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Re:Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet by eli_gottlieb on Monday March 09, 2020 @02:19PM (#22528012)
Honestly, spring just happens to be the season when I contribute to my Roth IRA, so hey, I guess this year I get my index funds at a low per-share price. Thanks log-normal random walk!
Re:Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet by cletus on Monday March 09, 2020 @02:45PM (#22528370)
Before you get too excited about Spring essentially solving this problem, I present to you the history of the Spanish Flu [1].

> Reported cases of Spanish flu dropped off over the summer of 1918, and there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the power to kill a perfectly healthy young man or woman within 24 hours of showing the first signs of infection.

[1]: https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurge...

Re:Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet by rmah on Monday March 09, 2020 @03:18PM (#22528716)
And the decade following the spanish flu epidemic -- which killed a massive # of people -- was great (financially).
Re:Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet by cletus on Monday March 09, 2020 @03:47PM (#22529022)
True, before it all fell apart. This sort of thing isn't unprecedented either [1]:

> In this downturn, however, the ground for the next economic explosion after 1500 was being laid. Wages rose and huge swathes of society had more money to spend on consumer goods, from beer to clothing to furniture. With fewer people to feed, the largely agricultural economy could focus more on livestock or specialty cash crops like hops or sugarcane instead of grain. Diets improved and, plague aside, so did health. More and more people were drawn into the market economy and trade networks grew wider and deeper.

[1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/after-the-black-death-euro...

Re:Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet by eli_gottlieb on Thursday March 12, 2020 @12:48PM (#22558760)
I wasn't expecting Spring to "solve the problem". I was expecting an ongoing economic disaster to make this year's retirement account contribution a "buy low", which I may someday benefit from if we all come through this.