Taking Stock

When the stock market plummeted 1,000 points on Monday, MAGOPs in Congress took to social media doing their best to scare the public about how their retirements had just been crushed by President Biden and Kamala Harris.  They were all similar, but one posted by the House Judiciary GOP account stood out best for each of them.  It said –

“If you look at your 401k today, remember that it was all brought to you by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”

Basically the same was one from Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) – who, being MAGOP, of course, includes a Bible quote in his Twitter bio, about walking humbly.  His was --.

“When you look at your 401k today, remember that Kamala Harris has spent the last three and a half years saying that #Bidenomics works.”

Their comments, designed obviously to score quite political points by scaring people about their retirement funds, was ludicrous for many reason, But most notably and obviously by the reality that if a person didn’t sell anything in their 401k account, they didn’t lose a penny.  It might be worth less on that day, but the account is fluid and is always going up and down.  Most people don’t even touch their 401k for a decade – or decades.  At which point its value with be overwhelmingly different.  For all any MAGOP knows, people who did take their 2024 distribution did so before the stock drop.  Or they’ll be taking it at the end of the year in four months, when (again) the market will be totally different.  So, what the stock market was on Monday has literally no meaning on what almost every person’s 401k will be when they deal with it.

Also notable and obvious and easy to figure out while MAGOPs are trying to scare the public about how President Biden and Kamala Harris have supposedly pummeled the value of their 401k is the Really Easy to Figure Out Reality that since Biden and Harris took office...the stock market (even after Monday’s 1,000-point drop) has gone up 7,000 points!

So, for all those who did take MAGOPs up on their suggestion and decide to “look at your 401k today” – something most people likely don’t very often – saw that it’s doing incredibly better than when Trump left office.  And are likely overjoyed.

So, y’know, thank you, MAGOP officials for the reminder to check our 401k’s!!

And, of course, there’s more.

A couple night later, I was talking with a friend about the market drop.  One of the things we noted – and neither of us are stock market whizzes – is that history shows that when the stock market has a big drop in one day (and is pretty much only that one day), it eventually comes up – in fact, often very soon. 

Furthermore, as my friend noted, a friend of his – who is, in fact, involved with finance and investing -- has told him in the past that, after there’s a big drop in the market, that is actually the best time to buy.  It means stocks had a correction, so they’re at a low point, but should likely go up.

Indeed, I’ve been checking the stock market the last few days with all of this in mind.  And it led to me to tracking down tweets by severely MAGOP officials (including, of course, the House Judiciary GOP) written the day of the drop and sent the following yesterday –

“UPDATE:  And if you look at your 401k TODAY, just three days after you tried to terrrrrify the public, you'll see that the stock market has gained back almost all it los, and is now only 300 points lower than its drop on Monday!

“Well-done, MAGOP, doing what you do.”