Stock Market or jobs?

[billwald]

>What do you all think the stimulus did for the economy

It did nothing for the working class economy because it neither bailed out home owners not was it spent into the economy.

It helped the economy of those of us who live off invested assets.

 

[InTheLight]

>What do you all think the stimulus did for the economy

It did nothing for the working class economy because it neither bailed out home owners not was it spent into the economy.

It helped the economy of those of us who live off invested assets.

And another person that is confusing TARP with the Stimulus Bill.

 

[Borneol]

I would say that jobs are most important. As we have seen a rising stock market, and government Keynesian policies to reinflate do not help with job creation.

The stock market seems to be more of a bubble situation to me. The government has made money cheap with printing more of it, and saving money difficult with ultra low interest rates. In essence the Feds are promoting the idea that we should buy, buy buy, consume more, go into debt, not save. This creates bubbles, as we have seen with many metals, oil, and other commodities over the past few years, along with stocks.

Thought Dr. Weiss had a nice article on this:

"The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room"

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/49557-49557

excerpt:

...Everybody knows about it. Everybody’s talking about it. But almost nobody has any idea what to DO about it!

This vast, massive, GLOBAL orgy of money printing — and the explosion in the world’s money supply that it’s creating — IS THE 800-pound gorilla in the room.

Already, that money has helped push U.S. stocks up to unsustainable levels as investors from all over the world pour new money into Wall Street.

Just since the first of this year, the Dow is up nearly 7% — and many household name stocks have fared much better …

Tractor Supply is up 42% … Polaris Industries is up 43% … Red Hat is up 47% … VeriFone Systems is up 50% … and Netflix is up 53%.

Plus Fossil is up 62% … LinkedIn is up 67% … Sears is up 67% … Cobalt Energy is up 73% … and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is up 128%.

And this may surprise you given the global debt problems, but Bank of America has surged a mind-boggling 50% since January 1.

Now, you have to wonder: Is the company — Bank of America — 50% more valuable than it was just 16 weeks ago?

Of course not!

It’s still choking on toxic assets. It still has a Weiss Financial Strength Rating of just D+ (‘Weak’). Worst of all, the European crisis is erupting again, exposing the bank to major new dangers.

But the trillions of newly created dollars, euros, pounds and yen sloshing around in the U.S. economy have to go somewhere — and for reasons known only to themselves, many investors have decided that BofA stock is where they want to be....

 

[InTheLight]

I understand the difference between the two and you are incorrect about no Republican voting for the stimulas plan. The republicans made it possible

On January 28, 2009, the House passed the bill by a 244–188 vote. All but 11 Democrats voted for the bill, and 177 Republicans voted against it (one Republican did not vote.)

So no Republican House members voted for it.


On February 10, the Senate voted 61–37 with only three Republicans voted in favor (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter), with Specter later switching to the Democratic party.

You are correct that some Republicans (2) voted for the bill. You are incorrect that the Republicans made it possible.

 

[InTheLight]

But the trillions of newly created dollars, euros, pounds and yen sloshing around in the U.S. economy have to go somewhere

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Individual stocks don't go up because the money supply increases. Individual stocks go up (mainly) because the company is profitable and/or the company is poised to be profitable. There are other factors but the money supply is NOT one of them.

And yes, Bank of America is worth more now than it was 16 months ago.

 

[billwald]

Over 60% of stock trades are made by high speed computers and the price "trends" are measured in microseconds. Long term profitability is immaterial.


from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis

In finance, technical analysis is security analysis discipline for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume.[1] Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis build on and incorporate many of the same tools of technical analysis [2] [3][4] [5], which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by efficient-market hypothesis which states that prices of any tradable instrument are essentially unpredictable.[6]