Trump approval ratings

ALWAYS an outlier huh?  ;-)

I'm not a statistician by any means, but looking at the RCP average is very telling to me.  In the last two weeks we have a spread from -25% to -7% job approval rating and I suspect their methodology has a margin of error something like 2-3 points (guessing) on each of the polls.

That tells me that somebody is Horribly wrong in this profession that prides itself on being "right".

Here's the latest on RCP for Trump

In comparison, look at how tight Obama's were back in the day.  I snagged these form mid 2010 I think.  Not for comparison of their support, but to show that the various poll outlets are fairly similar in their numbers.

I don't care who approves and who doesn't..........just keep the economy and the stock market rocking.  As long as that happens, by the time he's out of office I'll be checking out anyway.....spending my days on a lake with a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other.  The rest of you can keep gnashing your teeth or cheering on the approval rating of another.  Maybe it'll be someone who thinks climate change makes a hill of beans, and you can cheer on the regulations and guidelines to make it so.......while you wonder why your investment portfolio and retirement doesn't add up to the rest of ours.

With the two big crashes of my adult lifetime 2001 and 2008 they had very similar drivers driving the growth and very similar things that caused the crash.

With the dot com boom you had trillions of dollars of venture capital being thrown into companies that had no fundamentals at all.  The stock market then bought into the hype of these extremely leveraged companies because every company was going to be worth a trillion dollars in the new dot com era.  The astronomical speculation obviously didn't pan out and everybody started panic selling and the crash ensued.

The growth leading up to 2008 was a result of government programs pushed by both political parties to enable everybody to buy a home no matter how much it cost and no matter what their credit status.  So you had people making $50k a year buying million dollar homes on interest only 1 year ARMS at 125% loan to value and blowing the $250k on fancy cars and clothes.  Then  refinancing them every six months.  The market was so over leveraged that the foreclosures were off the charts and the government was forced to intervene.  The crash was very rapid and deep because the money driving the boom was all gone and massive numbers of families were horribly underwater on their homes because trillions of dollars in value disappeared from the market instantly.

So, for those that are fearing of another crash we have to look at what's going to drive the crash.  There has to be a false injection of money into the market that props it up in a way that's not natural and requires an ultimate correction when the house of cards comes crashing down.  For years the guys can tell you that I was worried about the QE injections as being that driver because they falsely inflated the economy in similar ways to the dot com and mortgage crisis.  However, the main difference is that it's all baked into the pie now and doesn't appear that it's going to "crash".  At worse, it seems that inflation may kick in to compensate for it, but I don't see that as a crash.
The other one I worry about somewhat is the student loans.  They're almost identical to the mortgage crisis where you have 18 year old kids getting $500k in student loans with no ability to repay because they got a degree in gender studies and can't get a job making more than $10/hr.
However, even with this one it's different than the mortgage crisis because the money wasn't getting dumped into the economy all over the place like it was with the equity lines and home values.  With student loans the money is all going to big universities and they're building billion dollar stadiums so if the government stopped all student loans tomorrow it's mostly the colleges that would suffer rather than the economy as a whole.

So, even though I can be a bit pessimistic at times with the stock market I don't see any fundamental flaws right now and the majority of the growth has been from fundamental growth in companies.  With the tax law passing virtually every company listed on the market will have a 14% increase to their profit next year.  Obviously they can spend that money to offset the taxes, but then if they spend it the money goes to other companies like mine :-D

Of course it will, it has to and it always does, and then it comes back......how long that takes can't be foreseen at this point.  BUT.....if you (collective you) are missing this ride then you really need to re-evaluate what you have been taught and what you know about economics and saving.

As for this run..... I'm not a greedy guy, and I have very modest retirement plans that mostly revolve around basically checking out.  I've been dealing with people and their problems for a very long time.......I'm gonna see about the fish's problems from a small place on the lake.    If things continue as they have I'll reach my number in about 6-8 months....then I'm out.  I'll work a few more years and see my kids through college, but I'll be happy to sit and watch the market do what it does.....and I hope it just continues to roll on for everyone's sake.

Yessir, a fund that I manage, set up through Vanguard (although we've changed companies through the years a few times)

30 years of 18% of my salary paid into by the city (don't pay into SS) plus another 3% that I put in because the City matches that....so 24%.  I have heavily invested in the stock market and stayed in through all of the downs in 97, 01, and 08.......I'll leave with 1.5 - 1.7 million in the fund.  Like I said, it's not a great sum of money, but I'm a pretty simple guy.  I saved all I could so I could one day live in a cabin on a lake,  and watch the world go by while I fished and hunted in the winter....and that's what I'll do.  I've been blessed with the job I wanted since I was a small boy and I'll have the retirement I always hoped I could make possible.   My wife will likely work 5-7 years after I retire and she will travel 8-10 months of the year.  She has her own pension and I'll have health care through her (federal employee).  I guess she'll visit me.............it's not gonna be easy.

Yessir, a fund that I manage, set up through Vanguard

The argument about giving "massive tax breaks to businesses" and "small temporary tax breaks to individuals" falls very flat because people know why they did it that way.  The Republicans wanted to give larger tax cuts to individuals and larger tax cuts to corporations, but because of the obstructionist Democrats they had to work within the reconciliation process that limited the deal to $1.5T.  The only way they could do the level they did was to clip two years off the end of the individual cuts.  The reason they chose that was because there's not a single Democrat or Republican who will make those cuts go away, but the entire Democratic party who enjoys demonizing corporations would most definitely let temporary corporate cuts sunset.  So the tax cuts for individuals will be permanent.
The Democrats need to be careful campaigning on the issue as well because they only need 7 senators to agree to make them permanent and it could be done this week.  The Democrats don't want them to be permanent and refuse to vote on it, will be the campaign commercials.

Don't forget, Trump isn't really a conservative in the sense of traditional Republicans.  The Republican party has been against infrastructure spending and lots of other things in the past because nobody wanted to pay for it.  Trump is kind of a different duck though and he's leading on this issue and willing to look at it in different ways.  The Republicans appear to be getting in line behind him and he should also get a fair amount of Democratic support.  We can all agree that it's needed to be done for a long time, but the problem is that nobody wants to pay for it.  I'll be genuinely curious what comes out in the plan because I'm not a huge fan myself of spending trillions of dollars without a way to pay for it. 
One point that Trump has made which is really a good one is that we've spent $6T on the wars in the middle east.  This has to stop and we can use this money to rebuild American infrastructure.

The unemployment rate is low, but that's just a gauge as to how many people are currently seeking unemployment.  The people who are under employed or out of the job market altogether are not part of the unemployment rate.  There's a lot of people ready to go.
Remember the $1.5T number is an "estimate" based on the current economy and a small percentage of growth.  It only takes a small uptick in the GDP for that $1.5T number to be wiped out.  This tax cut could be a surplus, but honestly none of us will know for sure until it really gets going.
Remember, we have had record revenues at the Federal level for years but our deficits have continued to increase at crazy paces. Social Security and Medicare are over half and almost 2/3 of our spending.   Social Security, Medicare, and Military are 3/4 of our total spending.  We could massively increase our revenues and these programs will continue to suck it dry.  The problem is politicians are paralyzed to do anything with the entitlement programs because they pander to the poor and elderly voters.  They simply cannot touch them.   However, the only real fix to the deficit is to reform these programs and make them more sustainable.  Yet, we refuse to touch them and continue to argue about tiny little programs for roads or tiny little tax cuts (in comparison).

That is a really good point. Maybe Trump should actually listen to what he's saying instead of continuing to send more and more troops over there.