I sometimes wish I were that dumb

Nah, this is their plan. When the economy stabilizes, they will control more of everything, and it will only cost the labor and likely lives of many, many people.

This isn't the first time I've seen this. People just have very bad memories.

Are they?

Are you sure?

Or is it all unrealized losses because they're holding and not selling?

Yah this entire drama is just wealth consolidation. Everyone has to pay more for everything, when the economy stabilizes, a smaller number of people control even more of everything.
This is simple, and I've seen it before. It's just sad we have so many people who either have goldfish memories or weren't even born the last time this happened. It's like some kind of nightmare seeing people do the same mistakes over and over and you scream at people that they're being stupid and they can fix ALL OF THIS if they just exercise their power and rights.
Crickets. Tumbleweeds.
- I'm certain they're just using the low prices to gobble up even more stocks so they can become even more rich than they already are.
If that's true they won't make anything on the upswing.
- See, this is the fiction that makes everyone panic. For most of the "wealthy", the majority of their wealth is actually held in stocks/bonds/other market devices, etc...
  Even with the relatively small amount that they use to live (compared to their overall "wealth"), they still live very comfortably. Millions per year of the hundreds of millions or billions that make up their "wealth".
  The wealth numbers are often just whatever their current holdings are worth of they sold everything right now.
  The value that the "wealthy" get from their holdings isn't in the capital cost, it's primarily from the year over year dividends/interest that they get from holding it. The market value of the stock or whatever is basically meaningless, as long as they get their pay out at the end of the year, they couldn't care less what the holdings are worth today.
  However, with all of that said, they do care because a large part of that figure is how confident the market is that the organization behind that holding will be able to deliver their dividends.... If confidence is shaken by some organizational change, eg, new CEO takes charge or something, then the confidence that the market has in the organization to deliver goes down, and so does the market cost of those assets.
  The fact that they will be paid their dividends is the part that they care about.... Nothing else matters. The book value of all their assets will basically never be realized, as long as those companies are delivering what they want, dividends.

Temporarily. But the middle class is losing more; they'll buy up all the distressed assets like local businesses and small chains and bleed them dry

I mean how many middle class people own stocks or even know what a stock is
- Virtually all of them? You think people don't have pension funds?
- Also, this is literally the pro-trump, pro-tariff talking point being passed around, that only the rich are going to suffer.
  Don't let people say this. I've been through recessions, have you? Has any of the children reading this shit? I cannot fathom how such dense, dumb talking points are being kept alive.
- You ever heard of trickle down economics? The thing that doesn't exist?
  Well, it does exist, but the other way round. If the top makes a lot of money, nothing trickles down to the bottom. But if the top loses money, a LOT trickles down to the bottom. Companies lose money and will try to make up for the loss, raising prices, which directly affects you.
- Even if you don't own anything that has the word "share" on it, your life and economic future are deeply tied to the stock market, this is why when there are market problems, the expenses are passed downstream. Everyone pays when people fuck with the system, and you can't get out of the system, it's built-in as long as we have capitalism.
- It's something I put on my foot, right?
- What do you define as upper class?

Not really. Many of those people have liquidated a lot of their stock assets when trump took over, and are buying again when it's dipping - I think that this was trumps plan anyways.

Don't think that the people that are at the top of the financial market lose anything. They know exactly what they're doing and how to stay at the top.