[pinky1417]

While I agree with much of your first couple sentences and resisting the emotional urge to think recovery is impossible, you're walking a hazardous line between believing recession timing is effectively impossible and trying to ballpark near term recession risk.

I preach this: nobody can reliably predict recessions but everyone should know recessions will happen. It would be damn near impossible to predict recessions if you had a single large country only trading with itself. Throw in the billions of people in the global economy, each a market participant, and the task becomes intractable. The macroeconomists and policy wonks sound much like you do: identifying real risks and evaluating sentiment in an attempt to convince others, and themselves, that they have special insight. I try not to be a cynic - there's enough negativity on HN - but I really think recession prediction is an exercise in futility.

Still, it's critical to expect recessions. Buying stock in a company that's selling for 100x revenue and would go bankrupt in the event of a recession is gambling. Likewise, leaving the market and putting your money in gold, Bitcoin, your mattress, etc because you think recession is around the corner is likely to burn you. Yes, Michael Burry and The Big Shorters made a ton of money betting on what would coincide with a recession... but some of them would've gone broke had the timing stretched on even longer.

In short, your best bet if you're scared of recessions is the same as your best bet if you're in a boom or in the middle of a recession: buy undervalued assets and hang on to them long enough for everyone else to recognize their value. And, since recessions happen regularly at an irregular interval, your job will be made much easier if those assets can simply survive a recession.