OK, so the idiot-in-chief blundered yet again and tweeted 409k instead on 401k. But allowing him the correction... just what is he communicating? Who is he meaning by "What are you doing wrong?" The 50% of American households that don't even have access to a 401k? http://longevity.stanford.edu/sightlines-financial-security-special-report-mobile/ Or according to the U.S. Census, the less than one n three that have any company retirement fund? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/e...k-plans-wont-have-enough-to-retire-2019-04-18
I think he's communicating that he has been so good for the stock market that anyone with a 401(k) account should expect to get 50%+ returns. And, if you look at your own account and finds you're making less than that, it's not Trump's fault -- it's your fault. You apparently are bad at dictating what percent of your 401(k) contributions should go to fund X and fund Y. Since I was curious, I looked how mine's doing (well, but I won't go into it), and at the menu of options Fidelity gives me and their table of past performance. They have a 1-year (FY 2019), a 3-year (2017-2019), and a 5-year (2015-2019, so it includes the Trump Bump) metric, which is pretty handy to judge how Trump's stock market has done. So here's the best and worst for each (stocks only, no bonds or blended funds): 1-Year Best: 31.2% 1-Year Worst: 21.33% 3-Year Best: 22.03% 3-Year Worst: 5.85% 5-Year Best: 15.36% 5-Year Worst: 5.85% Those are some great returns. But not 50%+ returns, even in the best case scenario. There are probably some non-finance Trumpers out there scratching their heads today and asking themselves "what am I doing wrong? I'm only getting 25%!"
Thanks... that helps. So... after excluding the 50% of Americans who don't have access to 401Ks, and an additional percentage of Americans who can't afford or choose not to take out a 401K, the rest of American's are failures for not getting some completely made up return level?
Yes. But, returning to your point that so many Americans don't even participate in the stock market, that's one of the things that really drive me crazy about conservatives. They want to use the stock market performance as the KPI for economic success, but all it is really telling you is something about the rate of wealth accumulation of capital. And that's the capital of the affluent from all over the world, not just people in the USA. If they wanted to say something real about how people are doing in this economy, they'd emphasize wage growth, median household income, or some metric like that. Median Household Income departed from GDP per capita in the 80s. Theoretically, you'd expect to see them roughly track together. But with GDP an average and MHI a median, a shift in wealth to the very rich kept MHI growth slowed down while GDP grew. MHI took a big hit from the last recession but we finally got back to our highs by the end of Obama's term. Maybe to Trump's credit, it has continued to grow around the same pace through his first 2 years -- but that's like 1 or 2% a year, nothing like the growth the stock market is seeing. I could relate a lot better if Trump would brag about metrics that measure the prototypical American family instead of a family like his.
If he’s going to make up #s, and there’s no if about it, why not just peg 99%, like a real authoritarian?
idiot-in-chief can't even take the care to spell his tired and lame insult correctly... update: he even misspelled Bernie Sanders name. Such a dolt.
Just a reminder... this tweet, and all the rest of trump's will be in the presidential records for posterity...
