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Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

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601–610 of 774 posts

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you get the mortgage, it's the same as cash to the seller. The bank just cut's them a check right away. The mortgage is between the bank and the buyer.

Sure if everything works out then the seller gets the same, but there are many more reasons a financed offer will fall through versus an all-cash offer.

Absolutely. You won't believe all the crazy stuff that can happen that makes an offer fail when using a mortgage.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#602
post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of earnings? Because Toyota's net income far exceeds Tesla's

> Toyota's net income far exceeds Tesla's Far exceeds? It is only 5% higher so that's a bit of a stretch ($22.4bn vs $21.4bn). Plus Toyota had shrunk it's net income from 20/21 to 21/22, while it was a 116.86% increase for Tesla, so it would need an optimistic person to think that Tesla hasn't already overtaken in the last few months since 21/22 year end.

I was responding to a comment which was referencing Q1 2022. Not sure if you missed that or intentionally chose annual figures to shift the goalposts, but either way I agree Tesla is trending toward sector domination and has the potential to prove its valuation as valid. Alas, that has not happened yet, and the market is more complex than net income trajectories. If you firmly believe Tesla will be the EV king in 10 years then so be it, but don't hold your breath.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#603
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention Slack, but they had losses of $140M/year prior to IPO: Slack says it may not turn profitable; IPO filing reveals $139 million in losses, Microsoft primary competitor The Slack IPO filing shows annual revenue of $400.5 million, up 60% from the prior year, with a net loss of $138.9 million, for the 12-month period that ended Jan. 31. Slack's actual fiscal year-end date has yet to be determined.

Slack grew their workforce too quickly. Actually the Slack I remember from when it first came out is more or less the same product they have now. I'm not really sure what all of those people were doing for all of those years.

You realize that there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, right?

They need to scale their systems, maintain reliability, scale their processes, build internal tools, run experiments, work with 'legacy' code and within the existing architecture, etc.

It's not surprising product development has slowed down. In almost all cases it seems like the speed of product development is asymptotic.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. I think government can be efficient if you put technocrats in charge of implementation rather than elected officials who are subject to the electoral whims of the uninformed masses. The problem with the above is it weakens demo…

The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. I sold a car of mine to Carvana in October. I returned the license plate to the DMV immediately, which is how they're notified that you no longer own the vehi…

>The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen.

Sounds like your state has a big problem.

In my state (New York), appointments are generally available within a week and walk-ins are welcome, but those with appointments get priority.

I've never spent more than 30 minutes or so at a NY DMV location and most transactions are available online, including replacement of lost/stolen licenses.

In fact, I decided on Wednesday (11 May 2022) that I wanted to trade in my license for an "Enhanced Driver's License"[0] (EDL) which, among other things, will be required for domestic air travel[1] in a year or so.

That's one of the few transactions that must be done in person. I went online to book an appointment and was presented with a whole bunch of appointment times next week. I chose Thursday (19 May 2022) as it worked best with my schedule, but I could have gone on the 16th if I'd wanted.

So, no. Not all DMVs are a pain or inefficient. Want to make that better in your state? Elect people who will work for you. Just a crazy thought.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_driver's_license

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. I think government can be efficient if you put technocrats in charge of implementation rather than elected officials who are subject to the electoral whims of the uninformed masses. The problem with the above is it weakens demo…

Which state? DMV is my favorite example of government because everything they do is required and everything they do is done terribly. I’ll have to revise if I meet a DMV I like.

>Which state? DMV is my favorite example of government because everything they do is required and everything they do is done terribly. I’ll have to revise if I meet a DMV I like.

Move to New York. I recommend NYC, as the food is fabulous.

Looking forward to having you as a neighbor!

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#606
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not irresponsible to bid 20% over asking. Asking is deliberately underpriced, because it is excellent advertising in a hot RE market. It's irresponsible to bid 20% over what the house is worth (which has nothing to do with asking price), just because you got emotionally attached to the house, and started a bidding war with another person emotionally attached to the house.

It's not "emotionally attached", it's that it's been impossible to buy a house for a while if you're not willing to pay more than it will appraise for . You'll repeatedly lose to buyers who will do that, with cash offers to boot. This has been true even in many cities that aren't trendy, and have been building housing like crazy for a decade.

Maybe you could think of it like a PE on a growth stock - people expect the house to go up due to inflation of cost of goods as well as all the money that was printed - they are willing to take a punt on the house value in the future, similar to many stocks.

There's also sunk cost in the effort of finding a house you want and reluctance to keep looking.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#607
post #92
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Across every investment class there has been a trend of buyers needing to become more financially irresponsible in order to participate in the market. Need to buy a house? bid 20% more than asking, if you don't - someone else will.. in cash. Need to build a ride-hailing app? prepare to pay people to ride indefinitely. Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue. All around, there ha…

This is also a central banking fail in so far that there's that much liquidity in the market that can't find a productive outlet. There's a lot of money, but also not enough concentrated in one spot to do really useful ventures like large infrastructure projects. So instead the money is distorting everything. Imagine if lending was less cheap for home owners but it was still cheap for governments or really large comp…

This is mostly a central banking failure. Take a look around the world, for decades the only thing the central banks have been doing is printing money. If that is ever going to work, put swines in their seat would do their jobs perfectly.

To me printing money should only be used as emergency measure just like administering of adrenaline in emergency room and must be reviewed afterwards. Unfortunately such instrument has been abused for a prolonged period as central banks saw no inflations. Of course there was no inflations in central banks' eyes. The first thing was that the definition of CPI was biased and not considering assets. Secondly in a global economy, inflation can happen elsewhere. So in the past decades, China actually absorbed lot of the actual inflations. And lastly and most importantly, the printed money went into the wrong hands. The extra printed money goes to the banks first, then goes to the rich in the form of loans. There is so much money in the market and it would be nice and easy to make money by bumping the assets prices up. So why would anyone put money into anywhere but virtual economies? That's pretty much what happened in recently decades, properties, shares etc. skyrockets but what really make their value changed so much? Nothing but too much money. For the poor, obviously they can hardly get any loans, so they only get their normal pay which would be diluted over time.

Crisis happens mostly because the poor doesn't have enough money to spend. Printing money obviously cannot resolve the problem, but it do be able to maintain the momentum a little bit longer by making it worse. The burst got delayed but eventually will come back harder, sooner or later.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#608
post #574

This has been a long time coming. Back in the day, there was an inherent understanding that a stock price is supposed to reflect "the fundamentals" - present value of the company + future earnings. And of course there was some amount of speculation around future earnings, but for the most part companies at least tried to be profitable. But if you look at the share price of like, Tesla - it's completely insane. There…

I'm not any kind of stock valuation expert, but I figure a big part of Tesla's share price (and GME's for that matter) is just the natural market consequence of too many short positions and someone calling their bluff. The current valuation might not be rational, but that's beside the point. A lot of money was invested betting that Tesla would fail (or at least, the stock value would fall), and the consequence of the…

I like that idea, it's like a perverse deviation from the mean.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Range” is likely the only one of those metrics Jane will care about. This sounds like one of those rants we used to hear about “why would anyone buy a Mac when PCs have higher specs??” Mercedes does cabin UX like Apple does software (and BMW is better still). Maybe Jane wants a button for her wing mirrors. And door handles that work. Actually comfortable suspension. An instrument cluster. A dealer to look after her…

I've opened Tesla's doors, enjoyed the suspension of the Tesla finding it comfortable, and when I adjusted my mirrors I used buttons on the steering wheel. Usually I don't have to adjust the mirrors, because the car can automatically detect that it is me who is driving and it has memorized my mirror preferences. Why are you lying? Why not focus on the metrics? For example... Storage space. The Tesla? It has four time…

“Lying” is a bit emotive, suggests you might be a bit too invested here to get the argument the GP was making.

Look, Tesla got early success in EVs by being considerably better where everyone else was weak (drivetrain, battery, software, charging network). That doesn’t mean it’s not weak where they are strong (QC, basic manfacturing competencies like panel gaps, dealer network, interaction switchgear refined over generations).

Yes, Tesla have also been innovative in attempting to turn those “bugs” into features - better online ordering, rapid response to QC fails, replacing complex switchgear with an tablet and a modally overloaded pair of dials).

Regardless, what matters is there are people who feel about Mercedes the way you clearly feel about Tesla. Emotion has always mattered with cars; you don’t win those people over with talk of cubic feet.

GP is betting there’s a huge market for “car like I always knew it from a manufacturer I love except with a battery” and I’ll bet they’re right.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#610
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rising interest rates are starting to slow the housing craziness, at least where I’m at. I was regularly seeing 20-27% over asking with limited to no inspections, new listings going in hours. Nuts. All-cash is basically the new norm. Two years ago that was an issue for regular buyers, but it’s workable now since lenders have jumped into the mix, more and more offer an all-cash option - they make the purchase and tran…

> All-cash is basically the new norm. It’s paradoxical that all-cash became the norm in a period where mortgage rates were at all time lows…

> It’s paradoxical that all-cash became the norm in a period where mortgage rates were at all time lows…

Cash transactions have less friction and chance of falling through, so it makes sense that sellers prefer cash purchases. Consequently, you see cash offers because buyers know that sellers prefer - you essentially jump to the front of the line.

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