JoeGambler Your comment inclined me to question why I was less...

JoeGambler

Your comment inclined me to question why I was less concerned about the "most anticipated recession" ever on the horizon!

To me, the ups and downs are just part of commercial life, and if a farmer has a less-than-typical year, he does not put his farm up for sale at half its price a year ago. This point of looking through the cycles has been clearly articulated by Encore Capital's CEO – there are good years for buying and good years for collecting, and an investor should think in timespans longer than a year.

I remember being relatively calm about the issue when I read the content of https://www.copyright link/companie...lukewarm-debt-chasing-outlook-20220801-p5b67d, so I read it again tonight. Obviously, it stated what I recall reading before, especially about the slow-down in Australian credit card usage, compared to the USA. The AFR opinion piece opens with the words. “Debt collecting giant Credit Corp has warned of lukewarm profits, partly due to Australians refraining from loading up on credit-card debt.”

I then Googled the credit-card-debt topic, and at https://mozo.com.au/credit-cards/articles/credit-card-spend-trending-up-after-july-slump-finds-citi I read that things have changed since July 2022. That is not long enough to be confirmation of a trend, but if the US is the harbinger of things to come, credit-card debt is not a thing of the past. I wonder if Mozo will give an update covering September, or a later month in CY22.