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In reply to the discussion: Are you rooting for a stock market collapse over #Coronavirus just to hurt Pres @realDonaldTrump? [View all]progree
(10,864 posts)63. "If the gains of 2019 are erased & it causes people to rethink their support of this psychopath..."
I couldn't help but do the numbers:
S&P 500 closing prices
3386 2/19/20 all time high
2507 12/31/18 at close of 2018
It would take a 26.0% drop from the all time high to erase the gains of 2019
so that would be a serious plunge but not a great crash. (We're already 12.8% down from the all time high as of Friday's close)
(They usually measure the severity of a drop from the previous all time high, particularly one that's close in time like this one).
That's an ordinary bear market
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-stock-bear-markets-and-their-subsequent-recoveries-2388520
Bear markets are defined as periods when the stock market declines by 20% or more from the highest point to its subsequent lowest point. From 19002014, there were 32 bear markets. Statistically, they occur about once every 3.5 years and last an average of 367 days.
So yes, it's going to happen in the not-so-distant future. The reason we've gone this long without one is because of how far down we went in the last one (57% drop from peak to trough as measured by the S&P 500).
So if it's going to happen in the next one, two, three, four years, I'd much much rather have it happen before November than after.
I am convinced Trump would probably win if the economy was where it was in January and early February with substantially sub-4% unemployment and monthly job gains in the 150,000-200,000 range.
Since WWII, when the economy was good under a Republican president, a Democratic presidential candidate has never won. Democrats trying to unseat the Republicans only do so when the economy is trending poorly (or crashing). Some analysis I read in the Washington Spectator, but I think its true, although the number of sample points obviously is quite small.
I'm pretty sure Trump would lose if we had a recession begin, along with a bear market (or worse) but the NBER, which is the official score-keeper of recessions, takes a year to call one after it starts. So that's too late. But the unofficial but widely used definition of recession in the meantime is two back-to-back quarters of negative real GDP growth. Before the election that means Q2 and Q3 both have to be negative. Q3 ends September 30, and the first estimate of Q3 GDP will be in late October.
But anyway if things are obviously crashing (and with job losses), people won't need to wait to see the Q3 estimate to have their votes influenced.
Counting the so called double-dip recession of 1980-82 as one recession,
we've had 8 recessions since 1945: 1953, 1958, 1960-61, 1973-75, 1980-82, 1990-91, 2001, 2007-2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
which averages one every 9.4 years on average (starting from and including 1960-61, its one every 10 years on average).
either way we're overdue since the last one ended in June 2009.
And not to mention if the coronavirus turns out to be bad...
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Are you rooting for a stock market collapse over #Coronavirus just to hurt Pres @realDonaldTrump? [View all]
yuiyoshida
Feb 2020
OP
I know we're sorta friends and all (maybe not after this) but I'm rooting for $10/gallon gas
mr_lebowski
Mar 2020
#78
If people were serious about reducing fossil fuel usage, it needs to be much higher than $5
MichMan
Mar 2020
#71
I've been expecting the market drop, and been accused of 'rooting for it'...
Wounded Bear
Feb 2020
#4
If Coronavirus causes a stock market collapse, that means more disease and more deaths.
Cousin Dupree
Feb 2020
#14
of course not, but that will be the bee ess the Trumpigists will be spreading.
Thomas Hurt
Feb 2020
#20
***YES I AM, ABSOLUTELY***. I don't think Trump can be beaten in November if the stock market
progree
Feb 2020
#26
Hell No if the stock market collapses it will carry over in to the economy and affects jobs housing
lunasun
Feb 2020
#32
No, but when millions of people warned what a disaster the Retrumplicans would be
maxrandb
Feb 2020
#35
Couple the stock buy backs with a big helping of irrational exuberance
TexasBushwhacker
Mar 2020
#47
A long overdue correction to this bloated, overvalued stock market is a good thing.
ooky
Mar 2020
#44
If that's what it takes. We can recover from another collapse with good leadership. The markets
brewens
Mar 2020
#52
No - I'm hoping the market recovers without the FED - everything is so politicized these days.
walkingman
Mar 2020
#53
I'm rooting for people to see what a menace Trump is when crisis strikes
SiliconValley_Dem
Mar 2020
#62
"If the gains of 2019 are erased & it causes people to rethink their support of this psychopath..."
progree
Mar 2020
#63
Investors don't seem to be all that worried at this point -- S&P 500 futures up 0.50%
progree
Mar 2020
#66
I'm not rooting for a crash that severe, which was the worst collapse since the Great Depression
progree
Mar 2020
#75
"Even a whiff of that from our leadership would lead to an electoral wipe out."
LenaBaby61
Mar 2020
#79