The more unbalanced Trump becomes, and the more damage he does to US Institutions and friendly countries, the faster money will leave the US due to political and financial risks.
Student loan line is completely artificial, because they were just not considering any loans delinquent. Let’s see how it goes.
Credit card line’s getting a bit high.
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Yeah, looks like “briefly almost nobody was delinquent by design, now the rate is lower than it had been since before the global financial crash”.
CC rates being as high as the GFC is the bigger story to me too.
Cc rates are up, but during the gfc, the increase lagged home and auto loans. Auto is up and home loans are just slightly up coming of long term lows. So what to make of that.
Fewer homes have transacted in the last 3 years as rates are higher now than the average mortgage rate, so fewer people should be stretched on a newer mortgage payment, so that source of debt should be more seasoned. This could be acting as a bit of a buffer on the overall economy.
S&P is nearing it’s all time high today.
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All time highs where ever you look
The New York Fed’s quarterly Household Debt and Credit Survey (HHDC) shows that total consumer debt stands at $18.203 trillion as of the first quarter of 2025. That’s a record high.
I don’t understand it. I don’t believe I can successfully time the market, and this thread is full of examples of why that usually doesn’t work.
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The student loan restart should be deflationary as it removes money from the system
It should also make people less able to borrow
Probably decrease consumer spending so businesses might earn less
Not really. The money was created when the loan was created. Now it’s simply transferring demand deposits. From one checking account to another. The lender will most likely just make another loan…or 5 more.
The other two are most definitely true.
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The lender is usually the federal government, who doesn’t care how much money they have vs how many student loans they give. So getting the money back will not cause any more or fewer loans.
Thus, deflationary.
It’s no coincidence that the high inflation happened at the same time that loans were put on pause. Not the full story, but part of it.
Not small cap
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A lot of retail investors are automatically buying into the market via their 401ks. That tends to hold up the share prices of the larger companies (for now).
The smaller companies are are already showing tariff damage via their share prices, and investors have already piled on to Gold, BTC, and now Silver and Platinum.
This generally points to US assets being re-priced downwards due to US debt levels and tariff damage. US FX is down quite a bit (also aided by much lower oil prices but lets see how long that lasts)
Who knows when thay will happen though (could be violent adjustment due to another Trump antic or a slower adjustment).
What I do know is that 50% of US Consumption is being driven by the top 10% of the income distribution, and the bottom 50% are facing higher prices due to tariffs (when they are already showing some markedly higher debt interest levels).
This would generally point to people spending less in order to pay down debt or buy cheaper products (which would then reduce economic growth).
If your investment horizon is 10+ years…then this doesn’t matter all that much. If its less than 2 years…I would be a bit more concerned.
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It is really hard to correctly call both the exit of an existing position and when to buy back in.
I had a fair bit of money parked in TBIL (from bonus money last year and this year) in my taxable account and used the opportunity to shift that over into dividend ETFs. I balked at moving the last 5% over to get to my target allocation but I did manage to move about 20% over in March and April when things were down. I’ll call that a win, although just barely since the increase in bond yields seemed to offset about half the equity gains (measured by broader S&P).
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