State of the Market

[willendure]

But I do think it's symptomatic of some structural and specific issues in the UK economy and market and I'm not convinced these will improve significantly for years to come.

Yes, I agree.

Soft landing? no way, but delayed landing (election year).

Structural issues stemming back to the GFC/credit crunch really, then followed up by Brexit, Covid, inflation and emerging soverign debt crisis. Not to mention energy issues and the environmental crisis. And then you've got workforce population decline, low investment and productivity decline. Shall we top that off with an emerging deflationary AI era? But thats still more on the horizon than todays reality.

Eek!

Personally I am hoping to stick out the current outside gig, then make a serious attempt at developing a software product and becoming a product company, whilst funds last (which won't be long).

[Fraidycat]

We have never seen times like this before.

We have had multi year slowdowns in IT before, in the early 90s and early 2000s, my memory is hazy but they lasted around 2.5 years.

The 2008 slowdown should have lasted 2.5 years as well but they cut interest rates to zero + money printing/QE.

We are only 21 months into this slowdown.. So i think another year is needed inorder to set a new record for badness.

[willendure]

We are only 21 months into this slowdown.. So i think another year is needed inorder to set a new record for badness.

Recession hasn't even started in the USA yet. So give that 18 months at least from end of this year, and then add some for our recovery after that. Or are we actually entering some kind of longer term stagflation/decline Japan... or Argentina?

The USA has more Millenials than Boomers, which will save them in around a decade or two. Europe only had a population bulge around the Boomers, and shrinking after that. Oh dear.

[Fraidycat]

Recession hasn't even started in the USA yet.

The US Fed signalled today they are on plan to cut interest rates 3 times this year. The UK BOE will follow.

Hopefully that will mark the end of this downturn.

There is lot of herd behaviour, companies stop hiring at the same time causing these awful bear markets, when things start to pick up they will all want to hire again at the same time as well.

The boom times will return in terms of demand for contractors, but rates probably wont return to previous levels on an inflation adjusted basis. That has been the trend for the last 20 years now..

[Bluenose]

If you look at the Salesforce hiring news (and its share price) there is a stronger argument to say the worst has passed and we are shortly off to the races once the bench has cleared. Adobe, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, even IBM are giving off 'rally-monkey' vibes - "ITS RALLY TIME".

[dsc]

If you look at the Salesforce hiring news (and its share price) there is a stronger argument to say the worst has passed and we are shortly off to the races once the bench has cleared. Adobe, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, even IBM are giving off 'rally-monkey' vibes - "ITS RALLY TIME".

Anyone here does Salesforce? I'm in a different industry but might have an opportunity to change over to Salesforce, but as it's CRM it seems remarkably boring. Worth doing in the long run? I'm fairly interested in UI / UX, which I reckon there's fair bit in SF.

[willendure]

The US Fed signalled today they are on plan to cut interest rates 3 times this year. The UK BOE will follow.

Some things to bear in mind. The Fed have never cut rates ahead of a recession, they always do it too late. Every major recession for the last 100 years tends to coincide with the interest rates uninverting. Think of it like this, the fed can pull a lever and adjust the short term rate, but the reaction of the economy to that lever lags around 18 months behind. The economy is a giant oil tanker and the fed are spinning the wheel.

I stayed in a rental property not so long ago and it had a bad shower. You turned the heat knob, and the shower would catch up about a minute later. So I had a shower that went freezing, boiling, freezing, boiling, couldn't find the right sweet spot!

They "signalled". A lot of it is about signalling. The economy is getting wobbly, so they are not going to say "we're holding course" or "we're gonna raise the rates again" because that might be the trigger that breaks it. So they have to give a signal that suggests a stimulus is just around the corner, stay positive folks!

Bank Term Funding Program just ended - that was the bail out for the Silicon Valley Bank and so on that went tits up around 1 year ago. Commercial real estate is badly underwater. So more bank failures seem fairly innevitable at this point.

The UK BOE will follow, the flock will follow the shephard. When the fed raised rates we got a "dollar milkshake" effect. Higher USA rates mean that excess capital around the globe flows into the USA - I certainly would not be investing my money in the UK economy right now, for example, when my ISA/SIPP accounts let me trade the US markets (even though they might be overpriced).

I think this milkshake effect is probably stronger than is often realized or talked about. It helps to explain why UK businesses are not investing right now, and I think we can expect some relief from that effect when rates do fall. Shame our country is in an equally dodgy position and unable to avoid reducing rates in sync with the fed, otherwise we might be able to have our own milkshake.

[willendure]

Anyone here does Salesforce? I'm in a different industry but might have an opportunity to change over to Salesforce, but as it's CRM it seems remarkably boring. Worth doing in the long run? I'm fairly interested in UI / UX, which I reckon there's fair bit in SF.

I did Salesforce once. I never put it on my CV so that no-one ever asks me to do it again. What a weird and ghastly product. They even invented their own fork of SQL, which of course means it does not run under standard libraries such as JDBC, so its all string munging. Nice one clowns, they just re-enabled SQL injection attacks!

If you are desperate, there does seem to be some demand for it, so it might keep you alive and out of debt for a while...

[SchumiStars]

This is crazy
Not being funny but seems like you are being paid an offshore rate for an onshore job.

Have you looked at companies like Detica / BAE systems? They are chock full of technical people from top unis.

Some things to bear in mind. The Fed have never cut rates ahead of a recession, they always do it too late. Every major recession for the last 100 years tends to coincide with the interest rates uninverting. Think of it like this, the fed can pull a lever and adjust the short term rate, but the reaction of the economy to that lever lags around 18 months behind. The economy is a giant oil tanker and the fed are spinning the wheel.

I stayed in a rental property not so long ago and it had a bad shower. You turned the heat knob, and the shower would catch up about a minute later. So I had a shower that went freezing, boiling, freezing, boiling, couldn't find the right sweet spot!

They "signalled". A lot of it is about signalling. The economy is getting wobbly, so they are not going to say "we're holding course" or "we're gonna raise the rates again" because that might be the trigger that breaks it. So they have to give a signal that suggests a stimulus is just around the corner, stay positive folks!

Bank Term Funding Program just ended - that was the bail out for the Silicon Valley Bank and so on that went tits up around 1 year ago. Commercial real estate is badly underwater. So more bank failures seem fairly innevitable at this point.

The UK BOE will follow, the flock will follow the shephard. When the fed raised rates we got a "dollar milkshake" effect. Higher USA rates mean that excess capital around the globe flows into the USA - I certainly would not be investing my money in the UK economy right now, for example, when my ISA/SIPP accounts let me trade the US markets (even though they might be overpriced).

I think this milkshake effect is probably stronger than is often realized or talked about. It helps to explain why UK businesses are not investing right now, and I think we can expect some relief from that effect when rates do fall. Shame our country is in an equally dodgy position and unable to avoid reducing rates in sync with the fed, otherwise we might be able to have our own milkshake.

No idea what milkshake we are talking about. Not sure this is good news or bad TBH. All I know, as we are looking forward to starting April, the market is dead.

[WTFH]

I stayed in a rental property not so long ago and it had a bad shower. You turned the heat knob, and the shower would catch up about a minute later. So I had a shower that went freezing, boiling, freezing, boiling, couldn't find the right sweet spot!

That's not a bad shower, that's someone who doesn't understand how showers work.
The run of the hot pipe will determine how long it takes to get from supply to shower. Most people understand that and leave the shower set to about the right temperature, then the next time turn it on and wait a couple of seconds before hopping in. If you find it's going from freezing to boiling to freezing, then you're just too aggressive and impatient with the controls, which most people understand.



It's a bit like people talking about economics and saying that based on the last 15 years, they understand everything.