Top is in

[dragoncar]

Will Friday bring four tops to the First week in July

The Four Tops performed with the original lineup until 1997.  On Jan 3, 1997, S&P500 was at 748.03.  748.03 times 4 is 2992.12.  Today the S&P500 closed at 2,995.82.  TOP IS IN

[JAYSLOL]

Top is in!

2,999.99 will be the top

You heard it here first

Top is in

And we’ll party like it’s 2999.99

[techwiz]

@realDonaldTrump Tweet July 2, 2019 8:44pm

Today’s Stock Market is the highest in the history of our great Country! This is the 104th time since the Election of 2016 that we have reached a NEW HIGH. Congratulations USA!

Top is in 104 times since 2016 not fake news!

[TomTX]

Can we finally declare thorstach the winner over mrpercentage yet?

You're assuming they are different people, but anyways thorstach is certainly my favourite, but I'm not sure we could call either of them a winner.

I was going to post an epic burn meme. Then I checked the 2018 S&P500 close of day top.  Then I plugged it into an inflation calculator. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Adjusted for inflation, the January 26, 2018 top of $2,872.87 was worth $2,968.20 in May 2019 dollars. Today's top was $2,964.33. TOP HAS BEEN IN ALL ALONG!

Sorry folks, top has been in and thorstach has been winning this whole time. Hope you sold when he said so. Top was in. Like an oscillating tide, that accelerates most rapidly near the center of its course, but advances and recedes ever more slowly near the peaks and troughs, the beginning of the top was in 2018, and now we are at the end of the top. Perhaps more like a tsunami than a tide, for a tide crosses the same ground many times, while a tsunami sets a high water mark that may not be passed for centuries or even a geologic age. Top is in!

You forgot the reinvested dividends.

[forummm]

Goddamit. Apparently I actually called the bottom on TSLA.

So, I like Tesla as a company -

@TomTX
Don't. Tesla is a disaster as a company and is headed towards bankruptcy. The stock will be volatile as it heads to zero. But zero is where it's going.

Also Musk is a fraud/con artist who is doing damage to the EV movement through his egregious behavior and massive incompetence. He is proving to the entire industry that the EV market is extremely small and massively loss-making.

LOL.

Yep, I sure don't see massively more Teslas on the road than any other EV, or even all other EVs combined. Totally don't exist. Tesla didn't have ~80% of BEV sales in the USA last year, if they weren't around the BEV market would totally be much larger.

Oh wait, is it opposite day?

It's easy to sell $1 for $0.85. That doesn't make the company sustainable. Krispy Kreme sold a lot of donuts before they went bankrupt. The firm's economics matter. There's a reason you only see Teslas in EV sales. Other makers aren't willing to lose as much money selling them. The other makers will be much more likely to stay in business.

They just sold a lot of cars in Q2. But to do it they had to cut prices 6 times so far this year, discount (I saw up to 40% discounts in some deals) on top of that, give incentives on top of that (like "free" supercharging), create a new lower cost option (created in Q1 but delivered in Q2), bundle autopilot with it, commit massive subsidy fraud in Canada, etc. Tesla does a lot of accounting shenanigans. In general with their "record sales" they should lose around a half billion dollars for the quarter. But that could be more (due to prior shenanigans coming back to bite them) or less (due to additional shenanigans now).

Their prior record was Q4. Back then:

*SR+ didn’t exist
*Model 3 wasn’t available in EU
*Model 3 wasn’t available in China
*SX were 30% of total deliveries
*AWD was >60% of Model 3 deliveries
*The cheapest Model 3 was the Mid-range at 46k without any autopilot features. With AP, it was 51k. Now the cheapest Model 3 is 39.9k including AP.

Now all the high end variants are a much smaller portion of the mix. Prices are lower. They are going keep losing a fortune (plus/minus accounting shenanigans).

[forummm]

I live in a wealthy suburb outside New York. Teslas are very common here. There are virtually no other electric vehicles. Wealthy areas in California are the same. I asked a friend if they were buying a Tesla and she said, no, they are just too common. Elon Musk is also running the most advanced rocket company in the world. So, while I am not buying their stock, your comments seem ludicrous from here.

Goddamit. Apparently I actually called the bottom on TSLA.

So, I like Tesla as a company -

@TomTX
Don't. Tesla is a disaster as a company and is headed towards bankruptcy. The stock will be volatile as it heads to zero. But zero is where it's going.

Also Musk is a fraud/con artist who is doing damage to the EV movement through his egregious behavior and massive incompetence. He is proving to the entire industry that the EV market is extremely small and massively loss-making.

LOL.

Yep, I sure don't see massively more Teslas on the road than any other EV, or even all other EVs combined. Totally don't exist. Tesla didn't have ~80% of BEV sales in the USA last year, if they weren't around the BEV market would totally be much larger.

Oh wait, is it opposite day?

See my other reply. Selling a lot of cars does not mean the company is healthy. The only reason they can sell a lot of cars is by cutting prices or abusing subsidies (in some cases fraud). The massive misperceptions of the company is probably the biggest reason why the stock is so ridiculously overvalued. It's quite the social psychology phenomenon.

[JAYSLOL]

Top is in!

2,999.99 will be the top

You heard it here first

Top is in

Happy 4th of July, here’s to getting back on track to the top!

[dragoncar]

You’re gonna love my nuts!

[catorbe]

You’re gonna love my nuts!

Risky Click of the day!

[Radagast]

Can we finally declare thorstach the winner over mrpercentage yet?

You're assuming they are different people, but anyways thorstach is certainly my favourite, but I'm not sure we could call either of them a winner.

I was going to post an epic burn meme. Then I checked the 2018 S&P500 close of day top.  Then I plugged it into an inflation calculator. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Adjusted for inflation, the January 26, 2018 top of $2,872.87 was worth $2,968.20 in May 2019 dollars. Today's top was $2,964.33. TOP HAS BEEN IN ALL ALONG!

Sorry folks, top has been in and thorstach has been winning this whole time. Hope you sold when he said so. Top was in. Like an oscillating tide, that accelerates most rapidly near the center of its course, but advances and recedes ever more slowly near the peaks and troughs, the beginning of the top was in 2018, and now we are at the end of the top. Perhaps more like a tsunami than a tide, for a tide crosses the same ground many times, while a tsunami sets a high water mark that may not be passed for centuries or even a geologic age. Top is in!

You forgot the reinvested dividends.

You only say that because you don't want to believe that Top is in

[TomTX]

It's easy to sell $1 for $0.85. That doesn't make the company sustainable. Krispy Kreme sold a lot of donuts before they went bankrupt.

Krispy Kreme seems to still be making a heck of a lot of donuts:

https://krispykreme.com/locate/all-locations

The firm's economics matter. There's a reason you only see Teslas in EV sales. Other makers aren't willing to lose as much money selling them. The other makers will be much more likely to stay in business.

Tesla has positive gross margins, on the order of 20-25%. This is quite good for the auto industry.

They also are in a massive growth phase. They doubled production from 2017->2018. Which is up from their prior growth rate of ~50% per year (with large swings, of course)

Growth costs money.

They just sold a lot of cars in Q2. But to do it they had to cut prices 6 times so far this year, discount (I saw up to 40% discounts in some deals) on top of that, give incentives on top of that (like "free" supercharging),

Gosh, if you roll in all the Ford dealers - Ford probably makes a thousand price cuts and discounts an hour.

You have no point.

create a new lower cost option (created in Q1 but delivered in Q2),

Oh, it's a negative for the company that they finally started selling the cheaper Model 3 they'd been promising?

Strange, I remember all these people negative on Tesla who bitched incessantly that they hadn't put it out.

Which is it?

commit massive subsidy fraud in Canada, etc.

LOL.

Suuure. "Massive subsidy fraud" - better call the RCMP.

Oh wait, Tesla's actually following the law as written.

In general with their "record sales" they should lose around a half billion dollars for the quarter .

Care to place a small wager on that?

[ender]

See my other reply. Selling a lot of cars does not mean the company is healthy. The only reason they can sell a lot of cars is by cutting prices or abusing subsidies (in some cases fraud). The massive misperceptions of the company is probably the biggest reason why the stock is so ridiculously overvalued. It's quite the social psychology phenomenon.

I think it's more that a lot of people want Tesla to succeed than anything else.

[Monocle Money Mouth]

See my other reply. Selling a lot of cars does not mean the company is healthy. The only reason they can sell a lot of cars is by cutting prices or abusing subsidies (in some cases fraud). The massive misperceptions of the company is probably the biggest reason why the stock is so ridiculously overvalued. It's quite the social psychology phenomenon.

I think it's more that a lot of people want Tesla to succeed than anything else.

So does that mean the top is in?

[ender]

See my other reply. Selling a lot of cars does not mean the company is healthy. The only reason they can sell a lot of cars is by cutting prices or abusing subsidies (in some cases fraud). The massive misperceptions of the company is probably the biggest reason why the stock is so ridiculously overvalued. It's quite the social psychology phenomenon.

I think it's more that a lot of people want Tesla to succeed than anything else.

So does that mean the top is in?

Only if you truly want it to be in.

[aspiringnomad]

LOL.

Suuure. "Massive subsidy fraud" - better call the RCMP.

Oh wait, Tesla's actually following the law as written.

Re: "Massive subsidy fraud." Hyperbole top is in. Hard to take seriously anything that forummm posts after reading that.

The irony is that the spirit of the law was probably "Let's help the incumbents while screwing Tesla!" but you can't present it as such in a Canadian court of law without getting laughed out of it, so there's absolutely no recourse for going after Tesla for complying with the letter of said law. Tesla shrugged and came up with a simple, effective, and legal strategy to make the Model 3 eligible for the subsidies - if anything, it's a point in the competent management column for the company.

[Financial.Velociraptor]

Care to place a small wager on that?

How about a large one?  I have $46,000 in synthetic short exposure to TSLA.  In the green several thousand.

[forummm]

It's easy to sell $1 for $0.85. That doesn't make the company sustainable. Krispy Kreme sold a lot of donuts before they went bankrupt.

Krispy Kreme seems to still be making a heck of a lot of donuts:

https://krispykreme.com/locate/all-locations

The firm's economics matter. There's a reason you only see Teslas in EV sales. Other makers aren't willing to lose as much money selling them. The other makers will be much more likely to stay in business.

Tesla has positive gross margins, on the order of 20-25%. This is quite good for the auto industry.

They also are in a massive growth phase. They doubled production from 2017->2018. Which is up from their prior growth rate of ~50% per year (with large swings, of course)

Growth costs money.

They just sold a lot of cars in Q2. But to do it they had to cut prices 6 times so far this year, discount (I saw up to 40% discounts in some deals) on top of that, give incentives on top of that (like "free" supercharging),

Gosh, if you roll in all the Ford dealers - Ford probably makes a thousand price cuts and discounts an hour.

You have no point.

create a new lower cost option (created in Q1 but delivered in Q2),

Oh, it's a negative for the company that they finally started selling the cheaper Model 3 they'd been promising?

Strange, I remember all these people negative on Tesla who bitched incessantly that they hadn't put it out.

Which is it?

commit massive subsidy fraud in Canada, etc.

LOL.

Suuure. "Massive subsidy fraud" - better call the RCMP.

Oh wait, Tesla's actually following the law as written.

In general with their "record sales" they should lose around a half billion dollars for the quarter .

Care to place a small wager on that?

Re Krispy Kreme, yes the brand survived bankruptcy and is now operating in private hands. The shareholders got wiped out. Which was my point. However, it's much easier to keep a donut brand going than completely restructure a worst-in-industry quality auto manufacturer in the highest-in-country cost of labor area. The factory is worth more for its land to build houses on. Tesla has no meaningful IP. The brand has some value, although Elon's decisions are rapidly threatening to erode it. The brand has the worst rating of any car maker in Norway for example.

Tesla's gross margins are gamed and not comparable to other makers. They exclude costs other makers include like R&D, the cost of selling the cars (which dealers pay, but that is taken out of the other maker margins), they severely underreserve for warranty expense, etc.

Tesla is no longer growing. Q4 was their revenue peak and I doubt they ever get back there again. And they are actually shrinking operations. So no, they aren't losing money because they are growing.

If you want to wager on whatever you can feel free to buy whatever securities you feel express your view. I personally think that betting on short term Tesla metrics is folly because they are so heavily manipulated that you can't count on any one report to accurately reflect what's going on. It's easy for them to move expenses from one quarter to the next. And while it's illegal I think they likely also capitalize inputs (increasing earnings) as whistleblowers have claimed. There is no end to their shenanigans.

[forummm]

See my other reply. Selling a lot of cars does not mean the company is healthy. The only reason they can sell a lot of cars is by cutting prices or abusing subsidies (in some cases fraud). The massive misperceptions of the company is probably the biggest reason why the stock is so ridiculously overvalued. It's quite the social psychology phenomenon.

I think it's more that a lot of people want Tesla to succeed than anything else.

Also very true.

[forummm]

LOL.

Suuure. "Massive subsidy fraud" - better call the RCMP.

Oh wait, Tesla's actually following the law as written.

Re: "Massive subsidy fraud." Hyperbole top is in. Hard to take seriously anything that forummm posts after reading that.

The irony is that the spirit of the law was probably "Let's help the incumbents while screwing Tesla!" but you can't present it as such in a Canadian court of law without getting laughed out of it, so there's absolutely no recourse for going after Tesla for complying with the letter of said law. Tesla shrugged and came up with a simple, effective, and legal strategy to make the Model 3 eligible for the subsidies - if anything, it's a point in the competent management column for the company.

They made up a fake version of the car that they made it nearly impossible to actually buy so that a much more expensive version of the car could qualify for a $13k subsidy. That looks like fraud to me. They did the same thing in Germany and Germany decided it was fraud.

But you are right, in that if there are three things that Tesla excels at, one is rooting out and maximizing utilization of government subsidies. Like how they got extra CA ZEV credits (which they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars) for their battery swap service that wasn't actually available to people. Eventually CA put an end to the extra credits. The other 2 things they excel at are propaganda and separating investors from their money.

[forummm]

Care to place a small wager on that?

How about a large one?  I have $46,000 in synthetic short exposure to TSLA.  In the green several thousand.

Hopefully your position is a longer term one. While the long term trajectory is almost certainly down, in the short term it's easy for Elon to manipulate the stock. He's a masterful penny stock promoter. This stock just doesn't happen to trade in the pennies. Yet.

They can always pull some accounting shenanigans to make the loss not so bad this Q. But I don't think they will be able to hide the demand problems over the next 3-12 months. But Elon has been very successful at mortgaging the future to avoid bankruptcy today. He might be able to keep that up for awhile.

[forummm]

Oh, it's a negative for the company that they finally started selling the cheaper Model 3 they'd been promising?

Strange, I remember all these people negative on Tesla who bitched incessantly that they hadn't put it out.

A company that is "production constrained" and losing $700M in a quarter does not lower prices. They would raise them. The only reason to lower prices is if they need to move down the demand curve to find enough demand to match their supply. And they can't afford to lower supply because they are heavily leveraged and have minimum purchase agreements, and building too much capacity (due to insufficient or faulty market research). The heavy leverage means they need to keep selling cars, even at a loss, to keep cash flow going (even if it's negative excluding capital raises) to keep paying the past due supplier bills. Tesla has a 3rd percentile D&B rating. That means there are only 2% of all companies (including small private firms) that have a worse credit profile. Their ability to survive is dependent on frequent and massive capital raises to pay their cash burn.

[RWD]

Can we move this discussion to the Tesla thread?
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/is-tesla-a-good-investment/



3000 is the impossible barrier! Top is in!

[TomTX]

Care to place a small wager on that?

How about a large one?  I have $46,000 in synthetic short exposure to TSLA.  In the green several thousand.

The suggested bet wasn't stock price, it was your claim that TSLA losses for 2Q19 would be over a half billion dollars.

[JAYSLOL]

Can we move this discussion to the Tesla thread?
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/is-tesla-a-good-investment/

Yes, it’s distracting us from the important work we do around here.  This thread is reserved for talking about the impending doom of the top, bacon and cat memes... wait a sec.. no.. it can’t be!

[BicycleB]

This top business is electrifying.

[aboatguy]

No four tops last week.... maybe there will be four or more tops this month...   the tippity toppity  apex summit top is  not in....

[Threshkin]

Can we move this discussion to the Tesla thread?
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/is-tesla-a-good-investment/

Yes, it’s distracting us from the important work we do around here.  This thread is reserved for talking about the impending doom of the top, bacon and cat memes... wait a sec.. no.. it can’t be!

Needs more bacon!

[techwiz]

Needs more bacon!

Here is some bacon to top it off!



Top is in!

[ILikeDividends]

Needs more bacon!

Here is some bacon to top it off!

Just looking at that makes me want to have a heart attack.

Bacon porn top is in!

[dragoncar]

Here is some bacon to top it off!

[forummm]

Care to place a small wager on that?

How about a large one?  I have $46,000 in synthetic short exposure to TSLA.  In the green several thousand.

The suggested bet wasn't stock price, it was your claim that TSLA losses for 2Q19 would be over a half billion dollars.

I said "around" half a billion dollars plus or minus accounting shenanigans. The shenanigans could easily be hundreds of millions of dollars. Hard to bet on that when the person signing those financial statements has no concern about violating federal law.

[forummm]

I know this thread is intended to make fun of people who try to time the market. But in all seriousness stock valuations are RIDICULOUS. About as high as they have ever been historically (1929, 2000 levels). And the global economy has been cycling into slowdown. Europe is in mild recession already. A lot of US recession signals are starting to flip over (nothing strongly determinative yet). There is an elevated risk of recession in the near term. And historically stock markets usually lead recessions, going down substantially in the few months before they officially start. And the official recession determination is made months after the recession starts. Anyway, stocks would need to fall about 65% from here before they got to historical average valuations. And usually the market doesn't stop at historical average when it's correcting back down (i.e. it goes even lower).

So I'm not saying this is the top. But this is an ideal time to make sure you aren't overweight equities. And be prepared to have the market go down 65% or 80% or whatever since that's a realistic possibility by the end of this market cycle (whenever that happens). The corporate sector is crazy leveraged right now. IIRC 13% of firms don't make enough cash flow to fund their debts. The recession could easily get ugly (2008 except corporate debt instead of mortgages). And the governments worldwide have little left in the way of monetary and fiscal policy levers that they can pull. No guarantee, but a real significant risk is ahead.

But what do I know. I'm just a full time investor up >1,000% the past couple years while the market return is single digits.

Be careful.

[dragoncar]

Who you gonna listen to a fuckin peanut?

[ScreamingHeadGuy]

We call out to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from The Top.”

[Exflyboy]

I know this thread is intended to make fun of people who try to time the market. But in all seriousness stock valuations are RIDICULOUS. About as high as they have ever been historically (1929, 2000 levels). And the global economy has been cycling into slowdown. Europe is in mild recession already. A lot of US recession signals are starting to flip over (nothing strongly determinative yet). There is an elevated risk of recession in the near term. And historically stock markets usually lead recessions, going down substantially in the few months before they officially start. And the official recession determination is made months after the recession starts. Anyway, stocks would need to fall about 65% from here before they got to historical average valuations. And usually the market doesn't stop at historical average when it's correcting back down (i.e. it goes even lower).

So I'm not saying this is the top. But this is an ideal time to make sure you aren't overweight equities. And be prepared to have the market go down 65% or 80% or whatever since that's a realistic possibility by the end of this market cycle (whenever that happens). The corporate sector is crazy leveraged right now. IIRC 13% of firms don't make enough cash flow to fund their debts. The recession could easily get ugly (2008 except corporate debt instead of mortgages). And the governments worldwide have little left in the way of monetary and fiscal policy levers that they can pull. No guarantee, but a real significant risk is ahead.

But what do I know. I'm just a full time investor up >1,000% the past couple years while the market return is single digits.

Be careful.

So historic PE of the S&P500 is about 15. Currently we are running about 22.. which is about 45% above the historic.. Call it 1.5X

Wouldn't stock prices have to fall about a third to get down to fair value?

I'm asking not arguing..:)

[Radagast]

I know this thread is intended to make fun of people who try to time the market. But in all seriousness stock valuations are RIDICULOUS. About as high as they have ever been historically (1929, 2000 levels).

This is an updated toned down ctrl+c of parts of something I actually said to Vand :D

      Jan 1 '00   July 9 '19   % Less
P/E      29.0          22.2          23%
P/E10  43.8          30.4          31%
P/Div   82.0          53.2          35%
P/B      5.05          3.50          31%
Many things likely make prices lower than they appear relative to fundamentals today in comparison to in 2000.

It will turn out to be a bubble if it pops. If it doesn't pop, it wasn't a bubble.

And the global economy has been cycling into slowdown. Europe is in mild recession already. A lot of US recession signals are starting to flip over (nothing strongly determinative yet). There is an elevated risk of recession in the near term. And historically stock markets usually lead recessions, going down substantially in the few months before they officially start. And the official recession determination is made months after the recession starts. Anyway, stocks would need to fall about 65% from here before they got to historical average valuations. And usually the market doesn't stop at historical average when it's correcting back down (i.e. it goes even lower).

So I'm not saying this is the top. But this is an ideal time to make sure you aren't overweight equities. And be prepared to have the market go down 65% or 80% or whatever since that's a realistic possibility by the end of this market cycle (whenever that happens). The corporate sector is crazy leveraged right now. IIRC 13% of firms don't make enough cash flow to fund their debts. The recession could easily get ugly (2008 except corporate debt instead of mortgages). And the governments worldwide have little left in the way of monetary and fiscal policy levers that they can pull. No guarantee, but a real significant risk is ahead.

The S&P500 will drop to 1,552.87 in intraday trading on March 24, 20020.

But what do I know. I'm just a full time investor up >1,000% the past couple years while the market return is single digits.

Be careful.

OK so we have established that you are lucky, rather than merely skillful?

But, if someone who is 100% in stocks and past the halfway mark happened to put 25% of their allocation into bonds right now, probably not a bad move. Of course I might say that anyway :-). But yeah it is probably a slightly better than average time to do so, though not earth shatteringly obviously so.

[ysette9]

I have read smart people talk about how accounting methods have changed over time, so P/E today isn’t exactly the same as it was in the past. Can anyone speak to that and what it may mean for what this means for the predictive power of P/E 10?

[RWD]

I have read smart people talk about how accounting methods have changed over time, so P/E today isn’t exactly the same as it was in the past. Can anyone speak to that and what it may mean for what this means for the predictive power of P/E 10?

I assume you're referring to this article?
https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-wait-youll-likely-miss-out?nopaging=1

[aspiringnomad]

Who you gonna listen to a fuckin peanut?

And a peanut who didn't mention anything about candlesticks, dead bouncing cats, or hemline indices?! To be fair, an 80% drop in the market was thrown in there along with lottery-like returns, so I'll probably subscribe to the newsletter anyway.

[ysette9]

I have read smart people talk about how accounting methods have changed over time, so P/E today isn’t exactly the same as it was in the past. Can anyone speak to that and what it may mean for what this means for the predictive power of P/E 10?

I assume you're referring to this article?
https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-wait-youll-likely-miss-out?nopaging=1

I hadn’t seen the article itself, apparently only references to some of the content. Thanks for sharing. That was really good.

[ysette9]

Who you gonna listen to a fuckin peanut?

And a peanut who didn't mention anything about candlesticks, dead bouncing cats, or hemline indices?! To be fair, an 80% drop in the market was thrown in there along with lottery-like returns, so I'll probably subscribe to the newsletter anyway.

My investment policy statement tells me to “just keep swimming” and makes no mention of dead cat bounces, so I’ll just keep investing.

[JAYSLOL]

Who you gonna listen to a fuckin peanut?

And a peanut who didn't mention anything about candlesticks, dead bouncing cats, or hemline indices?! To be fair, an 80% drop in the market was thrown in there along with lottery-like returns, so I'll probably subscribe to the newsletter anyway.

My investment policy statement tells me to “just keep swimming” and makes no mention of dead cat bounces, so I’ll just keep investing.

My investment policy statement is determined almost completely by dead cat bounces... and bacon.  Am I doing this right? 

[UnleashHell]

Who you gonna listen to a fuckin peanut?

And a peanut who didn't mention anything about candlesticks, dead bouncing cats, or hemline indices?! To be fair, an 80% drop in the market was thrown in there along with lottery-like returns, so I'll probably subscribe to the newsletter anyway.

My investment policy statement tells me to “just keep swimming” and makes no mention of dead cat bounces, so I’ll just keep investing.

My investment policy statement is determined almost completely by dead cat bounces... and bacon.  Am I doing this right?

seems reasonable as long as you don't mix them up.



1) The S&P 500 has pretty much gone nowhere in the last 18 months.
2) the S&P 500 has averaged about 9% over the last 5 years


Both of those are true so what does it mean? Probably nothing. Could be that the lack of movement in the last 18 months is the s&p returning to a normal market return. 30 month of Obama and 30 months of Trump has resulted in an average return.


So the s&p is at or near a all time high.
isn't that nearly always true?


I don't see any glaring indicators that its going to crash. Sure there's a lot of pressure on the feds to cut rates - but that's because companies like cheap debt. 

I don't see any reason to do anything other than keep on investing.


except of course the top is in....

[HPstache]

S&P 3K !  Top is in.

[GuitarStv]

But what do I know. I'm just a full time investor up >1,000% the past couple years while the market return is single digits.

1000% over a couple years?  Neato!  Assuming you've got ten dollars invested today, in ten years time you should be upwards of 14 million then.  That's very impressive.  Care to post your current stock positions so we can track your phenomenal stock gainz over time?

[RWD]

S&P 3K !  Top is in.

It heard you and ducked back under

[Cookie78]

S&P 3K !  Top is in.

It heard you and ducked back under

I call that proof of top!

[DadJokes]

Top is in!

2,999.99 will be the top

You heard it here first

Top is in

S&P 3K !  Top is in.

It heard you and ducked back under

I was off by 2.99 - I apologize for being so wrong with my prediction. I throw myself at the mercy of the forum. All hail the top, our new overlord.

[dougules]

Top is in!

2,999.99 will be the top

You heard it here first

Top is in

S&P 3K !  Top is in.

It heard you and ducked back under

I was off by 2.99 - I apologize for being so wrong with my prediction. I throw myself at the mercy of the forum. All hail the top, our new overlord.

You missed your chance to play it off by saying you were calling the close and not the intra-day. 

[dougules]

I know this thread is intended to make fun of people who try to time the market. But in all seriousness stock valuations are RIDICULOUS. About as high as they have ever been historically (1929, 2000 levels). And the global economy has been cycling into slowdown. Europe is in mild recession already. A lot of US recession signals are starting to flip over (nothing strongly determinative yet). There is an elevated risk of recession in the near term. And historically stock markets usually lead recessions, going down substantially in the few months before they officially start. And the official recession determination is made months after the recession starts. Anyway, stocks would need to fall about 65% from here before they got to historical average valuations. And usually the market doesn't stop at historical average when it's correcting back down (i.e. it goes even lower).

So I'm not saying this is the top. But this is an ideal time to make sure you aren't overweight equities. And be prepared to have the market go down 65% or 80% or whatever since that's a realistic possibility by the end of this market cycle (whenever that happens). The corporate sector is crazy leveraged right now. IIRC 13% of firms don't make enough cash flow to fund their debts. The recession could easily get ugly (2008 except corporate debt instead of mortgages). And the governments worldwide have little left in the way of monetary and fiscal policy levers that they can pull. No guarantee, but a real significant risk is ahead.

But what do I know. I'm just a full time investor up >1,000% the past couple years while the market return is single digits.

Be careful.

There's a good chance you're right, but even if you are

a) who knows when and how the dénouement will play out. 

b) other options are just as overvalued. 

c) the top has already been in for 2 years now!  Haven't all the bacon eating bouncing cats taught you that?