4 comments

  • raziel2701 18 minutes ago
    The story we were telling young people that if they apply themselves, go to school and get a job they'll be able to afford family, house, vacations is moving further and further away for more and more people.

    The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.

  • bananamogul 4 minutes ago
    "Smart men go broke three ways: liquor, ladies, and leverage." -- Charlie Munger

    (Which is not to imply that these are smart men).

  • ungreased0675 43 minutes ago
    It’s just gambling, not investing.
  • brcmthrowaway 34 minutes ago
    Are other countries like the West where 'markets' (equities, derivatives, prediction) have a wide ranging pervasive effect on culture?
    • dcrazy 26 minutes ago
      Around the Evergrande collapse there were stories about Chinese retail investors who had pushed money into their domestic real estate industry’s stocks.

      Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.

      • hiddencost 2 minutes ago
        Auatralians are a great case study. Once you control for pensions and similar indirect exposure, Australians have very high stock market exposure.
      • adventured 3 minutes ago
        US household assets are fairly well distributed between real-estate and equity markets. China for example previously had ~70% of its household wealth tied up in real-estate, which has suffered enormous declines over the past four or five years.

        That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.