'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bursting'

Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by grey-area on Friday September 30, 2022 @04:08PM (#33040101)

Yes, that's why it has far more to go to revert to the mean of earnings and price. Earnings are also artificially inflated, and will drift down, and stock prices with them, we're just seeing the beginning of that process.

Here's someone else who called it over a year ago with some charts with counterpoint those you link:

https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc220925/

OR CAPE: https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe

Note he's in good company, with Jeremy Grantham for example also warning of the same thing:

https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/grantham-this-is-a-bub...

Just to be clear, the argument is not 'everything is shit now because inflation', it is that the era of easy money has ended, significant inflation and war means a regime change in central bank intervention, and central banks will now tighten till things break. They haven't even managed to unwind QE yet and stop buying their own debt, will they ever? If they do, watch out.

This isn't doom and gloom, it's simple realism about the regime change in interest rates - the era of 0% money is gone, in its place we have a normalisation, which means a normalisation of frothy asset prices and a reversion to the mean of earnings and prices in many domains. Usually these things take a year or two to work out, it won't be a fast process.

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by sokoloff on Friday September 30, 2022 @04:30PM (#33040381)

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I think it misses that, in an era of 0% money, growth matters more than current profits and so firms rationally trade off the latter in pursuit of the former.

When that changes, I think you’ll see earnings rise as chasing growth now carries a higher cost.

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by grey-area on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:49AM (#33139474)

That has changed with persistent inflation. We are now moving up from zero rates.

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by RC_ITR on Friday September 30, 2022 @04:30PM (#33040385)

> Earnings are also artificially inflated, and will drift down

Citation needed. Maybe we are enter a local minimum, but what, you think off-stock-market value is not going to be brought onto the stock market?

I think you should try to raise a private capital fund and roll-up as many mom and pop retailers as you can, then.

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by portlander52232 on Friday September 30, 2022 @04:39PM (#33040490)

How are earnings artificially inflated?

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by RC_ITR on Friday September 30, 2022 @04:43PM (#33040537)

It's a common trope for people who don't like the fact that the stock market is trading at normal-ish P/E levels to say 'well the E is fake!!! Just wait until the E normalizes!'

Usually, they cite things like artificially low input costs (hard to argue that today), unsustainable demand from customers due to 'cheap money' (haven't seen evidence of that yet, the opposite actually), and a general disdain for advertising and retail business models (despite their long-term durability).

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Re:'Big Short' investor says white-collar jobs bubble is 'bu... by adammarples on Sunday October 02, 2022 @01:31PM (#33058162)

Yes, you are the clever one, everyone else just repeats tropes. Personal debt is at record levels, inflating earnings. That has to unwind at some point and it will be when the cost of money increases, which it will, if the Fed has to trigger a recession to do so. We're in a different regime now.

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