No, I'm talking about XIV. It went into a free fall around 1pm EST on no apparent news. Confidence is eroding quickly. Let me take a look at Hong Kong.

I don't see anything unusual with Hong Kong, do you?

@Manwe it dropped like 6 billion dollars just a few days back

but, yes, the Zombie Apocalypse has begun

Has what begun?

Well, with a market cap of $3.5 trillion, $6 is small potatoes ;). I knew it Felipe, the zombies are coming for us!

$6 billion. But $6 too

The financial crisis part 2

Well, if it hasn't yet, it will. Global markets have only so much tolerance for batshit crazy incompetence in Washington. I suppose that's one approach to bringing down carbon emissions

What? An apocalypse? Yeah, sure, good idea. Works like a charm.

Zombie apocalypse ..yes I see that the price of brains has just gone through the roof...at least Trump is safe from zombie attack..

Or, *gasp* markets going up and down are all parts of the natural business cycle. As are financial crises. Policymakers can only do so much to influence it.

As for when the next dip is, I'd give it another year, year and a half. We're in 2006-7 territory, imo.

The current bubble has at least one similar cause to the last, the FED has kept interest rates artificially low for too long. I agree with the feeling like 2006-2007 assessment.

It's all about consumption smoothing, Manwe. First off, they kept them low because they were consistently missing their inflation targets - this was the case in the 00s as well. The Fed has a dual mandate - stable (low) inflation and unemployment. Those two take priority over any other issue that may pop up. Inflation being too low can cripple an economy, or is a symptom of a very weak economy.

Second, we may have an asset bubble in stock markets, but it hardly extends to the rest of the economy like it did before. There are some localized areas where there are real estate bubble, but for the most part those are starting to correct themselves. And the impact of interest rates or the Fed on those markets is minimal. A new condo building is most likely going to remain profitable on an 10% loan as compared to an 8%. If anything the low rates are encouraging more building which should keep prices down in the long run.

Inflation comes naturally and doesn't need to be instigated by the Fed, same with employment. What does happen when the Fed attempts to manipulate those two through fixing interest rates is the formation of asset bubbles and over capacity in production and inventories. They perfectly set-up the crash last time, and they are doing it again!

The huge increase in the stock market over he past 8 years has been a direct result of he Fed disincentivizimg people from investing in the counterpart of bonds by making the returns from them pale in comparison and making them non-competitive. The S&P 500 more than doubled from 2010-2017 while 2016 EPS were only 22% higher than 2010 EPS. There's been hardly any growth in profitability since the start of the recovery, yet the market has soared to unprecedented highs. Why? Because the Fed pushed all of the capital from bonds to stocks. So not only is the bond market in a potential bubble because of the inverse relationship between interest rates and bond prices, but the stock market is as well because of the imbalance in asset allocation. If either one of these markets, or both, fall into a correction, a liquidity freeze could plague the entire economy forcing layoffs and a fall in demand on a scale greater than in the Great Recession.

Lol, that was a funny read. Understandable, coming from a certain viewpoint, but incorrect nonetheless.

Inflation needs to be managed. Study the 19th and early 20th centuries, or the 1970s or any of the inflation spikes in the developing world in the past 50 years, and you can easily see why. To not have a central bank managing inflation is an invitation for disaster. Since the inflation targeting regimes were implemented in the 1980s across the West, there hasn't been an inflationary crisis.

Unemployment is a similar story. It's not that it won't correct itself, it's about the speed of the correction and how deep it goes. That's why I mentioned smoothing in my previous comment. A study of the Great Depression should show you why this is necessary.

As for your comment on stocks, I think you're slightly misinformed. Profitability has never been higher for corporations. And stocks are (by one method) valued using the discounted dividend model. Based on compounding interest, a 20% increase in EPS should result in a stock price increase several times higher. So the story you're saying isn't all too concerning. However, looking at the P/E ratio you can see that the market is elevated compared to normal levels.

As for the bond markets, the Fed has pushed out some of the market due to its...$4 trillion?... portfolio. And it is overpriced. Now I think they should've unwound that position before they started raising rates, but that's just me. But the bond markets are very susceptible to being influenced. Back in the 2000s the Fed tried to raise rates, but the massive demand for US treasuries by China and oil funds single-handedly kept rates below where the Fed wanted them.

You also seem to be mistaken in your reasoning as for why there was a liquidity freeze during the last crisis. It was mainly due to the insolvency of multiple market-makers and a battery of credit-default swaps that were triggered. This cannot happen again, due to a stricter regulation of these types of financial products and the living wills and other standards implemented by Dodd-Frank. Now, could it happen in the unregulated markets? Hedge funds, etc? Sure. But that won't have nearly the same effect, and the losers in those situations are people who can afford to lose the money haha

Haha, the only reason inflation was an issue in the 1970s was because of a single commodity which had been nationalized and resctricted by governments. If oil had traded on the free market by private citizens, there would have been no inflation problem then. My original rebuttal was against the government trying to purposefully create inflation though, not limit it. Regardless, it is almost always caused by the government in one way or another. Whether through intentional resctrition of supply (1970s) or the intentional overproduction of currency (1920s Germany).

Unusual levels of unemployment during the Great Depression was also the result of poor monetary policy by the Fed and a credit freeze.

I only presented facts in relation to the state of the market, and I could provide citations if I were so inclined to do so. Profits are at an all-time high, but have grown at a much slower pace than the price of the equity for these companies. That is why the P/E ratio of the S&P has grown so drastically over the past 8 years. An increase in EPS should cause a directly proportional increase in Price, no more as you claim. That is why when the price is 100 and earnings 20 you have a P/E of 5 and when both double to 200 and 40 you still have a P/E of 5. If price is increasing at a faster rate than EPS, you get an increasing P/E and resulting bubble of growth can't keep up (which it isn't). Real GDP in 2010 was $14.78 trillion. Real GDP in 2016 was $16.66 trillion. That's growth of 13% over 7 years, pretty anemic.

At least you agree on bonds.

I never alluded to why the credit freeze happened last time. It was caused by a lack of confidence in lending though, which resulted partly from what you have said. The same exact thing will happen if the markets enter into too deep of a correction, people will not feel safe lending their money out. The only difference will be what will trigger it, which none of us know yet (or else we could make boatloads off of it).

No matter what inflation is going to be traced back to government in one way or another since they control the money supply. That's a terrible line of argument. You're focusing on the two main cases that affected the West and ignoring the dozens of other cases - which stem from currency crises to governments padding their budgets. This is why independent central banks exist - to manage the inflation caused by government policies. Government and Fed are not the same thing, though their interests frequently coincide.

Too low of inflation can stick you into a really bad place though. Just look at Japan. Inflation is both a sign of and a cause for economic activity. It puts a cost to sitting on money.

And yes, the Fed didn't do well during the Great Depression. So you blast them for learning from their mistakes and trying to not repeat them? The Fed was scared to hell of a double-digit, which Europe almost went through in 2011.

Also, P/E is cyclical. There's no one static figure that it should be. It changes based on perceptions of growth rates as well as interest rate projections. So it can be absolutely healthy for P/E to be going up...but only to a certain point.

13% growth over 7 years is not anemic by modern standards. It's downright enviable to some industrialized nations. Be careful when you attribute global trends to the faults of one nation. Now historically, yes it sucks. But there might not be a return to that rate of growth - ever. Not with the current income distribution, current population growth rates, or new savings rate. All of those are big drags on the economy.

And lending might collapse a bit as credit standards tighten, but that isn't a credit freeze. Believe me, it can't get as bad as it was before