correct. Markets rise & fall on earnings. Every time. This is a textbook, epic case study of senior management failure, to recognize and recover from mistakes. One high roller, betting all the chips, no one hard enough to say no. Holy camoley. The madness of king George, pt. II ‘rise & fall of the orange sun’

 

Repeat after me: the stock market is not the economy. And the economy is not the stock market. It's tempting (and very common) to conflate the two.

Thanks for the tip on financial advisors. I can assure you I'm not worried about my financial well being. Although I will agree with you heartily that 99 pct of people should not be making their own investment decisions. All of our investments outside of our investment real estate portfolio are managed by people who ain't me.

 

Nor was I necessarily saying it was, although I would challenge that it is “irrelevant”.

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I simply posted two historical charts that demonstrated the economic impacts of the Iran war - the title of the thread - relative to two indexes that broadly reflect the economic consequences on most of our retirement accounts. Turbosina either couldn’t wait to play ‘gotcha’ to even look at the second photo or did look at it but didn’t understand it and proceeded to lecture me on the failings of the Dow,

But in an era when it has never been easier to actually look up things like participation rates we ought to be careful about throwing around terms like “irrelevant”. Clearly those of us with more disposable income are significantly more invested in the stock market (probably Miata’s too) than those with less disposable income,

 

I think most of this is absolutely right on. But China has also done a lot more than we have to get itself less dependent on oil. They've heavily subsidized electric, wind, and solar. I was just in PVG a few months back and Guangzhou before that...BYD (colossal Chinese electric car maker) has practically conquered the market with cars that put Teslas to shame. And in the countries where you can buy Chinese EVs, they have absolutely dominated. And they're really well made cars, too. I wish they were just cheap pieces of &&&& so I could feel better about US manufacturing capabilities, but Chinese automakers have advanced in leaps and bounds.

Unlike in the US, the Chinese take a remarkably practical view of energy. They don't code gasoline as "conservative" and electric/ wind/ solar as "liberal" like we do. The last time I checked, energy sources don't have political allegiances, so precisely why we in the US have this distorted view is beyond me.

 

China has been authorizing construction of 10+ large commercial nuclear reactors for years. Take 5-7 years to build. Unlike the US, they actually build them.

Also heavily invested in renewables.

They're on track to have roughly 2x the available commercial electric power than the US by 2035 or so.

Where cheap power is, manufacturing will follow. "AI" as well, if you buy the hype.

 

Good point. I forgot nuclear. Another solution that would make us so much less dependent on whatever the latest Gulf conflict du jour is....

 

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57280

Georgia just built the first modern nuclear plant in 30 years. It can be done and I hope the government forces these AI companies to build them as a requirement for spamming dystopian data centers everywhere.

 

If we build them themselves, what can go wrong???

 

In addition, China has invested heavily in battery technology and renewables to the extent that it is the leading power in these fields:

"Chinese companies dominate not just batteries and grid hardware but also, increasingly, the software that manages energy flows. While some governments may be wary of giving Chinese firms access to their grids via the software, they are likely to keep buying the hardware since they have few affordable alternatives."

While there may be some domestic pain, China may be positioned to benefit from a global oil shock: "Chinese companies dominate the manufacturing of nearly every component of a modern grid, including solar panels, high-voltage cables, transformers and batteries that store energy for later use. Even before the war in Iran, they were expanding abroad, helping countries build grids designed to meet the heavy electricity demands of artificial intelligence."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/b...tery-grid.html

 

What are you even talking about? This is a laughably irrelevant example.

We did not win WW2 because FDR made threats on twitter. Are you actually being serious?