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So back in the 2006-07 time frame the first person who told me the economy was going to tank was a former coworker who became a partner in a boat dealership.
It looks like the recreation industry is seeing signs of a downturn again.
So back in the 2006-07 time frame the first person who told me the economy was going to tank was a former coworker who became a partner in a boat dealership.
It looks like the recreation industry is seeing signs of a downturn again.
The more I'm looking the more I see at least a slow down or stagnation forming.
Average year-on-year growth over the past ten years or so has been around 2.0%, we've had some quarters of negative growth and some above 3%.
On a quarterly basis, the latest "slowdown" already started in 4Q2018, rebound in 1Q2019, probably another slowdown in 2Q2019 (stats not out yet).
Over the next 4-5 quarters, we could see a quarter or two of negative growth, but on average one could reasonably expect 2.0% growth annually over the 2018-2019 period as over the past ten years.
It will be here before the 2020 election. The Fed wouldn't be talking about lowering rates already if they didn't know what was coming. Especially with rates already at near historic lows.......
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Boat sales may well be affected by the same market forces as car, and worse, motorcycle sales, and it's not recession.
More likely the aging of the buyer pool, and lack of interest and/or money from younger buyers. RVs showed record sales in 2017-18 (when we bought ours) and you don't replace them every 3-4 years like a car. I could be wrong but there are a lot of industries that will have to handle a slow period until the younger adults start to settle down and have kids, and outgrow their "experience over stuff" attitude.
Thing about boats, it's not only about boats. It's also about gas prices. And compared to 7-8 years ago, gas is cheap enough to not discourage boating.
Where I live in a lake/boating recreational area, we are still going like gangbusters! 7-8 years ago we were seriously lagging when gas was very costly.
So back in the 2006-07 time frame the first person who told me the economy was going to tank was a former coworker who became a partner in a boat dealership.
It looks like the recreation industry is seeing signs of a downturn again.
The more I'm looking the more I see at least a slow down or stagnation forming.
I think the jobs numbers are often the first thing to show a slowdown.
Also, housing. If housing sales go down and continue going down for a while...well, real estate IS the U S economy, I've heard it said.
I wouldn't think boat sales are indicative, since a lot of boat purchases are by wealthy people. Wealthy people don't experience recessions. That's when they MAKE money. Unless maybe they divert their purchases from boats to cheap recessionary real estate? But if that's why boat sales show a coming recession, I would think tracking real estate sales would be a better indicator. Even with investors buying r.e., the # of sales would still go down, and the avg prices would go down.
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