No Stupid Questions

Look at Tesla stock prices - even after a slight deflation it's astronomically overvalued and divorced from reality.

We're in a speculative bubble baby!

They have most of the wealth. They don't need the working class. Just jeep purchasing beach others netbooks and number goes up. Realized it wasn't tied to reality during covid.

Because its value was always fictitious.

The stock market is up because nothing has fundamentally changed. Tarrifs are only going to hurt the consumer.

The stock market is based on value extraction and as long as everyone keeps on working and consuming at reasonable level it will continue to hum along just fine.

Some markets and industries will be harmed by this the tarrifs but these are small fractions of the overall economy. There is also a ton of uncertainty since Trump has a tendency to pull back any measure that affects the market averages.

The pain will be felt by workers and consumers but people have to work and we cannot stop consuming so affected workers will ultimately shift to new places and consumption will shift to new products and the skim will continue.

Global markets aren't going to get shaken up because the global market is incredibly resilient. Prices will quiver for a bit but in the long run they will simply route around us and new normals will emerge.

The only way things change is if the people cause it to change. Either accidentally or on purpose. But the change has to be sudden and swift because there are tons of levers built into the system to force us to participate.

Something like national strike might not be enough unless it can be sustained indefinitely and it's not clear how that could occur. I suspect will take several events each gaining the momentum of the last and there is little chance of a first event for occurring.

The stock market is indicating it doesn't think we have the fortitude and despite what we may want to be true, they know a lot about us and our patterns. Our predictability is to their profit, literally.

keeping its* value

I'm not surprised why big companies no matter what morals they claim(ed) to follow still do business like nothing happened. As long as they can strive for profits and shareholder value they will. Big business is the last place one should look for any sort of backbone.

I'm also surprised why there hasn't been more of an impact on the stock market. I wouldn't have expected an immediate drop of 50% or some catastrophic decrease like that. That's because a lot of the incredibly smart economic policies from stable genius will take time to cut into bottom lines. First prices continue to go up for US consumers, spending will go down, unemployment numbers will go up, and then possibly a recession. Which he will blame on Greenland, I suppose.

Stock markets are legal gambling. As long as the gamblers still have hope they will play. Most will play without hope as well. And Trump 45 was good for them so hope is still very much alive.

At the same time, chainsaw wielding deregulation will help businesses in the US. It may not be great for consumers or the environment but tax breaks are great if you can get them. Melon Usk is not bulldozing any sort of oversight for his business interests or the IRS for no reason.

As for uprooting security alliances I think we will see a move away from US manufactured defense goods pretty soon, maybe starting next year. Europe will concentrate on its own industry more than ever. Even if they don't find a common position to take in regards to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they will all look to increase spending locally rather than transatlantically, having hopefully learned that reliance on Washington is futile.

Defense contacts are harder to get rid of than a Tesla though, these things take even longer to show up on Wall Street. I mention Tesla though because numbers came out recently in France and Germany that showed a dramatic drop in new car registrations. I think this development on the micro level will eventually reach macro proportions as well. I am personally waiting for pitchforks being sharpened in Usk's boardrooms because his doge antics and political statements cut into their bonuses.

The stock market holds value because people believe it holds value. There is nothing actually backing any of that up. We dumb monkies just like watching number go up and will ensure number goes up at all costs. It's how capitalism works.

Because not enough people are selling.

If people / companies don't believe the stocks will lose value they won't sell. If they don't sell they won't lose value.

I am hoping at least the first blatant constitutional case to appear before the Supreme Court would rationalize the market to this shift to fascism and overt imperialism.

I’ll agree with what others are saying about speculation but I’ll add a few points…

Meme investing. People just buy shit now. You can download Robinhood or any other free app and buy something you read about because you feel like it. That’s a lot different than traditional stock valuation. And in some cases (GameStop?) the public can have such force that it massively overwhelms traditional stock valuation

The other point is that businesses will still function. Will it suck to have a 20+% tariff? Yes. Will in end a massive global corporation? No. A trade war can’t kill multinationals because they have a foot in both sides, in a sense (that’s a crazy oversimplification)