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‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

nytimes.com

81–90 of 289 posts

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#81
It's my current understanding that recessions are caused not by economic news, but by the people's reaction to it's apparent demise.

I feel like they are priming the pump with stuff like this...I guess it's time to hit the flush button on the Dow and suck all that "buy-n-hold" money outta the market, and start the cycle all over again.

Cynical? I guess but I call it like I see it.

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#82

People often note, like another comment here notes: > since 1960 there has been a US economic recession once every 5 to 10 years. The last one ended in 2009, 9 years ago This is an interesting line of thinking, but I think it's a mistake. We can use this fact itself and circumscribe some meta-thinking around it. Put the same fact another way, this is arguing that the 1960's started a brand new paradigm that was mater…

One thing we can be sure will _not_ be different is the irrationality of human nature.

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predicting recession reliably 2-3 years in advance with 2 year window would be really good indicator.

DOW 2005: ~10,000 DOW 2007: ~13,000 DOW 2009: ~8,000 DOW 2009 (later): ~10,000 DOW 2011: ~12,500 A 2 year window of precision is completely useless

The stock market is not the economy.

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOW 2005: ~10,000 DOW 2007: ~13,000 DOW 2009: ~8,000 DOW 2009 (later): ~10,000 DOW 2011: ~12,500 A 2 year window of precision is completely useless

The stock market is not the economy.

How do you propose to measure economic health?

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#86

People often note, like another comment here notes: > since 1960 there has been a US economic recession once every 5 to 10 years. The last one ended in 2009, 9 years ago This is an interesting line of thinking, but I think it's a mistake. We can use this fact itself and circumscribe some meta-thinking around it. Put the same fact another way, this is arguing that the 1960's started a brand new paradigm that was mater…

> Or capital's other options for returns (real estate, emerging markets, etc) will look bad-ish for the next 10 years and continue to prop up the stock market because its the only good outlet for extra cash for a decade or three.

And if capital flows into the stock market, not to keep pace with growth or to expropriate the standard rate of profit, but simply because it has nowhere else to go, then the natural outcome of this is overproduction. Which leads to a falling rate of profit. Which eventually means falling stock prices, as earnings and market cap are always linked over the long term (even for Amazon.com, which will have to start showing a profit when it moves from #8 to #2 on the Fortune 500 list).

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#87
post #33

As someone who (I'm guessing like a lot of others who post here) didn't really have any financial responsibilities during the .com bust and the real estate bust, it will be interesting to have a neck in the game this go around!

This, in a nutshell, is why the human condition is so tragic. This won't be "interesting", believe me. Watch what happens when the body of startups funded by global pools of capital (which are the underlying source of capital for VCs) sees the NPV of software startups vanish as lower expected investment returns smack up against higher risk-free rates. The current software economy is incredibly leveraged and intertwined. Most startups are not cashflow positive, and they're explanation for that is that they have low CapEx. However, it's all been transferred to OpEx that is the web of mutuality between them. There is a huge body of low quality startups that are going to stop paying monthly Slack, Git(hub/lab), Trello/Atlassian, Twilio, Mongo, every other monthly-billed service, and put the breaks on AWS/GCE/et al spending. The AWS spending, for example, will result in layoffs in Seattle, which will lead to people forced out of their homes and forced sales for losses (which will ruin them financially), and that will result in a cycle of real estate deflation (which, as you saw in 2006, leats to pools of buyers trapped in their home, killing construction and labor mobility). And thankfully we'll have deregulated or de-fanged federal regulators just in time for all of this! WeWork is the obvious first bankruptcy, since they almost entirely exist because of venture funding froth. I don't know who have funded them offhand, but that might result in forced selling of private shares and lower private valuations, with further deflation risks in that sector. Then it will expand to the broader economy. /rant.

edit: I worked through both the dot-com and mortgage-backed security fraud crises. They were terrible.

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#88

People often note, like another comment here notes: > since 1960 there has been a US economic recession once every 5 to 10 years. The last one ended in 2009, 9 years ago This is an interesting line of thinking, but I think it's a mistake. We can use this fact itself and circumscribe some meta-thinking around it. Put the same fact another way, this is arguing that the 1960's started a brand new paradigm that was mater…

"This time it's different" is literally the last things always said right before the next recession kicks in.

A nice, 500 page overview: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8973.html

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#89

People often note, like another comment here notes: > since 1960 there has been a US economic recession once every 5 to 10 years. The last one ended in 2009, 9 years ago This is an interesting line of thinking, but I think it's a mistake. We can use this fact itself and circumscribe some meta-thinking around it. Put the same fact another way, this is arguing that the 1960's started a brand new paradigm that was mater…

Everything seems to always be speeding up, so I'd bet on a shorter cycle (3-7 years, to pull numbers out of my ass) before I'd bet on longer cycles (20 years).

Although faster cycles might also mean faster adaptation, soooo.

Re: ‘A Powerful Signal of Recessions’ Has Wall Street’s Attention

#90
post #42

An article from 2005 with the same prediction: http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/27/news/economy/inverted_yield_... The recession didn't happen until 2-3 years after that, making me question the utility of such predictions. "A recession will happen - eventually" is about as useful as predicting your own eventual demise.

There is something on the order of a decade between recessions.

A signal with a 3 years error is actually useful here. If the signal is instead "there will be something in 2-3 years", that's instead a great signal.

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