I think you fade this rally. The only news to come out today was very negative: consumer confidence came in at 38%, vs. the expected 52%. This was a record low. The Case-Schiller home price index dropped by a record amount as well. Other indicators looked bad as well: the CDX (an index of the credit quality of investment-grade companies, as measured by the price of their credit default swaps) was roughly unchanged, 10yr notes were only a little bit lower, the yield on 2yr notes is still a ridiculously low 1.6%, the primary mortgage rate remains well over 7%, etc.

So the question is, what good news drove this rally? I can't think of any. I think you sell stocks here.

The biggest risk is the Fed meeting tomorrow. The market is expecting a 50 basis point cut in the Fed Funds target rate (currently at 1.5%). If the Fed only goes 25bp, there will be a huge selloff. If the Fed goes 75bp, there's a moderate rally. 50bp, I think we see a moderate selloff.

I've learned more trackable economic indicators over the last two months than I have during the rest of my life. Case-Schiller? CDX? Neat! Thanks market crash! Thanks, ctkrohn!

Can someone put together an aggregator for this stuff?

I also heard a rumor about Bank of Japan maybe cutting 0.25bps off their rate (a 50% reduction, bringing it down to 0.25bps). And that if true, it's enough to revive the carry trade for a while and pump our markets with borrowed Yen for a month or two...if, in fact, the Japanese banks have anything to lend.

I swear, one reason I read today was that there was good news for "commercial paper production." People will rally on anything, but there are fundamental problems here that stock markets won't solve.

One of the largest ever percentage gains in the DJIA was in 1933, near the bottom of the Great Depression. What does it all mean? Nothing.

You don't even have to look that far back

Two weeks ago, October 13th, the DOW went up 11.1%, of course it gave that whole 11.1% and more back in the days that followed

The market is crazy right now.

Definitely agree. This will probably not be a "slap on a band aid" type of thing that fixes quickly.

Dead cat bounce?

aka Sucker's Rally.

Short covering.

There was a big VW short squeeze today: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/10/28/Volks...

Does a "VW short squeeze" have anything to do with clowns?

It should drop almost accordingly by the end of week due to profit taking.

I don't think so. The reason we kept bouncing off the low 8000s on the Dow is because there are real money buyers who are buying stocks there based on fundamentals like P/E ratio, expected earnings, etc. These guys are going to hold on to their portfolios for a while, rather than sell out for a quick buck. The type of guys who would take profit after today are hedge funds and other fast money types -- but they have had to give back a ton of money to investors, and their power to move the market is now limited. Even if those guys take profit tomorrow, I don't think it will noticeably hurt the price.

How many of the fast-money momentum investors do you think are still in the market? I would think that the large-scale losses have just begun (well, not just, but we still have more of them), because retail customers are starting to get scared and pull their money out of funds. Even though the fund managers themselves are value investors, they're only as strong as their weakest backers, so they may be forced to sell shares (even when they'd rather be buying) to meet redemptions. But then, you're closer to the market than I am, so you'd have a better idea whether this is actually going on...

What's up with the tech crowd and the negativity? The market is fine, people with big money are just restructuring their investments because of some change that is coming up - those people with access to market surveys and analysts see something we don't.

Where do you think the cash from the crash went? You think Trump stuffed it in his matrass? It's all there somewhere, and they will put it back in the market - the question is just about where the money will be invested in.

Wake up sheeple :)

Uh, yeah, we noticed. Not really interesting, though.

Those of us with a firm grasp of technology have figured out how to obtain this information without it being posted here. And discussing it after the fact is just hand waving and making up stories to tell ourselves. If you can call movements like that beforehand with any degree of accuracy, feel free to post, but otherwise, I hope we don't see a string of "dow up blah blah, dow down blah blah, nikei up blah blah", and so on and so forth.

I thought it was interesting. Ordinary daily random fluctuations aren't, but something on this scale is. And while any reader here could easily obtain such info, most probably don't check the market closes every day. I don't. So if something dramatic happens it's handy to see it here.

I find it interesting that anytime pg posts a comment it gets upvoted like crazy even if it isn't particularly brilliant. Honestly, I agree with him about this subject. I didn't check the market close, and the second largest daily increase in history is a great piece of information to be informed about. However, if an average user would have posted that it would have probably received a mix of agreement and "but it's not hacker news".

I realize that this is pretty much his site, and he makes the rules, but does that mean that we should all be hitting that little up arrow next to his name out of gratitude? Honestly, I don't think that he probably checks on the number of upvotes we have given him when looking at yc applications. Although, he may have some sweet filter algorithm that automatically takes that into account...

Maybe it's just that pg's comments are more relevant to this community? If a nickname didn't lend credibility to a comment, we could all post anonymously.

Also, users of this community likely want to read pg's comments, and upvoting is the surest way to get them noticed.

If he did have a filter (to look at who has upvoted him the most during YC application review), it would likely not weigh in favour of those who unfalteringly agree with everything he says.

> I find it interesting that anytime pg posts a comment it gets upvoted like crazy even if it isn't particularly brilliant.

My comment started out at -1, got voted up to 5ish or so, and after pg made his comment, got voted down again (not that I particularly care). He certainly does have a lot of influence, but that's not a bad thing - I think many of us arrived here because we like his writing and what he's done with this site.

Agreed. I'm not saying that it's bad that pg has a lot of influence. It's just interesting to me how quick we are to follow him even against the trend of the community, and perhaps our own individual thinking.

It ends up on pages like cnn.com, just like lots of other news that's important to many people. I guess once in a while it's easy enough to ignore, but with all the volatility, this was the third or fourth time I'd seen a post about the stock market bouncing around, and thought to myself that it's really not that interesting.

I don't check cnn.com. I use filters like HN and twitter.

I agree that engaging in post-dictions is a pointless exercise.

However, I still hold out hope that some people might still have something interesting to say on days with interesting fluctuations in economic indicators- Their incredible unpredictability is conceptually interesting on many levels.

This isn't a bottom and a reversal, this is a bear rally. Tomorrow the fed will be dropping interest rates 0.5% and we may see a slight rise or stagnation. Thursday the government will be releasing some quarterly reports, which will probably show just how bad things are getting and the market will eat crap again (-4/500).

Prepare to hit the 7000's in the coming weeks as no one buys squat for xmas. Sorry little Timmy, due to fiscal irresponsibility there's no Christmas this year.

Looks like my Wednesday prediction was spot-on. We'll see just how low we can go tomorrow.

All the biggest market gains were in economic recessions and depressions. Don't be fooled until the numbers come out positive for at least 2 quarters.

Second largest point gain ever!

This is the part that really starts to scare me. We keep seeing record or near record swings, and it's starting to look like we'll get at least one per week.

Bad downturns happen, and there is plenty of reason to expect that we can recover from them, yet I can't help but feel that these sorts of wild oscillations show some sort of deeper trouble in the system itself.

Keep in mind that it's a record point gain, not a percentage gain. We're constantly breaking those records because of inflation, and it's nothing to be particularly concerned about.

If you keep hearing about record-breaking percentage swings, well, that's a little more worrying.

ugh! I hate the recession!

http://www.sniki.org

economy.fucked--;

( sleep(30); economy.fucked++ )?

I don't visit Ycombinator for this kind of news.

I don't visit HN for this kind of comment :)

Seriously, the not hacker news comment has been beaten to death on this site. All you have to do is not say anything and move on when you see something you think is off topic. Otherwise you just add to the noise.

Then don't vote up.

It's just like capitalism, if your unhappy, don't buy the product.

You are free to air your views with producers in a capitalist system, you know:-) Sometimes they even listen.