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Anyone investing heavily this year??

How much money did you lose/gain this past week?

  • I have been looking at the payout on my wife's life insurance policy...do I still need her?

    Votes: 2 6.7%

  • I guess I will postpone paying off the mortgage for a few more years

    Votes: 19 63.3%

  • I knew this day would come and was shorting the hell outta the market

    Votes: 9 30.0%
  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .

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At this moment, a huge amount of attention is being justifiably paid to the announced tariffs and their very big impacts on markets and economies while very little attention is being paid to the circumstances that caused them and the biggest disruptions that are likely still ahead. Don't get me wrong, while these tariff announcements are very important developments and we all know that President Trump caused them, most people are losing sight of the underlying circumstances that got him elected president and brought these tariffs about. They are also mostly overlooking the vastly more important forces that are driving just about everything, including the tariffs.
The far bigger, far more important thing to keep in mind is that we are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders. This sort of breakdown occurs only about once in a lifetime, but they have happened many times in history when similar unsustainable conditions were in place.
More specifically:
  1. The monetary/economic order is breaking down because there is too much existing debt, the rates of adding to it are too fast, and existing capital markets and economies are supported by this unsustainably large debt. The debt is unsustainable because the of the large imbalance between a) debtor-borrowers who owe too much debt and are taking on a too much debt because they are hooked on debt to finance their excesses (e.g., the United States) and b) lender-creditors (like China) who already hold too much of the debt and are hooked on selling their goods to the borrower-debtors (like the United States) to sustain their economies. There are big pressures for these imbalances to be corrected one way or another and doing so will change the monetary order in major ways. For example, it is obviously incongruous to have both large trade imbalances and large capital imbalances in a deglobalizing world in which the major players can't trust that the other major players won't cut them off from the items they need (which is an American worry) or pay them the money they are owed (which is a Chinese worry). This is a result of these parties being in a type of war in which self-sufficiency is of paramount importance. Anyone who has studied history knows that such risks under such circumstances have repeatedly led to the same sorts of problems we're seeing now. So, the old monetary/economic order in which countries like China manufacture inexpensively, sell to Americans, and acquire American debt assets, and Americans borrow money from countries like China to make those purchases and build up huge debt liabilities will have to change. These obviously unsustainable circumstances are made even more so by the fact that they have led to American manufacturing deteriorating, which both hollows out middle class jobs in the U.S. and requires America to import needed items from a country that it is increasingly seeing as an enemy. In an era of deglobalization, these big trade and capital imbalances, which reflect trade and capital interconnectedness, will have to shrink one way or another. Also, it should be obvious that the U.S. government debt level and the rate at which the government debt is being added to is unsustainable. (You can find my analysis of this in my new book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.) Clearly, the monetary order will have to change in big disruptive ways to reduce all these imbalances and excesses, and we are in the early part of the process of it changing. There are huge capital market implications to this that have huge economic implications, which I will delve into at another time.
  2. The domestic political order is breaking down due to huge gaps in people's education levels, opportunity levels, productivity levels, income and wealth levels, and values—and because of the ineffectiveness of the existing political order to fix things. These conditions are manifest in win-at-all-cost fights between populists of the right and populists of the left over which side will have the power and control to run things. This is leading to democracies breaking down because democracies require compromise and adherence to the rule of law, and history has shown that both break down at times like those we are now in. History also shows that strong autocratic leaders emerge as classic democracy and classic rule of law are removed as barriers to autocratic leadership. Obviously, the current unstable political situation will be affected by the other four forces I’m referring to here—e.g., problems in the stock market and economy will likely create political and geopolitical problems.
  3. The international geopolitical world order is breaking down because the era of one dominant power (the U.S.) that dictates the order that other countries follow is over. The multilateral, cooperative world order the U.S. led is being replaced by a unilateral, power-rules approach. In this new order, the U.S. is still largest power in the world and is shifting to a unilateral, "America first" approach. We are now seeing that manifest in the U.S. led trade-war, geopolitical war, technology war, and, in some cases, military wars.
  4. Acts of nature (droughts, floods and pandemics) are increasingly disruptive, and
  5. Amazing changes in technology such as AI will be highly impactful to all aspects of life, including the money/debt/economic order, the political order, the international order (by affecting interactions between countries economically and militarily), and the costs of acts of nature.
Changes in these forces and how they are affecting each other is what we should be focusing on.
For that reason, I urge you to not to let news-grabbing dramatic changes like the tariffs draw your attention away from these five big forces and their interrelationships, which are the real drivers of Overall Big Cycles changes. If you allow yourself to be distracted by them, you will a) miss how the conditions and the dynamics of these big forces are causing these news-making changes, b) fail to think through how these news-making changes will affect these big forces, and c) fail to keep focused on how this Overall Big Cycle and the parts that drive it typically transpire, which will tell you a lot about what is likely to happen.
I also urge you to think about the interrelationships that are critically important. For example, think about how Donald Trump's actions on tariffs will affect 1) the monetary/market, economy order (it will be disruptive to it), 2) the domestic political order (it will likely be disruptive to it as it will probably undermine his support), 3) the international geopolitical order (it will be disruptive to it in many obvious ways that are financial, economic, political, and geopolitical) 4) climate (it will somewhat undermine the world’s ability to deal with the climate change issue effectively), and 5) technology development (it will be disruptive in some positive ways to the U.S., like bringing more technology production into the U.S., and in some harmful ways, like being disruptive to the capital markets that are needed to support technology development and in too many other ways to innumerate here.)
As you do this, it’s helpful to keep in mind that what is happening now is just a contemporary version of what has happened innumerable times throughout history. I urge you to study the actions that policy makers took in analogous past cases in which they found themselves in similar positions to help you build a list of things that they might do—things like suspending debt service payments to "enemy" countries, establishing capital controls to prevent the free flow of capital out of the country, and imposing special taxes. Many of these things would’ve been unimaginable not long ago, so we should also study how these policies work. The breakdowns in the monetary, political, and geopolitical orders that take the forms of depressions, civil wars, and world wars, that then lead to the new monetary, political orders that govern interactions within countries, and the geopolitical orders that govern interactions between countries until they break down, have all happened repeatedly and are the most important things to understand well. I described them in detail in my book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order so you can see it clearly laid out there. The Overall Big Cycle is described in six clearly identifiable stages that unfold as one order becomes the next. It is laid out in such detail that it is easy to compare what is now happening with what typically happens, so it is possible to identify what stage the cycle is in and what is likely to come next.
When I wrote that book and my other books, I hoped, as I still do, that I would be able 1) to help policy makers understand these forces and interact with them to produce better policies so we get better results, 2) to help individuals who can collectively but not individually affect policies to deal with these forces well so they could get better results for themselves and those they care about, and 3) to encourage smart people who have different views than mine to have open, thoughtful exchanges with me so that we can all try to get at what is true and what to do about it.
The views expressed in this article are mine and not necessarily Bridgewater’s.
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Apple plans to send more iPhones to the U.S. from India to offset the high cost of China tariffs, people familiar with the matter said.

The adjustments are a short-term stopgap while Apple attempts to win an exemption from President Trump's tariffs -- which Chief Executive Tim Cook obtained during the first Trump administration. The company sees the situation as too uncertain to upend long-term investments in its supply chain, the people said.
 
RoomService said:
C

CLF, is that Cleveland cliffs?
Click to expand...
Yes

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is an American steel manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. They specialize in the mining, beneficiation, and pelletizing of iron ore, as well as steelmaking, including stamping and tooling. Wikipedia
CEO: Lourenco C. Goncalves (Aug 7, 2014–)
Founded: 1847, Cleveland, OH
Founder: Samuel Livingston Mather
Headquarters: Cleveland, OH
Number of employees: 30,000 (2024)
Revenue: 22 billion USD (2023)
 
doe moe said:
Yes

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is an American steel manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. They specialize in the mining, beneficiation, and pelletizing of iron ore, as well as steelmaking, including stamping and tooling. Wikipedia
CEO: Lourenco C. Goncalves (Aug 7, 2014–)
Founded: 1847, Cleveland, OH
Founder: Samuel Livingston Mather
Headquarters: Cleveland, OH
Number of employees: 30,000 (2024)
Revenue: 22 billion USD (2023)
Click to expand...
Are you long or short holding?

www.defenseworld.net

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) Reaches New 52-Week Low – Here’s Why

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF – Get Free Report) hit a new 52-week low during trading on Friday . The stock traded as low as $7.25 and last traded at $7.26, with a volume of 33406491 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $8.73. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts...
www.defenseworld.net www.defenseworld.net
 
RoomService said:
Are you long or short holding?

www.defenseworld.net

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) Reaches New 52-Week Low – Here’s Why

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF – Get Free Report) hit a new 52-week low during trading on Friday . The stock traded as low as $7.25 and last traded at $7.26, with a volume of 33406491 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $8.73. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts...
www.defenseworld.net www.defenseworld.net
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So many discounted stocks right now its hard to choose which ones to load up on once everything bottoms out.
 
bgbtylvr said:
I bought CLF. 300 shares. I want NIKE to fall to the mid to low 40s. Target, Walmart and the cell phone companies are on my list.
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I can't even lie, I've been thinking about NIKE and Target also just for diversification....Target has increase their dividends as well....I still can't get over the DEI stuff with them though lol
 
jlcollinsnh.com

Deja vu all over again

April 7, 2025 Deja vu all over again A few short years ago my blog comment section and social media were blowing up. Panic was in the air. The comments were varied, but uniformly convinced this time was different. As a theme, they ran along these lines: “JL, I love your work and have been...
jlcollinsnh.com jlcollinsnh.com
 
I can't remember who posted about $UNH, but it's up 11%.....

Health insurance stocks soar after boost to Medicare reimbursement rates​

By Reuters
April 8, 20259:39 AM EDTUpdated 11 min ago



The corporate logo of the UnitedHealth Group appears on the side of one of their office buildings in Santa Ana, California

The corporate logo of the UnitedHealth Group appears on the side of one of their office buildings in Santa Ana, California, U.S., April 13, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake///File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
  • Companies
Show more companies

April 8 (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. health insurers jumped on Tuesday after a bigger-than-expected increase in the government's reimbursement rates for Medicare Advantage plans in 2026 signaled some relief for a sector burdened with steep medical costs.
Medicare-focused insurer Humana (HUM.N), opens new tab led gains with a 16% jump, while other health insurers including UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N), opens new tab, Centene (CNC.N), opens new tab and CVS Health (CVS.N), opens new tab advanced between 5% and 10%.
Keep up with the latest medical breakthroughs and healthcare trends with the Reuters Health Rounds newsletter. Sign up here.

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The 5.06% average increase, more than double what the government proposed in January, could help profit margins in the sector after a post-COVID surge in demand for medical procedures drove up costs.
The "rich final rate" also signals a supportive posture by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration towards Medicare Advantage plans, Jefferies analysts David Windley and Steven Couche wrote in a research note.
The magnitude of the increase versus the provisional rates "reinforces a politically-influenced, 'more art than science' reality to rates," they said.
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The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted last week to confirm Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician nominated by Trump, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid.
The rate the U.S. government pays to private health insurers to manage Medicare for people aged 65 and older or with disabilities influences the monthly premiums these companies charge, the plan benefits they offer and, ultimately, their profits.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had earlier proposed a 2.2% increase in 2026 payments.
The agency said the rate change mainly accounts for additional data on rising costs for insurers, including payment data through the fourth quarter of 2024.

00:11Second child dies in Texas measles outbreak





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Health insurance stocks had a rough 2024 due to low government payments, high medical costs and public backlash against the sector after the murder of a UnitedHealth executive.
But more recently, some stocks have performed well despite a market rout triggered by escalating worries over a trade war. Centene and Molina Healthcare (MOH.N), opens new tab notched gains last week, when broader markets plunged after Trump's tariff announcement.
(This story has been corrected to say the final rates are more than double of provisional rates in January, not roughly double, in paragraph 3)
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