Rising defaults on car loans, increasing term lengths for car loans, people living off credit cards, increasing unemployment, reduced job availability, divisive politics, unstable foreign relations, out of control spending/debt, … and yet a stock market that is at record highs. I also wonder why gold and crypto are doing so well at the same time. Everything is high but it seems like a bad situation. And yet, people will get laughed at for predicting a recession or some other event, because it’s hard to predict the timing. Still, I feel like something has to give.
Isn't that all because of Big Tech? All the other Fortune 495, or 995 companies are mostly flat or down over the past few years. The AI bubble is effectively a private economic stimulus program. When that money stops, everyone's going to have a bad day.
I’ve been quickly taking stuff out of the market. No one wants to say we’re in a recession because it would make the stock market go down. The fact is, we are in a recession. It’s an oxymoron.
That is indeed the question. I'm not one those sophisticated investor types. I'm more of a "stick it in a broad index fund and leave it there" guy with a side during high interest times of "have a fair amount in 3 to 18 month CDs and treasury bond/notes".
I'll be retiring in a few months, and because my house is paid off, my older ICE car is paid off, my new EV will be paid off soon, we have no state income tax and a great senior property tax relief program, and I don't have any expensive hobbies, my annual Social Security benefit will be about 50-60% more than my normal annual expenses. The difference should be enough to cover a new desktop computer every 5 years, a new iPhone every 4, a new iPad every 5, a new watch ever 4, a new car every 10, and deal with the occasional need to replace a major appliance with several hundred a month left over.
If Congress screws up Social Security by letting the trust fund run out I'll be old enough then that when I'm forced to start drawing on my retirement investments I probably won't have enough years left to actually run out of money, as long as I can reasonably preserve my investments until then. I don't even need my investments to beat inflation--it looks like I'll be fine even if they fall behind inflation as long as the inflation isn't too high for too long.
So it seems to me a good case can be made for getting out of stocks, or at least getting a significant majority out, and into something safer. The question then is where to put it that has very little risk of loss of principal but should at least try to counter inflation?
Why do you think you’re able to time the market? What if it keeps going up? Even if you’re right that the market eventually drops, you’ll still need to be right in timing your re-entry. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Because people so commonly misuse and misunderstand the phrase "time the market," I'll take a moment to clarify:
If a kid comes down your street selling you lemons because their lemonade stand didn't work out, and they start selling them to you at $10/lb and you say, "Uh thanks kid, but I can buy them from Walmart for 75¢ each," and then another kid running a failed, overpriced lemonade venture comes around and tries to sell them to you for $5/lb and he clarifies that all the grocery stores near by are sold out and aren't getting any more lemons until next season, and CNN says there is a new insect killing off citrus trees, you're not timing anything when you look in your backyard, which has two producing lemon trees and you start offering them to your neighbors at $2/lb since no one can buy them from stores.
Now for the adults in the room, if 3 month treasury bills are yielding nearly the same as 10 year treasury bills,
...you’re not "timing the market" by preferring one over the other. You’re recognizing the price of risk and time. If lending money for ten years barely pays more than lending for three months, the market is telling you something about growth, inflation, and future policy rates. Choosing the shorter bill isn’t speculation. It’s responding to the information embedded in yields, just as choosing to sell lemons from your backyard isn’t speculation but simply adjusting to supply, demand, and alternatives available.
One reason to buy a 10 year bond over a 3 month bond paying the same interest rate - if you are worried that future interest rates could be lower on average than current rates. With 3 month bonds you need to replace then every 3 months, and if interest rates decline you can no longer get that rate. If you buy the 10 year, you've locked in your rate.
The leading indicator to me was when I started spending more time trying to recover from identity thefts every year than not. The frauds became novel, no longer just maxing out retail credit lines to baby goods and lingerie shops, but exploiting internal corporate processes that were tedious to discover, explain, and clear. I'm not really served by credit, so it felt like I was going through a lot of effort talking with companies, writing affidavits, and getting police reports for nothing.
So I stopped fixing it.
And guess what? Not having perfect credit made me such an unattractive target that it hasn't happened since. I write letters of dispute to the bureaus, but if they choose not to remove anything (the debt collectors are much easier to convince, by comparison), I suppose that's as far as I'll go until I need it.
Rising defaults on car loans, increasing term lengths for car loans, people living off credit cards, increasing unemployment, reduced job availability, divisive politics, unstable foreign relations, out of control spending/debt, … and yet a stock market that is at record highs. I also wonder why gold and crypto are doing so well at the same time. Everything is high but it seems like a bad situation. And yet, people will get laughed at for predicting a recession or some other event, because it’s hard to predict the timing. Still, I feel like something has to give.
Collapse of dollar value means you need more dollars to buy things.
> and yet a stock market that is at record highs.
Isn't that all because of Big Tech? All the other Fortune 495, or 995 companies are mostly flat or down over the past few years. The AI bubble is effectively a private economic stimulus program. When that money stops, everyone's going to have a bad day.
Yeah I've been slowly taking stuff out of the market, it feels illogically high.
I’ve been quickly taking stuff out of the market. No one wants to say we’re in a recession because it would make the stock market go down. The fact is, we are in a recession. It’s an oxymoron.
Where are you putting the stuff you take out of the market?
Exactly this. Selling stocks <=> Buying USD.
Are they buying bonds? Investing in foreign countries? Real estate? Gold? Crypto?
Holding cash is surely a losing bet I doubt we will see any deflation even if a shit ton of people lose their jobs.
That is indeed the question. I'm not one those sophisticated investor types. I'm more of a "stick it in a broad index fund and leave it there" guy with a side during high interest times of "have a fair amount in 3 to 18 month CDs and treasury bond/notes".
I'll be retiring in a few months, and because my house is paid off, my older ICE car is paid off, my new EV will be paid off soon, we have no state income tax and a great senior property tax relief program, and I don't have any expensive hobbies, my annual Social Security benefit will be about 50-60% more than my normal annual expenses. The difference should be enough to cover a new desktop computer every 5 years, a new iPhone every 4, a new iPad every 5, a new watch ever 4, a new car every 10, and deal with the occasional need to replace a major appliance with several hundred a month left over.
If Congress screws up Social Security by letting the trust fund run out I'll be old enough then that when I'm forced to start drawing on my retirement investments I probably won't have enough years left to actually run out of money, as long as I can reasonably preserve my investments until then. I don't even need my investments to beat inflation--it looks like I'll be fine even if they fall behind inflation as long as the inflation isn't too high for too long.
So it seems to me a good case can be made for getting out of stocks, or at least getting a significant majority out, and into something safer. The question then is where to put it that has very little risk of loss of principal but should at least try to counter inflation?
A partial explanation is that money flows to money-market funds & CDs. Reference: https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/12/money-market-funds-cds-ame...
But let's not forget that is someone is selling stock and getting USD, someone else is buying and giving USD, so the overall effect may be limited.
Why do you think you’re able to time the market? What if it keeps going up? Even if you’re right that the market eventually drops, you’ll still need to be right in timing your re-entry. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Because people so commonly misuse and misunderstand the phrase "time the market," I'll take a moment to clarify:
If a kid comes down your street selling you lemons because their lemonade stand didn't work out, and they start selling them to you at $10/lb and you say, "Uh thanks kid, but I can buy them from Walmart for 75¢ each," and then another kid running a failed, overpriced lemonade venture comes around and tries to sell them to you for $5/lb and he clarifies that all the grocery stores near by are sold out and aren't getting any more lemons until next season, and CNN says there is a new insect killing off citrus trees, you're not timing anything when you look in your backyard, which has two producing lemon trees and you start offering them to your neighbors at $2/lb since no one can buy them from stores.
Now for the adults in the room, if 3 month treasury bills are yielding nearly the same as 10 year treasury bills,
...you’re not "timing the market" by preferring one over the other. You’re recognizing the price of risk and time. If lending money for ten years barely pays more than lending for three months, the market is telling you something about growth, inflation, and future policy rates. Choosing the shorter bill isn’t speculation. It’s responding to the information embedded in yields, just as choosing to sell lemons from your backyard isn’t speculation but simply adjusting to supply, demand, and alternatives available.
One reason to buy a 10 year bond over a 3 month bond paying the same interest rate - if you are worried that future interest rates could be lower on average than current rates. With 3 month bonds you need to replace then every 3 months, and if interest rates decline you can no longer get that rate. If you buy the 10 year, you've locked in your rate.
You can still accelerate with the last drop of gas in the tank.
A bad time to want a damn corum coin watch to be sure. Gotta wait :(
We're at the tip of a recession right now. Mass layoffs coming next year. The market bubble is going to pop. It's going to be bad.
How do you know that?
[dead]
The leading indicator to me was when I started spending more time trying to recover from identity thefts every year than not. The frauds became novel, no longer just maxing out retail credit lines to baby goods and lingerie shops, but exploiting internal corporate processes that were tedious to discover, explain, and clear. I'm not really served by credit, so it felt like I was going through a lot of effort talking with companies, writing affidavits, and getting police reports for nothing.
So I stopped fixing it.
And guess what? Not having perfect credit made me such an unattractive target that it hasn't happened since. I write letters of dispute to the bureaus, but if they choose not to remove anything (the debt collectors are much easier to convince, by comparison), I suppose that's as far as I'll go until I need it.
No graph. That's frustrating.