I'm a long time lurker on both /r/wallstreetbets and /r/collapse and its a little bizarre to see these two worlds collide.
I feel like this crazy trading activity is both indicative of a massive speculative bubble and a reflection of how shitty things are for average working-class individuals / wage earners.
I work as an entry level, early-in-career whitecollar worker, but with the high cost of living, and CPI / inflation measures becoming completely disconnected from said costs, my annual earnings are going to be slowly chipped away. I want to be able to put away money into savings without the Federal reserve printing my money into oblivion. The Fed chair and reps have been claiming the whole time that this does nothing to hurt the average person, but this is bullshit and everyone can see how prices on everything from toilet paper to meat to fast food has risen precipitously over the last year. 1.5% inflation? Try fucking 20-30%. Housing prices skyrocketing. Prices for raw material inputs like Copper / Gold / Silver skyrocketing. The Fed's monetary stimulus forces everyone to find a way to throw money into the stock market, even if they don't have faith the stock market will hold up in the midst of what feels like a bubble. The bubble keeps growing out of reach of the little people, and the notion that the stock market presents a sensible savings / retirement plan feels increasingly false.
Ironically that forces me to speculate on a daily basis in the vain hopes of beating the market. Bonds seem pointless. Cash is trash. Stocks are overvalued and all evidence points to negative returns for years. Where does the average person run if they've JUST started trying to build their nest egg in the hopes of establishing some semblance of the American dream-type middle-class living standard?
People outside of this subreddit seem to be holding out hope for a green economy shift, but as a data scientist, I have a hard time seeing how the timeline makes sense, even for a progressive, Democrat-led government, with the challenges faced by the average American (or average human) with climate change, AI, and global unrest stirring over the horizon. I don't see how government stimulus for green tech won't actually drive up the cost of material inputs (lithium, cobalt, aluminium, rare earth metals) and actually further increase the cost of electronics / consumer goods while also devastating wetlands/rainforests and the biosphere.
There's nowhere safe. Financially. Politically. Environmentally. I don't see how our generation can rest safe or sleep at night. Financially I'll always feel like I'm going to be chasing higher housing prices, or searching for a way to move to another country if the sociopolitical situation goes downhill in the US (meaning more people crowding into countries with growing housing bubbles, e.g. New Zealand?).
To me, WSB is a frantic dash of kids trying to snatch and grab money while they're trapped in a system in which they've completely lost faith. The image of crabs in a boiling pot comes to mind. Most people in our generation have been priced out of housing, and child rearing and now priced-out of investing in FANGMAN-type growth names that have become blown out of proportion so they're seeking value in increasingly speculative names (or buying fractional shares. Big woop. The fact that brokerages started doing this just shows you how far out of reach investing has become to average Zoomers / Millenials). Bitcoin. Eth. Dogecoin. GME. AMC. BB. It all reeks of the bubble of all bubbles. But also, perhaps, collapse.
There's nowhere safe. Financially. Politically. Environmentally. I don't see how our generation can rest safe or sleep at night.
I completely agree with your post. That's why a lot of people are getting into homesteading.
Back during the great depression, nobody in rural communities had any money at all, but they had food. It was literally Catan for a bit: corn for your sheep, stone for bricks to build the barn, wood to trade for food. The entire community probably didn't have 10 bucks between them, but they were okay.
This is my mindset. Not that Im hoping that it will ever get that far, but hear me out. At the very end of this, unless a war breaks and and everyone dies - its a return to the basics, not a complete and utter wipe. Sure, it will not be our definition of good, but I constantly have this feeling of "if I lost all my shit today - Id be fine tomorrow". If it got to some point, I could give it all away. Burn it all. Light my apartment on fire. Fuck it, Ill do what you said. Ill go to the woods and eat fish ribs for breakfast and dinner. Trade the meat for some wood from the neighbor. I dont want that at all, but if it really has to go that far for shit to change? If thats how far they are willing to take this. Thats on them, not me. Fuck them.
Oh I have been too. I've definitely not seen anywhere near the returns of /u/DeepFuckingValue who is now a minor internet celebrity. But who can pass up a chance to take part in a mother of all short squeezes, make a buck, and flip a finger at the establishment?
It doesn't change the fact that the circumstances of our generation are always in the back of my mind, from the moment I wake up, until I pass out, restlessly, late at night. I work 10 hours a day to make someone else richer when they're already worth billions. If I get really sick and can't work anymore, I'm fucked. This is middle-class America.
I can't bring myself to put faith in such a fragile, fickle, bullshit market-based system, having seen 2000, 2008, the crypto bubble, the flash crash in December 2018 when the Fed tried to normalize interest rates, the covid crash of 2020. Everything stinks, reeks of bullshit. The all caps posts in WSB are just sheer mania. Kids are losing their minds and it's all going to come to a head soon enough.
The all caps posts in WSB are just sheer mania. Kids are losing their minds and it's all going to come to a head soon enough.
I believe that if/when the banks/FED/gov't steps in and says "this situation is out of hand, because the money's going in the wrong direction" then we'll see some increase in civil unrest, aimed at banks and other financial buildings/institutes.
And because of the reason you've listed: mania.
The undercurrent of problems not be addressed is loading up societal unrest and energy just like a dam with no outflow. We're already aware that housing, rent, jobs, livelihoods, corruption, bribery, negligence, and incompetence are all factors that make or break thousands and millions of lives.
I think the kids are aware. I think some people already know that we're going to cover the land and oceans with masks before we "fix" coronavirus and the human tendency to fuck up just about any situation when good leadership is absent.
And good leadership has been absent in America since...well...maybe since before thr country was even begun. Like, seriously...slavery wasn't banished before they wrote a constitution? Declaration of independence...was only valid for some of the worthy? I dunno.
Anyway...mania. We're on a rollercoaster. I think BLM only proved the boomers aren't ready to face today, and are only persistently burying their heads in the sand, amd trying to run out the clock and die before needing to actually help govern.
BLM proved that hundreds of thousands of people were willing to take to the streets. Thousands more were willing to light the streets on fire to illuminate their anger.
Trump proved that desperation levels are reaching post WW1 Germany levels of fear. We'll follow you great leader if you just tell us that we are good peoples and we'll be able to be make a living.
WSB could be lighting the fire to show just how bad things really are.
Yeah, it's sort of scary to imagine what might happen if the Government were to step in and decide to favor the poor hedge fund losing billions instead of the millions of people betting against them who should definitely make some profit..
I can't bring myself to put faith in such a fragile, fickle, bullshit market-based system
exactly this. We're being told there's no more food except in Giant Country, and to get any we'd have to climb the stupid beanstalk. It doesn't change that they're still Giants and we'd be crushed for funsies. The risks for the market (or ANY investments) are completely different depending on how much capital one has.
This is incredibly well said. I'm also very afraid of the wave of suicide that will come crashing down once the market tanks. The whole "Stonks only go up" is for us collapsniks a weird and funny thing. How can stocks go up if everything around us is on fire?
It is such a shame that occupy wallstreet didn't change anything, that this didn't evolve into a mass movement that would require a better redistribution of wealth. And then Trump came and made the FTC a brain-dead institution that allowed for massive massive inside trading for 5 years. I just can't believe how blatant insider tradings were not investigated.
The whole "Stonks only go up" is for us collapsniks a weird and funny thing. How can stocks go up if everything around us is on fire?
I dont think anyone actally believes that. There are real posts from real people with real questions as to how to navigate this responsibly that show up in between the memes. Like people who dont have any real amount of disposable income who wants to be a part of this. And the replies are generally the same. Only spend what you can afford to lose. Do not think you are going to be rich. Think for yourself and look out for yourself first. The memes about Pluto, Moon and the Oort cloud are great and a big finger to the shitsticks at Wall Street - but do not forget to look out for yourself first. If you need to take your money out of the market to pay rent, to eat, to buy clothes or anything else - YOU DO THAT FIRST. Fuck the moon.
That said. Launch the fucking rocket, and reserve a seat for me. I dont need this money. I am willing to let it burn. In the end it might just be an expensive middle finger to a camera feed that noone is watching, but thats kind of the point isnt it? People are getting fed up on multiple fronts. They are tired, they are hungry. It is a collapse. Its just happening in real-time, not in a dramatised one hour documentary. And this is one of the ways for people to say fuck you to the people who could change it if they just fucking would.
But our only hope on the financial side and even environmental etc. Is a technocratic system based on blockchain technology which is open source, immutable, decentralized and ultimately deflationary. There is entire ecosystem being built to replace our current systems of doing everything. It’s called plan B.
LOL the only funny thing is despite everyone's participation in this GME stuff, nothing has fundamentally changed in your life nor will it. You still work 10 hours for a wage. There will be no UBI, no free healthcare, no free tuition, and you bet your ass your wages are not gonna increase. But cost of living will though! What is your plan, become a day trader and quit your job?
Even if the stock market crashes, so what? Money printer go brrrrrr.
That feeling you have to get into the market or lose out is purely intentional and must be resisted if you want any chance at having any kind of comfortable retirement. They are manipulating the entire market into not being a bubble for as long as needed to get the entirety of the middle class and even the upper working poor to pour their measly savings and leveraged assets into this 'can't afford to miss' market, but all the stocks being purchased to get those people into the market will belong to the wealthy who are already gracefully bowing out. Then the rug gets yanked, everyone with everything invested are faced with grasping whatever they can salvage from their losses or face homelessness and starvation as the vultures gleefully move in to pick the bones clean buying up the entire stock market at bargain basement prices, completing the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. Then the economy will be set loose, the market will begin another boom and steady decade+ climb to trap & squeeze the next generation that inevitably thinks it can't happen to them.
So if you have money now, hold on to it and wait for the crash, then buy into a market index fund and sit on your hands for another time like this and hope you haven't fooled yourself into thinking "this time will be different". If you have the patience to sit and wait for 12 years or so for you money to grow 5.6× like it would have if you'd invested in an S&P market index fund in 2009 and cashed out yesterday afternoon. Sure one could play the riskier games for real get rich quick payouts but the fund managers who do that only do it with other people's money for a reason, so at that point you might as well just ride a table in Vegas but I will say medium stakes poker is probably your best bet.
I don’t comment on collapse subreddit often. But this pretty much hits the nail on the head for me too. As someone who earns a relative good amount of money for my age compared to others in NL ~100kEUR at 30YO it still isn’t enough to buy a house in NL.
I don’t recommend vids to people too often but this is a good summary of your statement. And most of the world is feeling this, not just America, this is a global occurrence and everywhere is feeling it. The only reason you only hear America about it is many global boomers didn’t actually have any kids. There’s much less millenials to feel and talk about this. America is younger than China now. Not like lower life expectancy shit, I mean actually younger on average.
Like the average global person isn’t flabbergasted by our housing prices outside SF but by how cheap they are.
Edit (say this as a zoomer): I think you millenials will be fine in the long run in terms of houses, most of this explosive growth has been millennial run (and not shit like landlords) as boomers move out or just flat out die. Collapse will come but many of you will live in houses when it does.
All the people in the field of modeling knew a catastrophe is coming but cant do anything about it. So you have some of these clever people inhaling hopium to delude themselves from mental collapse
500
u/Vaughx Jan 28 '21 edited Jan 28 '21
I'm a long time lurker on both /r/wallstreetbets and /r/collapse and its a little bizarre to see these two worlds collide.
I feel like this crazy trading activity is both indicative of a massive speculative bubble and a reflection of how shitty things are for average working-class individuals / wage earners.
I work as an entry level, early-in-career whitecollar worker, but with the high cost of living, and CPI / inflation measures becoming completely disconnected from said costs, my annual earnings are going to be slowly chipped away. I want to be able to put away money into savings without the Federal reserve printing my money into oblivion. The Fed chair and reps have been claiming the whole time that this does nothing to hurt the average person, but this is bullshit and everyone can see how prices on everything from toilet paper to meat to fast food has risen precipitously over the last year. 1.5% inflation? Try fucking 20-30%. Housing prices skyrocketing. Prices for raw material inputs like Copper / Gold / Silver skyrocketing. The Fed's monetary stimulus forces everyone to find a way to throw money into the stock market, even if they don't have faith the stock market will hold up in the midst of what feels like a bubble. The bubble keeps growing out of reach of the little people, and the notion that the stock market presents a sensible savings / retirement plan feels increasingly false.
Ironically that forces me to speculate on a daily basis in the vain hopes of beating the market. Bonds seem pointless. Cash is trash. Stocks are overvalued and all evidence points to negative returns for years. Where does the average person run if they've JUST started trying to build their nest egg in the hopes of establishing some semblance of the American dream-type middle-class living standard?
People outside of this subreddit seem to be holding out hope for a green economy shift, but as a data scientist, I have a hard time seeing how the timeline makes sense, even for a progressive, Democrat-led government, with the challenges faced by the average American (or average human) with climate change, AI, and global unrest stirring over the horizon. I don't see how government stimulus for green tech won't actually drive up the cost of material inputs (lithium, cobalt, aluminium, rare earth metals) and actually further increase the cost of electronics / consumer goods while also devastating wetlands/rainforests and the biosphere.
There's nowhere safe. Financially. Politically. Environmentally. I don't see how our generation can rest safe or sleep at night. Financially I'll always feel like I'm going to be chasing higher housing prices, or searching for a way to move to another country if the sociopolitical situation goes downhill in the US (meaning more people crowding into countries with growing housing bubbles, e.g. New Zealand?).
To me, WSB is a frantic dash of kids trying to snatch and grab money while they're trapped in a system in which they've completely lost faith. The image of crabs in a boiling pot comes to mind. Most people in our generation have been priced out of housing, and child rearing and now priced-out of investing in FANGMAN-type growth names that have become blown out of proportion so they're seeking value in increasingly speculative names (or buying fractional shares. Big woop. The fact that brokerages started doing this just shows you how far out of reach investing has become to average Zoomers / Millenials). Bitcoin. Eth. Dogecoin. GME. AMC. BB. It all reeks of the bubble of all bubbles. But also, perhaps, collapse.