The only way this would not turn into recession is if the tariff's are withdrawn or fed lowers the rate even further or with quantitative easing.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 of these would prolong the 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 huge stabilizing element in stock market.
Games and internet goods are now real, not like 2008 or at the time of .com bust. Though those things are still virtual in essence but they affect real life much more than earlier. So even if there is manufacturing slowdown, no one has numbers on how much people are spending on virtual stuff. Sales of books, movies, software went really up, because delivery mechanisms of today were not there 10 years ago.
People who knew technology like me 10 years ago did not had money to spend it on virtual stuff. People who grew up playing computer games are now in their 40ies or 30ies. Now they have money and can spend it on stuff that previous gen was seeing as stupid.
That said virtual goods market still has plenty of potential to grow. There are multiple jobs to fill for filtering and creating content. There was no such thing as "influencer" or full time youtuber 10 years ago. In the end, no there is no artificial intelligence or algorithm that can filter original content or create one.
Manufactured good you can sell once, virtual good you can create once and sell to everyone.
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.
>Notice how even getting close to zero spread can sometimes be followed by a recession. But a negative spread always does.
Everything since the last recession is, on some timescale, followed by a recession. So, technically, you'll be correct. But so were the people saying this in each of the years since 2008. If you don't have an upper bound on this, it's unfalsifiable and, when taken as advice, can't be used for any concrete actions.
If investors were as certain as you, a recession would be happening now.