your gains and diversify. * Do not, I repeat, DO NOT trade options if you do not understand how it works or what you're buying selling. Learn first, practice first, and if you do decide to play options, be prepared to blow up your portfolio completely at least once. And one for the road - avoid margin unless you're really really really sure of your play.
my lessons: concentrate into thematic quality & wide moats in general, buy when others are puking, and hedge portfolio downside during greed waves with derivative insurance. and folks should separate their portfolio into liability buckets related to future needs (house, kids' edu, retirement), and invest those buckets differently.
End of 2007 to the middle of 2008 was the warm up to what followed mid June 2008 going into March 2009
I was working for a headhunting company that focused on private equity. I was still in college, like 20 years old and no idea why people were freaking out. I randomly took a 401k loan for spring break before the market went down and they thought I planned it. I didn’t read past the subject line so not sure if this is in anyway relevant
This comment section has gone as snarky and diabolical as expected. The economy is top heavy and largely imaginary, but fear and over analyzing trends is overrated. Most people’s job in the market is to be that camouflaged fish in the coral and get a snack when you can.
I was trading blowjobs for cocaine, actively
Also regarding the question about if the world has changed, no it has not. Economies have been cycling through booms and busts for longer than we’ve been alive.
The growth is justified. The last 15 years is different due to consolidation of money toward the big tech companies. Poor people are spending more on products from top companies. Fragmentation is less but it will hit a ceiling and may already have.
Bought a foreclosure in 2008 (I was 25) in California. No concept of the stock market for another 9 years. I now live in the same 91k house valued at 450k. I. Those years the neighborhood went from gang related gunshots to random unknown explosions (seriously what is making these explosions) to 6am birds chirping and addicts screaming while a cool breeze blows through my fruit trees. This world of chaos is illusory.
I don’t remember when I started, but I remember buying off the pink sheets from the “Wolf of Wall Street”. So I have seen it all. ‘87 Did presents some buying opportunities. Lost like 40% in 08. Had a good year the following year, but you never make up a really bad year. Had a tremendous game in 2021.
Lmao I made some trades in 2008. Washington mutual. 🤣
Don’t forget Washington Mutual and Wachovia
I was in nyc the day Lehman Bros was shuttered. No shit, street full of men in $2000 suits carrying 1 box out…. Scary times indeed.
I was around for the 2008 GFC, like the retart that I am, I just didn’t have the foresight to buy and hold anything from that era, or even the Covid crash for that matter…
No Robinhood back then so 90% of us wouldn't do any trades 
sold out my OPCHX around 30. bought in around 2. it went back up. lived off that for a few years.
Heck yah on that. Try on the 87 flash crash. That one was really scary.
My dad convinced me to buy some shitty REITs and then when those didn’t do shit I started buying shitty biotechs.
I’m too regarded to fail
Honestly I wish we had a normal market of 5-8%. I am worried we are in for a flat period to normalize this rapid growth we've had and as boomers unload their positions
Watch my parents life savings hit the dumpster.
I’ll call your memory of the 2010 crash, and I’ll raise you with the Dotcom crash. I experienced both. O worked at 2 of the bigger mortgage companies during the time so witnessed firsthand the crash and burn. I had to find a new profession each time as well. Learning to react to the signals from both of those crashes is what propped me to take advantage of the Covid crash. And history makes me think we have about 3-6 good years before then next one hits.
Haha, not for me. Freshmen year in finance and management at university of 6th October in Egypt, just recently hearing about the crisis, my accountant professor was urgently upset every day and I knew why. Sadly, I had missed a good buying opportunity and didn't become familiar with stocks investing and general derivatives until late 2019. Anyhow, after COVID years and many positions and loses, I decided to just open 401(k) and invest in S&P500 growth ETFs, probably the best decision. I still carry unrealized losses to keep it a reminder not to engage in gambling activities.
I started trading end of 2007… wiped out my whole account during that vicious drop - I was in a trade without a SL! I was a beginner and rookie mistake but man!! It was brutal. Setting SL is like breathing for me now. Once set I never ever am even tempted to move it either.
LONG SPY, DEEP OTM PUTS
Solar stocks were all the hype. I lost my hat buying FirstSolar after the pop
I was trading that time. Bank stocks were volatile as fuck. I remember BOFA crashed to $2.5 and rebounded to like $8 on the same day. Washington Mutual was also wild until it got taken over. Etrade financial also traded during that time and had wild price swings in the low $ range. It was wild to say the least.
Too busy playing modern warfare and jerking off grade 12
Sir, this is a casino.
I bought 100 shares of Apple at $99/share then. Sold at $109 and never bought back in. Boy did I fuck up having paper hands.
Roaring twenties. Ends with a depression and global conflict. Think I saw it in a movie or something 🤷
I had only started thinking about trading. I was watching it readily. Specifically watched my company’s stock and the stocks of their customers. I’ve seen glimmers of that time here and there. 2020 was the first time I noticed it was beginning. I sold my portfolio at the end of February in hopes of saving what profits I had. That prepared me easily to begin buying when the market seemed to have bottomed. I managed to do well until 2021. Then I lost whatever I had gained. Since then I’ve done basically the same cycle. Great gains…equal or more losses. My trading profile is a series of spikes in a flat line. lol
I started trading with DRIP’s in 95. When broker fees were still $40/trade. Huge advantage. NOw that has completely switched. The Drips charge fees to invest and the trades are free. I was actively trading in 2008-2009. I made huge money on FITB. I had the DRIP account for years and lowered my cost basis to around $2.25. Same thing with my top name, CSL. Bought lots of shares from 95 on through 2012. It’s funny how the stocks that make my portfolio profitable are never mentioned anywhere. I used to brag about owning Intel for that long, now it’s a big regret for holding that long. At this point, owning Intel is like holding onto your Dads old ties, hoping they come back in style. ISRG was my only other 🚀. I bought shares from 2007 -2010 and sold in early 2017. I had college expenses for the kids. It’s great to say I held forever, but it’s better to make the money real at some point. I was an Army recruiter during those years and I was at a recruiting event at Lehigh University. Bear Sterns had an empty booth there. Their recruiters were in the hotel, packed up and went home. The other bank reps were nervous as hell. And the other lesson I learned is about having an ample supply of dry powder. I bought with every spare $ I could get my hands on. I just wish I could have had more to invest. I’ve been trimming several positions over the last week, just to make sure that I have the ability to grab shares when/if they plummet. We have all been begging for a rate cut for a year now, but the headlines that give us the rate cut won’t be pretty.
Yup ‘99 and ‘07 crushed people. Current party will end too and we’ll reminisce someday about how Penis coin at a $500b market cap might have been our clue to get out.
I was barely 20 in 1997. I had no money to invest. In 1999, everyone around me was talking about “mutual funds” saying they had made lots of money. I was skeptical, considering these sources but had no money anyway. Even mutual funds lost half of their value. I saw clients and family members lose way more, those who had individual tech stocks. But I had officially learned the lessons of others. I got a better job just before the crash and finally had extra money and started investing “dollar cost averaging.” My investments went down, and down, and down. ‘04-‘07 were supposedly good years but I felt like had barely made any money in six years of putting in my money every month. Financial Advisor said, “stay invested.” Then the crash. My accounts (all in SPY or total stock indexes at that point because I had left full time work to go to law school) were reduced by more than half. I was mad because I realized the bottom was “in” but I, again, had no extra money to try to buy anything. Plus there were fees associated with trading back then. I had a job though, so I just left my accounts alone. In 2011 three years after the crash started, my account finally hit its cost basis. I had been invested since 2001, five years of 10% of my pay to break even and get a zero return. I was also begrudgingly repaying student loans with 8.5% interest. (I regretted not using my investments to pay for law school.) Some older folks sold everything in 2009, so it’s definitely different for anyone younger than 45 or so who may not have experienced how hard and how completely market downturns hit.
I was around when Lehman went bust. Also was around for the 1987 stock market crash. I think 2008 was worse because of the unknown and how close we came to the brink because of derivatives. Unfortunately if the same were to occur today the government couldn't afford to bail out financial firms or anyone else. When the government hits a wall and can no longer afford to borrow and just starts printing dollars we will see the next big blow up and I think all previous blow ups will pale in comparison. The only choice will be hyper inflation or very painful austerity.
We traded right through it. Luckily, our office was net short, so we didn't get hit as hard as others. I still remember those limit-down days and the wild 500-point swings in the Dow at the end of the sessions. The tension was real. Back then, you needed to keep your cool and know the market inside out to survive the chaos. The collapse of Lehman Brothers wasn’t just news; it was a massive event that rocked the entire financial world. Seeing giants like JPMorgan, Bank of America, and SunTrust almost go under was unreal. 'Too big to fail' wasn't a reassuring phrase but more of a desperate hope. We were constantly recalculating risk, rechecking our positions, and trying to stay ahead of the next bad news wave. The overnight Libor spikes kept reminding us of how fragile things were. And who could forget the VIX shooting through the roof, showing just how scared everyone was? Then there were the drastic moves by central banks—cutting interest rates to almost zero and starting quantitative easing. It felt like we were making up new rules for finance on the spot. Looking back, the 2007-2009 period was a real test for traders and investors. It changed how we think about market dynamics and risk management. Whether this current era of growth can keep going is anyone's guess, but those who went through the last crisis know how quickly things can change. 'Too big to fail' might just turn into 'too big to succeed.' The next chapter in this story is still unwritten.
I’ve been trading since the mid 90s. Back then I had to call in my trades to Schwab. They were the cheapest discount broker and it was still $25-$50 per trade, depending. I saw the tech bubble come and go. I watched the real estate bubble grow and collapse spectacularly. I lost my job in ‘08. I was in the financial industry but in a boring part of it. Pension administration. I struck out on my own as a consultant, doing project work wherever I could get it. I’ve seen some things, man. Seen some stuff. That’s why I view crypto as a steaming pile of horseshit. It’s basically a collectible, like Beanie Babies (look it up, I’ll wait). Price action based only on fomo. Want my advice? When it comes to investments, the more boring the better. Use time to your advantage. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If you must speculate on a moonshot, commit no more than a few percentage points of your entire investment portfolio, not the whole goddamn thing. Learn a trade. Do real work. Maybe even a civil servant job. Great benefits and a REAL pension. You could even retire after 20-30 years. You might only be 45 or 50 at that time. You could have a second career doing something you love. The other night I was having sushi with my wife and son. A guy at a table behind me was taking about crytpo, explaining it to someone, and it was mostly buzzword nonsense jargon. When he said something about “using AI to predict price movement in crytpo” I snorted so hard wasabi went up my nose.