Doomscroll News

Tag: recession

  • Decoding the NASDAQ: Copper, Bonds, and the VC Canary

    The daily fluctuations of the NASDAQ Composite often dominate financial headlines, creating a narrow focus on immediate price movements. But what if the most important clues about the tech market’s future aren’t in the headlines at all? Some of the most potent signals hide in plain sight—in the bond market’s quiet warnings, the global demand for raw industrial metals, and the private funding decisions made far from Wall Street’s trading floors.

    This article explores four surprising indicators that can signal a potential downturn in the tech-heavy NASDAQ. By looking beyond the usual metrics, investors can gain a deeper understanding of the broader economic and psychological forces shaping the market. This journey from the widest economic outlook to the most sector-specific insights offers a crucial, alternative perspective.

    1. The Bond Market’s Ominous Whisper: An Inverted Yield Curve

    One of the most reliable predictors of economic trouble is found not in the stock market, but in the quiet corners of the bond market. The yield curve, which plots the yields of bonds with different maturity dates, provides a powerful signal. Normally, longer-term bonds have higher yields. But when the curve “inverts”—meaning the 2-year Treasury yield rises above the 10-year yield—it signals investors’ overwhelming conviction that an economic slowdown is imminent.

    This inversion has a stark Negative (Inverted) historical correlation with the market and is a classic recession predictor. The link to the NASDAQ is direct and punishing. Tech companies, particularly those valued on future growth, are punished severely when higher interest rates make their distant earnings less valuable today. More fundamentally, a recession means less corporate and consumer spending on the very software, hardware, and services that NASDAQ companies sell.

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  • The FBI and CDC: Mandated for Chaos

    I believe the fundamental mandates of the FBI and the CDC are not to foster business or stability, but to create a form of chaos. We see this in the political antics from both sides that surround these agencies, which makes me think they’ve become redundant. We are already served by the National Guard, state and local police, and U.S. Marshals. These organizations are business-minded and have a deep understanding of the communities they protect. The FBI, in my view, has gone rogue.

    I know enough about how the USA is supposed to operate to see that if things were running correctly, the FBI wouldn’t even be needed. Think about it: we have the TSA for travel security and other agencies for our borders. I can maybe understand the need for the CIA to handle international threats, but the FBI’s domestic role seems to have devolved. I believe the FBI alone has the power to throw us into a recession and can literally tank the whole country’s economy. In that sense, they are more powerful than even the Federal Reserve, which is supposed to manage economic stability. You just have to look at the political turmoil they get involved in. The Wikileaks situation in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and Seth Rich, the drama around John Bolton—these events show an agency enmeshed in politics, not justice.

    And it’s not just the FBI. The CDC operates in a similar fashion, creating chaos under the guise of public health. Their handling of COVID-19 with constantly changing and conflicting data was a disaster that hurt businesses and families. That’s why I think what Bobby Kennedy is doing now is so important. He’s trying to fire them all, and they deserve it. He has defended the firings at the CDC, citing what he views as their failures during the pandemic. Kennedy has said that the people at the CDC who “put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.” I believe these changes are necessary to restore trust in an agency that lost its way.

    This all feeds into a larger, scarier picture. We humans live a short life, and we’re watching our national debt run wild with no real strategies to fix it. The tariffs are a nice idea, but they aren’t part of a coherent plan. Then you have some Republicans, who I call the “chaos caucus”—figures like MTG and Massie—who just seem to create chaotic headlines. It’s a frightening time, and I am surprised that no president seems to see how rogue agencies like the FBI and CDC are at the center of this storm, capable of causing immense economic and social damage.