I know that approval ratings mean absolutely nothing, but it's always fun to watch them.

If you believe social media you'd think Trump has lost all his support and has zero chance of reelection, but according to Rasmussen he's at exactly the same place Obama was at this point in his Presidency.  hmmm
I suspect as the tax cuts get rocking next year his approval will steadily creep up.

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