Famous American investor and "Big Short" Michael J. Burry has taken to Twitter tonight with an eye-popping Tweet:
A last hurrah before the US economy is officially in a recession? The stock market is already in a bear market. Perhaps Mr. Burry is suggesting a lengthy recession.
Companies that have cut their full-year earnings forecast for 2022 recently include Walmart, Verizon, AT&T, Logitech, Whirlpool, Adobe, Kohl's, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Beer Company, and General Electric. That's a pretty stark variety of tech, communications, industrials, health care, and utilities.
Several companies have announced layoffs recently too:
- Shopify to lay off 10% of workforce
- Lyft lays off 60 employees
- Tropicana cuts 27 jobs at St. Lucie County plant
- Blockchain.com reducing workforce by 25%
- Eventbrite lays off half of workforce
- Microsoft will lay off thousands of employees
- 7-Eleven lets go of 880 workers
These were just layoffs announced in the past week. The list goes on, the further back you look. There's even a new handy tracker Twitter account - https://twitter.com/LayoffsTracker
By Jove, the portents are painting a very bearish picture. The White House even announced tonight that several retailers may have over ordered inventory. We will hear more color from the FOMC tomorrow, when the next rate hike ia announced.
Still, many say we can't be heading toward a recession because inflation has peaked and job reports continue to be strongly positive. As with anything, it all depends on who you listen to and what evidence you look at. To me, the writing is on the wall: second consecutive quarter of negative GDP confirmed soon.
