Are there any predictions out there on what industr(ies) are more likely to be impacted? In 2008 it seemed to be centered around the financial industries and housing. Is that overly simplistic? Might we see a similar trend today? Partly I'm just curious, but partly I'm curious if I might find a good deal on a house. For what it's worth, I'm partly in cash. Every few weeks I move a bit of investment to cash, trying to average myself into reducing risk. Fidelity sends me emails about being overly conservative, and I ignore them. I remember 2008 well. While I was invested in several different types of mutual funds, all went down at roughly the same percentages. In a bear market, being diverse doesn't change much. I also remember how much my retirement was worth. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was somewhere around an eighth of what it is today. The slide then didn't hurt much because my biweekly 401k contributions crushed it when the market recovered. Today it would hurt more.
The current betting pool has (1) convertible bonds (2) ETFs (3) subprime auto loans as the three most likely straws to break the camel's back. CONVERTIBLES - there's a lot of yield seeking out there right now and people are buying convertibles as if they weren't convertible. The bond market, as always, is huge compared to the stock market and there's over $218b in convertible bonds out there as of March. The US bond market itself is like $35t so it's not like ZOMG all of it. There were $400b in subprime mortgages in 2008 when it started to rip. ETFs - The problem with ETFs is they're not as liquid as the underlying securities. Not only that they're a derivative - there's an equation that makes up an ETF and the stakeholders have to buy and sell to keep the blend at the algorithm. They're supposed to be advantaged by the arbitrage opportunities but on an average day, $18b in SPY trades hands. On a hot day? Fuggedaboudit. I've got a little biotech I own because they make my daughter's peanut allergy medicine. The day they released news that their clinical trials worked and they pretty much holy shit cured peanut allergy their value went down eight percent because Aetna had a bad day. And Aetna is the healthcare market as far as ETFs are concerned. It's a tiny little stock and it's in 24 different ETFs. So if people decide to sell, the bottom is likely to fall out of ETFs at an even more precipitous rate than the underlying stocks. SUBPRIME AUTOS - people are defaulting like crazy There's about $40b out there. FWIW, Rosenberg said recently that recessions happen because the Fed makes them happen. I believe the language he used was "puts a gun to the market's head and pulls the trigger" or something equally florid.Are there any predictions out there on what industr(ies) are more likely to be impacted?
Not as an investment vehicle, no, despite the fact that it would cost me more to buy my car now than it did last October. The car market has been stupid for years now and so long as the rich keep getting richer, it'll just get stupider. Had I bought a '97 Carrera 4 in '97, driven it 5k a year, performed all maintenance and sold it last year, I would have made $40k.