Comment by gehwartzen
4 months ago
I work for one of the largest packaging companies in the world. Customers across the board in the US are cutting back on how much packaging they need due to presumably lower sales volume. Make of that information what you will.
My eBay sales have been way down this year too and so far q4 is not looking good at all. People are cutting back across the board and it’s going to be very ugly once wall street stops plugging their ears and covering their eyes.
> My eBay sales have been way down this year too and so far q4 is not looking good at all.
I had half the mind to start up an old project I abandoned after losing my job. I opened eBay and was floored to see how much costs have increased in my little niche.
This is an indicator that is very close to the sale time. If you can share and don't mind sharing, how did whatever you saw during 2020/2021 corelate with retail sales?
tariffs could be an explanation.
sometimes volume and total $ are not the same.
car manufacturers, right at the beginning of covid, started cutting orders of components from their suppliers, thinking that demand is going to drop due to covid induced recession.
Guess what happened next?
Covid was a black swan event. Unless we see something like the MBS collapse, the underlying economic weakness isn’t due to a such an acute root cause.
Not sure how comparable they are.
I know it’s not popular to bring politics into things on HN, but… From the outside at least, White House policy sounds like at least as much of a black swan event as COVID.
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A contagious disease pandemic is not a black swan event. We have had many of them before and there are people whose day jobs are to model and plan for them.
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> Covid was a black swan event
I beg to differ. Epidemiologists and public health planners always knew such a pandemic would happen eventually. In fact, it wasn't even surprising that it came from a coronavirus as this virus group was the most likely contender with the influenza family.
The only open question was when. We dodged the bullet several times over the past two decades with SRAS, H5N1, MERS and H1N1 (notice, two influenza and two coronaviruses), but one virus slipping through was definitely the most likely outcome.
And I can confidently tell you: it will happen again.
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Tariffs can easily be turned off, and in December the supreme Court could rule that they majority of tariffs in place are illegal AND must be refunded.
According to Polymarket, there's a >50% chance that happens: https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-supreme-court-rule-in-...
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> Guess what happened next?
Stimulus and zero interest rate followed by 10% inflation.
and that inflation was (partially) due to the lack of supply of production (say, of cars). Which is due to the lack of supply of components (that was cancelled due to expectation of low demand, as well as various shipping/cargo issues in the ensuing period).
A gigantic contracyclic fiscal policy was adopted to sustain demand.
Do you think Trump and the GOP will do that anytime soon?
At least until such time as his polling stumbles the GOP will do absolutely anything he says. And Trump will do whatever it takes to keep the grease coming in, I really think him turning on the printing presses is a long from the least likely scenario.
Would the GOP have to eat large quantities of excrement, yes. Have they become used to doing that (cf Epstein), yes.
Short the stock market then if you feel a recession is coming