Demand for US index funds sinks shorts.
https://www.ft.com/content/094ebfb0-bbd8-42c4-9e93-0116d1f896de
“Activist short selling, which involves researching companies and publishing reports, was the only way to consistently make money betting against stocks these days”
There is a vast amount of global cash hoping for an ai crash. So they can buy. This was always a worry with index funds.
So. What you are telling me is that the AI crash is *also* a bubble now?
Lordy lordy what are we doing?
Is no one interested in dividends anymore?
@futurebird My crackpot theory is for 25y we have had an imbalance between global money seeking productive returns and actual opportunities. Specifically not enough productive opportunities (in places where investments won’t be stolen).
The rise of Africa might change that if we survive the ai transition.
Also the index fund problem might be contributing …
@jgordon @futurebird That's not crackpot.
It ties in very tightly with the US reactionary takeover to prevent moving off fossil carbon dependence as a consequence of the 1970s oil shocks, too. (That is, making sure the economy won't do the right thing in productive opportunity terms has been policy since Reagan. This policy would probably have collapsed without the VLSI gold rush masking the symptoms, only now the gold rush is well and truly over and AI is trying to fake that it's not.)
@debcha @jgordon @futurebird The thing that continues to annoy me is this tangle around "system under selection".
It is one, how those behave is reasonably well understood, the impossibility of getting an incumbent to choose to reduce their relative status, the deep conflict between quantitative analysis (~absolute status) and any and all qualitative measures (relative status, sure as death), and just how much these ideas are never brought anywhere near economics, which remains creationist.
@debcha @jgordon @futurebird So, yes; sympathy! It's highly frustrating from this corner, too. Things could be better.
Core insight the first; no incumbent cares about anything but their relative status. All else is rationalisation. Core insight the second; no one can be trusted with money in capital amounts, they'll try to turn it into status. (Band-forming primates can't truly value anything else.)
The systemic fix for this, and how to get there from here? I have ideas, but argh.
@graydon @debcha @jgordon @futurebird Proposed solution: you can have as much wealth as you want, but if you are found to have more than [$EXCESSIVE_AMOUNT] you *will* be subjected to Cotard's Delusion (it can be induced by drugs or surgery).
Hard to enjoy your newfound status if you believe you're dead and in hell!
@cstross @debcha @jgordon @futurebird Money dissolves everything; rather like getting an accurate tally of Putin's personal wealth, such things are only as useful as the power available to enforce them, which by definition does not apply to elites.
Eventually it comes back to not having elites.
John Gordon
myrmepropagandist
Graydon
Deb Chachra
Charlie Stross