This economy is baffling to basically every professional who looks at it.
Just this week we saw a jobs number that absolutely rofl stomped the consensus expectations. At the same time the credit card number came in ism services business purchasing came in 35% over expectations and new orders were way over expectations as well. Businesses are out there doing something!
You could watch in real-time as the markets all did a collective about face on what the narratives should be.
I frankly don’t know if we are in a good economy or not, but there are lots and lots of indicators we are, so saying someone is on “copium” because they espouse that view says a lot more about your biases than theirs.
I listen to conservative AM radio a fair bit (because I'm not right in the head) and a local guy was really struggling with this the other day. "The jobs numbers, yeah, those are really good, but... um... economy bad? Can't possibly say it's good while a Democrat is President, but um, yeah, I was surprised at how good the job numbers were. But... it's still bad, somehow, because reasons. Inflation? Oh and we're definitely on the cusp of a recession, if not a depression, I'm just sure of it."
The situation's super-weird and it's evidently hard for people used to being able to easily spin the narrative one way or another to adjust to whatever the hell this is. It's definitely not the case that all indicators look great, but damned if the economy's not still trucking along.
It makes sense to me that the economy overall is doing well but that the tech sector specifically over invested during the pandemic and is now contracting.
That’s my thinking. Tech companies over-expanded based on predictions juiced by the pandemic accelerating things online, that actually didn’t happen so they are over extended.
But I can see being critical of a ceo saying it’s the macro environment when other industries are doing really well. They clearly mispredicted the future, that’s different than a broad economic decline.
That sounds like proper risk management then? If you don't know what's happening then it makes sense to play safe. The only problem is that those collective layoffs might actually slow economies down and exacerbate the issue at hand...
Just this week we saw a jobs number that absolutely rofl stomped the consensus expectations. At the same time the credit card number came in ism services business purchasing came in 35% over expectations and new orders were way over expectations as well. Businesses are out there doing something!
You could watch in real-time as the markets all did a collective about face on what the narratives should be.
I frankly don’t know if we are in a good economy or not, but there are lots and lots of indicators we are, so saying someone is on “copium” because they espouse that view says a lot more about your biases than theirs.