Huge sales at Macy’s today.
They seem to be trying to get rid of all the merchandise built up during Coronavirus.
On line was this stylish lady in an orange dress with a white handbag.
On her arm were happy, playful tattoos, including a Minnie Mouse with her tongue out on her upper arm.
Life goes on with Disney characters cheering us up with or without a global pandemic. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
It’s Tisha B’Av tonight.
But this is a good one for Rosh Hashanah in 2 months.
Got to contain the spray from the blowing of the shofar.
It’s a coronavirus time of year. 😉
(Source Photo: Facebook)
Man Plans and G-d Laughs!
So in retrospect, in 2015, not a single person got the answer right to ‘where do you se yourself 5 years from now?’
Where you gonna be in 2020?
Stuck at home for almost the entire year!
But you are a fortune teller and are so smart you should’ve rolled your dice in the ever exploding bubble of a stock market.
Oh, that’s right, you did! 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Even Sophie the dog wears a mask against Coronavirus.
– If giver doesn’t wear mask and receiver does – 70% chance of transmission
– If giver wears mask and receiver doesn’t – 5% chance of transmission
– If giver wears mask and receiver wears mask – 1.5% chance of transmission
That’s doggie good statistics to avoid the Coronavirus plague.
People can learn just like dogs. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So many months into Covid now, and probably so many more to go unfortunately.
Just missing getting out and down to Florida for a little vacation.
The palm trees. The sun. The beach. A little fun.
This isn’t forever, right?
Hopefully, let’s pray, Covid will be over and we can live again in freedom and without fear of contagion every moment of every day, day, day. 😉
(Credit Photo of artwork: Andy Blumenthal)
I went to the mall today.
This is a few weeks into reopening phase 2!
I expected people would have pent up demand and be swarming the stores even while keeping their social distance.
They weren’t at the mall!
The stores were nearly void of people.
The shelves were virtually empty of goods.
Whatever merchandise there was seemed to marked “sale, sale, sale” even on the already deeply-discounted clearance items.
It was completely frightening–like the economy is dead or on severe life support!
Most stores had 3 or more associates standing around or sitting twiddling their thumbs.
This while the stock market keeps ticking up and the NASDAQ is reaching new highs almost daily.
Coronavirus is surging again across much of the U.S. and there is almost 140,000 dead in the U.S. after just 5 months even though much of the population was in self-quarantine.
The economy looks to me in sh*t shape, despite the U.S. pumping $3 trillion dollars more of debt to artificially prop up the economy and the fed lending out money at super low rates.
It makes NO sense for the market to be hitting all time highs as if everything is all roses when the economy is still a true mess!
The New Yorker magazine wrote back in May of a post coronavirus “decade of depression” with an L shaped recovery, yet we keep seeing a V-shaped one and no one seems to be able to offer any plausible explanation for it.
Two-months ago, even before the recent stock run-up to higher levels, Business Insider reported that “the Stock Market is trading at its highest valuation in 18-years.“
Last month, Forbes reported that “the stock market appears to be reaching unsustainable highs.“
Yesterday again, Bloomberg reported that the “economic recovery is faltering.”
Almost daily, I read that companies are laying off their workers (in Travel, Transportation, Entertainment, Retail, Energy, etc.) or declaring bankruptcy (e.g. Hertz, JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Energy, and more).
This while we are still, in the best case scenario, maybe half a year away from the possibility of a tested, approved vaccine. And then it will then need to be mass produced and mass distributed to hundreds of millions of people in this country and billions globally.
In the meantime, we certainly could be up for a second wave of Coronavirus on top of the flu in the fall/winter. And then the Coronavirus may mutate and become more virulent requiring annual vaccines like the flu shot–more hit or miss.
All this while U.S.-China trade war is imperiling our economy further, and arch-enemies Iran and North Korea remain national security threats.
To me this all points to that we are nowhere near out of the woods and perhaps that there is a wildfire raging and no one seems to be paying any attention!
The stock market euphoria is a common trap and is the definition of “irrational exuberance” but comes after investors have been robotically indoctrinated to buy the dips!
IMHO, buyer beware, beware, beware. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Wondering if this is also part of social distancing.
Shopping cart up a pole.
No one else up there.
Safe from Coronavirus, hopefully.
Maybe some illusive toilet paper to be found in the sky mall?
Desperate times calling for desperate measures or an anxious society is losing its mind. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Social distancing is the new norm.
Shaking hands is a no-no!
Even in the park yesterday, they had a sign prominently displayed that read:
Thank you for practicing social distancing. Please stay 6 FT apart.
We might as well all just wear t-shirts or little reminder signs on each of us with:
Keep the F*** away from me!
That about sums it up without putting up a specific distance range. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Look folks, Pinocchio’s nose is getting longer by the minute.
The market continues on a tear, even while the economy is heading in the other direction.
I know people have been conditioned to buy on the dips, but I’m not sure that applies while we’re in the middle (or maybe still just in the beginning) of a pandemic that has claimed 286,000 lives in just over 2 months (and that’s with a global shutdown)!
Somehow, there is a notion that when things start to reopen that all the problems will just magically go away, including the $3 trillion we just added to our national debt, all the bankruptcies being declared, and all the job losses that are becoming permanent.
If you believe this, perhaps you’d like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
The greater fool theory is alive and well. 😉
(Credit Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
I believe this photo best summarizes where we are with the Coronavirus stock market.
As they say:
Don’t count your chicken before they hatch.
This market has gotten way ahead of itself and the pending economic realities of the Coronavirus and the consequences of the trillions of response fund debt.
Remember:
– The virus does not yet have a vaccine, and it is mutating and may become even more virulent!
– The deaths continue to soar in the U.S. with now over 75,000 dead in just two months.
– The deaths involve much pain and suffering both for the victim and his/her grieving loved ones.
– The unemployment is at all time highs since the Great Depression.
– Companies are starting to move from temporary layoffs to permanent firings and contraction, and many eventually to bankruptcy.
– Profitability and gross domestic product are way down and may be even worse in the next quarter.
– Price Earning ratios are around their 10-year highs even looking out toward a possible 2021 recovery.
– Restarting the economy does not mean a return to what was as the extreme trauma from the pandemic, shutdown, and social distancing rebalance us to a “new normal.”
– A second and third wave of Coronavirus may be as bad or even worse than the first.
– The two biggest global economies of the U.S. and China are facing a deteriorating and toxic relationship.
– The lingering $3,000,000,000,000 that we just added to our National Debt is going to increasingly strangle our future economic outlook.
– The election is in November and brings increasing instability and likely volatility.
In summary, the term used by former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan of “irrational exuberance” seems like a gross understatement when it comes to our current stock market.
Get ready to see the froth come painfully off this drunken market–these eggs are about ready to crack. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
andyblumenthal