Quote from: exstasie on January 04, 2019, 01:01:50 AM

Quote from: Hydrogen on January 02, 2019, 05:07:28 PM

Interestingly, we have little indication of a bear market. All economic and business metrics appear positive and hint at growth.

What we're seeing with the DOW is a massive dump by whales, executives and major stock holders. It could be coordinated and hint @ market manipulation.

These questions are difficult to answer. Especially for someone like me who hasn't paid much attention to markets for a long time and is constantly surprised at the low standards of information available.

The economy is quite strong right now. GDP showed continued growth in 2018 and unemployment is quite low. While there are signs that growth may be close to peaking (in the sense of broad business cycles), I'd agree that people are too hasty to proclaim "bear market." There was arguably a lot of overspeculation in the stock market throughout 2017 and 2018, and now we're on the heels of a strong 10-year bull market. So it shouldn't be any surprise the markets have corrected down to 2017 levels.

I think we should distinguish between real economy and financial one

Obviously, stocks may be falling and if you are an investor that may look or feel to you like the end of days, while for the average Joe, I mean, for the one who is not heavily invested in anything (i.e. people from real world with real jobs), things don't necessarily look as grim. After all, the companies whose stocks are falling are not going anywhere provided they produce real value, not air (in Warren Buffett's terms)

Apart from that, we shouldn't forget about the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment rates (in reasonable limits, of course). When inflation rates rise, unemployment rates typically go down, i.e. more people get employed, which is good for the economy as a whole because the total output increases. To sum it up, things are complicated in the modern world