{"id":405,"date":"2010-04-23T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=405"},"modified":"2018-08-19T10:17:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T14:17:49","slug":"what-my-intuition-tells-me-now-anecdotes-help-you-understand-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/04\/23\/what-my-intuition-tells-me-now-anecdotes-help-you-understand-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Anecdotes Help You To Understand the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was spending time with a\u00a0loyal blog reader yesterday and he brought up what he felt was an economic anecdote conundrum.\u00a0 On one hand he was listening to a program that said that the Pittsburgh Pirates were struggling to fill their ballpark right now and that average attendance was around 10,000 people.\u00a0 The reason for the fanbase decline is that the economy is tough.\u00a0 Yet he had just returned from Las Vegas which was bursting at the seams with activity and the Wynn Hotel where he was staying was at a 95% occupancy rate.\u00a0 He wanted to know which piece of info was the relevant piece for understanding the economy.\u00a0 I thought it would make a nice blog post.\u00a0 Here’s what I feel…<\/span><\/p>\n

Both pieces of anecdotal information are indicative of the state of the economy.\u00a0 The piece that is more indicative to me is the Pittsburgh Pirates’ decline in attendance.\u00a0 Before talking about that I wanted to discuss the Las Vegas situation first.\u00a0 This is a great example of why getting the proper context is essential to invest well.\u00a0 What is the economic context of Las Vegas, and specifically the Wynn Hotel?<\/span><\/p>\n

Las Vegas is a tourist town.\u00a0 Most people who go to Vegas don’t go to visit relatives, they go to get their party phreak on, whether that is\u00a0Cirque de Soleil\u00a0or Wayne Newton.\u00a0 In a country with 305 million people, the folks travelling to Vegas are the one’s who either have the enough money that they don’t have to worry about the cost to travel there, or who saved money to travel there, or have used credit cards to travel there.\u00a0 The point is that when you encounter people in Vegas\u00a0in good or\u00a0bad economic times they are people who could afford to get there.\u00a0 By extension then, they are people\u00a0either unaffected by, or ignoring the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wynn Hotel, in particular, is a very expensive home-away-from-home and the wealthy just are not that\u00a0economically sensitive to bad times.\u00a0 Vegas is also increasingly attracting tourists from abroad.\u00a0 To really understand how Vegas has been affected by the downturn one would need to look at the occupancy rate of the hotels that the lower and middle classes stay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, among glamorous tourist destinations, Las Vegas is a well known inexpensive place to travel.\u00a0 Even in a downturn people still vacation.\u00a0 I am guessing that Vegas is taking away tourists from New York, Orlando, Los Angeles and definitely Europe.\u00a0 So, in my opinon, Vegas is the anomaly.<\/span><\/p>\n

A ticket to a Pittsburgh Pirates game represents a minor luxury purchase for a citizen of the Burgh.\u00a0 One that, in poor economic times, looks\u00a0more like a non-necessity.\u00a0 A Pirates game is a local good.\u00a0 People do not plan vacations around a trip to a Pirates game.\u00a0 Instead the context is that they probably are thinking about local entertainment options and the Pirates game competes with going to a movie theater, staying home to watch TV, surfing the Internet,\u00a0reading a book, hanging out with friends, and so forth.\u00a0 Because sporting events tickets are expensive, it’s likely that the Pirates are losing out to Netflix, for example.<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0Pirates\u00a0game is not all that unique given that there are 84 home games per year to choose from.\u00a0 Fans who used to go to a Pirates game have probably been to quite a few of them over the years.\u00a0 Whereas, seeing a new movie is not equated with going to the theater yet another time.\u00a0 Instead, it’s seen as seeing\u00a0the<\/span> new movie, a unique experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my opinion, Pittsburgh is more likely indicative of how the worst recession since the Great Depression has affected daily living.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would be very interesting would be to see how many folks from Pittsburgh, who no longer go to Pirates games, were in Vegas along with my pal.\u00a0 Their stories would be the truly indicative ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Have a great weekend!<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was spending time with a\u00a0loyal blog reader yesterday and he brought up what he felt was an economic anecdote conundrum.\u00a0 On one hand he was listening to a program that said that the Pittsburgh Pirates were struggling to fill their ballpark right now and that average attendance was around 10,000 people.\u00a0 The reason for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}