Coincident to this thread, in the 6/13 WSJ is an article titled: "How the Fed and the Biden Administration got Inflation Wrong" (its behind a pay/subscription wall).
Fair-use excerpts: (paraphrased)
-Yellen urged Biden to spend, to avoid the "austerity path" which Obama took after the GFC.
-Powell bemoaned the "long years of underemployment" after GFC.
-Dems wanted to spend more to further their social agenda ("Great Society 2.0")
-More "relief checks" even when labor shortages were becoming apparent.
-“If you look back in hindsight then, yes, it probably would’ve been better to have raised rates earlier,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerry said in an interview last month.
-They blame the "models" for getting it wrong. So I guess their Excel spreadsheet was broken?
===
Maybe we can put a stake in the idea that the "team" didn't get this terribly wrong. Yellen acknowledged it. Jerry acknowledges it.
-Pay workers to not work. Penalize (oil-) producers to supply. "Gun" the money supply 40%. Guys, this is "Econ 101, aggregate supply & demand. They "gunned" demand by sending out helicopter money, and suppressing the price of money (interest rates), and they constrained supply (aided by paying workers to stay home & not produce).
The "team" made decisions based on emotion, partisan dogma and a lot of "groupthink".
Enjoy filling up the gas tank.
Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

Tar, no problem -- You are fine with the predicament we are in. We can agree to disagree. Enjoy filling up the gas tank, and giving Putin more leverage, not by anyone's intent, but definitely by effect, by burnishing ESG credentials. Since oil production is still needed, we can either produce here -- where environmental standards can be enforced -- or to our 'friends' in the Persian Gulf, and Russia.
I've no problem holding others accountable --- You mentioned CEOs" Sure, agreed. Both parties spent the past 40 years allowing CEOs to offshore US jobs to our strategic competitor. -- The 1st guy to fight it was... Trump. Once upon a time, the US produced the vast majority of chips used in the domestic economy. -- The supply chain mishaps would largely have been avoided if we still produced what we use/need. Why are the feed stocks for most of the pharmaceuticals we consume sourced from China? And the rare earth minerals in our electronics? -- Heck the rapid spread of the virus itself was accelerated because the economy is so very globalized..
In fact, back to the whole "Global warming" issue, if GW is so important, why have the GW advocates not insisted we build locally -- to reduce greenhouse gases from these round-the-world supply chains? -- Their silence on that is astounding -- if they are sincere..
As for 'holding Trump accountable' -- well Trump holds no office, and was fired in 2020, so holding someone accountable who has no current official powers, may be emotionally satisfying, but really, what is the point?
The point of holding public officials accountable is not to do a "gotcha". Its to remove incompetents (or those who do not operate in the public interest) from positions of power, and discourage wrong-headed decisions by the next guys who take over.
Thus endeth Civics 101 class for today.

The VIX gets tossed around a lot by media pundits. One noted recently that there won’t be a correction “while the VIX is stuck in the mid 20s”. I suspect that it is widely misunderstood. ISTM it is tied to the prices being paid to purchase protective “puts” farther out on stocks. Lately, fear has been low. So the “return” on those puts on down days isn’t great. But ISTM the cost of such puts must also be relatively cheap?
Barron’s this week quoted the manager of GATEX (which I own). He seemed to be dismayed the fund hasn’t benefitted more from its put options recently. I gather that ties in with what I wrote above?
@yogibearbull - Kindly fill in some blanks. ;)
BTW - As I’ve noted before, I use a 5% allocation to TAIL as a hedging tool. Mediocre results so far this year. Today it jumped over 2% early on, but has pulled back some. Also - My understanding is: The managers run the fund so that big payoffs occur under extreme market sell offs. So, a 1-2% drubbing won’t pay off much. But a 15% 2 day slide would pay off very well?
@LewisBraham recently speculated TAIL is being hampered by the longer dated bonds it uses. I agree that that’s part of the problem to date and appreciated his insight.

VIX touched 39 in Jan, 38 in Feb. So, 40 is just a number.
Nasdaq 100 VXN touched 40 today (YTD hi was 44).
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&p=D&yr=0&mn=6&dy=0&id=p67687948034

So tell me, geniuses, how was the Fed and other policy makers supposed to:
- Anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on gas prices?
- Prevent supply chain disruptions, which were caused by the pandemic and corporations faulty decisions to cut back too much on production?
- Labor shortages and resulting cost increases caused by the pandemic and years of corporations skimping on wages?
Too many people blame government leaders for problems outside of their control and often caused or made worse by poor corporate decisions.

Tar -- we (the People) hire these people to be accountable. They spend most of their time collecting their checks, obfuscating, and dodging responsibility. Harry Truman quipped : "The buck stops here!" At least Yellen confessed her failure. But oh, well, just giver her a free pass? So she can do what, make more mistakes?
What is the alternative to holding people in power accountable? No accountability? I mean this is basic "Civics 101" stuff. Maybe people are too far gone to even care.
You threw some straw man proposals up there to suggest the "helplessness" of policy makers. I do think a "post-mortem" on these colossal blunders is in order. I will start with the following
-Sending Covid checks to people who did not lose their jobs -- and in many cases who were already retired. That should never have happened.
-Creating a hostile regulatory environment for N. American oil/gas production, in order to virtue-signal to the ESG crowd. -- Cancelling Keystone is an example. Why on Earth would an accountable oil/gas CEO invest in marginal production if the authorities are determined to "cancel" these industries. Incremental supply was impacted b4 Covid, thanks to the tree-huggers. Where is the accountability?
-The monetary base has increased something like 40% since pre-Covid. Whatever the Fed/Govt should have done, they went way, way overboard -- with predictable result (runaway inflation -- which initially created gross asset bubbles to spur a "wealth effect").
-Jerry's Fed should have commenced tightening ~ 1 year ago. There was a very political reason why he did not -- Jerry wanted to be re-appointed, and Biden delayed a decision regarding re-nominating (why, I do not know). The effect: Jerry played "dove" until after Biden re-nominated, fearing a hawkish stance would scuttle his renomination. -- giving inflation a year to be embedded in the economy. That delay means a lot more pain will be needed to fix it.
--
As for the suggestion that "all those other policy makers overseas did the same thing"..
I can't speak to that, but the incompetence of foreign policy makers is hardly an argument that Jerry + Joe didn't scr#w the pooch here.
Its a systemic problem in this country, that the people with the most power/authority are seldom held account for their errors/incompetencies. We have a lot of people who tolerate it. -- Which suggests we will continue to experience more incompetencies in the future.

Yes. Sorry. Did not mean to implicate the entire market. The NASDAQ is what got hammered. It was the hottest sector. And the internet related stocks inside the NASDAQ is where people had been speculating wildly in the late 90s.
Guess I was thinking more of ARKK. In one recent year it soared over 150%. That’s hot. So if a 60% drop from recent highs looks inviting, … maybe it is a good bet. But maybe it isn’t. Also, I was tempted to throw a bit into Price’s Blue Chip (TRBCX). But noted it also had a very huge run up over a recent 4-5 year period. Gave me pause. Not saying it’s still overvalued - just that even at today’s 35-40% off, it may not be as “cheap” as might first appear. Not qualified to give advice. Just sharing my personal take on where things are.
Today I bought back into DKNG. :) - Bought in at under $12 having unloaded it (small loss) for close to $15 a couple weeks ago. Also added to GLTR which is down hard today - a bet on precious metals …

+1, @hank.

Ditto.

Nearing -11% at Chuck's place. VG, less than half that.

@rforno : Wouldn't one have to take into consideration the % of total drop & not so much the number (600) ?
Band aids don't seem to be holding back the flow of blood, I'm calling for a tourniquet !
With the summer season in progress I've decided to put the dry powder on hold, unless another 10 % drop .
Dippers beware, Derf

Agreed. The points are less important than the percentage,but still, it's not often you hear a 600 or 800 POINT drop on the Dow, which to some can sound more dramatic than a "3%" drop ... which probably is why most media use the points, b/c it's scarier-sounding.

@rforno : Wouldn't one have to take into consideration the % of total drop & not so much the number (600) ?
Band aids don't seem to be holding back the flow of blood, I'm calling for a tourniquet !
With the summer season in progress I've decided to put the dry powder on hold, unless another 10 % drop .
Dippers beware, Derf

“There was a drop of 78.4% from the 5132.52 of March 2000. In October 2002, the NASDAQ was trading at 1108.49.”
Remember it well. People were freaking out. Be careful out there.
Source

It was brutal on the tech sector. But the S&P 500 only got to about 15.
Now, think about where the S&P 500 was treading water the last time inflation was this bad?

Yup. And having seen big moves in the 00s and 10s I'm not panicked. If anything, I only start to get a bit more interested/concerned when the overnight futures tank hard like last night .... but even then, I don't run to sell b/c I hold good stuff, so I'm often looking to buy.
A 600-point move in the Dow back in '08 was unheard of and indicative that the sky is falling ... these days, it's like, no big deal.

This news overnight doesn't help, either.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-13/crypto-lender-celsius-freezes-withdrawals-fueling-market-rout?srnd=premium

+1, @hank.

HaHaHa :) WABAC. I think of Pat every time I hear the name Paulson. He should have been president!

Just so long as he made sure to keep Officer Judy along with him for protection.

(Pat Paulsen and Officer Judy made recurring appearances on the Smothers Brothers; two comics with a deadpan approach)

“There was a drop of 78.4% from the 5132.52 of March 2000. In October 2002, the NASDAQ was trading at 1108.49.”
Remember it well. People were freaking out. Be careful out there.
Source

It seems folks are talking past the subject line of this thread. @Derf appears to suggest that a big CPI print to be released on Friday got leaked on Thursday approx 1 hour prior to market close. Not looking for controversies but leaks are disturbing (no leaks = rule of law).

"I’ll take 8% annual inflation and 12% average portfolio returns any day over 2% inflation and negative portfolio returns."
That's the way that I see it too.
"One “plus” to inflation is that fixed payments on a 30 year mortgage become less and less onerous over the years as they are repaid with cheaper and cheaper dollars, That’s a big help to young first time home buyers."
Sure worked for us.

Ha!
Joe, Janet and Jerome all agree it’s “way too high”. So, perhaps it is. Some of this, however, is political posturing. And Powell may be in sympathy with bankers who don’t like inflation because loans get repaid in cheaper dollars. Who knows?
I’ll take 8% annual inflation and 12% average portfolio returns any day over 2% inflation and negative portfolio returns. And, as long as wages and benefits (ex-taxes) stay ahead of inflation workers shouldn’t be too unhappy either. One “plus” to inflation is that fixed payments on a 30 year mortgage become less and less onerous over the years as they are repaid with cheaper and cheaper dollars, That’s a big help to young first time home buyers.