How to manage Capital in an Economic DownturnThe Great Recession is not the first time that the economy has experienced downturn or recession. The last one occurred during the early 1980s, and it caused unemployment to spike and home prices to drop. However, that doesn’t mean that a similar situation cannot happen again. The effects of a recession have lasting implications for consumers and businesses. When consumers have less money to spend on goods and services, businesses must make adjustments in order to remain profitable. In fact, recessions can lead to innovation in industries like technology where creative minds come up with cheaper solutions for everyday problems. Here’s a look at how consumers are affected by recessions, what they’re doing about it, as well as how you can manage your money in these challenging times.
What Happens When the Economy Recovers?
When the economy recovers from a recession, there are typically two ways that consumers spend their money. One way is that consumers continue to spend on the same products and services that they bought before the recession. The other spending trend that occurs during a recovery is that consumers change the products and services that they spend money on. The reason for this change in spending habits is that consumers have changed their priorities during the recession. When a recession has caused consumers to have less disposable income, they tend to make their money go further. When consumers have less disposable income, they can no longer afford to spend money on certain products and services.
The Impact of a Recession on Consumers
A recession can have a lasting impact on consumers. Consumers who experience a recession tend to have less confidence in their ability to manage their money. This can cause lasting damage to their credit scores as they seek out lower interest loans or take out a repayment plan. A recession can also impact a consumer’s career and ability to earn a living wage. When a recession occurs, businesses have to make changes to remain profitable. This might include laying off employees or reducing the hours that part-time workers are scheduled for. A recession can impact consumers’ ability to buy a home as well. Mortgage rates tend to be higher during a recession as investors seek out higher returns because of the increased risk of default.
Consumer Responses During a Recession
When a recession occurs, consumers are likely to make changes to their spending habits in order to save money. The first thing that consumers are likely to do is reduce discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is the money that is spent on entertainment activities, eating out at restaurants, shopping for luxury items, and on travel. Another common response of consumers during a recession is to change how they get their services. When a recession occurs, consumers are likely to change how they get their banking, insurance , and healthcare services as well as how they pay their bills.
How Consumers Can Manage Their Money in a Recession
The best way for consumers to manage their money during a recession is to make a budget. A budget for spending should include all of the money that goes out of your bank account each month as well as how much money comes into your account. When making a budget, it is important to consider your expenses and income to see if there is any room in your budget to make changes. This can include looking at your monthly expenses and trying to reduce the amount that you spend on certain items. When you are making a budget, it is important to keep in mind that you will have to change it as time goes on. As your income changes, you may have more or less money available to spend each month. Likewise, you may also have more or less expenses to pay each month.
Investing in the Stock Market: The stock market is one of the riskiest investments you can make. It’s also one of the most profitable when things go right. The stock market has its ups and downs, but it always rebounds in the long run. Even during a recession, savvy investors know how to make money in the stock market by investing in stocks and other types of securities. Investing in the stock market may seem intimidating at first, but it’s not as complicated as you think! In this Educational article, we’ll show you how to invest in the stock market if you have less than $5,000 to invest. With these tips and tricks to invest in a recession, you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful investor with an impressive portfolio sooner than you think!
How to invest in the stock market with $5,000
Before you dive head first into the stock market, it’s important to know how much you have to invest. While the stock market can be rewarding, it’s also one of the riskiest investments you can make. Investing in the stock market is all about risk and reward — the more risk you take, the bigger your reward can be. Investing in the stock market requires at least $5,000 in order to diversify your portfolio. Diversification is key to long-term success in the stock market. Rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket, diversification allows you to spread your funds across many different investments.
Diversification is key
When you’re investing in the stock market, it’s important to diversify your portfolio. Diversification allows you to spread your funds across many different investments for two reasons: risk reduction and opportunity enhancement. Risk reduction is accomplished by not putting all of your funds into one investment. Instead, you’re spreading the funds across different types of investments. Opportunity enhancement allows you to take advantage of different types of growth opportunities.
Understand why you’re investing
Before you invest in the stock market, it’s important to understand why you’re investing in the first place. If you’re investing for growth, you’re looking for stocks that are currently undervalued to increase in value over time. If you’re investing for income, you’re looking for stocks that pay dividends.
Take advantage of no-fee investments
When you invest in the stock market, you pay fees for the management of your portfolio. Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are mutual funds that are pre-packaged and purchased as a single unit. Mutual funds are professionally managed funds that are offered by financial institutions, whereas ETFs are professionally managed funds that are traded on a stock exchange. If you’re investing a small amount of money in the stock market, you’re better off choosing mutual funds or ETFs that have no or low management fees. Mutual funds and ETFs with no or low management fees are often referred to as no-load funds.
Shorting ETFs can be profitable (This strategy is best suitable for Professional Traders)
Shorting ETFs can be profitable if you’re investing a large amount of money in the stock market. Shorting ETFs allows you to profit from a declining market. Shorting ETFs is a very risky investment strategy and is not recommended for beginners. If you’re interested in shorting ETFs, be sure to talk to a financial advisor before making any investments.
Additional Note: When the global economy is on the verge of recession, investors are scared and their first thought is to run towards things that are safe. In recent years, markets have grown to distrust risky investments such as stocks and other volatile assets. When the global economy is about to go into recession, commodities like gold and oil usually become hot properties for investors wanting to preserve their capital. There are a number of asset classes that thrive during a recession: real estate, bonds, and value stocks—or anything with a low correlation to the stock market. However, at the same time there are also some that suffer: high-beta stocks; growth stocks; growth real estate; luxury goods; emerging market equities; and anything else with a high correlation to the stock market. In our next article we will analyze Gold and Silver as an hedge against inflation and their performance in an economic downturn.
Conclusion
The recession that took place in the early 2000s is a great example of how a recession can change the way consumers spend their money. During this recession, consumers were likely to spend more money on food and clothing since those were necessities that consumers could not do without. When the next recession occurs, consumers may change their spending habits once again. However, it is important to remember that a recession is a natural part of the business cycle. It is likely that consumers will continue to spend their money in the future even in the face of a recession. Investing in the stock market is a smart way to diversify your investment portfolio. It’s also a great way to earn passive income through dividends. The best way to invest in the stock market if you have less than $5,000 to invest is through mutual funds or ETFs with no or low management fees. Shorting ETFs can also be a great way to make money in a recession if you have a large amount of funds to invest.
Even though the technical definition of a recession has been changed/modified it is important to know that unemployment rate determines the condition of a recession.
Consumer
The Secrets to Forex & Seasons GreedingsThis section is on seasonality and follows the prior section on carry trading conditions. I strongly recommend reading the prior parts for full value. This is (pt. 5) in chronological order.
And yes, this will be on the test.
-----------------------
You probably have someone in the immediate or extended family that considers herself (let's be honest) an expert shopper. The coupons, the early trips, the economy size containers, the 2 for 1 dealerinos, etc. Gets the seasonal produce or vegetables because they're cheap. Skips Black Friday, shops Cyber Monday. Didn't run out of toilet paper during the pandemic, etc. Gets all the Christmas gifts shortly after Thanksgiving, or in early December. And this expert shopper will repeat many of these decisions each year around similar times or with similar products. Doesn't matter what holiday, culture, or country involved, the behavior is parallel. I'll cut the music and get to the important stuff: Shopping is where the average normie experiences the pricing influences of seasonality.
Not everything is 'worth' the same price all year round, not everything can be produced on any given day of the year, and not everything is consumed on any given day of the year. There are private and public laws and behavioral standards tied in as well. Everyone knows this as they experience it in their general robotic lives. But retail traders tend to forget this when it comes to trading and investing.
So what's the difference between seasonality and similar-sounding concepts like cyclical trading or using historical models?
Part 1: Solar Calendars
Seasonality is a kind of factor (like in factor investing), it's a more rigid concept derived from historical data. It tends to be cyclical, but the timing is not arbitrary, it's formatted into the gregorian calendar . This calendar is based on solar timings and their effects. Solar timings were once one of the great wisdoms coveted by our ancient ancestors, building incredible structures to predict these seasonal events. They didn't do this for fun. In our current era of surplus, we can tik tok our way to prosperity, but in earlier eras, maximizing food and shelter was a life or death strategy.
The solar calendar predicts these events with relatively decent scientific accuracy. It offers certain outcomes. Think about trading and its challenges. Uncertainty is the norm, so anything certain is inherently valuable. Now, how does that fit into currency exchange?
Businesses, major exchanges, and governments all rely on this calendar for their standard operating procedures and for risk management. What do those three things have in common? They involve people, and they involve lots and lots of money. They all share the same green destiny.
Part 2: Are These Titles Useful?
I said this a million different ways in the first 2 parts. Look, there are certain psychological biases that greedy people at the top share, due to their upbringing, income bracket, and nationality, among things. Those biases help make seasonality matter, largely due to vacation timing, consumption season, and tax events these wealthy people will into relevance out of thin air, like a magician. This is why seasonality can still generate an edge for you, the pitiful retail trader. Now, as mentioned in pt. 3, we are still focused on long-term trades, traders that hold for many days, weeks, or months.
Does seasonality have big changes for intra-day traders (who play on nightmare difficulty)? I'm not going to write a book here and detail every answer, you need to do your own research. Or you can just wait for me to write the section on intra-day trading. Or you could spend your whole life serving coffee.
Please remember to follow me so I don't have to see your awful latte art.
Part 3: Dead Presidents
Okay, here are some secrets from the money magicians:
There are seasons for all securities.
It's important to understand that seasons for stocks and commodities affect currencies.
I had to check google to make sure this is up to date but it appears you still need cash to buy or own things. And we're in the cash game. Ever wonder why dead presidents or national heros are always on the faces of fiat currency? As described in the last part, they are country-level assets, created for tax and liquidity purposes. Those faces are reminders of your most sacred civic duty: paying taxes. Did you know that all people have to pay taxes? Including wealthy people? The most powerful person on earth (probably) pays taxes. And, based on nationality, have to pay taxes at the same time each year? That is a rare form of certainty related to markets.
Part 4: The Spice Must Flow
Tax season, especially the US tax season, is big because lots of cash (usually over 80%) flows through forex as USD. Most of the wealthiest people in the world hold a lot of USD. And a majority of them live in the US, as tax residents or as citizens. As a result, it has an effect on USD rates towards the end of the year, when investment portfolios are rebalanced to try and take advantage of the tax system with whatever strategy is legally available. Indeed, it can be complicated, and I recommend doing your own research, something you will have to be competent at if you want to make a living for decades into the future. The net assessment is that if you are trading towards the end of the year, you need to be mindful of how the US tax season will affect your potential positions, and fit that into your risk management evaluation.
Variables like earnings seasons, and other business or industry dependent factors serve as strong influences. After all, they are the ones using most of the money... currency isn't just there to collect for rent and spend on groceries, it's to create and capture value, the mission of all corpos. The money must flow.
JUST THE TIP: When looking at seasonality, or any other global macro like news or fundamentals, it's important to think in terms of DEMAND. Does xyz increase demand for a currency (relative to the pair)? The supply does matter, but where many retail traders (and especially cryptocoinies) tend to get pink in the face, is when they focus almost entirely on supply in the evaluation of a currency. Demand is principally important to currency, and is the primary reason why consensual pegging agreements and the gold standard failed last century. Instead of reading a book on it, just read this: the demand for the currency of a few key nations is consistently strong due to loosening international finance standards that allow the newly minted wealth of developing world investors to gravitate towards developed country assets to hedge against local economic turbulence. Oh yeah and the petrodollar.
Part 5: Commodifying Seasons
Looking at commodities as futures contracts, because they deserve special attention. Especially useful in recent months.
A lot of bag holders suffered big time in the oil contract bogmarket. The Bogdanoff's made a call, and prices on a few different oil contracts fell below zero. The behavior is so significant it is having effects on USD and global economic sentiment. Thank god we smart kids trade forex right? No zeros in forex, just infinities.
There are plenty of articles online explaining how that happened, but let me tie in FNDs and explain the intersect with currency. The First Notice Day on futures products usually represents the peak of a trend if a trend was recently present. For example, the trend would occur over the prior 2 weeks or more to the FND date. You would want to look for positive open interest changes to support that trend. The FND could represent a definitive exhaustion point and signal a reversal or retracement. For risk management, these can be useful to look at if you trade a safe haven currency against a commodity or emerging currency. That means JPY & CHF (and now USD & EUR) against AUD, CAD, and sometimes NZD. Overall, most non-safe havens will have commodity performance attached to their currency performance. A quantitative or qualitative (ya eyeball it) composite of the performance of these commodities can help identify your center of price gravity (and its shift, is it being pulled up or down). I will come back to commodity futures and how they affect commodity currencies in the next part, so don't panic. In sum, I suggest googling the first notice days for commodity contracts (and you should also make note of currency contracts as well), taking a look at their chart development, and being mindful of a likely reversal occurring on those dates. This is an excellent way of finding extremes on the related pairs and can serve as 'risk mindful' price levels for entering into a long term trade.
For example, not to get too far ahead of my risk management articles here, but let me briefly spoil with a more intermediate level trade: Relevant commodity futures contracts are rising in confluence with seasonal data and your currency (AUD/JPY) is rising in tandem. Your center of price gravity is accurately reflected as the current price of AUD/JPY at market, and you bought at the start of the month based on prior research, so you are in profit. Shortly before FND, interest rates on AUD are cut and the AUD/JPY trend flatlines. However, at the FND, the contracts make an extreme bullish move, and price action on AUD/JPY jumps as well (but in a smaller %). You have found an extreme, and can now close your long position or open a reversal position and wait for PA to retrace.
Now, I could write a Chinese novel on all the specific things that should also happen with that trade, but that example is a framework you should familiarize yourself with.
Part 6: That Time of the Month
Your eyes are probably glazing over at this point. That's alright, everyone has a limit to what they can read and learn. Just like everyone has a limit to their net worth. Wonder if there is a relationship between the two.
Let me make this a little easier by explaining just how complicated seasonality can be.
As mentioned earlier, seasonality tends to work simply because there is an underlying calendar structure within highly regulated wealthy markets. These structures are created by the rules and standard practices of individuals and institutions, and more. These are effectively factors (factor investing) that shape price mechanics. Money moves in and out based on these regulations or standards (controlled timing), IE: tax obligations (end of year), holiday spending (consumer nations benefit), commodity contracts (exchange rules), and vacation months (volatility dynamics), and more. Global weather patterns influence shipping and availability of ports, temperatures and Ninos influence the price of agribusiness commodities normally tied to season... But it doesn't have to be that complicated for you, my small headed friend. I wanted to highlight the harder route first if you so choose to follow it, but the easy route is also available.
Most of the forex market is USD, the remaining minority is EUR and JPY, and the rest is just a twinkle in some greedy fatcats eye. Why not just look at the seasonal or monthly performance of those currencies? Review the conditions from the peak, instead of the ground floor?
Part 7: Started at the Top
Firstly, if you prefer averages, you can average past 3 years, past 5 years, past 25 years, etc. You can find these indicators on TV by searching 'seasonality.' You can find them as free or paid indicators on the mt4 marketplace. You can also find them in various forms on other sites, some of them premium. Now, it gets even easier. Some pairs tend to close higher on some months versus others, this can be a useful unit of analysis when you attempt to fit seasonality into any overall model. If a pair like the USDJPY has 65% of closing higher in October but a sub 35% of closing higher in August, then you can evaluate risk by aligning yourself with history. You will know based on the MoM shift of probabilities. If you don't know this, then you need to return to the zoo, they are probably looking for you. Likewise, anything between 45-55% is likely noise, and not subject to the psychological intersect present in seasonality that I find significant. Again, we're still operating under a long-term trade frame of reference; intra-day traders will have their own sections in the future. To stay on target, long term traders with limited time to do additional research will want to focus on monthly seasonality performance at minimum.
You don't necessarily need to be going through futures contracts, seasonal consumer spending, tax season dynamics, or weather patterns for perfect market timing opportunities; but know that the institutions do, and they have the money, they make the markets, and they intimately follow (or create) business and client trends. As I explained in part 1, what they think is the only thing that matters, even if it seems overly complicated or stupidly simple. Spending a little less time with your gann wave analysis and more time mimicking their research efforts will improve your survivability and your probability of accurately finding that center of price gravity.
What about carry conditions?
So let's return to the carry condition question. How can you use seasonality to find the center of price gravity, the resilient value, for long term positions? Alone, it is not sufficient, but it necessary to consider, especially in months where seasonality dictates a 65% or higher chance of a positive or negative month. For instance, you decide to plan a 3-month trade on the USDJPY, from August through October. You will know based on seasonal monthly performance, that the center of price gravity is moving from a lower to a higher price point. UJ has a 32% of closing HIGHER than it opened in August, a coinflip 53% in September, and 68% of closing higher than it opened in October. This instructs your risk management approach. You take additional risk holding a 3 month short in that period. And adding carry conditions, you pay a daily fee to make that trade as well. Personally, I feel sick just thinking about that trade. I had coronavirus last month, but that trade is worse. Now, that doesn't give you much guidance on when to open your position, which further sections will help elucidate.
If you got this far, congratulations. Your mom and I are very impressed.
More on fundamentals, commodities, and global macro in general next time. If you're someone that obsesses over the medieval metals or boomer rocks, then you will really enjoy the next section. Still lost and confused? Don't worry, it's already priced in.
HYPERBITCOINIZATION: dollar purchasing power down 94% since 1914Purchasing power ( PP -25.00% ) is a measure of strength of a currency. It represents a quantity of goods & services that can be bought by a unit of currency. Since 1914 the purchasing power of the US dollar -0.89% is down 96 %.
The calculation is simple. We take the consumer price index ( CPI 0.24% ) for the USA and divide every value by the value for our base year (1914), then multiply by 100 to get a percentage:
PP -25.00% = CPI_i / CPI_base * 100
The CPI 0.24% is itself a measure of economic strength and its rate of change forms the basis of inflation . From Wikipedia: "The CPI 0.24% is a statistical estimate constructed using the prices of a sample of representative items whose prices are collected periodically."
Since the introduction of a de facto system of free floating fiat currencies in the early 70s, the decline has been slow but persistent 3.66% . It looks very much like an asymptotic decay, where the value will go to zero over an infinite 2.39% amount of time. Inflation may effect the rate of decline, but it seems that the natural process in this case is decline.