Fed rate increase = lower hifi prices?

Gold was not a great investment during the pandemic. It was not awful, but it and silver until recently totally under-performed. Real estate did well due to lack of supply caused by a whole host of issues in some countries, not just pandemic or China, but general immigration, zoning blocking construction, policies that provided "false" affordability, etc. However, in some countries, said real-estate is declining (Canada for instance), and could be headed for correction leaving those most vulnerable to holding assets worth less than the debt they hold against that asset. It’s the 80’s all over again. People 8+ year into ownership with mortgages worth more than the house. It’s fine if you can weather it for another 10 year.

@ghasley  thank you I knew some true colors would show up. 

Regards

Some here sound like they're boning up on economics by reading anything they can and regurgitating talking points so as to sound relevant and further a conversation that's going to go nowhere. For all the goldbugs out there, if and when it starts to get really bad, how finely does one have to grind up the gold and how do you season it to make it palatable?

All the best,
Nonoise

@headphonedreams I just looked at speakers and many brands have increased or is increasing their prices with 20-40% !
I have a distinct feeling these new prices will not go down much the next 2 years.

At a basic level, input prices have increased. How much wood (mdf) goes into a speaker? In America, wood/lumber prices have tripled or quadrupled since 2020. That must hurt a little bit.

There may also be issues regarding speaker/transducer availability - I’ve seen stories here about folk having some difficulties securing those round things.

And that is all I know about speaker construction! As for all that air inside, well, its like a bag of chips, innit?

I’d reckon that the market for speakers is fairly competitive, manufactured both in America and internationally, together with "cottage" (independent) outfits - although international shipping costs have also increased substantially.

That’s my simple take on the supply side. The demand side (buyers) - is another story, but my intuition suggests that demand for audiophile kit is pretty inelastic which does allow dealers to take advantage of any supply issues to bump up prices if stock availability is a bit hard to come by, without suffering much loss in turnover.

I reckon 20 - 40% is quite explainable in the circumstances.

In the meantime, estimates of official monthly inflation figures due out on Wednesday in the US are around 0.2% or so. Yeah.

@noske , purely IMHO at this point, but I would think the high high end is pretty inelastic since for the people buying this, it is chump change. I expect the middle-bottom end of the audiophile world to be rather elastic. $100K on a hobby with a $1M+ equivalent salary is "reasonable". There is a lot of disposable in $1M+.  $20K on a $200K salary, or $10K on a $100K salary is a much bigger chunk out of disposable income. For "family" people, there will be an expectation to maintain other aspects of life, including vacations, etc. especially as the pandemic ends, so I could see audio dropping down the list of spends.