I’m feeling a little saucy tonight. I’m too lazy to search for the threads but I believe I called bottom for R/E at the end of 08, early 09 and it’s been substantiated for the most part, so I’ve got some street credibility here. I also called the dow bottom so I think I can go out on a limb, trust my gut and I’m going to call the end of the recession as right now, specifically two days ago, on Saturday night. I do not expect any fantastic growth tomorrow, or even for the next year, but I think I felt that tickle, that turnaround, and I had this epiphany on Saturday. I also expect lagging indicators to do what they do best, and that is lag. Maybe it’s just me but here are my anecdotal reasons, all from this month or so.
I priced airline tickets to NYC a few months ago, pulled the trigger a few weeks ago, despite falling fuel prices, planes started filling up, I had to pay about $75 more per seat.
I made my hotel reservations, even though it’s three months away, price went up $75 a night for a very bland week January.
My work occasionally takes me to downtown SD, as it has for about a decade, in short spurts, right now I’ve had to go there a lot lately. Traffic is up, lunch is unbearable (sushi deli is 30 minutes for take out) and I go more toward 1 pm. My noon jog through seaport village and downtown is now more about carving my way through shoppers and workers than it was during my last stint there, reminds me of stints during 2003 and 2007, but nothing like six months ago, seaport village is packed and there are no cruise ships any more.
Two weeks ago, hit the local casino with the fellas, we couldn’t get a card table together, haven’t seen that in a while. I ended up playing blackjack just cause I could get a seat, I hate blackjack.
A little more than a month ago, went out with sdrealtor and friends in Temecula on a Sunday night. We got the last tickets to a Sunday jazz concert, $75 to stand in the back, the $300 seats were completely sold out, as was every seat, the restaurant we went to, late (after 9 pm), was also packed.
This last Saturday I went to that same restaurant, the Public house, nearly a two hour wait and they wont take reservations, and I got there at 6. They don’t even give you a buzzer thing and send you the bar, because you’ll be passed out by the time they have a table for you, they actually call your cell when they have a table.
Ran into the same thing in Encinitas three weeks ago at solace, was told the wait was more than an hour and 45 minutes. That’s not a wait, that’s the average length of a movie. I keep running into this, in multiple towns, where I can put my name on the wait list of a restaurant, go see a movie, and be back before they call my name.
If all I did was stay home and read piggington or other websites, the world is coming apart at the seams, if I leave my house, I feel like it’s 2006 and I’m the only guy with stock rims in a paid off car. Speaking of cars, my car shopping has yielded similar indications of consumer confidence, now that it’s getting to be about that time to take the plunge and get a new sled, I’m not finding the prices I was finding three months ago. I let a 2001 carrera cabrio garage queen with 50k miles go to some other schmuck for 20k, now I can’t find one this side of 24k that is in similar condition. 2006 vettes, 2003 XKR’s, same story, the liquidation of toys has ended. I’m going to end up driving a sonata and castrating myself with a butter knife out of frustration.
So I’m calling it, Let’s say October 8th, about 6 pm, recession ended officially.
