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We aren’t in a recession yet. Companies are starting to see the slowdown, so they are taking preemptive action so as earnings contract, P/Es will hold up bette

We aren’t in a recession yet. Companies are starting to see the slowdown, so they are taking preemptive action so as earnings contract, P/Es will hold up better. The politically minded readers of Hacker News refused to listen to those who said 2 quarters of negative GDP doesn’t necessarily mean a recession. It would be really nice if we could take a deeper dive into economics, markets, etc and all learn but …

willsmith72 4y ago
Has there ever been a recession so widely accepted and talked about before it kicked in? I mean that honestly; I know there's a downturn and it'll probably continue, but my instinct is that something so widely talked about and accepted will probably not be as bad as it seems. Again I have no proof and maybe my instincts are totally wrong, but that's the feeling
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  It's very common for recessions to be widely talked about before they happen. I first heard talk about the upcoming housing bubble burst in 2003, five years before the bubble actually burst. "Economists have predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions" - Paul Samuelson
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > I first heard talk about the upcoming housing bubble burst in 2003, five years before the bubble actually burst. 2006 is when the housing bubble was pierced. It took another couple of years to fully deflate, so bursting isn't likely the best depiction of the event, but typically when we talk about bubbles bursting we refer to the first moment of weakness, not the tail end. It was the securities market that crashed fast and hard five years later. The housing market crash played a role in that happening, I'm sure, but isn't housing itself.
    - mgkimsal 4y ago
      I first learned what 'no doc' loans where in 2004. I worked inside a mortgage company for a while, and was a bit shocked by some of the numbers I saw. BUT... I don't think a housing bubble/crash was a foregone conclusion in 2003/2004, but warning signs were there and got louder over time.
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        The housing bubble occupied the front cover of the economist several times in 2004.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > I mean that honestly; I know there's a downturn and it'll probably continue, but my instinct is that something so widely talked about and accepted will probably not be as bad as it seems. Again I have no proof and maybe my instincts are totally wrong, but that's the feeling Pretty much the center of opinion in mid-2006 was that the housing market was in a "slowdown" but that any recession would be brief, talk of "soft landings" and everything else. Everyone could see that it was rolling over, but there was a lot of optimistic talk about it. Your opinion here is almost exactly the opinion seen 6-12 months before a strong recession. There was some discussion of a contraction/recession due to the spike in commodities around 2014 by economists, but that never quite developed into a broad common opinion that a recession was due. And there was no Fed rate hike cycle starting then (since the Fed knew that inflation that was confined to commodities would be its own tax and brake on the economy, in the absence of other measures of inflation taking off).
candiddevmike 4y ago
Will we be in a recession on November 9th?
dpedu 4y ago
According to the general definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product - the U.S. entered a recession in the summer of 2022.
- melling 4y ago
  And we left the recession in Q3? https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Probably depends on whether it stays up or not. See here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA 7 of the 12 recessions marked on the graph temporarily jumped up then dropped back down during the recession. A note though that the "2 quarters negative real GDP growth" has only ever been a rule of thumb that tends to fit (on that graph above, the dips below 0 outside of recessions only ever lasted one quarter). The official determination has always been made by NBER ( https://www.nber.org/ https://www.nber.org/ ), and how they determine it is more complicated (though AFAIK the details aren't public). I think it's too soon for them to make a determination on this one though, they make it while looking backwards, so these two quarters may yet become official which would maintain the pattern.
  - dpedu 4y ago
    Perhaps, though this more of a response to "We aren’t in a recession yet" as this is an odd thing to say being just 1 quarter out.
rapjr9 4y ago
Here's some actual data on hiring rate from LinkedIn: https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/en-us/resources/linkedin-workforce-report-november-2022 https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/en-us/resources/linkedin-... Looks like the hiring rate is down some since May but still quite positive. It's always been above 1% for the last two years, and reached a max of about 1.35% in June of last year. It is down 10.6% this October, compared to October of last year, but the actual variation in hiring rate is not huge. They break it down by industry, some industries have increased hiring, some have decreased it.

willsmith72 4y ago

Has there ever been a recession so widely accepted and talked about before it kicked in? I mean that honestly; I know there's a downturn and it'll probably continue, but my instinct is that something so widely talked about and accepted will probably not be as bad as it seems. Again I have no proof and maybe my instincts are totally wrong, but that's the feeling

bryanlarsen 4y ago
It's very common for recessions to be widely talked about before they happen. I first heard talk about the upcoming housing bubble burst in 2003, five years before the bubble actually burst. "Economists have predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions" - Paul Samuelson
- randomdata 4y ago
  > I first heard talk about the upcoming housing bubble burst in 2003, five years before the bubble actually burst. 2006 is when the housing bubble was pierced. It took another couple of years to fully deflate, so bursting isn't likely the best depiction of the event, but typically when we talk about bubbles bursting we refer to the first moment of weakness, not the tail end. It was the securities market that crashed fast and hard five years later. The housing market crash played a role in that happening, I'm sure, but isn't housing itself.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    I first learned what 'no doc' loans where in 2004. I worked inside a mortgage company for a while, and was a bit shocked by some of the numbers I saw. BUT... I don't think a housing bubble/crash was a foregone conclusion in 2003/2004, but warning signs were there and got louder over time.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      The housing bubble occupied the front cover of the economist several times in 2004.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lamontcg 4y ago
> I mean that honestly; I know there's a downturn and it'll probably continue, but my instinct is that something so widely talked about and accepted will probably not be as bad as it seems. Again I have no proof and maybe my instincts are totally wrong, but that's the feeling Pretty much the center of opinion in mid-2006 was that the housing market was in a "slowdown" but that any recession would be brief, talk of "soft landings" and everything else. Everyone could see that it was rolling over, but there was a lot of optimistic talk about it. Your opinion here is almost exactly the opinion seen 6-12 months before a strong recession. There was some discussion of a contraction/recession due to the spike in commodities around 2014 by economists, but that never quite developed into a broad common opinion that a recession was due. And there was no Fed rate hike cycle starting then (since the Fed knew that inflation that was confined to commodities would be its own tax and brake on the economy, in the absence of other measures of inflation taking off).

candiddevmike 4y ago

Will we be in a recession on November 9th?

dpedu 4y ago

According to the general definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product - the U.S. entered a recession in the summer of 2022.

melling 4y ago
And we left the recession in Q3? https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product
- Izkata 4y ago
  Probably depends on whether it stays up or not. See here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA 7 of the 12 recessions marked on the graph temporarily jumped up then dropped back down during the recession. A note though that the "2 quarters negative real GDP growth" has only ever been a rule of thumb that tends to fit (on that graph above, the dips below 0 outside of recessions only ever lasted one quarter). The official determination has always been made by NBER ( https://www.nber.org/ https://www.nber.org/ ), and how they determine it is more complicated (though AFAIK the details aren't public). I think it's too soon for them to make a determination on this one though, they make it while looking backwards, so these two quarters may yet become official which would maintain the pattern.
- dpedu 4y ago
  Perhaps, though this more of a response to "We aren’t in a recession yet" as this is an odd thing to say being just 1 quarter out.

rapjr9 4y ago

Here's some actual data on hiring rate from LinkedIn: https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/en-us/resources/linkedin-workforce-report-november-2022 https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/en-us/resources/linkedin-... Looks like the hiring rate is down some since May but still quite positive. It's always been above 1% for the last two years, and reached a max of about 1.35% in June of last year. It is down 10.6% this October, compared to October of last year, but the actual variation in hiring rate is not huge. They break it down by industry, some industries have increased hiring, some have decreased it.