WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer confidence declined slightly this month as gas prices stayed high and inflation remained elevated, a sharp contrast to soaring stock prices hover near record levels.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index slipped 0.7 points to 93.1 in May, the first decline after three months of gains. The measure hasn’t fallen as much this year as other gauges of consumer attitudes, but it has been stuck at a low level since the pandemic. Before COVID-19, it regularly reached 130.
A separate gauge of consumer sentiment released last week by the University of Michigan fell to a record low this month. Soaring gas and food costs have worsened inflation that is outpacing the average growth in paychecks, reducing most Americans’ purchasing power. Americans have soured on President Trump’s economic policies, polls show, potentially creating problems for Republicans heading into the midterm elections.
Money and the stock market is extremely fake at this point
A huge part of the gains are propped up by a handful of companies that investors believe are just on the cusp of artificial general intelligence and have thus valued those companies as having the potential to entirely eliminate entire categories of labour in the next decade.
The moment they realize they have been duped, all those “gains” will evaporate overnight.
“De-laminated” is the term I think fits the best.
How is the stock market increasing if people aren’t buying the things that those companies produce? I know the answer is because the stock market is based entirely on feelings and doesn’t have any basis in reality. But I still want to ask the question.
The stock market looks like gambling but it’s actually fraud.
Astronaut meme
I feel like it’s a spectrum that’s entirely dependent on how much wealth and connections you start with.
I know the answer is because the stock market is based entirely on feelings and doesn’t have any basis in reality.
I mean, that’s phrased really about as well as anyone could phrase it. You could also say that there are two Americas: the 1% and everyone else. The stock market is a measure of how the 1% are doing. When Bondi said “the Dow is over 50000!” in that senate hearing, she was basically just saying, “the rich people think this administration is great, so you should too.”
2 factors:
Every salary person has 15% of their income go to the stock market for their 401k.
Most things are staples that people have to buy. Companies increase their prices and consumers don’t have a choice. The increased price means increased earnings.
Currently the rest of the stock market is essentially held up by 7 companies.
https://oriongemini.substack.com/p/the-number-is-going-up
• Tier 1 — Magnificent Seven / Mega-Cap: Up 75–100%+ over five years. Cash-rich near-monopolies trading on AI futures. Effectively function as quasi-sovereign entities. Collectively hold over $420 billion in cash.
• Tier 2 — Rest of S&P 500: Up 50–60%. Piggybacking on the giants through index weighting. Solid balance sheets but increasingly dependent on AI-adjacent demand.
• Tier 3 — Russell 2000: Up roughly 17%. The “one percent of the losers.” Struggling but kept alive by access to public capital markets. 40–44% unprofitable. Facing a $709 billion refinancing wall in 2026–2027.
• Tier 4 — Private Middle Market: Flat to declining. Consolidating from roughly 200,000 to 125,000 firms over two decades (RSM). Margin-squeezed by tariffs and input costs. RSM MMBI showing fragility.
• Tier 5 — Main Street / Small Private Business: Fighting to exist. No access to Wall Street capital. Absorbing inflation that large firms pass through to customers. NFIB Optimism Index showing persistent fragility.And the 401k contributions are the significant factor here. Until people start pulling their 401ks out, this wont stop.
The stock market isn’t really dependant on companies actually producing stuff. The expectation of them producing stuff is enough. Which is why this whole AI-circlejerk exists for example.
It is all insider trading and companines funding each other with the same non-existant money.
All the money that’s accumulating in the hands of the ultra rich has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is investment assets and investment assets are chosen based on going up in price and said going up in price needs not be for any reason other than that money is going into those assets in the expectation that the prices will go up (i.e. it’s just a feedback loop of price increases attracting more buyers which in turn makes prices go up).
It’s one big Ponzi Scheme and it will keep on going until there is no more money entering the scheme.
As it so happens we’re living a long period of the wealth that was accumulated across society for decades being sucked out from the hands of the many into the hands of the few, and said few then keep putting more money into investment assets (what would be the point of buying yet another yacht) which is what keeps the whole price goes up because people buy -> people buy because price goes up loop going in so many asset categories, from housing and stocks to ultra speculative stuff like crypto.
This shit will only stop when it crashes and the longer it keeps going the harder it will crash.
Tbf a lot of it is ordinary people with their 401ks or ETF purchases. Like a very big percentage. That creates the baseline demand, which means the line is always going up when things are good.
Then the ultra rich and the gamblers make bets on which companies beat that constantly rising line.
Yeah, I’ve seen that in the UK (were I worked in Finance) and The Netherlands were both governments changed the legislation to make any Retirement Savings above a certain point have to go via Retirement Funds (which mostly ended up in the stockmarket) in order for that money not to be taxed - all that money was propping up the stock market, paying for some serious shenanigans in the Funds part of the Industry (like Fund Managers sending tons of money to Investment Banks in the form of things like trading fees and later moving to highly paid positions in said Investment Banks) and pretty much being the part of the market regularly fleeced by big professional players with advantages such as insider info, which was mainly Investment Banking Prop Trading desks (anybody who thinks the Chinese Walls between Client Desks and Prop Desks actually works have never worked in that side of the Industry, actually get paid to hold and spread such beliefs and/or still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy).
Some people who do check how much money is their Retirement Fund worth complain that their Retirement Fund levels have barelly gone up faster than the money they put in but most people are only going to notice just how seriously screwed they’re being by that whole system in a couple of decades when they try to retire, which is why politicians and their (“thankful”, very, very materially “thankful”) mates in Finance are getting away with it.
In summary, Retirement Funds (and, I assume the US equivalent: 401k) not only prop-up stock markets because they’re a huge slice of the saved wealth from regular people, they are also the prime sheep in the markets that get regularly fleeced by the Finance Industry and people are only going to notice what’s happenned decades from now, by which time everybody involved in the scam will have walked away very rich.
This is probably one of the main pathways via which the wealthy (and quite a lot of parasites) plunder the wealth of the Middle Class at levels which are far beyond anything since the late XIX and early XX centuries.
I didn’t mention any of this in my previous post because it would just add and extra dimension and hence confusion to the point I was making, but I definitelly have a very strong insight (or so I like to think) on the subject.
Well, index funds are also the only way for the average person’s portfolio to appreciate faster than inflation. Remember that even most professional traders underperform compared to S&P500 in the long term.
Now if the funds you experienced were actively trading rather than just buying Index ETFs, that’s definitely a scam.
Before I turned mine here in Estonia from a composite index fund into a trading account, it held US, european and world stock ETFs. Now I’m holding european, Asian emerging markets, China ETFs and some individual Estonian stocks that reliably pay dividends. I ain’t keeping my shit in the US with Trump in charge.
NASDAQ 100 just got changed to completely fleece everyone who holds it next month though. Interest Free Loan With No Repayment Obligation To Elon Musk, inc is going straight into the index when it IPOs lmao. As will ClosedAI and Anthropic when they IPO.
Stock price is dependent on the average trade price, so technically you could just drive up a stock if you had limitless funds.
But the fun stuff is market cap (the “value”) of a company only takes the current price into account, because how else could it work?
So recent trades drive up the value of a stock that most people bought when it was cheaper, doesn’t mean a billion or trillion or whatever dollars went into it recently. Only means there are more buyers than sellers and the price has gone up.
It also means that you can’t actually sell the entire company worth of stock and get the value listed as its market cap. There wouldn’t be demand for it and it would plummet hard.
advertising bot networks
For tech, it goes up because expectations on higher profits. Datacenters and the dystopia is driving right now. Memory sticks are through the roof because datacenters buys it all. Same with drives and gpus.
It takes years to build the dystopia so lots of profits on that. And then profits on watching people in real time and selling their data.
The stock market is genuinely meaningless and has been detached from the real economy for well over a decade. It’s indicative of nothing other than greed and the fact that the federal government keeps printing money and handing it directly to the wealthy.
We don’t buy groceries to feed our families with the fucking stock market. All it is is a way to tell how the epstein class is raking in the dough like the parasites they are.
I actually do that. And I’m no Epstein. Shit pays the bills and requires very Lil effort.
Almost like the stock market and “economy” are just terms for how wealthy people’s money is doing.
Let’s sabotage and burn everything
Last time I was at the grocery store, I casually unscrewed their credit card reader display from the register while nobody was paying attention.
It’s the little things that really warm my heart.
If one were to do this in Minecraft, one should be aware that there may be ALPRs in the parking lot often capable of facial recognition, overt and covert in store cameras capable of facial recognition and bluetooth trackers to pinpoint peoples’ exact location as they move through the store.
Ain’t nobody going through any of that trouble for a loose screw. They will barely do it for tens of thousands of dollars in theft.
Ain’t nobody going through any of that trouble for a loose screw.
Yep. They’ll assume it came loose on its own, maybe through vibrations over time or something.
And, hopefully, they’ll bring in a highly paid repairman to come fix the problem.
I’m genuinely down, let’s organize.
Burning is still risky without more people on the cause but I suppose sabotage is still very viable even with smaller groups of people. I’ve been mulling over things like getting a job at places that are actively helping this administration to fuck things up and slow shit down for them under the guise of being an idiot who can’t do anything right or preferably totally incognito
Makes you wonder where all that stock market money is ultimately coming from…
Likely devaluing of the dollar.
Edit: stocks aren’t like a bank. The “valuation” is just the median sale price over some number of trades/time.
Yeah that edit is what a lot of people don’t always realize
If a company jumps up a ton in market cap, that doesn’t mean the equivalent amount has been paid for its’ stock. Long term holders came in at much lower prices after all. It’s the current price (which depends on what people are willing to buy/sell for right now, aka the order book) multiplied by all the shares that exist, including ones that may not have been sold in a decade in the case of some company like nvidia.
This is true but generally that money is still functionally real because it can be spent, even if in some sense it’s “socially constructed”. Similarly banks don’t have all the cash on hand, but no one would argue that the money in your account isn’t real.
To put it clearer terms: when the markrt cap goes up, stock owners can buy more stuff. Where’s the stuff coming from?
BANK RUN???
Part of it is spendable, but definitely not most. If everyone wants to sell, the stock is not worth anything anymore. There have to be people left holding.
Vast majority of gains on the market will be reinvested in the market. As long as more money in going into the market then coming out the demand to supply ratio will raise stock prices over all. There is not currently a better place to put all that money then the market currently, and as long as this is true the cycle continues.
deleted by creator
Its the only place capital can be parked with a relatively low risk return.
AI speculation.
This, more than anything, is why I hate both parties. Harris tried to gaslight us into thinking the economy was okay. Now, Donald’s doing it.
But these limpdick, rich motherfuckers don’t understand that the poor do their own grocery shopping, their own child care, actually open their own medical bills, and actually notice how much worse their schools have gotten and how many fewer opportunities there are to build a better life. The economy doing great for the rich has zero meaningful connection to the circumstances of the poor and middle class now.
Yeah but only one side has active concentration camps
That’s a lie. Dems loved putting people in cages too, and in fact, Obama built many of them.
Go look up who originally appointed Tom Homan if you don’t believe me.
If you can’t admit the difference between Trump and previous administrations, you aren’t being honest.
Oh, I can.
The difference is presentation. That’s it. Donald is doing everything in the light that was previously hidden behind rhetoric.
And before you try and tell me just how powerless Biden was to keep all of these awful things from occurring or stopping Dems from participating in them, I’ll just direct you to the first two years of Donald’s second term, wherein he’s proven definitively that the Democrats had the power they needed to do anything they promised multiple times over the last three decades.
You’re fucking delusional, oy.
The difference is presentation. That’s it.
Fuck you, you dumbass piece of shit. No honest and reasonably intelligent person could possibly come to this conclusion.
Both parties use the same consultants, I don’t see why people don’t see that as the real issue. The consultancy class is making a killing off of both parties while actively ignoring the populace. The more they ignore us, the more they get paid to understand us, which they will continue to actively fail at because they don’t want to understand us: they just want to get paid, doesn’t matter the party. They really make their money by telling politicians what they want to hear about their constituents, rather than constituent reality. That’s why Chuck Schumer literally makes up his constituents, I’m not kidding, he talks to imaginary constituents he thinks represents people.
Also, yes, Obama appointed Tom Homan, and people need to stop pretending the Democrats haven’t had any hand in this.
They really love defending the guy who ramped up the drone war, because it wasn’t our soldiers dying, it was just kids who were “terrorists.” He codified and legalized the worst excesses of the Bush admin and that’s why Trump has his hands on mass surveillance via Palantir and more. People like us warned the Democrats not to do it, in case someone like Trump arose. Someone you couldn’t trust with those powers.
The consultancy class
What the fuck is the “consultancy class”. Literally just made that term up.
You have to be fucking delusional to compare everything Trump is doing with ICE, the National Guard, the USMC and the mass creation of concentration camps, along with reclassifying antifa as “terrorists” to justify bypassing civil rights to kill or lock up dissidents, to anything the Dems have ever done.
But by saying “both sides” I can refuse to educate myself or get involved all while maintaining a smug sense of superiority. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Electing Harris would have meant Lina Khan would have stayed at the FTC and we wouldn’t have the jackass Trump just appointed to the Fed. Both parties are not the same.
I miss her.
Trump also appointed the Fed guy who has kept shit from completely hitting the fan, too. The new guy is just one vote on the board, he’s outvoted by default.
Our country has been irreparably corrupt for decades, the shit you’re reminiscing about wasn’t better it just still had the mask on
Fuck off with this dumbass bullshit. You have no fucking actual argument, pathetic edgelord.
The difference is a night and day.
One of them is marginally better for you personally and that’s the only thing you actually give a shit about or believe in
Removed by mod
Seems like you don’t actually have anything to directly refute anything people challenging your narrative are saying, and are spam-fucking whataboutisms to dance around the topic.
Please keep your terminally online leftist bullshit to yourself. Enough damage has already been done by stupid mother fuckers who think neoliberals are just as bad as literal fascists.
Removed by mod
You’re a genocide supporter,
Oh god he’s halting! He’s doing the same stupid bullshit of copy & pastting brainless and lazy accusations that all terminally online leftists do!
and no I won’t keep it to myself what you did to those kids.
Time to take the psychosis meds the nurse passed you earlier.
What about voting for the only viable candidate that would have prevented Trump, a child rapist, is bad for kids?
It makes sense that you supported it cause like a Zionist,
Fact: Israel wanted Trump to win, not Kamala. We knew this in 2024
Fact: Israel has Epstein child rape blackmail on Trump. We knew this in 2024
Fact: Trump is the only president to have launched a war against Iran for Israel. Not Biden, not Obama, and there is zero reason to believe Kamala would have.
Fact: ICE wasn’t made to become a US gestapo force, training under the IDF and using Israeli spyware on US citizens and undocumented persons under ANY DEM.
Seems if the accusation of supporting Zionism is applied accurately, its to limp docked, short sighted, overly privileged, faux advocates like you. You enabled Trump to win, which is objectively what the Zionists wanted, and why they’re trying to keep the GOP in power now.
you’re always claiming to be the victim.
Screaming at the mirror again?
When you help Nazis carrying out a modern day Holocaust, you are the literal fascists.
Hey dipshit, due to your complete and total lack of willingness to vote for the ONLY VIABLE CANDIDATE TO BEAT TRUMP IN 2024, you get to have blood on your hands with
- The escalated genocide in Palestine
- The escalated genocide in Lebanon
- The genocidal war against Iran
- The genocidal blockade of Cuba
- The genocidal round up of brown Americans into ICE concentration camps
- The rape of resources of Venezuela
- The total collapse of protection under the law in the US for anyone who isn’t a rich Zionist
- The destruction of USAID and pullout from the WHO DURING THE RAPIDLY EXPANDING EBOLA OUTBREAK IN AFRICA
- The total destruction of the ACA and closure of 900 US medical facilities thus far
- The colossal fuel crisis that hurts developing countries and their remaining aid the most
- Etc
The only people in this thread who helped with carrying out the modern holocaust ARE DIPSHITS LIKE YOU, DIVORCED FROM REALITY AMD WHO REFUSED TO VOTE FOR THE ONLY VIABLE CANDIDATE TO PREVENT VIRTUALLY ALL OF THIS FROM HAPPENING.
The blood IS ON YOUR HANDS
There we go! That’s the non-sequiter meltdown I was waiting for to tell whether you were serious or just in it for the vapid self-fellatio.
Removed by mod
Sure, Jan.
Jan?
The difference is the Dems actually have a track record of making the economy at least less worse than Republicans BY FAR.
Not to mention the Build Back Better bill was originally going to be the single most progressive infrastructure upgrade bill in US history, but it was gutted because of the GOP.
I’ve just replaced “the economy” and “stock market” with “rich people’s yacht money.”
Neat cause that’s basically what they did, too!
The post-Covid economy under Biden did nothing but improve and Trump’s idiotic decisions have caused it to do nothing but worsen.
But yeah, let’s keep going the “both sides” bullshit that keeps Republicans in power.
The post-Covid economy under Biden did nothing but improve
For the wealthy, maybe. The rest of us work for a living, and most of us are working longer and harder for less pay, if not multiple jobs. Biden had the power to change that but chose not to.
But yeah, let’s keep going the “both sides” bullshit that keeps Republicans in power.
The Republicans in 2024 got elected on the message of affordability. Democrats insisted that they couldn’t win if they actually showed they cared about people’s cost of living. Your cognitive dissonance is astounding, and yes, it is certainly a problem that the cost of living crisis continues to get worse no matter who we elect.
Whether or not the economy can be called “OK” is extremely dependent on who says it and when. At the time of the election campaign, it was fair to say that the economy was OK. It wasn’t great, but inflation was getting under control, employment numbers were rising, it was generally trending in the right direction and could be called “OK”.
Then trump comes in and from his (more specifically his ownership group’s) perspective, this is currently beyond OK. Profits for the ultra-rich are skyrocketing. They clamp down on immigration to get rid of the sources of cheapest labour, then make sure the cost of living keeps rising to push people into taking whatever job they can get, for wages they previously would never have accepted. All while cashing in on planned market swings.
But yeah, tell me again how both parties are the same.
It’s a good cop/bad cop routine, quit being gullible
https://www.equifax.com/newsroom/all-news/-/story/faq-what-is-a-k-shaped-economy-/
https://www.investopedia.com/long-term-impacts-of-the-covid-19-k-shaped-recovery-5200711
The economy went K-shaped before Biden even got into office. The economy was far from “OK.” It’s just gotten a lot worse since then is all.
Even during Obama’s term the growth in jobs was mostly part-time McDonald’s type gigs, not real quality jobs. Then Trump fucked everything over during COVID and made things even worse with the PPP loans, which further kicked things into a K-shape.
People forget that the TSA was always a stealth jobs program for Bush’s shitty economy. It’s still in operation as security theater and an outright dismissal of the 4th amendment as mattering.
There hasn’t been a time in my adult fucking life where working full time even in the state with the highest minimum wage can an adult afford to rent an apartment on their own. It’s been fucking bad for a long time. Minimum wage should be at least $25/hour if not more.
But sure, $7.25/hr and gig work is great. /s
Absolute absurdity. Their argument on inflation was that it was slower, as if that helps people who’ve already been price-gouged for years at that point.
Give me a break. The parties are absolutely the same on how little they give a shit about our poverty. (But they’ll vote in bipartisan fashion when the crash comes and their stock portfolios need a bailout, guaranteed.)
One day they’ll notice our peaceful protests, general strikes, and sign-waving, right?
…right?
They’d sure as hell notice if we ever actually had a general strike.
Probably will take less time if we go full Marsha P. Johnson.
A few days ago I saw $6.08/gal at my neighborhood gas station. But of course, high gas prices won’t make the Epstein files go away.
Don’t worry, trickle down economics will start working and sort this out any day now.
I’m scratching my head wondering how we haven’t had an official recession™ yet, but maybe it’s because the rich haven’t quite put everything in place to leave everyone else holding the stinky bag. Maybe that’ll come with the AI company IPOs and private equity inclusions into pension and retirement investment accounts.
It’s great, if you are in that big club that you ain’t in.
Further illustrating that the stock market is just gambling for the wealthy and not a barometer of livability.
I mean stock market going up makes the rich richer, poor people don’t have significant stocks
They would if there were more employee owned companies to work for.
Wonder if i should cash out all my stocks… I know its gonna crash haaard soon
Into what?
Idk moneys
