Economics chat?

[LWJ]

First. No PARFy stuff please. I am not interested.

Today is August 12, 2025. I have been casually buying and selling stuff on FB and CL for years. And? I have not seen the market for discretionary items this soft since 2009.

I can't seem to sell ANYTHING and I see killer (well, they were killer two months ago!) deals daily.

Add in we just had a disastrous jobs report just over a week ago. My son struggled to get a job for the last year as a fresh college grad and claims almost all his friends did worse than he did. (not sure of this, it could be BS)

And housing is still crazy expensive. And the AVERAGE P/E ratio of the S&P500 was 29.4 yesterday.

I want to run screaming about the sky falling.

Except I am often wrong.


Y'all are a very interesting source. Educated. Opinionated. Articulate. Tell me your assessment. For me, things feel "off." And the discretionary income piece is the biggest indicator.

[gregpark]

The US dollar is on the way out, we've run our course. Too much debt, too much printing new currency with nothing behind it. Pay off your personal debts, re-invest your stock portfolio to strictly commodities. Every fiat currency in history has ended in 0, why do we think we're different? Lots of bubbles about to burst.

[fanaudical]

Agreed - Things seem off. Talking to friends around the country, it seems more off in some areas than others.

Stocks seem (to me, at least) to be overvalued but trading volume seems high.

I see housing construction but projects seem to have slowed down. Tons of town-home building and they are advertised for premium prices.

Groceries are up. Gas is up. Utilities are up. Where I work, major customer projects are non-existent. OEM forecasts still say orders will pick up "next quarter", but the forecast keeps moving. Hiring freezes in place at many customers, suppliers, and competitors. Major industries in our area are either in trouble or treading water.

I'm not trusting any job reports or economic outlook from our state government; they seem pretty disconnected from reality.

Greg - I'm curious about your advice to drop stocks for commodities. What's the rationale behind that? And which commodities?

[gregpark]

What you said, most stocks are over valued. Losing propositions in the near run in my opinion. I've traded in for articles of real substance. Real estate, gold and silver. I'm having difficulty trusting most anything else anymore.

[cabmandone]

I'm not seeing any softness in the consumer market. I got to use my Bobcat E40 excavator for four weeks before it sold. I listed a 52 acre wooded property on Marketplace and had an approved buyer within 15 minutes of the property being listed (It's scheduled to close the first week of September. I listed a 16 acre parcel and had a full price cash offer in 24 hours (set closing for September due to crops) Listed a 22 acre property for sale and had a full price cash offer in 24 hours (again closing in September due to crops) Mind blower for me is that I listed them all on marketplace. I never dreamt there would be that kind of demand for property on MP. A machine I bought to try out sold before I could get it home.

I gotta tell ya, if this is a soft consumer market, I hope it stays this soft.

Originally Posted by LWJ

Today is August 12, 2025. I have been casually buying and selling stuff on FB and CL for years. And? I have not seen the market for discretionary items this soft since 2009.

Consumers becoming more value oriented and price conscious has been well discussed on several financial sites. It's not 2021 or even mid 2024 anymore. I said for the last year that some businesses are struggling to adjust to the rapidly changing consumer market.

[Paul T]

I agree things seem a bit “off”, I think there are a lot of things lurking beneath the surface that have not spooked investors sufficiently yet. The full effect of tariff’s is not even close to being realized, although supercore CPI is running at something like 5% annualized and trending up - the dollar keeps dropping and the yield curve signals possible recession ahead. All that said, I’m not ready to give up on equities yet. There still seems to be a lot of cash making its way into the market. I think household ownership of stocks is at an all time high and growing, and the “buy the dip” mentality seems to have taken hold with the average retails investor. I think there is more room to run here through the end of the year, just my opinion. But, if I were trying to time this market, I’d be nervous for sure. I’m a long term investor so year over year gyrations don’t bother me much.

EDIT: sorry, 6% annualized on supercore CPI, which is something the Fed pays attention too. Really a tough call on a Sept rate cut. Personally I think it’s a bad idea.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I hope this isn't an off-topic question, I think it might be a piece of the puzzle that I am seeing or postulating on really. My question is where are the billions of AI investment coming from? Is all of it "real" in any sense, fiat be damned, money or purely electronic with only a small portion covered by banks?

We've always had two economies. My sense is they are dissociating from each other more and more, especially with crypto added to the mix, with less of a mutual dependence every day, Wall Street clearly becoming the winner, perhaps at the expense of Main Street.

If inappropriate, please just ignore. Or LWJ LMK if I should delete.

[wdfifteen]

I’ve had a lot more trouble selling on CR and FBM this spring than ever before. I don’t know if it’s because people don’t have as much to spend, or if they are hanging on to cash and waiting to see what happens in this economy.
The lofty stock market has me concerned. I’m not in the market anymore, but I wonder what will happen to the value of my hard assets when it crashes. I’m skeptical about the twin “latest things” - AI and crypto, living up to the hype.
In answer to your question, things do seem “off.” It feels like that silence right before a thunderstorm, when all the birds stop chattering and go to roost.

[LWJ]

Shaun just called out "two economies." Hmm. This rings true. And, Cabmandone sales are all pitched towards higher income / institutional buyers.

It could well be that poor folks are having a small recession while wealthy folks just are having another day. I will confess that my circle is mostly made up of wealthier people - but I buy and sell from far more normal folks.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by LWJ

Shaun just called out "two economies." Hmm. This rings true. And, Cabmandone sales are all pitched towards higher income / institutional buyers.

It could well be that poor folks are having a small recession while wealthy folks just are having another day. I will confess that my circle is mostly made up of wealthier people - but I buy and sell from far more normal folks.

^^^^ Yep ... my take too .... doing just fine here, but NOT in that circle either .

Lots of folks are not in a good position.... but I don't run in those circles either.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by LWJ

Shaun just called out "two economies." Hmm. This rings true. And, Cabmandone sales are all pitched towards higher income / institutional buyers.

It could well be that poor folks are having a small recession while wealthy folks just are having another day. I will confess that my circle is mostly made up of wealthier people - but I buy and sell from far more normal folks.

One overlap, at the expense of the consumer, is private equity firms buying literally everything. The formula is simple: business (veterinarian, carpet installer, painter...) starts in 1950s-1980s and creates generational wealth along with a great reputation in the community. Private Equity sees a steady cash flow machine and they jack up prices. A LOT! And/or their standard load up on debt and then sell assets and let it die after they've cashed in on the assets. So many places have real estate as their primary asset. Very tasty.

Of course PE buying up homes for cash so they are interest rate independent is also driving up the price of housing.

Net net is Wall Street is taking advantage of and/or crushing Main Street, consumers paying the price for unbridled greed.

[cabmandone]

Originally Posted by LWJ

Shaun just called out "two economies." Hmm. This rings true. And, Cabmandone sales are all pitched towards higher income / institutional buyers.

It could well be that poor folks are having a small recession while wealthy folks just are having another day. I will confess that my circle is mostly made up of wealthier people - but I buy and sell from far more normal folks.

Like I said, "value driven" and price conscious consumerism is well documented. That switch flipped sometime late last year. Most credit card companies report that the US consumer is still doing well. Business Insider has an article about the strength of the consumer market even with tariffs in place.

If folks want stuff to sell right now, they need to focus on price point. If you're playing in the space everyone else is, you don't stand out. The machines I sold were priced aggressively but with good margins. The land I sold all went quickly due to price point. I could have held out for more, but I had recent appraisals to work with and had a good idea of the markets I was selling in. Price things right based on the market we're in, and things will sell.

[Alan A]

You mean now free money stopped being given out people started looking at prices again? Who could have foreseen that?

[Arizona_928]

Idk what you’re seeing with the job market, just this morning i was offered a GS-2 (not a typo) at the VA. Heck, i could throw a rock and hit a dozen jobs paying 16 a hour…. Too bad housing, vehicles, insurance, groceries, fuel, etc. are still high.


The prices aren’t 2009 level yet… not even covid years…. But they’re soft.

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by cabmandone

I'm not seeing any softness in the consumer market. I got to use my Bobcat E40 excavator for four weeks before it sold. I listed a 52 acre wooded property on Marketplace and had an approved buyer within 15 minutes of the property being listed (It's scheduled to close the first week of September. I listed a 16 acre parcel and had a full price cash offer in 24 hours (set closing for September due to crops) Listed a 22 acre property for sale and had a full price cash offer in 24 hours (again closing in September due to crops) Mind blower for me is that I listed them all on marketplace. I never dreamt there would be that kind of demand for property on MP. A machine I bought to try out sold before I could get it home.

I gotta tell ya, if this is a soft consumer market, I hope it stays this soft.



Consumers becoming more value oriented and price conscious has been well discussed on several financial sites. It's not 2021 or even mid 2024 anymore. I said for the last year that some businesses are struggling to adjust to the rapidly changing consumer market.

Priced too low. Are the buyers going to run crops or build?

[Zeke]

I have a few things that I check every day on CL and FBMP. While looking I run into similar listings not quite up my alley. Things that I notice having seen beforehand have been sitting for weeks. Some may have sold and the listing not taken down (that's a problem with FBMP and OfferUp) and I suspect some just gave up.

But I agree that the market is soft in Los Angeles and typically L.A. is not the place to find deals.

[gregpark]

The fact is we're on an unsustainable path.
The dollar is getting weaker daily because of continual printing to solve our problems.
We face an unfathomable 38 trillion dollar debt now.
Even Yellen and Powell have admitted the way we do business is unsustainable. The Feds have a plan in place for a total reset. Back to the gold standard? CBDC? Some sort of crypto? All of the above? The rest of the world is also working on it. The Feds can't spring it on us until a major economic event occurs like a stock crash, pension fund collapse, housing market crash, etc. All of which could happen like a house of cards. Then they'll look like heros instead of villains. I believe when it happens it will happen fast like in the past. No one saw the dot com collapse of the '90s coming or the '29 crash until it happened almost overnight.

[vash]

close to home. my wife volunteered to do initial interviews for new hires. last time, same position, there was THREE applicants. (so she volunteered)

this time? 71!!! it is taking her all week long. something changed.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Net net is Wall Street is taking advantage of and/or crushing Main Street, consumers paying the price for unbridled greed.

Consumers and workers are paying the price for unbridled greed.



This is another thing that adds to the sense of things being "off." I don't know how long this can go on before something bad happens.

[Yorkie]

Originally Posted by LWJ

First. No PARFy stuff please. I am not interested.

Today is August 12, 2025. I have been casually buying and selling stuff on FB and CL for years. And? I have not seen the market for discretionary items this soft since 2009.

I can't seem to sell ANYTHING and I see killer (well, they were killer two months ago!) deals daily.

Add in we just had a disastrous jobs report just over a week ago. My son struggled to get a job for the last year as a fresh college grad and claims almost all his friends did worse than he did. (not sure of this, it could be BS)

And housing is still crazy expensive. And the AVERAGE P/E ratio of the S&P500 was 29.4 yesterday.

I want to run screaming about the sky falling.

Except I am often wrong.


Y'all are a very interesting source. Educated. Opinionated. Articulate. Tell me your assessment. For me, things feel "off." And the discretionary income piece is the biggest indicator.

It took my son over a year after graduating from ASU with a degree in business to find a job. He is paid $22/hr in LA. It is certainly not his fathers or grandfathers job market. My other son is trying to sell his Gen3 4Runner with a busted head gasket and nobody is interested. For Main Street I think things are off.