The existing home sales market has been at a standstill. Buyers are turning away due to 7%+ mortgage rates and high prices. At the same, selling a house is equally difficult. Sellers do not want to get rid of low-rate mortgages and assume a much higher mortgage on a new purchase. Supply problems in the […]
With the holiday season in full swing, look out your window. You will see FedEx and UPS trucks, and those from the U.S. Postal Service and Amazon. Believe it or not, Amazon is the truck you may most frequently see. Per the WSJ, Amazon “has grabbed the crown of biggest delivery business in the U.S., […]
From 2021 through 2022, the price of lithium carbonate, a key component of EV batteries, soared 14-fold. At the time, Tesla and other car markers were paying dearly to secure the limited supplies of available lithium and future production. Since then, as the Trading Economics graph below shows, the price of lithium, quoted in Chinese […]
Might the future of retirement saving plans for corporate employees be changing? Starting next year, IBM will no longer match their employee’s contributions to their 401k plans. Instead, they will contribute 5% to the employee’s retirement benefit account (RBA). During the first three years of the RBA program, IBM will pay its beneficiaries a 6% […]
The Fed’s tone markedly changed in the weeks preceding the November 1 FOMC meeting. Many Fed speakers offered that higher interest rates will tighten financial conditions, allowing them to take a break from rate increases. The messaging was solidified at the November 1 FOMC meeting. To wit, the following statement from Jerome Powell. In this […]
The squeeze is on in the orange juice futures market. The price of orange juice tends to be stable, typically hovering between $100-$150 per 15,000 pounds of frozen orange juice concentrate, as shown below. On occasion, the price spikes to $200 or higher during the winter months as irregular cold snaps harm the crops. Over […]
According to a recent article by the American Farm Bureau (AFB), Thanksgiving dinner will be cheaper this year than last year. That said, prices for the turkey and traditional Thanksgiving dinner side dishes are still up over 20% from pre-pandemic levels. The turkey accounts for 45% of the price of the dinner at an average […]
Michael Burry, who made a fortune shorting the subprime market in 2008, and was made popular in Michael Lewis’s book and movie The Big Short, is at it again. The quarterly SEC 13-F holdings report for Bury’s $1.7 billion hedge fund shows that he is short approximately $1.6 billion of the S&P 500 (SPY) and […]
Goldman Sachs released its 2024 forecast for the S&P 500 and the economy. “We forecast the S&P 500 index will end 2024 at 4700, representing a 12-month price gain of 5% and a total return of 6% including dividends. Our baseline assumption during the next year is that the US economy continues to expand at […]