A 2-Speed Economy
For the past two years, we have had a bifurcated economy, with a strong service sector and a weak manufacturing sector. Bifurcation is also seen in the borrowing and loan space: While lower income and indebted individuals have been negatively impacted by rising interest rates, higher net worth individuals and savers have benefited from rising equity prices and rising interest rates.
These divergences are creating a problem for the Federal Reserve. Keeping rates higher for longer to reduce inflation negatively impacts the manufacturing sector, debtors and lower income individuals.
“A tale of two cities” also describes the equity market performance which was characterized by poor market breadth and negative performance for most indices, yet a small group of large-cap growth stocks with outsized index weightings had robust gains. AI enthusiasm continued to push broad U.S. equity indices higher in 2024. Decelerating inflation, moderating interest rates and stable earnings growth are directionally consistent with higher equity prices.
“The rich keep spending, but the lower-income
Americans are facing stress” – Axios
Investors entered the year thinking the central bank might lower rates significantly, giving them a cheery view of the path ahead for stocks. But data in the following months showed price pressures were persisting, and the Fed has held off on rate cuts so far.
PROFIT GROWTH: Analysts expect profits from companies in the S&P 500 to grow 11% this year, with every sector except energy and materials showing an increase, according to FactSet. Next year, they anticipate earnings will rise 14%, with the participation of all 11 S&P 500 segments.
BAD BREADTH: The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies is down 17% from its November 2021 peak and has made minimal gains this year. In the S&P 500, which includes the biggest companies, the average stock is about where it was at the start of 2022, and more than half of the current constituents are down since then.
WIDE DIVIDE: There is a wide divide between low-income and high-income consumers. The latter are thriving, evidenced by the $40 trillion worth of spending they’re driving into the economy, which is around half of all consumer spending. Lower- to middle- income consumers, though, appear to be falling behind as the cost of living rises with the bottom 20% of consumers contributing to just 10% of the economy’s total spending.
THE SLOWDOWN: Early indications of an anticipated slowdown in the economy are the growing credit card and auto loan delinquencies, and the recent labor statistics which showed a slowing of hiring, a slowing of wage hikes, rising unemployment and downward revisions of employment for the previous 2 months. Further, almost all the new hires were in governmental, healthcare and leisure sectors
HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS: The haves suddenly have much more which, in turn, fostered an extraordinary wealth effect. For luxury in all its forms – fashion, travel, cars, real estate – the post-COVID economy has been a golden era. Meanwhile, those at the bottom have not only been left behind as financial assets have soared, but with interest rates rising, they have paid a higher price to stay afloat.
Since 2021, food prices have risen by more than 20%, automobile-loan rates have all but doubled and today U.S. banks charge over 25% on most credit-card balances. The net result is that behind a supposedly strong and resilient single U.S. economy, there are two.
Bifurcation is the word of the summer.
WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE LEARNED
What we know is that historically the market goes up much more often than it goes down and that trying to guess when to get in and out of stocks can have very costly consequences. We learned that market experts were once again wrong this year and that surprises occur.
It is impossible to know what will happen nor how the market will respond.And that is why the best investment advice is to have your financial plan guide your decisions.
Through the middle of the year, the S&P 500’s return has primarily come from just seven companies. Just 7 out of 500! Stock market performance being influenced by just a few stocks is not uncommon. Since 1926 only 2% of publicly traded companies generated 90% of the wealth in the stock market according to Morgan Stanley. Knowing which ones they will be is impossible to forecast and risking a poor selection of expected winning stocks is a key reason for diversification as a risk management tool.
A PICTURE TELLS A THOUSAND WORDS
– AND A CHART TELLS
THE STORY CORPORATE PROFITS ARE STRONG AND EXPECTED TO GROW
GROWING PROFITS ARE A KEY SUPPORT FOR INCREASING EQUITY VALUATIONS
MARKET RECOVERIES AFTER RECESSION DRAWDOWNS
Here’s why we do not live in fear of the next recession
WAGES DECLINING
INFLATION DECLINING
THE MARKET EXPECTS THE FED TO REDUCE INTEREST RATES
CONSTRUCTION SPENDING SOARING
SUPPLY IS UP AND RENTS ARE DECLINING
THE MARKET WAS DRIVEN BY THE MAGNIFICENT 7: AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, META, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA.
THE DIRECT ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DATA CENTERS
THE WEALTHY ARE GETTING WEALTHIER…. THE PIGGY BANKS ARE FULL
The pandemic housing boom means Americans have more home equity than ever. Households have added roughly $12 trillion in home equity since the end of 2019:
HERE IS A MASSIVE LIQUIDITY RESERVE ON THE SIDELINES – HISTORICALLY, A BULLISH SIGN FOR EQUITY MARKETS
EARLY SIGNS OF PRESSURES ON CONSUMERS
AUTO LOANS & CREDIT CARD DEBT
CREDIT SCORES ARE DECLINING
HOUSING MARKET SLOWING DOWN
PROSPERITY IS GLOBAL
A FEATURED BOOK: PUBLISHED IN 2017 – AS RELEVANT NOW AS IT WAS THEN
STUDIES CONFIRM TIME IN THE MARKET BEATS TIMING THE MARKET: ARE YOU PREPARED TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM A KNEE-JERK REACTION?
STAYING FOCUSED ON WHAT MATTERS:
THE 5 MEGATRENDS TO WATCH AS THEY EVOLVE
Distractions and discouraging headlines are always around us. Bad news can drive market volatility in the near term, but company fundamentals drive long-term value. Investors who remain focused on their financial objectives will be better positioned to participate in long-term investment opportunities when they arise.
With wars in Ukraine and the Mideast, simmering U.S.-China tensions and a contentious U.S. presidential campaign underway, it is understandable that investors may be anxious. Yet positive trends across technology, health care and other areas are transforming lives and driving opportunity for companies and patient investors.
- The U.S. is resilient and robust.
Many investors spent the past 2 years bracing for a recession that never materialized. In the face of elevated inflation and rising interest rates, GDP, a measure of total economic output tracked by the U.S. Department of Commerce, expanded at a strong 3.3% annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2023 and this has continued into the first half of 2024. The expected decline in interest rates will strengthen the housing industry and positively impact valuations of multiple asset classes including most elements of investment real estate. The U.S. federal government has committed $1.4 trillion for capital projects, including the construction of manufacturing facilities as American companies seek to diversify supply chains, and onshoring gathers steam.
- The AI productivity boom is just beginning.
The introduction of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools has garnered wide attention for the technology’s potential to drive vast gains in productivity across industries, reducing costs and creating efficiencies for companies and consumers.
- More stocks are likely to join the market rally.
The Magnificent Seven — Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla — accounted for an overwhelming proportion of the market’s total return but, a look at returns over the past two years reveals that returns for the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 and more than 2,900 other stocks in the MSCI ACWI were generally flat despite growing profits. The brighter economic backdrop in the U.S. is providing tailwinds for corporate earnings across a broader range of companies.
- Mexico leads a group of expanding trade relationships.
Escalating tensions between the U.S. and China triggered tariffs and trade restrictions that adversely impacted the flow of goods around the world. This was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed serious vulnerabilities in supply chains as shutdowns and labor shortages led to bottlenecks and delays.
- Ongoing breakthroughs in health care.
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have entered a golden age of drug discovery in the last few years, advancing therapies for a wide range of major diseases and extending and improving lives.
Perhaps the most widely talked about advancement has been the introduction of drugs developed by Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and others to tackle obesity. Life-threatening health problems linked to obesity include cardiovascular disease, diabetes and kidney failure, to name a few. Several treatments have been introduced in recent years to treat and manage diabetes. We are in the early stages of dramatic enhancements to cancer cures and organ replacement.
HISTORY SAYS IGNORE ELECTIONS AND STAY INVESTED FOR THE LONG TERM:
The reality is that the market grows over time because companies consistently innovate, create, and drive increasing profits. It’s easy to let politics cloud our judgment, but history has shown that regardless of who is President or what policies are enacted, entrepreneurs and companies find ways to adapt and thrive within or around the rules. Innovation and creativity are the true engines of market growth over time.
RVW WealthWisdom: PROF JEREMY SIEGEL LAYS OUT THE CASE FOR LONG TERM EQUITY INVESTING.
ESSENTIAL VIEWING:
Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer Professor Emeritus of Finance, a bestselling author, and an acclaimed authority on financial markets. “Stocks are real assets. They’re claims on capital, land, factories, equipment, patents, copyrights, and intellectual property. All of those are real assets,” Siegel said. “Real assets will appreciate with inflation. Over the 210 years I have examined stock returns, the real return (meaning return net of inflation) on a broadly diversified portfolio of stocks has averaged 6.5 percent per year. A 6.5 percent return, which includes reinvested dividends, will nearly double the purchasing power of your stock portfolio every decade. If inflation stays within the 2 to 3 percent range, nominal stock returns will be 9 percent per year, which doubles the money value of your stock portfolio every eight years.” Click Here to watch the full video.
GETTING WEALTHY VS. STAYING WEALTHY
Good investing is not necessarily about making good decisions. It’s about consistently not screwing up.
There are a million ways to get wealthy, and plenty of books on how to do so. But there’s only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of frugality and paranoia. And that’s a topic we don’t discuss enough.
Capitalism is hard. But part of the reason this happens is because getting money and keeping money are two different skills.
Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there.
But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.
Let’s begin with a quick story about two investors, neither of whom knew the other, but whose paths crossed in an interesting way almost a century ago.
Jesse Livermore was the greatest stock market trader of his day. Born in 1877, he became a professional trader before most people knew you could do such a thing. By age 30 he was worth the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100 million.
By 1929 Jesse Livermore was already one of the most well-known investors in the world. The stock market crash that year that ushered in the Great Depression cemented his legacy in history.
More than a third of the stock market’s value was wiped out in an October 1929 week whose days were later named Black Monday, Black Tuesday, and Black Thursday.
Livermore’s wife Dorothy feared the worst when her husband returned home on October 29th. Reports of Wall Street speculators committing suicide were spreading across New York. She and her children greeted Jesse at the door in tears, while her mother was so distraught she hid in another room, screaming.
Click Here to read the rest of the story.
LEARNING TO IGNORE THE DOOM-AND-GLOOMERS: 5 GREAT EXAMPLES OF THE PERILS OF HEEDING THE HEADLINES
Those who follow the forecasts have generally paid a heavy price for their folly. Barron’s went from headlining “Be Ready For a Drop” at the beginning of the year to, “This Market Has Legs.”
- The most famous magazine cover of them all:“The death of equities is…a near-permanent condition”.
When this appeared, the Dow Jones was 867.
Here are Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) market closes at the proclaimed “date of death” and 10-year anniversaries:
• August 13, 1979: 875.26
• August 13, 1989: 2,683.99 (3.1x)
• August 13, 1999: 10,973.65 (12.5x)
• August 13, 2009: 9,398.19 (10.7X)
• August 13, 2019: 25,896 (30X)
• It is now over 40,000
- AIG Bullish on Its Credit Default Swaps
Heading into the 2008 Financial Crisis, AIG (AIG) had been prominently using Credit Default Swaps (CDSs), which had some investors uneasy as the instruments can be quite complex. The firm had this to say (in 2007) to alleviate investor anxiety:
It turns out that the CDSs were the main cause of the company’s financial distress in 2008. Just a year after the reassuring comments, the company completely collapsed, suspended its dividend, and took a bailout from the U.S. government to the tune of $85 billion.
- “No Chance the iPhone Will Get Significant Market Share” – Steve Ballmer
To be fair, Steve Ballmer, then CEO of Microsoft (MSFT), was probably just being competitive when he stated that, “there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” But Apple (AAPL) blew everyone out of the water with its iPhone device, which has seen numerous iterations and has become a staple release from the company each year.
Apple’s iPhone controls approximately 40% of the smartphone market and is one of the most alluring consumer products ever introduced.
- Should I be Worried about Bear Stearns? NO! NO! NO! – Jim Cramer
This list would not be complete without an entry from Jim Cramer. His most memorable prediction (among many flops) comes from his call about Bear Stearns on March 11, 2008, just before the crash. When asked by a viewer if they should be worried about Bear Stearns, Cramer emphatically replied “NO! NO! NO! Bear Stearns is fine. Don’t move your money from Bear, that’s just being silly.”
Five days later (3/16/2008), after scavenging for and failing to get a loan from the Fed to remain liquid, Bear was purchased by JP Morgan (JPM) for $2 per share, less than 7% of what the stock was worth the day before. When Cramer spoke on 3/11/2008, Bear was trading around $60 per share. The stock opened at just over $3 per share on Monday 3/17/2008 after JPM made the purchase over the weekend.
- Dow to Crash in 2013
Since the 2008 crisis, a number of pundits put their names into the headlines with calls for a double dip recession and an ensuing market crash. You can probably find a dire prediction published somewhere on the web today, as someone tries to title-grab readers for more views to their site or blog. Here is one from 2011:
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NOTE: The information provided above is not complete, may be erroneous, and omits important data. The charts are estimates and may contain inaccuracies or distortions.
Read and rely exclusively on actual offering documents and on statements received directly from your custodian. The report prepared by us is to highlight aspects of your investments but is incomplete. No decision should be made, or action taken based on it. Advice not provided in writing cannot be relied upon. Investments are not guaranteed and may lose value. Past performance is not indicative of likely future returns.