This all reminds me of a coworker I had back in the day that was like 6 weeks from retirement and they were super excited and happy and hopeful. It was all they talked about.
And 2wks after they retired the 2008 crisis hit. Their portfolio went to absolute shit, they panicked and sold. And then later missed the window for good general recovery.
I spent a good chunk of this paycheck on car parts for my car and my wife’s.
Breaks, oil and air filters, enough for 3 years of maintenance.
Last month was parts for the furnace.
Most of the affordable stuff is made over seas.
If you can, I suggest also stocking up on repair materials. Parts are going to skyrocket in price very soon, and it’s going to become very expensive to even do regular maintenance on most mechanical equipment.
I'm like not 100% sure what floor traders even do besides pose for reaction photos when the stock market does something. Basically professional mourners but for capitalism.
They stopped being a thing back in the '00s. Floor trading is all done by algorithms now. Specifically, the High Frequency Trading algorithms, that perpetually scan trading indexes and place orders in anticipation of arbitrage opportunities.
You've got a few people on the floor who function as IT and tweak the algorithms as necessary when they encounter bugs. But that guy is more likely freaking because his API is bugging out than because of any change in equity values.
There are still traders who work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)—where some large companies still trade in the pit—as well as commodity and options exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
One of the TVs in my gym plays fox news. Usually they have stuff along the bottom of the screen for current stock index prices (DJIA, etc.). Guess what was conspicuously absent today?
It was funny to watch them hide it while the TV across from it runs CNN, where they were covering the tariffs and market drops, while fox was running a bit shitting on Kamala Harris.