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Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

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Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#291

Post by hyperpape »

ummonk wrote: post #248
strenholme wrote: post #221

I remember the dot-com crash of 2001 and seeing companies close so fast, they didn’t their employees a final paychecks; I remember one day, after the dot-com collapse a position I was qualified for got filled within three hours. As someone who has seen this before, things are looking ominous: The stock market drop of late 2018 reminded me of the stock market drop we had in 2000, about a year before everything fell ap…

I think the difference this time around is that the largest tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, to a lesser extent Amazon) are generating healthy profits. So while there is likely an issue with a lot of the unprofitable unicorns, the industry as a whole won't collapse.

If anyone has done a comparison of the size of profitless companies in the (tech) market, today and before the dot-com crash, that would be incredibly valuable.

My gut feeling is that they constituted a larger portion of the market back then, but I've never seen a direct comparison.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#292

Post by Myrmornis »

sxcurry wrote: post #171
roymurdock wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is what is the point of the trade war. What does trump get from initiating/escalating it, or who is directing him to do it. Seems to be a net negative for all sectors of the economy.

As Paul Krugman says, "What looks like raw ignorance and prejudice is, in fact, raw ignorance and prejudice".

Krugman has looked like an arrogant idiot at times. There's a video of him talking about cryptocurrencies. I've no problem with people thinking crypto is silly, but he was spouting opinions while clearly not having any idea what a cryptocurrency was.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#293

Post by rwoodley »

JeremyNT wrote: post #265
empath75 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the thought has always been that the president was using a high leverage negotiating strategy Whose thought? The people who didn't know that trump was an incompetent nutjob?

Regardless of the man himself, historically the "deep state" (for lack of a better phrase) has so much inertia that radical changes (even if desired) by the White House end up moderated. I think it's more correct to say that people are realizing that the old order under the president is gradually eroding and its moderating effects are weakening, which adds compounding risks (directly in the trade war stuff but also h…

Trade is one area where the president can act independently and assertively regardless of any 'deep state' (if such a thing even exists). So this trade war was initiated by Trump and his inner circle of advisors. The trade war is not the only thing impacting the yield curve inversion, but it is a real factor.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#294

Post by cr0sh »

roymurdock wrote: post #183
sxcurry wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Paul Krugman says, "What looks like raw ignorance and prejudice is, in fact, raw ignorance and prejudice".

Come on this guy is the president of the US people need to stop calling him ignorant and dumb just because they don't like aspects of his persona (racist/greedy/cunning/divisive). He is surrounded by aides and business people giving him information and trying to forward their own agendas. He's not just sitting there thinking "wouldn't it be fun to start a trade war to look tough". I respect Krugman as an economist bu…

> Come on this guy is the president of the US people need to stop calling him ignorant and dumb just because they don't like aspects of his persona (racist/greedy/cunning/divisive).

I don't consider him ignorant and dumb because I don't like aspects of his persona. I consider him ignorant and dumb because every time he opens his mouth or types something on twitter - what comes out is generally ignorant and dumb, assuming it is composed of actual words.

Misspellings are one thing - if that were the extent of things, I could probably just chuckle, even if I vehemently disagreed otherwise. It's more than that. It's often a stumbling incoherency to the messages, almost as if he's speaking in some form of "stream of consciousness" - just saying whatever is coming to his mind - and it is composed of very simplistic words and phrasing, at best.

Worse - he's been shown to literally lie within a single sentence or paragraph (most of the time, it takes him hours or days to go from one "truth" to something 180 degrees opposite). He either doesn't know he does it (bad enough), or he has two independent personalities warring inside his mind (worse), or he knows and just doesn't give a f--k (worst, imho) - for all we know, it could be the trifecta.

None of this points to him being a leader of or for anyone or anything, let alone somebody who should have his person anywhere near our nuclear arsenal.

---

Something else that is interesting - and I know its completely anecdotal and probably not really true.

But - it has often been noted that being POTUS tends (or seems to) age a person. They go in looking spry and hale, and exit - well, chastened, and visibly older. Even after only a single term.

Should Trump make it through his term (possible) - and/or should he get another term (I atheist pray not - but who really knows?) - note how he looks afterwards. Right now, he doesn't really look any different than when he started. Maybe that's bias on my part, but I really don't think being POTUS has changed him in the "usual manner" that we have seen of past POTUS's.

This itself should be a concern, if there is any truth to the concept. It either means he's not actually doing the incredibly hard and difficult work of being POTUS, or the usual stress of being POTUS - all the concerns for the welfare of the citizens and the country, and more - do not and have not meant anything to him; ie - he doesn't care, and that hasn't translated to stress that would affect bodily changes. Or - he's a sociopath who revels in the issues, and wants more. Any of these possibilities should be worrisome to the electorate.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#295

Post by pradn »

elamje wrote: post #160

A very useful caveat from the insightful, and cautious, Howard Marks - > In that regard, the Financial Times noted on June 1 that “the [yield curve] has ‘inverted’ before every US recession in 50 years.” (Note, however, that this is different from saying every inversion has been followed by a recession.) https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/thi...

If this signal is watched more often now, it might be that it's predictive power is decreased. A metric you act on ceases to be a good metric.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#296

Post by JTbane »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #109

Everyone serious knew that a trade war would set a recession in motion, and that it would be a trade war the US would lose because of the directionality of the trade. The thought has always been that the president was using a high leverage negotiating strategy (see https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/for-trump-diplomacy... , for example) to extract maximal concessions from PRC. But in the end, most of the people…

> it would be a trade war the US would lose

well, not just the US. China also loses, the whole world economy basically goes down too.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#297

Post by jghn »

ummonk wrote: post #248
strenholme wrote: post #221

I remember the dot-com crash of 2001 and seeing companies close so fast, they didn’t their employees a final paychecks; I remember one day, after the dot-com collapse a position I was qualified for got filled within three hours. As someone who has seen this before, things are looking ominous: The stock market drop of late 2018 reminded me of the stock market drop we had in 2000, about a year before everything fell ap…

I think the difference this time around is that the largest tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, to a lesser extent Amazon) are generating healthy profits. So while there is likely an issue with a lot of the unprofitable unicorns, the industry as a whole won't collapse.

During the dot com bust that was part of the problem. As the startups started dying, it turned out that the big companies had started to rely on them for their profitability.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#298

Post by alexandercrohde »

So, somebody with a more rigorous understanding correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was a truism that any advice about the market appearing in print was necessarily useless:

If there is advice (e.g. Buy/Sell when X happens) and there is statistical proof it's a good indicator, then large companies with multibillion portfolios would act on that evidence. At which time their behavior would "correct" for the indicator. At which point there is no value to the layman.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#299

Post by at-fates-hands »

pm90 wrote: post #249
asdf21 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 employees to 1,500 in 4 years is still extremely solid growth. Markets have corrections, if your company is providing something of value I'm sure things will be okay.

Value is relative. If consumer spending drops it’s going to hurt a lot of services that rely on it.

Consumer spending remains strong. . .

From July:

Real GDP grew above market expectations in the second quarter of 2019, according to the advance estimate released this morning from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Growth was particularly strong in real consumer spending, which rose 4.3 percent at an annual rate in the second quarter of 2019. This increase is notably higher than the 2.5 percent pace set in the preceding four quarters.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/strong-consumer-spending...

Also, if the unemployment numbers continue at record lows, I would expect consumer spending to remain positive. A lot of the market instability has been due to the shaky trade stuff going on with China.

Re: Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K

#300

Post by batmansmk »

strenholme wrote: post #221

I remember the dot-com crash of 2001 and seeing companies close so fast, they didn’t their employees a final paychecks; I remember one day, after the dot-com collapse a position I was qualified for got filled within three hours. As someone who has seen this before, things are looking ominous: The stock market drop of late 2018 reminded me of the stock market drop we had in 2000, about a year before everything fell ap…

I heard a few key thinkers predicting a larger recession due to our inability of getting more energy out.

GDP and energy seemed to be correlated so far, as if our growth is directly or indirectly fueled by the cheap labor of machines and automation.

Gas and electricity production reached a peak which can only go down in a finite world. With a constrained energy supply, GDP should go down. At least that's what happened so far since the 1800s.

Germany and UK entered recession the last quarter.

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