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Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Slumping Sales? Could This Be Why?

Seen the topic of "slumping sales" come up in a few other threads.

Can this be the reason why?

The Golden Age is Over: Billionaires Dumping American Companies
By MONEY MORNING STAFF REPORTS - 10/3/2015

Over the past few weeks the U.S. stock market posted its largest decline in years...

On Monday, August 24, the Dow plummeted 1,089 points within minutes of the opening bell. It was the largest point loss ever during a single trading. Iconic U.S. companies like GE and Pepsi saw their stocks drop 20%. Costco fell 16%, and the world's richest people lost $306 billion...

(Read the entire story below)

http://moneymorning.com/ext/articles/rickards/the-golden-age-is-over-2.php?iris=408416

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Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

That must be it. Surely this is where billionaires shop.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

I guess I maybe one should have mentioned that every single person in America is totally or partially reliant for some some portion of they income on the companies trading on Wall Street.

This is not about billionaires, it is about everyone.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

True - I always look at my stock reports before buying a throw pillow.

Personally I'm looking at my best month ever here on FAA.

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

Floyd,

The market has broken support. It will go down substantially. The current trading is a bull trap. JMO

Further I think there is no bull market around for a recovery. Not the housing market, the tech market, the financials nor commodities.

I think this market will stay down for most of 2016. The FED will hike rates soon. When who knows, but by FED standards soon.

The money supply is tightening somewhat. The FED will not bail any institutions out this time.

All that said the economy is okay. Not great and not bad. But it depends on what you want to make of you life as usual.

The smart money existed before that article came out. Of course the major institutional money could careless. If you own
2% of IBM you do not sell because the US markets might be off by 25% in 2016. You hold for many more decades.

WEB will be buying, but not till he sees the whites of their eyes.

Fuel costs are low, the average person has more discretionary dollars to consume.

Dave

 

JoNeL Art

8 Years Ago

lol...now THIS is why I read discussions!

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

i kind of doubt. billionaires aren't shopping here, and the others i don't don't think it effects anything. oddly when the market goes down, my sales go up. though i can't imagine how it will help things in the future. i still think the slump has to do with bills from august.

slumps happen to each person now and then. it does what it does, depends on the type of person buying from you.

oddly that site reminds me a lot of the sites bill showed us about the economy tanking. i wonder if we would go back in the archive during the last election, if a similar story popped up.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Patricia Strand

8 Years Ago

I'd rather focus on the financial news stories that warn of a "correction" rather than a tanking. Nothing to be gained by getting involved in economic paranoia. The stock market is actually up as of yesterday. I think it matters little in art sales, but that's just an opinion. I choose to be positive.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Yup, mostly agree David. The election itself will keep it moving sideways at best if other factors don't push it shout faster.

I am not sure if the market is effecting everyday purchasing yet or not. I have not been following the retail sector's earnings reports. But if we keep getting stores like this one, it will sooner or later case some consumer spending downturn.

I did hear a neg jobs report early this morning also.

 

David King

8 Years Ago

The stock market has little relevance to the daily life of the average consumer. There have been some big layoffs announced recently though, even my company layed off a few. The threat of job loss is the kind of thing that scares consumers into not spending.

 

Adam Jewell

8 Years Ago

I'm sure it is one of many things that influence sales. When people look at a large portfolio that has lots of "free money", i.e investment gains in it, they may tend to spend more and when it is going up they tend to spend more.

Everyone in the US is not partially dependent on the companies trading on Wall Street, not directly anyway and certainly not on the stock prices as only a relatively small fraction of people in the US can afford to own stock.

 

Ricardo De Almeida

8 Years Ago

I know a person that had a growth of 500% in sales last month (compared to September 2014). All PODs included.




 

David King

8 Years Ago

Actually, I bet the majority of Americans own stock, just not directly, but rather in their 401k's and IRA's. But those accounts are long term investment vehicles for retirement, so I don't think that people that have those investments think about the fact that the DOW is down 6% from a couple weeks ago when making their daily purchasing decisions, it probably never even enters their mind.

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

i know the 401k i have left is not doing well, i should have taken the money out when they made me switch over, it might be dumb to pull out right now, i don't know how the stocks really work though. but its not my main money, i don't have real access to it. i suppose one could argue that when the stocks do well people think they are rich and buy all kinds of odd things. and those kinds of people might have stopped buying. but its really hard to say.

i think there are also buying seasons. everyone just got done stocking kids for school, they may be tired of looking at stuff right now. i looked at my own buying habits over the summer, and for the entire time i didn't really buy anything. i wasn't in the mood. now the weather turned cooler and i think more sales will increase because of that... however if there are huge floods where galleries are, or fires where framers are, those people could be affecting the sales here. i do know my views of products seems to be up a bit, from the data i have. if i can just get them to buy that thing, then i'm golden.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

No one is trying to spread doom and gloom. The markets, on a day to day bases, usually has little to do with consumer spending. I agree.

But this is way beyond normal market fluctuations. And that news letter reporting facts, things that really happened.It does not matter what site the facts are on. The still remain the facts.

"On Monday, August 24, the Dow plummeted 1,089 points within minutes of the opening bell. It was the largest point loss ever during a single trading. Iconic U.S. companies like GE and Pepsi saw their stocks drop 20%. Costco fell 16%, and the world's richest people lost $306 billion."

A 1089 point one day drop is significant. Investors like Warren Buffert and George Soros are people that the street watch. They have some of the best research and smartest economist on staff that exists in the world.

"Warren Buffett recently dumped his entire $3.7 billion stake in America's largest company.

And legendary international investor George Soros cut his number of market positions by over 30% in less than three months. He's already moved nearly $2 billion out of U.S. stocks and into safer havens overseas."

Facts such as these are going to get people's attention. Especially when there is neg news on the job market.

 

Joe Burgess

8 Years Ago

It hasn't been normal for decades, and the people who profit from it most don't want it to be normal.
It's a fabricated system of imaginary value where inflating a bubble and being the first to pop it makes you rich.
Everyone else be damned.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

"i suppose one could argue that when the stocks do well people think they are rich and buy all kinds of odd things. and those kinds of people might have stopped buying. but its really hard to say."

No, it not hard to say. All of that data is tracked and there are monthly reports released on them. This why all of the great investors read and study those reports and why there are concerned about radial fluctuations.

The people that are most directly affected and are the most likely to start cutting back are the retirees and the people in their fifties and older that are starting to look seriously at building wealth to retire on.

All of the DOW stocks are widely held by most if not all of the retirement funds and mutual funds. These funds take a big hit when the likes of GE, PEPSI and COSTO take a 15% - 20% loss.

People that are totally or partially reliant on those funds for income get nervous when they see these sort of market fluctuations. Do they buy prints? Of course then do. But they also buy other consumer goods and when the cut back, those other industries will also suffer and so will their employees.

No one likes to see terms like "tank" or "crash" or "burst" but when the market breaks through levels of support, that is what you have.

I am not predicting that, but it is what it is.

I just posted it because like I said, some people in other threads were looking for reasons for what they described a slump.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Unemployment is at a healthy 5.1%. People with jobs can buy art. I saw plenty of people out shopping today. Sell something people want and you'll have buyers.

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

the great investors read that stuff. the general consumer i doubt does anything like that.

a while ago congress shut down. i think this time around they nearly did so. maybe people were holding their breath. the last time they shut down, the caused many people to lose their jobs, and it never came back. state parks, some are closed, many don't have enough rangers because they cut back on that, all that stuff had a ripple effect but it bounced back.

i think there might be less sales because there are more pod's than last year, and maybe some people just got bored of buying art.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Patricia Strand

8 Years Ago

Mike, it sounds like your 401k is not in the right mix for your age. You should call your admin and talk about it.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Seasonal fluctuations are easy to track once you have a few years under your belt.

You can do it quarterly or "seasonal" by winter, spring, summer and fall, or actually look at what your own time periods like "the holiday season" or "back to school" or however you want to look at it.


If your summer months are within a certain every years and then a year comes along and it breaks below that range, that is a slump. If you summer months are always you lowest "season" but are about average then that is not a slump, that is a seasonal fluctuation.

I look at quarterly reports with my 2nd quarter being the lowest on average. When I have a quarter that breaks out of range, a real slump, the first I do is look at what I did different, not the marketplace. Usually it directly linked to cutting back on advertising.

I think in many cases people are reporting seasonal fluctuations as slumps.

 

Steven Ralser

8 Years Ago

I haven't had great times with online sales, but a few weeks ago I had mt best ever 1 day art fair, at a small dying event.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

"the great investors read that stuff. the general consumer i doubt does anything like that. "

Yup, correct again, to some degree. People with a ton of money in the market, do read that stuff, but the average person does not. But the usually work with a financial planner, investment adviser or counselor or some other professional. And you can get they read that stuff. And unless they want to get disbarred they better be explaining why the clients dividends are in the tank.

It was the ignorance on the part of the investors of not following the information on Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Zee Best, KrispyKream and others that I remember, that lead to thousands and thousands of people to lose their entire life savings.

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

at some point i have to write to my place and find out how to just get it all out. i'll put it in a slower IRA. where it was, it did well, they invested in themselves. but not so much now. i just have to get to it, i'm hoping it will at least level itself out before i remove it. its all pretty annoying. partly i think it was the 5-6 week overlap that it took to get it over there that killed the stock.

except for that, i don't invest in stocks. i get CD's and such. slower, but they don't lose money.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Mario Carta

8 Years Ago

If I were in the POD industry or was an artist that made my living in this field I would be worried. The reason is supply and demand, supply and demand effects almost every industry in one way or another. Every single day now 1.8 billion images are uploaded to the internet, this number is growing all the time and at an exponential rate. It only follows logic that this creates an over saturated market for the artist.To expect growth in this market for the artist goes against logic unless something else changes. This could be the "why" for the slump in sales many are referring to and maybe it's not a slump at all but a growing down trend, just like the stock market report Floyd provided.

As for me I'm working on my multiple income streams, it's the only way to hedge against this looming reality of the over abundance of everything that the internet creates. As the old saying goes "don't put all your eggs in one basket".

 

JC Findley

8 Years Ago

I think the low price of oil influences disposable income and art spending to an extent much more than the stock market.

 

David King

8 Years Ago

For sure JC, I just filled my car up for $30 for two weeks of driving and I drive a large car and use "Plus" grade. However, the slow oil industry does hurt a large number of consumers, creating ripples through other industries. Our motor vendor was complaining about the oil fields shutting down, he's way down in motor sales, that's just one example. The company I work for has an industrial branch and it's been very slow for over a year, orders related to the mining industry have been way, way down, almost non existant. Caterpillar announced layoffs last week through 2018 primarily due to the mining industry. This is something to be concerned about, a slow mining industry is an indication that growth is slowing in general.

 

Floyd Snyder

8 Years Ago

Agree JC, when you are talking about normal day to day moves, but this was the single largest loss in history and you can bet there are a lot of people wast hinge to see if the recent moves can be sustained or if it just a dead cat bounce.

Incidently, I seen an article Thurs or Friday saying that consumers are not spending the latest saving from the latest drop in oil. I am away from my desk or I woul look it up for you and post the link. IPad sucks for posting links and such.... Not to mention spell checker. lol

Like I said earlier, the move itself is not the concern, it is the combination of factors, the next batch of data combined that could be the tell. Way to early to fret, but market watchers pay attention to these kind of anomalies.

Going to be interested to see earnings reports and forecasting going forward. That too will be important. If a lot of them miss and than warn going forward... That will be a step in The wrong direction.

 

Lance Vaughn

8 Years Ago

September is notoriously slow for retail. There are many articles out there about how to survive September on various retailer sites and blogs. The going theory is that people have just blown their wad on summer vacation and are gearing up for holiday spending. From everything I can gather, this time of year just basically sucks for anyone trying to sell retail - which includes us.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

My sister has a Federal job and they were told weeks ago to brace for possible shutter down. The idiots in Congress don't seem to mind wrecking havoc on the economy just to make points.
...
I agree with Lance. After back to school spending, the time leading up to Halloween is typically slow. Halloween is the second biggest holiday for spending but I don't think people buy too much art to decorate their homes.
...

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

people don't even decorate their houses any more for halloween. except for the crazy inflatables people, but they had those stored next to crazy inflatable santa's. but simple things like pumpkins aren't even being used as of late. and i haven't seen too many candy commercials either.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

This discussion is closed.