I think the crash of 08 is different from anything we have brewing right now. I am leaning more toward a dot com bubble burst type situation. I have been slowly rebalancing everything for the last month or so. I managed to lose less than 1% value in my portfolios Friday, so I am pretty satisfied that I can weather things for now. That being said, I am trying to avoid taking a lick that would knock me back 10 years, even if I have to give up some amount of potential gain for now. My plan is to work for roughly ten more years before retiring.
My overall feeling and sense of the market is that a lot of crap is way-overvalued, hyped with manipulation, especially in tech. Look at what happened when Elon bought Twitter and exposed how so many posts and engagement was from bots.
Then look at pensions/retirement, housing, energy, insurance, automobiles, hospitals, services, big retail, Pharma, commercial banking, supermarkets/grocery stores, e-commerce/auctions, colleges/universities, online computer software sales, warehouse club super centers and the other top 20 industries.
If you go down each market sector, we find grotesque inflations and over-valuations at almost every turn.
It’s like that Tesla Cybertruck with plastic covers held in place by Velcro and tiny fasteners. Has a nice package and exterior, but corner-cutting as standard underneath, with a Platinum price tag.
We called the HVAC guy to come out and check out our system, which was running sluggishly. Turns out the capacitor (made in China) had gone bad and was only generating 16 uF instead of 45 like it should (45/5 system 440V). House isn’t even 6yrs old.
Technician says he has one in the van for $245 on top of the call-out/diagnosis.
The best ones are $24 retail, so he charges 10x the retail price for that part.
Look at what happened with housing and automobiles over the past 4 years. Pricing went way out of control, and the manufacturers focused on inflating their numbers as well due to upward volatility. They kept doing that until people could no longer buy.
A lot of people paid at way-inflated rates and are strung-out with insane levels of Debt-to-Income ratio that never would have been approved 4 years ago from brokers.
Then look at college/university tuition. It’s a bloody scam of immense proportions and there is only devaluation for a lot of the students who walk away with no skills and tens of thousands in debt for a BA in Psych/Polysci/Gender. It was already 14,000% inflated years ago, with a corollary deflation of aptitude and marketable skills.
Big retail has been importing Chicom excrement, but gone are the days of $8.88 and $14.88 at Wal-Mart.
$126 Wal-Mart groceries receipt from 2022 is now $414.
So it’s been clear to pretty much anyone with some sense remaining the market is tapped-out, so time for a correction. The next question is how much will it correct and for how long will the drop last?