1. 2022 Sector Dispersion Highest Since 2007….Energy vs. Consumer Discretionary 82% Spread

www.dorseywright.com

2. 30 Year Treasury Yield…1.2% to 3.1% One Year.

50 day about to go thru 200 day to upside on chart

www.stockcharts.com

3. Small Cap Tech -25% Correction High to Low.

I was expecting this chart to be worse when I hit it up today

4. Under Armour Another Full Round Robin Stock Back to Covid Lows

5. Target TGT -43% Correction

www.stockcharts.com

6. Weakness in Retail-Bespoke Investment Group

The broader retail space has been weak relative to the S&P 500 so far this year. Much of this weakness came after Target’s (TGT) and Walmart’s (WMT) earnings calls, in which management noted margin compression, inventory gluts in certain categories, shifting consumer preferences, and weakness in consumer spending as inflation in food and energy reduces discretionary budgets. Institutional subscribers can view our Conference Call Recaps on these two companies by clicking here. On a YTD basis, the VanEck Retail ETF (RTH) has underperformed the S&P 500 (SPY) by 4.5 percentage points, trading down by 18.2% as of today. A chart of the relative strength of RTH vs SPY over the last year is shown below.

Within the S&P 500, there are 21 stocks that make up the Retailing industry, and in the table below, we have outlined the performance of the 10 largest stocks by market cap.  You’ll notice that companies like Costco (COST) and WMT aren’t listed, but that’s because they are actually part of the Food and Staples Retailing industry.  As you can see, seven of these ten stocks are down more than the average S&P 500 member on a YTD basis, and six are further from their respective 52-week highs than the average S&P 500 member. However, only two of these stocks are below their pre-COVID highs, whereas more than a third of (35.8%) of S&P 500 components are below their pre-COVID highs.

https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/weakness-in-retail

7. Consumer Credit Explodes…Double Estimates

Zerohedge-Here are the shocking numbers: in April one month after the jarring March print again came in more than double the $25 billion expected to $52.435 billion, in April consumer credit again exploded to a ridiculous $38.1 billion, again blowing away expectations of a $35 billion increase (and not much lower than last month’s downward revised $47.3 billion).

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/shocking-consumer-credit-numbers-everyone-maxing-out-their-credit-card-ahead-recession-0

8. U.S. Exports Set a Record in 2021….$1.8 Trillion.

From The Daily Shot Blog  Food for Thought: Lastly, let’s take a look at US exports of goods by state.

Source: Visual Capitalist Read full article

https://dailyshotbrief.com/the-daily-shot-brief-june-6th-2022/

9. Homeownership Remains the American Dream, Despite Challenges

NY TIMES A new survey reveals that nearly three-quarters of Americans place owning a home above career, family and college as a sign of prosperityBy Gregory Schmidt

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say owning a home is a higher measure of achievement than having a successful career, raising a family or earning a college degree, according to a new survey. But affordability remains a challenge for many of them.

The survey, released in March for Bankrate.com, a financial services company, found that 74 percent of respondents ranked homeownership as the highest gauge of prosperity, above having a career (60 percent), children (40 percent) and a college education (35 percent).

The survey, conducted by the market research firm YouGov, comprised 2,529 adults, 1,397 of whom were homeowners. Of those respondents who did not own homes, about two-thirds pointed to one or more affordability factors for holding them back, including income level, soaring housing prices and their ability to make a down payment.

Other factors included poor credit, not being ready for homeownership and high mortgage rates. Fourteen percent said they were not inclined to be homeowners, regardless of the circumstances.

To find more affordable housing, 58 percent of all respondents said they would be willing to make compromises, including moving to another state, buying a fixer-upper or moving to a less desirable area.

Those results skewed toward younger Americans, said Jeff Ostrowski, a senior reporter at Bankrate.com who covers the housing market and mortgages. “Boomers and Gen X have built up equity, so there was a smaller percentage of older people willing to make concessions,” he said.

But he added that there were still affordable homes to be found, particularly in cities in the Midwest and Northeast like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. “In all of those places, the median home prices are $300,000 or less,” he said.

Despite the rise of remote work, which has accelerated the migration from expensive coastal cities to more affordable inland housing markets, a majority of homeowners in the survey were satisfied with their choice: Seventy-two percent said they would buy their current home again.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

Gregory Schmidt covers New York real estate. @GregoryNYC

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/realestate/homeownership-affordability-survey.html

10. The purpose is to become the kind of person that can do it

The Daily Stoic —In one of his letters, Seneca describes himself as a “cold-water enthusiast.” He would “celebrate the new year by taking a plunge into the canal, who, just as naturally as I would set out to do some reading or writing, or to compose a speech, used to inaugurate the first of the year with a plunge into the Virgo aqueduct [present day Trevi Fountain].” But then he gives the real reason for his cold plunges: “The body should be treated more rigorously that it may not be disobedient to the mind.”

There’s a lot of interesting research about the health benefits of taking cold showers and going for a run and lifting weights. But the real reason to do these things is far more simple: it’s to make a statement about who is in charge.

Who is in charge? The courageous side or the cowardly side of you? The side that doesn’t flinch at discomfort or the side that desires to always be comfortable? The side that does the hard thing or the side that takes the easy way?

We challenge ourselves not to improve our immune system. Not to increase our metabolism. Not to reduce anxiety. Those things might be nice ancillary benefits but they are not the point. The purpose is to become the kind of person that can do it. How do you expect to do the big things that scare you—that scare others—if you haven’t practiced them? Why do you think you can endure the cold reception of a bold idea if you can’t even endure cold water? How can you trust that you’ll step forward when the stakes are high when you regularly don’t do that when the stakes are low? What gives you any confidence you’ll do the hard thing when people are watching if you can’t do that even when no one is watching?

The person who does something scary every day is less fearful than someone who can’t. The person who does something difficult every day is tougher than someone who doesn’t.

https://dailystoic.com/

1. Energy Stocks are Still at Record Cheapness vs. Tech

Kailash-this group does great work.

https://kailashconcepts.com/is-it-too-late-to-buy-oil-stocks/

2. Year to Date Returns…Consumer Staples ETF -4% vs. Consumer Discretionary -23%

www.yahoofinance.com

3. Shocker! State Backed Developers Benefit from China Housing Crisis

WSJ-Developers backed by the central or local governments have dominated land auctions around the country in recent months, thanks in part to their continued access to affordable financing. While they are also contending with slumping apartment sales and falling home prices, their sales drops have generally been less severe than those of their peers not backed by the state.

As China’s Private Developers Retreat, State-Backed Rivals Gain Ground-By 

Cao Li https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-chinas-private-developers-retreat-state-backed-rivals-gain-ground-11653989402

4. Interesting Chart to Watch as the FED Unwinds Balance Sheet

Mortgage Backed Securities ETF

www.stockcharts.com

VMBS has a negative 5 year performance

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=vmbs+etf+performance&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

5. According to WSJ-Factory Robotics Orders Jumped 40% Year Over Year in Q1 2022

ROBO chart -30% from Highs

WSJ-By Bob Tita

https://www.wsj.com/articles/robots-pick-up-more-work-at-busy-factories-11653822002

Robo Top Holdings-www.etf.com

6. Airbnb…Airlines Back to Pre-Covid Bookings

ABNB -50% Correction…Forming Base in Chart

www.stockcharts.com

7. Another Covid Stock …SQ (Block) $280 to $66….-75% Correction

www.stockcharts.com

8. National Homicide Clearance Rate Dropped to Historic Low

The Marshall Project– For homicide detectives, 2020 brought good news and bad news. On the one hand, police across the nation solved more murders — in absolute numbers — than in any year since 1997, according to data reported to the FBI. On the other hand, because new homicides increased sharply, the reported rate at which killings were solved, known as the “clearance rate,” declined to a little below 50%.

The lower clearance rate in 2020 was an extension of a long, steady drop since the early 1980s, when police cleared about 70% of all homicides, and a decline that experts say was exacerbated by the pandemic. (The FBI won’t release 2021 numbers until later this year.

As Murders Spiked, Police Solved About Half in 2020The U.S. homicide clearance rate is at a historic low. Here’s what that means. By WEIHUA LI and JAMILES LARTEY

 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/01/12/as-murders-spiked-police-solved-about-half-in-2020

9. The Uyghurs in China now live in a giant, open air prison camp

By

Steven W. Mosher

An estimated 2 million Uyghurs are interred in detention camps in the far-northern Chinese province of Xinjiang. Along being forced to renounce their Muslim faith, the Uyghurs are subject to grave human-rights abuses including torture and sexual exploitation. NY Post photo composite

There’s a cultural genocide taking place in China right now against the nation’s Uyghur minority. Aggressively monitored by Chinese authorities and faced with the constant threat of arrest or torture, this Turkish-speaking people in China’s Far West now exist in the world’s first, real-life, digital dictatorship.

It is no exaggeration to say the entire province of Xinjiang, an area only slightly smaller than Alaska, has been turned into a giant, open-air prison camp by the Chinese Communist Party. As author Nury Turkel explains in his new book, “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs,” every neighborhood in Uyghur cities large and small now has its own hastily erected “convenience police station” manned by “low-level assistant police officers, who are more brute muscle than actual law enforcement officers.” The neighborhoods themselves are surrounded by manned check points, where those who want to leave are forced to squint into a camera for a retinal scan before departure.

Each neighborhood is further broken down into small “grids” of 15 to 20 families, each with an assigned a “grid monitor.” As the author writes, each monitor is tasked with snooping on their neighbors, reporting any suspicious or forbidden activities — such as Islamic practices like refusing to eat pork or fasting during Ramadan — to the authorities.

Then there are the Monday-morning flag-raising ceremonies, at which attendance is obligatory.  As the red flag of communist China is raised, writes Turkel, who’s ethnic Uyghur, Party officials “lead chanted slogans about the greatness of the party and its secretary-general, Xi Jinping, and the need for Uyghurs to abandon their faith in anyone but him.”

https://nypost.com/2022/06/04/the-uyghurs-in-china-now-live-in-a-giant-open-air-prison-camp/

10. Where Should You Focus?

Tiny Thought—Farnam Street Blog

In every area of life, there is a hidden asymmetry. If you apply your focus like everyone else, you will get the same results as everyone else. Understanding where to apply your focus makes a massive difference in results.

Everyone knows that focus matters. Most people don’t know where to focus. Telling people “to focus more” is about as helpful as telling them to “make better decisions.” Common advice but useless in practice.

Not all focus is equal. Some focus is asymmetric. Knowing where to focus makes a difference.

How do you know where to focus? The answer is a deep fluency in the problem. You need to embed yourself in the problem and the details. You need to try things, reflect, and learn. Sooner or later, you start to understand the hidden asymmetry.

A lot of business people treat all decisions the same, no matter the implications. They’ll spend as much time trying to decide a trivial decision as a major one. A lot of authors focus on the work and miss that how it’s positioned for the audience matters more. A lot of people go to the gym 4 days a week only to miss that what goes into their body and the amount of sleep matter more.

The visible problem might appear to be a lack of focus, but the invisible problem is often not knowing where to focus to get the best results.

In any field, a few areas of focus make an asymmetric difference. Often they’re hiding in plain sight and ignored by most.

One place to find asymmetry is to listen to people talk about others’ success … “that book sold a lot, but did you read it, it’s not well written.” That’s an indication that the quality of writing matters less than you think and something else matters more. Or consider the person that explains another person’s success away with “luck.” There might be an element of luck to it, sure, but when you pull back the curtain, I bet you discover they’re focusing a little bit more on something different. Success leaves clues.

What looks like a lack of focus is often a lack of understanding.

(Share this Tiny Thought on Twitter)

https://fs.blog

1. 2000-2022 Trailing 12 Month P/E Ratios

Back to 2002 Levels Coming Out of Internet Bubble

Gina Adams Bloomberg https://twitter.com/GinaMartinAdams

2. SPDR Software ETF -41% Correction….Closed Below Long-Term Weekly Chart 200day Moving Average.

XSW closes below 200day

3. Regional Bank Index Sell-Off….Holds Support Going Back to Early 2021

www.stockcharts.com

4. Energy Select ETF Another Break-Out to New Highs

www.stockcharts.com

5. Number of Days that SPY Traded in Positive Territory All Day Plummets

Bespoke Investment Group All Day Rallies A Thing of the Past-It seems like a distant memory now, but Monday’s rally marked just the 13th time all year (and over the last 100 trading days) that the S&P 500 tracking ETF (SPY) opened higher and traded in positive territory all day (‘100% positive day’).  The chart below shows the rolling 100-trading day total number of 100% positive days for SPY since 1994, shortly after the ETF launched.  The current level of 13 is already well below the long-term average of 18, but last week, the reading was even lower at 12.  The last time the 100-day rolling total was lower than that was in May 2009, and the lowest readings ever recorded were in periods beginning in October 2002 and September 2008 with just six in a 100-trading day span.

What makes the current period unique is how quickly the rate of 100% positive days has plummeted.  100 trading days ago, the rolling total was more than twice the current level at 29.  Also, it was only in February 2021 (less than sixteen months ago) that the number of 100% positive days reached a record high of 33 on 2/4/21.  That peak came just weeks before the Federal Government sent out the third and final round of stimulus checks.  Just as massive amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus helped to support markets during COVID, the withdrawal of these supports has introduced gravity back into the equation.

https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/all-day-rallies-thing-ofpast

6. Natural Gas Huge Run Up in Price but Still Well Below 2008 Levels

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. And the fracking boom that caused prices to collapse in the US starting in 2009, while prices soared elsewhere, is now being leveraged to export LNG, and we already kissed those collapsed natural gas prices of $2-3 per million Btu goodbye.

https://wolfstreet.com/2022/05/25/us-natural-gas-futures-spiked-to-highest-since-2008-tripled-in-a-year-why-we-kissed-that-dirt-cheap-natural-gas-goodbye/

7. Meanwhile, LNG exports are surging as U.S. inventories hold near the low end of the 5-year range.

Source: @WSJ  Read full article

The Daily Shot https://dailyshotbrief.com/the-daily-shot-brief-may-27th-2022/

8. Personal Savings Rate Falls Back to 2008 Levels

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-27/us-savings-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-2008-as-inflation-bites?srnd=premium&sref=GGda9y2L

9. College Enrollment Fell for 11th Year in a Row

685,000 fewer students were enrolled in post-secondary education in America this spring, a 4.1% fall on 2021, which itself was a 3.5% fall on the numbers from 2020 according to data out yesterday from the NSC Research Center. That fall marks the 11th straight year that the spring count of total enrollments has dropped in the US.

The college conundrum

The biggest drop came in undergraduates, as 662,000 fewer undergraduates enrolled — a 4.7% drop on the year before. Community college numbers fell almost 8%.

Part of that fall could be explained away by the pandemic, where remote-learning distinctly diminished the college experience, but the scale and consistency of the declines suggest something larger is at play: college is losing its allure.

Once the golden ticket to a middle class life, the rise in the cost of college has outstripped the rise in the cost of living many times over in the last 50 years, suggesting that the math of the college decision is, for some prospective students, not adding up anymore.

Interestingly, the most well-known institutions are bucking this trend. The acceptance rate at Harvard plunged to an all-time low (~3%). The same happened at Stanford… and Yale… and Brown… and Columbia (to name but a few). The college path might not make quite as much sense for everyone as it used to, but the big name institutions aren’t the ones losing out.

www.chartr.com

10. Three flavors of a good life: Happy, Meaningful, Psychologically Rich

Psychology Today Marianna Pogosyan Ph.D. As a distinct, yet corelated dimension of a good life, the psychologically rich life differs from the existing hedonic-eudaimonic dichotomy in a number of ways. For example, if the emphasis of a happy life is on positive emotions and security, and the emphasis of a meaningful life is on purpose and coherence, then the hallmarks of a psychologically rich life are variety, interest and perspective (Oishi & Westgate, 2021). If a positive mindset facilitates a happy life, and moral principles facilitate a meaningful life, then curiosity and spontaneity will facilitate a psychologically rich life. If the outcome of a happy life is personal satisfaction and the outcome of a meaningful life is societal contribution, then the outcome of a psychologically rich life, according to Oishi, is wisdom.

To explore the three constructs of well-being differently, consider the metaphor of a beautiful garden. You might feel hedonic well-being whenever you are greeted by the lovely blooms as you stroll through your garden. You might experience eudaimonic well-being as you revel in the sense of purpose you receive from tending to your garden and sharing its gifts with others. According to Oishi, psychological richness arises as your garden undergoes seasonal changes. The landscape of the garden is in a constant flux. Its diverse inhabitants from the plant and animal kingdoms follow the Nature’s lead. As you watch your garden metamorphose through the seasons – aflush with color and harvest in one, barren and dormant in another – you might recognize the wealth, wonder and wisdom of life’s unfolding, to which you also belong.

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Here are 6 questions on the psychologically-rich life with Dr. Oishi.

What does a psychologically rich life look like?

A psychologically rich life is a life of curiosity and exploration. It’s not that you have to chase after new and exciting experiences all the time. Rather, it’s an invitation to remain curious about life in its fullness, and not limit yourself to the comforts of what you already know.

What is the mechanism that allows our experiences, at times even the challenging ones, to add up to a well-lived life?

Consider the differences between material wealth and psychological wealth. Material wealth, which can be money or other assets, is often tangible. For me, the psychological equivalent of material wealth are our stories. They might include our happy memories and the meaningful contributions we make to other people’s lives. But when it comes to psychological richness, sometimes even the difficult experiences that help us grow and see things in new ways can add to our wealth. That’s because those are often the experiences that we tend to with care and reflection, which then turn to insights and observations that we can carry with us and share with others.

Two people can have the same number of unusual experiences. For one person, these experiences will add up to bring about new insights and perspectives. For someone else, they will remain interesting, yet disparate events that don’t contribute to growth. In part, this discrepancy has to do with personality, value systems, and even mindset. For example, if someone wants to live an aesthetic life, then engaging with thought-provoking art can be transformative for them, compared to someone who isn’t interested in these values. It also matters how reflective the person is. Self-reflection might be what binds experiences together to make them count towards a well-lived life. When we deeply reflect on our experiences, the connections and insights that we gather can accumulate to make for a richer whole.

You argue that a psychologically rich life comprises of experiences in which novelty and complexity are followed by changes in perspective. Why is a change in perspective so important?

A change of perspective is precisely what captures some of the growth. For example, the reason why certain experiences such as study abroad programs can be so transformative, is because they often introduce us to new ways of thinking about life. In turn, we might become encouraged to engage with the novelty and complexity of the experience in ways that affect our understanding of the world and lead to growth.

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On the other hand, a person can go bungee-jumping for the sake of sensation seeking, and it might not change anything about the way they see life. Thus, change of perspective is an indication that we were able to digest the novelty, complexity and depth of the experience in new, insightful ways.

Can second-hand experiences, for example through literature and film, contribute to a psychologically rich life?

Great literature, poetry, film, music and art can significantly enrich our lives. I think humans created art and culture to essentially help themselves go through a wealth of experiences second-hand. As Marcel Proust wrote in In Search of Lost Time, a novel can help us experience the joys and sorrows of someone’s entire lifetime within a matter of hours. While first-hand experiences are obviously more real, sometimes the imaginary worlds that novelists craft can be as vivid.

How can we add psychological richness to our lives?

A good lesson can be found in studies about regret. According to research, short-term regret is usually about something you did, whereas long-term regret is about something you didn’t do. If you were to ask old people about their regrets, it often is about not having various experiences, not taking the job offer, not doing this or that. This mindset can help us be more willing to make changes.

What can research on psychological richness teach us about the good life?

Sometimes, people can be so obsessed with happiness, that they actively strive to stir their lives in one direction – that of positive emotions and comfort. But life is unpredictable, and unfortunately, not always pleasant. Psychological richness entails accepting life as it happens, in its entirety. If we consider stories that we accumulate and share with others as the currency of psychological richness, many of our experiences can lend new insights and propel us towards growth, thus adding up to wealth.

To me, this research diversifies the ways in which people could lead a good life. A happy life is a great life. A meaningful life is a great life. But at times, when happiness and meaning are hard to come by, or if you are not predisposed to them, you can still experience well-being and have a good, admirable life by leading a psychologically rich life.

Many thanks to Shige Oishi for his time and insights. Professor Oishi is a personality and social psychologist at the University of Virginia.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/202205/the-psychologically-rich-life?collection=1175818

1. 40% of Trading Days this Year 1%+ Moves…2008 Levels

Nasdaq Dorsey Wright-A major portion of the trading days so far this year have seen SPX move at least 1% higher from its daily low into the close, with the count at 39 days through market action Monday. This equates to 39.80% of the days. which is significantly more than the average dating back to April 1987 at about 20.64% of the days. This also puts us on the highest pace of trading days with such a move since 2009. The only other year to see such a high pace of 1% intraday rallies came in 2008. We saw a significant count of intraday rallies from 1997 through 2002, although none of those years reached the current pace. The year with the lowest percentage of large rally days was 2017, which saw only one such day throughout the entire year.

https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-dorsey-wright

2. Another 2008 Number….Max Pessimism–Percent that Expect “stronger economy” Lower than 2008

From Irrelevant Investor Blog https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2022/05/25/animal-spirits-the-most-obvious-recession-ever/

3. History of 7 Week Sell Offs.

Don’t Panic! What History Tells Us After 7 S&P 500 Losing Weeks-The S&P 500 has fallen for seven weeks. Here’s why you don’t want to panic now. BRET KENWELL

Seven straight weekly declines is a pretty rare occurrence. This is just the fourth time we’ve seen such a streak since 1928. The prior three scenarios occurred in 1970, 1980 and 2001. Interestingly, all four declines concluded either in March or May.

To little surprise, there is good news and bad news associated with the declines.

The bad news: In two of the three declines, the seven straight weeks of declines turned into eight straight weeks of declines (in 1970 and 2001).

Further, in both of those years, the market went on to retest the lows, although the time it took varied widely. After the bottom in 1970, the S&P 500 went on to break the low about 4 1/2 years later, in Q4 1974. In 2001, the index broke to new lows a little more than six months later following the 9/11 attacks.

The good news: Each downtrend of this magnitude (seven straight weeks or more) has marked the low for at least six months. Further, the longest stretch did not exceed eight straight weeks.

The “tldr” is we may endure more short-term pain, but we also could be near an intermediate or potentially even a long-term bottom.

For instance, following the low after each stretch of seven or more consecutive weekly declines, the S&P 500 was higher four weeks later, one quarter later, six months later and one year later. That’s promising.

In 2001 we had a nice initial burst off the lows, climbing 15.4% a month later and 13.3% one quarter later, although those gains faded a bit once we got to the 6-month and 12-month marks.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/dont-panic-after-7-losing-weeks-in-sp-500

4. Big Correction in Consumer Discretionary but Still Trading at Premium vs. Historical

LPL Research

https://lplresearch.com/2022/05/25/difficult-outlook-for-consumer-discretionary/

5. Factor Returns Year to Date

https://www.zeninvestor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/factors.png

6. Supply Bottlenecks Disappearing

United States: Supply bottlenecks are disappearing, which means suppliers will have a tough time raising or even maintaining prices.

Source: Daily Shot

The Daily Shot https://dailyshotbrief.com/the-daily-shot-brief-may-25th-2022/

7. Alternative Investments Go Mainstream

www.chartr.com

8. CO2 Admissions and Commodities

From Michael Gayed Lead Lag Report

https://twitter.com/leadlagreport/status/1529540557202153473/photo/1

9. Another Covid Chart…Beyond Meat $200 to $25

www.stockcharts.com

10. The 15 Rules Every Stoic Must Follow

https://www.njlifehacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/16-Rules-Every-Stoic-Must-Follow-Infographic.png

1. U.S. Households Could Now Theoretically Repay All Indebtedness

Blackrock Rick Reider

Figure 5: US households could now theoretically repay all indebtedness with cash

https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/insights/prepping-financial-hurricane

2. Tesla Loses 50% of Market Cap Since November

3. S&P 500 has Only Fallen 8 Weeks in a Row 3x Since 1950

Irrelevant Investor-And to top it off, the stock market keeps going down. If the S&P 500 falls this week, it would be just the third time since 1950 that it fell for eight consecutive weeks.

https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2022/05/24/recession/

4. Office REITS No Bounce Out of Covid

Jim Bianco https://twitter.com/biancoresearch

5. S&P Financials Trading at P/E 12

Despite yesterday’s gain, Financials -13% YTD; sector’s undemanding valuation – current P/E of 12 is almost 20% below past 5 years’ average – may reflect concerns about impact of economic slowdown and potential recession may have on banks’ earnings ⁦⁦

@SPDJIndices

From Liz Ann Sonders https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders

6. Thrifting is the new normal

Hope King, author of Axios Closer

Axios on facebook

Axios on twitter

Axios on linkedin

Axios on email

Data: GlobalData via ThredUP; Chart: Baidi Wang/Axios

Buying secondhand is no longer an afterthought.

Driving the news: 93% of shoppers in the U.S. have or are open to buying secondhand products, according to a new report from resale platform ThredUP out this morning.

• That’s up from 70% in 2019.

Why it matters: We’ve grown increasingly aware of our consumption habits — particularly the youngest consumers among us — and are living in a period of high inflation which has us questioning our purchase decisions.

Details: Nearly 2 in 3 people believe their individual buying habits have a significant impact on the planet, according to a survey of 3,500 U.S. adults.

• 82% of respondents said they feel a positive emotion when they buy used.
• 74% said preowned apparel is more socially acceptable now than it was five years ago.

Yes, but: Saving money is the top reason people buy secondhand over new — across all age groups — the study found.

• Among Gen Z, sustainability is the second top motivator.
• For average consumers, being able to afford higher-end brands is the second leading motivator.

The big picture: E-commerce technology has matured so much over the past few years that it’s helped to increase the availability of used clothing around the world, whether that’s through dedicated platforms like ThredUP, Poshmark, The RealReal or a closet-sharing service like Tulerie.

What to watch: Big legacy brands are building more ways to resell their own products.

• Doing so not only helps companies like Oscar de la Renta and Levi’s retain customers, but it also adds a new stream of revenue to their business by taking back what a resale platform may have made on their products.

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/17/resale-secondhand-americans-shopping

7. TikTok vs. T.V. vs. NFLX

Scott Galloway

https://www.profgalloway.com/tiktok-boom/

8. Average age of U.S. cars hits record high due to tight supplies, report says

Reuters

May 23 (Reuters) – U.S. consumers are using their existing vehicles for longer as the inventory of new cars and light trucks remains constrained due to supply chain challenges, marking an all-time high for the average age, according to a report from S&P Global Mobility.

The average age of light vehicles in operation (VIO) in the United States rose to 12.2 years this year, increasing by nearly two months from the prior year, the report said.

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The pandemic led consumers to shift from using from public transport and shared transport to personal cars, and since customers could not upgrade their vehicles, demand for used cars have accelerated and boosted the average vehicle age further, the report said.

Stress on global supply chains worsened in April as COVID-19 lockdown measures in China and the war in Ukraine lengthened delivery times, and air freight costs between the United States and Asia rose, the New York Federal Reserve reported in its latest update to a worldwide index of supply problems. read more

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The average age of light vehicles in operation in the U.S. is expected to rise through 2022 and 2023, as the pipeline for new vehicle production and sales continues to be weighed down by parts shortages, the report said.

Supply chain constraints have led to a decrease in vehicle scrappage, which measures the number of vehicles leaving the vehicle population, and has been a catalyst for the rise in average age over time.

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The report also said demand for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the U.S. has been expanding rapidly over the past few years.

The average age of electric vehicles in the U.S. is 3.8 years of age this year, down from 3.9 last year, and has been hovering between 3 and 4.1 years since 2016.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/average-age-us-cars-hits-record-high-due-tight-supplies-report-2022-05-23/

9. The Increase in Public Home Builders Gross Margins

John Burns Real Estate

https://twitter.com/johnburnsjbrec

10. This Is the Exact Amount of Coffee You Should Drink, According to a Harvard Brain Expert

But don’t make it espresso or French press.

BY MINDA ZETLIN, AUTHOR OF CAREER SELF-CARE: FIND YOUR HAPPINESS, SUCCESS, AND FULFILLMENT AT WORK@MINDAZETLIN

Scientists agree: Drinking coffee is good for you. That’s good news if, like most Americans, you enjoy coffee and perhaps rely on it to help you wake up in the morning or stay alert during the day.

In the last couple of years, more detailed research on coffee has sought to zero in on just how much coffee you should drink every day for maximum health and brain benefits. They’ve found the answer: You should drink three cups. That advice comes from Dr. Uma Naidoo, who’s been described as a “triple threat”: a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, trained nutrition specialist, and trained chef. She’s also the author of the bestseller This Is Your Brain on Food. In an article at CNBC.com, Naidoo explains how she uses coffee as part of her daily routine to boost her own brain function. (Naidoo’s routine includes putting shots of espresso into golden milk, which sounds like a fantastic idea to me.) 

Why three cups? Naidoo points to a study in which researchers tracked both the coffee consumption and cognitive health of 676 elderly men over 10 years. They found that the coffee drinkers had less than half the cognitive decline as the non-coffee drinkers did. And those who drank three cups a day had the least decline of all. A larger Harvard study, with 208,501 participants (both men and women), examined the likelihood of death over more than 20 years. It found that participants who drank coffee were less likely to die early than those who didn’t, with the greatest longevity benefit going to those who drank between 3.1 and five cups a day.

If you want the maximum benefits from your coffee habit, make sure to follow these three rules.

1. Filter it.

Many sophisticated coffee drinkers favor espresso, French press, and Turkish coffee–and some love the Scandinavian tradition of boiling coffee with an egg in it (sometimes including the shell), which pulls together the grounds. Unfortunately, all these versions of coffee can be bad for you. When coffee is made without a paper filter, “oily chemicals called diterpenes come through that can raise artery-damaging LDL cholesterol,” according to the New York Times‘s Jane Brody. Brody, who uses coffee pods, actually dissected one to make sure it contained a paper filter (it did).

2. Be careful what you add.

Coffee may be good for you, but sugar is very bad for you. So if drinking coffee means getting a highly sweetened latte concoction from your favorite barista, you won’t be doing your health any favors–especially when you consider that espresso-based drinks like lattes are unfiltered.

A better strategy is to make your own drip coffee at home, using fresh-ground beans for both better flavor and better control over what exactly goes into your coffee. For added fun, put the $4 to $6 you would have spent at the coffee shop aside for every homemade cup you drink, then use that money for a special treat.

3. Pay attention to your own reactions to coffee. 

This is Naidoo’s advice and it’s an important tip to follow because everybody is different, and each of us may react differently to coffee’s effects. If it makes you feel jittery, cut back your consumption or cut it out altogether. The same holds true if you have trouble sleeping. Caffeine can affect your ability to fall asleep, and also whether you reach the deep sleep stage that your body and brain both need to stay healthy.

At the same time, pay attention to whether coffee lightens your mood, which it might. One of the most intriguing findings from the Harvard study is that coffee drinkers were half as likely to commit suicide as non-coffee drinkers. According to the research, the explanation may be that coffee boosts brain chemicals that have an antidepressant effect.

There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or idea. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Interested in joining? You can learn more here.) Many are entrepreneurs and business leaders, and they tell me that a bright mood and positive attitude makes all the difference when you’re running a business or leading a team.

So the most important question is: How does coffee make you feel? If it makes you feel nervous or interferes with your rest, then stay away from it or switch to decaf. If it makes you feel good, then drink up. Make sure to use a paper filter, and aim for three cups a day.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misspelled Uma Naidoo’s surname.https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/coffee-consumption-health-benefits-correct-amount-uma-maidoo-harvard.html