So I still think there's a huge disconnect between market perception of what's going on and what's actually going on. Last month I was saying "don't treat this is a temporary dip". Many have never known anything other than a bull market. The S&P 500 has rallied some ~20% since then (after a >30% fall mind you) so I've had a couple of people point to this like I'm wrong.
The perception many seem to have is that everything is going to go back to normal in a month. But some businesses and jobs are just... gone. This will absolutely impact demand and this will be much slower to recover.
I was also surprised to learn that S&P 500 earning shave been flat since 2014 while the market has gone gangbusters. That had to come crashing back to Earth eventually.
Also, some things like social distancing are here for the long term. I've already gotten emails from airlines saying they won't be filling certain seats on the plane. It's probably going to be a lot nicer to fly in coach, which I guess many will enjoy, except it's going to have to get more expensive. Less passengers, same plane, higher price per passenger. It's just simple math.
And who's going to be traveling anyway? Business travel (the lifeblood of most airlines) is going to take a long time to recover.
The economy just doesn't shrink 5% and everything is back to normal the next month. People who think so are hopelessly naive or just plain delusional. And that GDP contraction isn't going to end here.
> I was also surprised to learn that S&P 500 earning shave been flat since 2014 while the market has gone gangbusters. That had to come crashing back to Earth eventually
I was also surprised recently to learn how flat earnings have been. The stock prices going gangbusters can be explained (at least partly) by earnings per share going up due to stock buybacks. If you go look, most companies have significantly fewer shares outstanding than they did in 2014.
The perception many seem to have is that everything is going to go back to normal in a month. But some businesses and jobs are just... gone. This will absolutely impact demand and this will be much slower to recover.
I was also surprised to learn that S&P 500 earning shave been flat since 2014 while the market has gone gangbusters. That had to come crashing back to Earth eventually.
Also, some things like social distancing are here for the long term. I've already gotten emails from airlines saying they won't be filling certain seats on the plane. It's probably going to be a lot nicer to fly in coach, which I guess many will enjoy, except it's going to have to get more expensive. Less passengers, same plane, higher price per passenger. It's just simple math.
And who's going to be traveling anyway? Business travel (the lifeblood of most airlines) is going to take a long time to recover.
The economy just doesn't shrink 5% and everything is back to normal the next month. People who think so are hopelessly naive or just plain delusional. And that GDP contraction isn't going to end here.