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Comment by standerman | Hacker News Reader

"There is a recession coming in the near future, which could result in Amazon looking for cheaper developers globally." It's dangerous to post speculative things with such certainty. The future is never guaranteed.

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The more worried people are that there's a bubble, the less extreme the irrational exuberance. I love all the "shit, the bubble's about to pop" talk. If people weren't worried, it's just make the correction that much worse when it comes. And someday we'll have one, that's a given. It's just a question of when and how bad.

I am just going to leave you with this image here that shows the SP&500 since 1928: https://imgur.com/a/JCMbIvU

We have had 10 years of growth since the last recession (every gray line is a recession).

If you take into account the market corrections that we have seen this year as a sign, most people in finance will agree that there will be a correction in the next three years. It is far from speculation.

The charts was generated from here: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat...

Edit: FYI I did not imply that market corrections == recession. The reason I put the image is to show that there hasn't been a recession in 10 years and that we are due for one. We have had a few market corrections this year, but no recession yet.

Now plot a expoential regression on it -- where _should_ we be?

Stock market "correction" != recession.

It's also not even remotely clear to me that a plot of 500 of the largest corporations in the US SHOULDN'T be growing extremely/exponentially fast.

Market corrections and recessions aren't the same thing, the chart you posted clearly shows Black Monday as not being a result of a recession. A rebalancing of the stock market at large doesn't necessarily result in mass unemployment, followed by mass foreclosure and so on.

That plot appears to show a 20-year-long bull market from 1980 to 2000, so with that precedent set, who's to say we aren't only half-way through the current bull run? (I don't actually have a strong view one way or the other; my point is just that it's hard to conclude anything by reading an S&P 500 price chart by itself.)

Rollback that graph to 1995, and it looks similar to current situation. And then there was 5 more years of high growth.

Well, I don't think it's speculative to say that a recession is coming. Predicting exactly when is hard, but isn't it a near virtual certainty that it will happen?

Sure, but that's like saying Yellowstone is going to erupt.

More like saying that a geyser at Yellowstone is going to erupt. If you believe that the timeframe for the next recession is on par with the timeframe for the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

I’ve lived through four or five recessions and there’s no indication this is any sort of anomaly. It’s more like saying that a hurricane is going to hit Florida. Predicting exactly when and how is nearly impossible, but we can say with almost complete certainty that it’s going to happen within a few years.

If few is three years or less time, you can make money on some options expiring Jan 2022. Have you bought them?

And if it’s three years and a month?

Well, it's useful for me to know that your confidence of it happening in the next 3 years is low when you make your statement. I see that it is.

That's enough for me.

Have you considered that maybe my concept of “few” is not “three”?

Can I make the bet you describe for, say, seven years? I’d say five is highly likely to suffice but I’d rather play it safe.

> Have you considered that maybe my concept of “few” is not “three”?

Yep. Hence "if few is three" earlier.

I'm not interested in a bet. I'm interested in adjusting my priors. Thanks for the help.

Right. You said if a few is three, I responded to indicate that it’s looser than that, and you then basically assumed I’m a liar rather than considering that the “if” might be wrong.

If you’re not interested in a bet, why did you reply to me to ask if I’ve made one?

it's also hard to predict how deep the recession will be

We're currently riding the longest bull market in history. Surely you don't think it will last forever and that we are closer to to it's end than it's beginning?

What's the danger?

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