OdontoBear66 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
DiabloWags said:
calbear93 said:
DiabloWags said:
calbear93 said:
Umm… Biden. He's spiking the football a bit, is he not?
https://time.com/6204141/biden-jobs-report-july-economy/
Politically, he has every right to "spike" the football.
Trump would have done the exact same thing, especially with mid-terms coming up.
As far as a Recession is concerned, that's still up to the FED in my book.
And as I have posted in the past, the last two quarters of GDP were highly impacted by the surge in inventories from Q4 of last year.
That's my point. And that is why I limited my take to those in government and the press. It is too early to spike the football since I have been hearing from industry leaders that they are planning as if recession is a certainty and pricing power to pass on cost is going away. As such, they will have to reduce costs to protect some of the margin, which has a chain reaction. Not sure if the government leaders are ignoring all that or they would rather mislead the public for political win.
And Trump should not be the bar or the role model. The fact that I voted for Biden and Clinton over him despite my conservative leanings should tell you what I think of Trump.
I think that there is a difference between a Corporate Earnings Recession which is what you have described (which will eventually lead to some kind of decrease in capital investment and potential layoffs) as opposed to an economic contraction that sends the unemployment rate back up in dramatic fashion.
Thus far, the capital spending has not gone away.
In fact, it's done the opposite.
In fact, it has remained strong and such expenditures are growing faster than stock repurchases for the first time since Q1 of 2021. If CEO's were truly battening down the hatches, they would not be spending like this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-from-google-to-pepsi-are-boosting-capital-spending-11659584015?st=ldi57bgfidcna23&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I only know what I am hearing from CFOs and also during networking during directors' college events at some of the top universities. CFOs are already cutting back on capital
expenditures, protecting free cash flow (especially with both public and syndicated debt markets in a flux), and already doing discrete restructuring and cutting work force. Yes, companies were purchasing stock since they believed that their stock was undervalued and stock repurchase was the best way to return capital under those circumstances. That does not mean they are not preparing for decrease in expenditures. Were there no stock repurchase during 2008? Of course there were a lot. Most data is lagging and you only can see around the corner by hearing what concerns about the future key decision makers have. If you are hearing something different from CFOs l, I will stand corrected.
Interesting that you mention CFO's cutting back future capex given the article Wags shared.
In my community of earlier stage VC backed companies, we are certainly seeing more disciplined spending across the board. People are ratcheting down burn which will have an impact on growth.
Will be interesting to see how this develops.
Also, and I mean this with all due respect. But you mentioned that you had directors college events. What were those like? What were the demographics and where were they located? I'm in a few startup peer networks and they are "diverse" but feature very few under represented minorities. Curious to see if your business circles are more reflective of our society than mine.
I went to Stanford Director College this summer but have attended NACD, Northwestern and Harvard in the past. I suspect the same circle as yours at Stanford. With the drive toward diversity on the board,, whether through private ordering or regulation, the public boards are becoming very diverse which is only helping to bring the necessary diverse perspective and, quite frankly, greatly elevating the level of oversight and insight.
Ah those events. I imagine they look more diverse every year.
They do. If your question was on whether there is more diversity in wealth, there is a lag. I think the private ordering push for diversity (both gender and ethnicity) not only on the boards but also senior leadership will have long term impact but that will take time. I am hearing that CHROs, CEOs and Boards are very conscious of making sure that the candidate pool include diverse candidates and CEO succession planning reflects diversity. That is a great step to eventually bridging the gap in wealth.
No, it wasn't about diversity in wealth - I think that is pretty well understood. More wondering how impactful the focus on board-level diversity has been. One of the historical issues was that companies want people with pre-existing experience and for hundreds of years that has been predominantly white dudes. It's obviously led to a lot of gnashing of teeth from white dudes who feel like their entitlement is being taken away for less qualified people but there is no other way to do it.
We are seeing more diversity in VC funds which will have an impact on tech company board diversity but was curious to see what it's like in the less tech-focused world.
The discussions I had with boards starting in 2015 when Blackrock, State Street, T Rowe were ordering diversity on the board, starting with gender and then with ethnicity was that they need to look outside their network and need to stop thinking diverse candidates must have prior public board experience. The few ones with board experience back then would be in so much demand that overboarding would become an issue. Now, with Nasdaq and even proxy advisory firms insisting on this, it is rare not to see board diversity. It is almost table stakes at this point, and now moving to expertise in climate-risk and cyber as well as diversity in the c-suite.
You were prescient there. Diversity is way up (but has a lot further to climb) and overboarding is still a concern.
Very interesting discussion. I recall my brother in law who spent his work life with AT&T in the seventies finding it difficult to hire to diversity mandates. I suspect in the short term quality suffered, but has become more level with time. Would you say the same of overbearing? Time has increased diversity in education along with hiring in the workplace so much I have a hard time imagining overboarding being but a temporary phenomena, but then I am not, nor have I been corporate.
There are a number of problems with overboarding but the one I'm probably most concerned with is how it limits opportunities.
Here is a
link to some relatively recent data on S&P500 director seats. About 1/5 director seats are held by minorities and 30% are held by women. For seats appointed in 2021, the numbers are much more diverse: 47% are minorities and 43% are women. But 2/3 of those new seats are held by people who are already S&P500 directors. And 94% of directors are over 50. More than 1/5 are active or retired CEOs.
I can't find data on this, but from what I've seen, women and minority directors with experience are in extreme demand so they are more likely to end up serving on multiple boards. While it's great for providing companies with experienced diverse directors, it doesn't help increase the total pool of diverse directors. I think the gains have been great the last few years, but it's still an uphill battle to increase diversity in the seats of power in our country.
We are seeing something similar in my company's attempt to hire senior engineers. You can't hire a senior engineer who doesn't have commensurate experience. The ones who do are in high demand and don't want to come work for my crappy startup. So we need the industry to diversify from the bottom and eventually there will be a more diverse set of senior leaders. We're just not there yet.
