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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

It's common for people to look at the S&P 500 chart and immediately decide it's due for a crash. (In fact people have been doing that since 2013!)

But the economy itself is quite healthy. Earnings have been rising and driving up valuations. Unemployment is low. Wages are (modestly) growing. Things are in general very good.

Why has the market risen for so long? Because the correction in 08 was so fast and deep, and took so long to recover from. That doesn't mean we're due for a correction anymore than sunny weather makes you due for rain.

Barring a shock to the system (a war, an unforeseen debt crisis perhaps coming from China, terrorism, etc.) I think we've got some more gains to realize.

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> But the economy itself is quite healthy. Earnings have been rising and driving up valuations. Unemployment is low. Wages are (modestly) growing. Things are in general very good.

But the multiple is rising, meaning prices have grown _faster_ than the price.

http://www.multpl.com/

To clarify what I think you mean, the P/E ratio is rising and is now above historical averages for the S&P 500 dataset. The only times in the past where this was true was in the bubble days of the late 90s and mid 2000s. The takeaway is that stock prices are not actually supported by the underlying earnings gains, even if earnings are going up - this is evidence of an overheated market.

I’d argue that a very large part of the high valuation and low volatility (until February) of stocks was because of low rates and money printing. Once that goes away, the economy may or may not tank but you would expect stocks to be at least volatile, if not to drop mechanically.

Barring a shock to the system ( a war , an unforeseen debt crisis perhaps coming from China, etc.) I think we've got some more gains to realize.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/john-bomb-iran-bolt...

It’s “good cop bad cop”. Trump is a skilled negotiator, he’s setting up a negotiation. Same with “trade war”. Same with North Korea.

This subthread turned into the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here. Please let's keep the usual partisan squabbles off HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Trump is a skilled negotiator

Trump is a skilled brand marketer; beyond that there is a dearth of evidence.

My sides. Dude is worth 4 billion dollars, ran hundreds of businesses over the course of his extensive business career, negotiated his way out of severe personal debt, is married to a hot former model 24 years his junior, and is a president of the US of A after taking up politics as a hobby 1.5 years before the election. And there’s still “dearth of evidence”. What does he need to do? Cure cancer?

I'd settle for above average returns on what he started off with, plus at least some evidence that thar was connected to skill in the domain it is being attributed to.

> and is a president of the US of A after taking up politics as a hobby 1.5 years before the election

Trump's first Presidential effort, which was quickly abandoned (notionally because he didn't want to be associated with certain other candidates in that race), was in 2000, when he sought the Reform Party nomination. He was involved in politics before that, and had fairly open Presidential aspirations since. So you're off by at least an order of magnitude with that 1.5 years. (Then again, while governing is something else, electoral politics is about 100% brand marketing.)

He didn’t run hundreds of businesses, he licensed his brand to oodles of failed business lines in a desperate attempt to make up for huge loses in real estate. He made a lot of bad decisions, ran a failed casino, got bailed out by his dad, the banks, and Russian oligarchs in that order. He cashed out an IPO and stuffed investors and creditors and contractors.

His negotiation skills are more like con-artist skills selling snake oil. Why should anyone on HN regard him as a great entrepreneur who built a great disruptive enterprise that caused many boats to rise on a ride? Shall we compare him with Bezos, Gate, Jobs, or Musk? There’s kind of a bizarre Trump worship that happens among SeekingApha financial types who seem to value pseudo-Alpha male bullying behavior and win at all costs salesmanship even if it screws other people over.

He is not an exemplar of a great businessman or negotiator and if anything his personal skills seem subpar and based purely on a dishonest sales tactics and bullying.

Ross Perot who also ran for the Reform Party Like Trump is a business man deserving of far greater respect based purely on what he had to do.

Moreover do you really think it is hard for a billionaire or pseudo billionaire to marry a former young model?

Honestly, if you can’t tell that Trump lacks serious character traits to be an effective executive I don’t know what to tell you because it seems patently obvious, from the temper tantrums and childish outbursts on Twitter, the excessive personel churn and desire for loyalty over competence, to the inability to focus, stay on message, and apparent severe attention deficit disorder.

Maybe people were hoodwinked in 2016 and really disliked Hillary, but at this point, all the cards and warts are on the table, and if you’re still carrying water from Trump there’s not really any other conclusion to make.

> Ross Perot who also ran for the Reform Party Like Trump

The Reform Party was created in an attempt (unsuccessful, but that's another story) to institutionalize the relative success of H. Ross Perot’s 1992 independent run, and qualified for federal matching funds in 2000 based on the (lesser) showing of Perot in the 1996 election under the party banner.

Trump, David Duke, and others sought to take advantage of those matching funds by running for the Reform Party nomination in 2000, but Trump’s run wasn't much like Perot’s.

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/donald-trump-companies/

Quote: “The president's personal financial-disclosure report was extensive before he handed the torch to his sons, and listed Trump as a trustee, president, chairman, or member for more than 530 entities. Almost half of these companies listed have Trump's name as part of the company name.”

Most of those entities are empty shell companies to hide paper trails. WSJ report via dailykos to avoid paywall: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/8/1608674/-Donald-Tru...

“President-elect Donald Trump owns a helicopter in Scotland.

To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99% of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99% of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B...”

He inherited $40 million from his dad in 1974 and his returns since then have roughly matched the S&P 500. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-do...

“Was given” rather than “inherited”, it was an inter vivos rather than testamentary transfer.

No he didn’t, seeing that his father only died in 1999, when Donald was already rich.

He has to show that he can contribute something as a public servant. So far, I'm not seeing any evidence that he understands the concept.

You think a parasite like Trump couldn't eat the entire cake and ruin the birthday party at the same time?

We don’t know how much Trump is actually worth. Even if he is worth a billion, that’s because he inherited an estate worth $100 million. It’s not exactly difficult to turn that into $1 billion (compared to, say, turning $10,000 into $100,000.)

His business acumen is questionable, as he has gone through four bankruptcies. One of those was a friggin casino. Do you know how hard is it to bankrupt a casino?

His negotiating himself out of personal debt amounted to threatening banks that he would declare bankruptcy unless they reduced or forgave his debt. As the saying goes, if you owe the bank $100,000 you have a problem, but if you owe them $100,000,000 they have a problem.

You must have forgotten about his first presidential bid 10 years ago. His MAGA slogan was trademarked in 2012. So his interest in politics isn’t new.

Lastly, I’m not sure how his marrying a “hot former model” has anything to do with... well, anything.

> he inherited an estate worth $100 million. It’s not exactly difficult to turn that into $1 billion (compared to, say, turning $10,000 into $100,000.)

And turning $1 billion into $10 billion is even easier!

> Trump is a skilled negotiator

I think this meme died 6 months ago. If /s, carry on.

I think he is a more than a little random and vengeful but that scares people into line. I guess that can be called skilled in a way.

> I think he is a more than a little random and vengeful but that scares people into line.

Random scares people away (or into violent opposition), not into line; for punishment to be effective in getting people in line, you want people to be maximally clear on what action will and will not provoke it.

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