The chart below, courtesy of @KobeissiLetter on X, depicts downtown cell communication data for several major metropolitan areas as of March 2024. Cell phone activity during working hours is significantly below pre-pandemic levels in almost every major city across the country, including areas with significant population growth. The second chart below, from Macrotrends, shows Nashville’s […]
The chart below suggests that global diversification could be dead. The S&P 500 notched a total return of 13.3% annually over the past 15 years, while the MSCI EAFE and MSCI Emerging Markets indices returned 5.9% and 3.2% per annum respectively. The performance gap primarily stems from differences in earnings growth. S&P 500 earnings grew […]
Tesla investors are betting on the EV maker’s path to tech-caliber profitability. However, the manifestation of that investment thesis is still a pretty long way off, as shown by the degree to which Tesla dwarfs other mega cap valuations in the chart below, courtesy of Bloomberg. Increasing competition amid a declining consumer appetite for EV […]
Over the past few months, we have witnessed a decided deterioration in consumer spending. For instance, first-quarter sales from many large retailers showed little to no growth. Economic data like Q1 GDP and the recent retail sales report further confirm that personal consumption is slowing. Last Friday, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey followed […]
Bad market breadth seems to be a hallmark of the rally off of the 2022 lows. Simply, very few stocks are leading markets higher, while many stocks languish. Consider that the equal-weighted S&P 500 index (RSP) is up 3.70% since the start of the year. Over the same period, the market-weighted S&P 500 (SPY) is […]
The Fed got good news yesterday, with the headline CPI coming in at 0% for the month. More importantly, core CPI rose by +.16% versus expectations of +.30%. That brings the year-over-year core CPI rate to 3.4%, a tenth below expectations. Excluding shelter costs, accounting for 40% of CPI, core CPI, also called “super core,” […]
The Fed often stresses that it prefers core inflation measures, which exclude food and energy prices. They do this for a few reasons. First, food and energy tend to be more volatile than most other goods. Accordingly, they can distort the broader price trends. Second, food and energy prices are affected by many variables, many […]
Degen traders, short for degenerates, are taking storm of the markets. The Wall Street Journal recently published Meet The Degen Traders Fueling The Latest Meme-Stock Mania. The article introduces its readers to a new type of investor creating incredible volatility in a handful of stocks and cryptocurrencies. Per the article: “Degens are gamblers, not traders […]
The BLS jobs report showed the economy added 272k jobs, well above expectations of 175k, and the 152k jobs reported by ADP. Also pointing to a strong labor market, average hourly earnings were 0.1% above expectations at +0.4%. While the jobs data seems strong, there is a lot of other data within the report, leading […]