The stock market looks like gambling but it's actually fraud.

I know the answer is because the stock market is based entirely on feelings and doesn't have any basis in reality.

I mean, that's phrased really about as well as anyone could phrase it. You could also say that there are two Americas: the 1% and everyone else. The stock market is a measure of how the 1% are doing. When Bondi said "the Dow is over 50000!" in that senate hearing, she was basically just saying, "the rich people think this administration is great, so you should too."

2 factors:

Every salary person has 15% of their income go to the stock market for their 401k.

Most things are staples that people have to buy. Companies increase their prices and consumers don't have a choice. The increased price means increased earnings.

The stock market isn't really dependant on companies actually producing stuff. The expectation of them producing stuff is enough. Which is why this whole AI-circlejerk exists for example.

It is all insider trading and companines funding each other with the same non-existant money.

All the money that's accumulating in the hands of the ultra rich has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is investment assets and investment assets are chosen based on going up in price and said going up in price needs not be for any reason other than that money is going into those assets in the expectation that the prices will go up (i.e. it's just a feedback loop of price increases attracting more buyers which in turn makes prices go up).

It's one big Ponzi Scheme and it will keep on going until there is no more money entering the scheme.

As it so happens we're living a long period of the wealth that was accumulated across society for decades being sucked out from the hands of the many into the hands of the few, and said few then keep putting more money into investment assets (what would be the point of buying yet another yacht) which is what keeps the whole price goes up because people buy -> people buy because price goes up loop going in so many asset categories, from housing and stocks to ultra speculative stuff like crypto.

This shit will only stop when it crashes and the longer it keeps going the harder it will crash.

Stock price is dependent on the average trade price, so technically you could just drive up a stock if you had limitless funds.

But the fun stuff is market cap (the "value") of a company only takes the current price into account, because how else could it work?

So recent trades drive up the value of a stock that most people bought when it was cheaper, doesn't mean a billion or trillion or whatever dollars went into it recently. Only means there are more buyers than sellers and the price has gone up.

It also means that you can't actually sell the entire company worth of stock and get the value listed as its market cap. There wouldn't be demand for it and it would plummet hard.

For tech, it goes up because expectations on higher profits. Datacenters and the dystopia is driving right now. Memory sticks are through the roof because datacenters buys it all. Same with drives and gpus.

It takes years to build the dystopia so lots of profits on that. And then profits on watching people in real time and selling their data.

advertising bot networks

"De-laminated" is the term I think fits the best.

A huge part of the gains are propped up by a handful of companies that investors believe are just on the cusp of artificial general intelligence and have thus valued those companies as having the potential to entirely eliminate entire categories of labour in the next decade.

The moment they realize they have been duped, all those "gains" will evaporate overnight.

Into what?

They would if there were more employee owned companies to work for.

The difference is the Dems actually have a track record of making the economy at least less worse than Republicans BY FAR.

Not to mention the Build Back Better bill was originally going to be the single most progressive infrastructure upgrade bill in US history, but it was gutted because of the GOP.

Yeah but only one side has active concentration camps

I’ve just replaced “the economy” and “stock market” with “rich people’s yacht money.”

Electing Harris would have meant Lina Khan would have stayed at the FTC and we wouldn’t have the jackass Trump just appointed to the Fed. Both parties are not the same.

Whether or not the economy can be called "OK" is extremely dependent on who says it and when. At the time of the election campaign, it was fair to say that the economy was OK. It wasn't great, but inflation was getting under control, employment numbers were rising, it was generally trending in the right direction and could be called "OK".

Then trump comes in and from his (more specifically his ownership group's) perspective, this is currently beyond OK. Profits for the ultra-rich are skyrocketing. They clamp down on immigration to get rid of the sources of cheapest labour, then make sure the cost of living keeps rising to push people into taking whatever job they can get, for wages they previously would never have accepted. All while cashing in on planned market swings.

But yeah, tell me again how both parties are the same.

One day they'll notice our peaceful protests, general strikes, and sign-waving, right?

...right?

The post-Covid economy under Biden did nothing but improve and Trump's idiotic decisions have caused it to do nothing but worsen.

But yeah, let's keep going the "both sides" bullshit that keeps Republicans in power.

I'm in the same boat.

Investments are doing great, but if I didn't already use the knowledge I gained growing up poor to live a very thrifty lifestyle, I would be absolutely screwed. Most people have no maneuverability in their budget and either have to work inhumane schedules or go without, in the wealthiest country in the world, and all because we have a couple of thousand billionaires. (And the two ruling parties exist solely to service said billionaires.)

Even so, I'm contemplating going 80%-90% into money markets and cash because while the performance of the market is great in recent years, it also scares me that it's propped up by seven companies built basically on hype only and no profit, which presumably cannot last forever.