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Not commenting directly on MND as my interests would bias my argument...

I think that looking at the macro level then make general conclusions to individual company below can be dangerous.

Firstly, while geniuses can make close enough projections of general trend over next year or two, beyond that and all projections are pure guesses.

Second, how can you be sure the general projected changes will affect a certain company equally?

Third, how do you know that it won't happen that through genius or luck or hardwork, management will be able to win new contracts in unexpected places, in unexpected fields... they may even acquire and diversify to a different sector altogether before the pain really hit home?

Anyway, it's just opinions and approaches but I'm more comfortable with going bottom up... It's too much work to look at the entire world then figured out where each company fit into which and how they'd likely to do and what their likely moves will be.

It might be better to find good businesses and good management, and let them figured out what is best to do given what they have and what they see.

You and I are capitalist, our job is not running or managing the business, especially ones we see from high up.

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With construction, or any business really but particularly true in construction... smart operators tend to not go for the lowest priced operator because it is cheap; smarter operators would want their contractors to make a decent profit - not to squeeze them dry and send them broke.

Reason is simple - if your contractor goes broke, your project will be delayed, and it will cost you more. If a bid is cheap but the bidder have a weak financial position or its practices hasn't been proven... it's not worth it to go cheap and end up paying more later through delays etc.; if the bid is cheap and the business is shaky, corners might be cut.

Not all operators are smart so some might just squeeze and hope for the best.. like Multiplex back then and got taken over.