Hypothetical crash. what would you do?

drillyeye

You catch a glimpse in a crystal ball, and it tells you that February 2019 will be a worldwide economic recession. For arguments sake, say its the same as the 2008 crash.

Knowing, for an absolute fact, that the shyt will have hit the fan in 11 months time......what would you do, or not do?

House prices are on the way to a 40 to 60% drop (depending where you are).

Rents will crater 40 to 60% soon after.

Mortgages will be very hard to come by as lending grinds to a halt.

Jobs are starting to shed left, right and centre, professors queuing for jobs at ikea again, stock markets tumbling etc etc.

Lets leave out the obvious of manipulating stock markets through shorting......what would you do besides that? Would you be able to do anything?

Its a hypothetical question of course (!), but it does shed some light on your own ability to control your life. For instance, I would imagine a lot of people wouldn't be able to do anything despite the knowledge.

Interested in hearing from people in different circumstances (permanent jobs/temporary, home owners/renters, single/married etc)

What say you, old beans?

Allinall

Open a Chinese restaurant .

It’s where the money is.

Do everything I could to get the biggest mortgage I can possibly get and never have to worry about paying it.

biko

Invest all my dosh in bitcoin

Tabnabs

Guns and ammo, you can never have enough!

One eyed Jack

drillyeye wrote: »

You catch a glimpse in a crystal ball, and it tells you that February 2019 will be a worldwide economic recession. For arguments sake, say its the same as the 2008 crash.

Knowing, for an absolute fact, that the shyt will have hit the fan in 11 months time......what would you do, or not do?

House prices are on the way to a 40 to 60% drop (depending where you are).

Rents will crater 40 to 60% soon after.

Mortgages will be very hard to come by as lending grinds to a halt.

Jobs are starting to shed left, right and centre, professors queuing for jobs at ikea again, stock markets tumbling etc etc.

Lets leave out the obvious of manipulating stock markets through shorting......what would you do besides that? Would you be able to do anything?

Its a hypothetical question of course (!), but it does shed some light on your own ability to control your life. For instance, I would imagine a lot of people wouldn't be able to do anything despite the knowledge.

Interested in hearing from people in different circumstances (permanent jobs/temporary, home owners/renters, single/married etc)

What say you, old beans?

It doesn't shed any light on anyone's ability to control their own life as though they could prevent an economic crash when the premise of the scenario is that you're saying it's inevitable. No matter what they do, anything they do will still lead to the crash happening.

Do nothing - crash happens.
Do everything - crash happens.

Carry on as I did during the last one I suppose, I made a ball of cash during the boom and didn't over-extend myself. I'm still making a ball of cash, still not over-extending myself.

Be graaaaand :pac:

BrokenArrows

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Do everything I could to get the biggest mortgage I can possibly get and never have to worry about paying it.

The mortgage would expire before the house prices fully crashed.

I'd sell my house as soon before the crystal ball date as possible. Then buy another 1-2 years after the crash when the prices are way down.

Outside of stock markets there is not much you can do.

BrokenArrows

BrokenArrows wrote: »

The mortgage would expire before the house prices fully crashed.

I'd sell my house as soon before the crystal ball date as possible. Then buy another 1-2 years after the crash when the prices are way down.

Outside of stock markets there is not much you can do.

No no no, you completely misunderstand. I would purposely get a mortgage I knew I had no chance of being able to pay back. It's worked out well for tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe call RTE and have a whinge about it etc.

drillyeye

Allinall wrote: »

Open a Chinese restaurant .

It’s where the money is.

All joking aside, I don't remember any of them shutting last time! In fact, If I recall correctly, fast food did quite well during recession.

But could you pull it off within 11 months?

drillyeye

Deleted User wrote: »

Do everything I could to get the biggest mortgage I can possibly get and never have to worry about paying it.

Its not a terrible idea, but could you really rely on a banks "approval in principle" over the course of a year?

Drumpot

Gold

The Backwards Man

I'd make a fortune with the crystal ball.

drillyeye

biko wrote: »

Invest all my dosh in bitcoin

Cryptocurrency worth definitely be worth a punt. Initially money will leave traditional markets and (for lack of alternatives) enter the cyber matrix doo-dad.

Dodgy, but a decent speculation.

drillyeye

drillyeye wrote: »

Its not a terrible idea, but could you really rely on a banks "approval in principle" over the course of a year?

Read up. :P I'm generally very straight-up with money. If it's people I know I'll sometimes borrow off one person to help someone else out. However being honest gets ya nowhere so **** it.

Mickeroo

We take Pete's car, we drive over to Mum's, we go in, take care of Philip, then we grab Mum, we go over to Liz's place, hole up, have a cup of tea and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

glenq

BrokenArrows wrote: »

The mortgage would expire before the house prices fully crashed.

I'd sell my house as soon before the crystal ball date as possible. Then buy another 1-2 years after the crash when the prices are way down.

Outside of stock markets there is not much you can do.

Effectively what you're saying is buy low and sell high?

I think you might be on to something there.

w/s/p/c/

Mickeroo wrote: »

We take Pete's car, we drive over to Mum's, we go in, take care of Philip, then we grab Mum, we go over to Liz's place, hole up, have a cup of tea and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

Forget the tea, go for a pint in the Winchester

drillyeye

One eyed Jack wrote: »

It doesn't shed any light on anyone's ability to control their own life as though they could prevent an economic crash when the premise of the scenario is that you're saying it's inevitable. No matter what they do, anything they do will still lead to the crash happening.

Do nothing - crash happens.
Do everything - crash happens.

Carry on as I did during the last one I suppose, I made a ball of cash during the boom and didn't over-extend myself. I'm still making a ball of cash, still not over-extending myself.

Be graaaaand :pac:

That's what I'm getting at though, how much freedom does a person actually have? Are most people simply tied to chance, reactionary? How much personal agency do you truly have, EVEN when you know the greatest thing of all, the future?

The hypothetical is about what you do, personally, in your own life, with this knowledge, not whether you change the fact of the matter for the world.

seamus

Invest in a pizza franchise. Invest in funeral homes. Find someone to give me a leaseback agreement on my house.

Yer Da sells Avon

I'd tell everyone that it's going to happen. Whether they listen to me or not, at least I'll be able to say "I told you so".

jamesbere

Soylent green is where the money is at.

Wibbs

I'm mortgage free with no debts and no dependents so can get by on very little if needs be, so a crash would generally speaking pass me by, as the last one did.

uch

Do feck all, sure I'm a rich civil servant

drillyeye

A homeowner (ie no mortgage) would be one of the easiest positions. Sell just beforehand (like October), bugger off to one of the cheapest places to live that you can enjoy, rent for a year or two, come back and hoover up some bargains. Depend on your job though, would it be worth it?!

Cryptocurrency, definitely worth as big a bet as you can muster.

Franchises for fast food would be too big a risk for me personally. But how many people would have the ready capital to get in on it in the first place?

As for renters......dunno! Don't know what the best thing would be.

As for jobs.....11 months isn't a long time to retrain and enter a more bullet-proof job (hello, civil service). Tech jobs, I would gamble, would be cratered (in fact, that could well be the flash point...)

Theres only so much money you could save in 11 months anyway. Its tricky, even when you know the bloody future!

drillyeye

Wibbs wrote: »

I'm mortgage free with no debts and no dependents so can get by on very little if needs be, so a crash would generally speaking pass me by, as the last one did.

Not a bad starting point. But how would you go about leveraging your knowledge? As opposed to simply weathering it out.

Wibbs

drillyeye wrote: »

Not a bad starting point. But how would you go about leveraging your knowledge? As opposed to simply weathering it out.

Probably what you've already said: Sell just beforehand (like October), bugger off to one of the cheapest places to live that you can enjoy, rent for a year or two, come back and hoover up some bargains.

drillyeye

Wibbs wrote: »

Probably what you've already said: Sell just beforehand (like October), bugger off to one of the cheapest places to live that you can enjoy, rent for a year or two, come back and hoover up some bargains.

But doesn't that seem like a criminal under-use of such knowledge?!

Its like a dog legging it after a car, then it catches up and ......it doesn't know what to do!

That's what I'm getting at when I speak of personal agency, its an exercise for the grey matter in assessing the amount of control you have over your life. A measure of your dependency/independency.

In itself, it leads me to the conclusion that a person should actively and devotedly search for independence at all costs, BEFORE someone/something dictates your future for you.

Hitman3000

Crack open my neighbours heads and eat the contents?

One eyed Jack

drillyeye wrote: »

Not a bad starting point. But how would you go about leveraging your knowledge? As opposed to simply weathering it out.

I've read the other posts and I think I get where you're coming from now. I guess I wouldn't do anything with the knowledge itself tbh, just carry on as before. Booms and recessions go in cycles anyway, so I'm prepared to be able to weather them out without imagining myself as a property speculator only to become an unwilling landlord with all my properties in negative equity and up to my eyeballs in debt.

Tech jobs are generally the first to go in a recession btw, and with increasing automation, jobs become redundant, but other opportunities open up. You're spot on about upskilling in order to compete in the jobs market.

SEPT 23 1989

If it was as bad as 2008 I would close my business I will NEVER put myself through that again

BrokenArrows

glenq wrote: »

Effectively what you're saying is buy low and sell high?

I think you might be on to something there.

No no no. You have it totally wrong.
Im saying sell high, buy low. Totally different concept. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

Wibbs

drillyeye wrote: »

But doesn't that seem like a criminal under-use of such knowledge?!

Its like a dog legging it after a car, then it catches up and ......it doesn't know what to do!

That's what I'm getting at when I speak of personal agency, its an exercise for the grey matter in assessing the amount of control you have over your life. A measure of your dependency/independency.

In itself, it leads me to the conclusion that a person should actively and devotedly search for independence at all costs, BEFORE someone/something dictates your future for you.

Oh true, but it depends on how much someone can leverage. I could leverage my house. To a point, I do need a roof over my head. So selling when the prices have peaked before the crash, then using that cash to maybe get two gaffs with a small mortgage on one when the market stagnates. That can be a problem too of course. People who are in negative equity with a big mortgage when a crash hits may not be too keen to sell and there'll be eff all buyers(which if you are one is a bonus). The banks may not want anyone to sell at such reduced prices, not when they can try to keep hounding people for the mortgage repayments and even if they foreclose the banks are still sitting pretty, especially if people have been paying their mortgage for ten years or more, so the original principle is essentially paid for. You need sellers and it would likely be a while before they'd appear so I could be in limbo waiting for that.

TBH the big money to be made would be in shorting the market and if I had said crystal ball that's what I'd do using my gaff as my investment fund, but you've removed that from the possibilities. Then when the dust has settled by good longterm reliable stocks and shares at cut down prices. I actually did that in a tiny way back in the 80's crash. I had a couple of grand(literally) saved and bought a few blue chip stocks at cut down prices and a couple of years later they had rebounded(Again I do remember it being hard to buy stocks when the prices had bottomed out. People were mostly hanging onto them). As they will. I sold then and made well over double my investment. I could have made more but a) t'was the 80's and unless you were "in the club" information was hard to come by and b) I needed the cash at the time so...

It was no great prescience or skill on my part, I just remember a relative's advice on buying and selling investment type stuff in general: try to buy when everyone is selling and sell when everyone is buying and always look to buy quality.

Vex Willems

Banana stand, there's always money in the banana stand.

drillyeye

drillyeye wrote: »

But doesn't that seem like a criminal under-use of such knowledge?!

Its like a dog legging it after a car, then it catches up and ......it doesn't know what to do!

That's what I'm getting at when I speak of personal agency, its an exercise for the grey matter in assessing the amount of control you have over your life. A measure of your dependency/independency.

In itself, it leads me to the conclusion that a person should actively and devotedly search for independence at all costs, BEFORE someone/something dictates your future for you.

How's that not leveraging things? Start with a house end up with 2 having spent a couple of years living the high life. Investment would double in 10 years.