Quantitative easing + all these stock buybacks from the Trump tax plan should get interesting. My money's on DOW 35k (just so the book can finally live up) before things get too frothy and crash. I don't think we've seen anywhere near the craziest of it yet.

I figured the gains from Nov 10th-present were from pricing in all the stock buybacks, given that the minute Trump won pretty much everyone on Wall St knew that some form of tax cuts were coming.

Profits more so in my opinion. But sure buybacks decrease the supply available and help buoy share prices.

You're talking about sharps. Uncles and housewives are nowhere near in all in yet. Another year like last year and stock mania will get going again.

Crypto is a scam dontchaknow? Just invest in the stock market, it's sound.

Careful dude, TRUMP's newly appointed Fed Chairman might be more of an inflation hawk than his predecessor.

Pretty sure we need to see interest rates rise and it's a healthy thing, otherwise when the economy cools off it's hard to inject stimulus. If the markets have to take a hit, so be it. If the markets can take a big hit without hurting the economy too much, even better.

There is no inflation except in things rich people want, and stuff like college that middle class people need to give their kids a chance. Everything else is soft to go along with consumer disposable income.

Profits, share buybacks, I was including almost every form of optimism and economic growth into why stocks have risen so much. Just saying I think things like share buybacks are more priced into the market since it hasn't been a secret there was going to be tax cuts since 11/9/16.

As far as uncles and housewives, they don't really move markets. Like 85% of the market is owned by 10% of people. And if you aren't optimistic or encouraged to "get in" after a 300% runup then you never will be.

As far as Corsi, I'd imagine he is dovish similar to his predecessors if there were real signs of economic stagnation/recession. Not to mention he is a republican and will not want a market downturn on Trump's watch.

I dunno about that. I definitely feel like what I spend on food goes up 3-5% a year even if gov't inflation #'s don't say this is true.

Housing, healthcare, higher ed have all skyrocketed. Energy costs were beginning to climb before the downturn last week.

So basically all the important stuff.

When your mailman is all in, it's a bubble. Until then I just assume the market is rational and I will never outthink the sharps. Only in manias will I think about pulling my money out of index funds. So that's all I care about.

Yeah inflation exists. But it hasn't been crisis level since the early 80s. Crisis level is what everyone means about when they say "inflation fears". Runaway inflation.

That's fine and it is likely the way 99.9% of us should think, but not really what you said when talking DOW 35k. That was what my response was for.

Dunno about the mailman thing though, I mean was the mailman all in in late '07? Ehh, didn't feel like it from what I recall. Bubbles can come in different shapes and sizes with different causes and effects.

Dow 35k is my guess at where the next stock mania ends.

The mailman was flipping houses in late '07.

One thing economists dont tell you. Inflation is almost impossible to measure. Its become even more difficult in recent times due to technology change.

To illistrate this. Iprobably listed to music worth $2000 by 90s standard on spotify this weekend, and chatted to 10 of my friends around the world on skype and facebopk for free, when in 1998 i spent $100 bucks on one international call.

There are so many judgement calls that go into inflation modeling. Its no coincidence that at the end of it, the model tells them that things havent changed so much...

I have an iPhone in my pocket that does 10x what my first Pentium PC did for 1/4 the price.

I've been in Mexico for 2 months. Almost everyone has a smart phone. People selling bananas on the side of the road - Mom and daughter are on their iPhones. I think they get our used iPhones. It's changed the way they live you can tell. Most of them skipped the PC revolution but now they have 90% of a PC in their pockets.

So yeah - lots of stuff like a car is still too expensive for them, but they can now afford a computer and cel phone.

Measuring inflation isn't hard. You might want to go and learn what economists measure inflation with.

Also, technology has nothing to do with it.

Economists have talked about how certain products becoming free is hard to price into productivity gains. Like having wikipedia instead of buying a physical encyclopedia or using uber instead of driving a car, etc....This has more to do with measuring productivity than inflation though.

But if anything I would say the gov't #'s understate inflation rather than overstate. If you poll Americans about their economic anxieties, rising prices/inflation is a common theme.

Yeah, stuff that makes our lives easier gets cheaper, but not necessarily the stuff that makes our lives better. I.e food, energy, housing, healthcare, education.

Also don't they exclude stuff like food and fuel for CPI?

There's no inflation except for housing, healthcare, education, and childcare.

Those are life necessities; not 'things rich people want'.

First of all if the stock market gets a big haircut due to Fed monetary policy but it is beneficial to the economy in the long run, sure no problem. I am more of an interested observer than anything else. I'll just state that I think the long end of the yield curve is pretty safe. Government has a vested interest in keeping inflation as measured by the CPI low.

Food and fuel should be part of all CPIs. CPIs are mostly daily purchases.

I know this isn't a fed mandate at all but given we're going to have trillion dollar deficits soon even in good economic times, would this persuade someone like Powell to be more dovish with rates? Given that getting to the 3% range would mean a massive uptick in interest that the fed gov't has to pay to finance debts?

No

Food and fuel is dropped from the Core Inflation rate but not the CPI.

Your smug econ 101 condescension is getting old. **** off.

You keep making silly statements because you don't know what you're talking about. I'm trying to help. Seriously, go look at how inflation is measured.

Econ 101. (Smug dicks like you). Measuring inflation is easy. You take a basket of goods, make informed judgements about what to put in, leave out and change over time.

Econ 102: hmm. Wait. A few select goods like computers seems to change dramatically in terms of what you get for the same price. Never mind. Its only a tiny fraction of a percent of total consumer spend. It doesnt really matter. Lets just fudge it by including "home computer" and "smart phone" in the basket and ignoring the two yearly doubling in performance.

Actual economists now: ah ****. Seems this is way more widespread than when these models were first designed and a much larger proportion of GDP. Oh wait, now theres health too. Thats a way bigger deal. If health products dramtically increase in quality for the same price, is that the same as if the same quality goes down in price? How do you even measure quality? What about free goods? What about dramatic changes in quality across all industries driven by technology? Its nice that loads of us are getting PHDs off the back of these debates, but this stuff is really important. I think we need to involve the politicians into this debate, because its clear that people are making major economic and political decisions off of the back of our numbers.

Trump: look at my yuuuuge stock market!

Economists: WAAF