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

bloomberg.com

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

#481

Post by hindsightbias »

pro-duct wrote: post #421
hindsightbias wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many employees does Uber need to operate? They could probably lay off 80% of their staff, keep the lights on, and the stock price will soar.

Until every competitor leap frogs them. Everyone's running up a down escalator. If uber just keeps the lights on, they will not maintain their stronghold on ridesharing, let alone be the last to market for the next generation of mobility that will replace their current product. Even Facebook goes out of fashion - that's why they bought Instagram and WhatsApp.

IMO, we’ve reached the diffusion limit of innovation in ridesharing. Autonomous is a pipe dream and in a recession, human drivers will be cheap.

Uber and Lyft lose money because they’re over-hiring talent and they’re consolidating their monopolies via marketing/market share wars. When the bubble pops, people are going to stick to MS and Apple - they’re not going to jump to Amiga or BeOS.

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

#483

Post by govg »

ohyes wrote: post #129
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd just like to point out that the yield curve inverted in 2018 [1] yet here we are. As pointed out in the article you linked, what happened in late 2018 was a small section (3-5 year treasuries) inverted. When people talk about yield curve being a harbinger of recession, they're usually talking about the 2-10 year spread, which is what the parent post referred to. You may argue "things are different this time", b…

Okay, I’ll get my shorts in. What date do you think everything will collapse?

It needn't be a "collapse", could be a protracted period of little to no growth, and most indications are that it will start in a couple of years at most.

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

#485

Post by aalleavitch »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #437
ianai wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dates for WW1: 7/28/1914-11/11/1918 Dates for WW2: 9/1/1939-9/2/1945 Dates for Great Depression: 10/29/1929 to 1939

I know when major historical events happened, thanks. Sorry if I did not state my case clearly enough. What I was saying was the underlying currents in the economy and politics are similar to the ones that led to those 3 events separately, not necessarily in the causal order in which they happened.

Right, all three of these things were a direct result of the second industrial revolution, as was the rise of communism.

The first industrial revolution was punctuated with the American civil war. The second industrial revolution was punctuated with the great depression and World War 2.

Just imagine what the digital revolution is going to be punctuated with.

We are in for a hell of a bumpy ride.

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

#486

Post by aalleavitch »

quotemstr wrote: post #281
throwaway5752 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed does not have the tools at its disposal that it did in 2008, they have been exhausted. The leadership on either side of the 2008 transition was much better at every level. Also, 2008 was a balance sheet depression that was more tractable to fix with monetary approaches. What is happening, right now, is literally what happened in the Great Depression (with the concurrent reemergence of nationalism) and is what…

The great depression was after one of those wars. I think you can make a case that the global economic and social excesses of the 1920s led to a hard crash, the rise of aggressive ideological movements, and, eventually, the second world war. The first world war was something else entirely, the last gasp of the old "Concert of Europe" balance of power stuff. After the first world war, the world was a completely differ…

All of these things were the result of the second industrial revolution.

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

#487

Post by kaesar14 »

Izkata wrote: post #336
cr0sh wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, assu…

Or, he already went through it in business and came mentally prepared for the pressure.

You don’t think the men who have been President haven’t been through stressful situations before their time in office? Bush, Governor of Texas, Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, Bush, World War 2 Veteran and Director of the CIA, Reagan, Governor of California, Carter, Governor of Georgia. Despite those experiences, all to a T came out of office looking worse for wear.

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

#488

Post by throw0101a »

ozim wrote: post #166
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue here is that events like these become a self fulfilling prophecy. Since 100% of inverting yield curves have resulted in recessions in the past, stock market investors will start behaving as if an recession is inevitable which in turn starts the recession. The only way this would not turn into recession is if the tariff's are withdrawn or fed lowers the rate even further or with quantitative easing. Any…

There are couple more points why it would not turn into recession. Last 10 years people bought a lot more ETFs so it is not like someone will call their broker screaming "SELL SELL SELL". Online brokers are a thing now but you have much more data visible in online interfaces. Like fees for selling all your stuff "RIGHT NOW". With more information easily available and people understanding what ETFs are, there is a hug…

> Last 10 years people bought a lot more ETFs so it is not like someone will call their broker screaming "SELL SELL SELL". Online brokers are a thing now but you have much more data visible in online interfaces. Like fees for selling all your stuff "RIGHT NOW".

Your faith in people remaining rational when their 'returns' are displayed as -5/10/15/20% is adorable. :)

It will be interesting to see what happens with the rise of index fund popularity during the next downturn. The best thing most people saving for retirement can do is simply not log into their account, and continue to squirrel away a little every month automatically.

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

#489

Post by kelnos »

SkyBelow wrote: post #234
tempguy9999 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely put, but a real drunken master doesn't get repeatedly decked. Look at trump's financial record, that should have been quite enough (6 bankruptcies was it?) Those who were fooled, were fooled because they chose to be.

Why should the number of bankruptcies matter if the person is still rich? It shows that they are using it as a tool, which might inform us we need to consider how bankruptcies work, but that doesn't make someone incompetent. If you want to see someone who is incompetent with money, look at lottery winners who within 5 years end up worse than before they won.

Assuming Trump still is fairly rich (even if it's a much smaller rich than Trump would like to project), the fact remains that he is just not a very good businessman, and that he has held onto whatever money he does have in spite of his business acumen, not because of it.

Put another way, if I were given $100M by my dad back in the 40+ years ago, and managed to grow it to, say, $500M by today, that would be nice, but I wouldn't consider myself "good with money". And it looks like the real figure for Trump may be north of $400M[0], which makes even $1B -- if he has that today -- look not all that impressive.

We're talking about the US President here, someone we should feel comfortable with influencing/managing the fate of trillions of dollars. Trump is not that guy.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...

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

#490

Post by benj111 »

repolfx wrote: post #386
dobleboble wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"federal government" is probably a better term than "deep state" unless you're intentionally trying to be inflammatory...

It's accurate. The Federal government in theory answers to the President or at least Congress. But the comment was discussing people in the government who work directly and quietly against government policy, to 'moderate' it. The notion of civil servants found many layers down the hierarchy who have their own agenda and ignore orders from the top is the notion of the deep state.

I don't think that's quite right.

If you're a civil servant in a department, you've worked there for years, you know why things are done the way they are, you know the pitfalls and the edge cases, you know the stake holders etc, etc, etc.

Some politician gets elected on a pledge to, eg, change the side of the road people drive on. Simple right? Set a date for next month as the switch over date, send a letter telling everyone, simple.

Except lane markings need changing, signs need changing, and most of those aren't directly under your control. Insurers are up in arms because all the cars are set up for driving on one side of the road. Some disability group is sueing because a proper safety study wasn't done, engineers can't guarantee that going on the off ramps and off the on ramps is safe, because they were never designed for that and theres 10000 other assumptions that were made on the basis of driving on one side of the road that are now invalidated, and its your job to point that out to your new boss.

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