1. Since 2015 S&P Big Outperformance….How About 30 Years?
Over 30 Years Equal Weight (RSP), IJH Mid-Cap, and IJR Small Cap All Beat S&P Nasdaq Dorsey Wright–The “core” of domestic equities, represented by the S&P 500, has dominated the market over the last decade. Since 2015, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is up 178%, handily besting the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP), iShares S&P Mid Cap 400 Index Fund (IJH), and iShares S&P Small Cap 600 Index Fund (IJR) by 50% in cumulative return. However, the core of the market hasn’t always been the area of strength within US Equities. In fact, the cap weighted S&P 500 has underperformed all three of the other previously mentioned indices across the last 30 years (since the start of 95′). While that alone is interesting, you may be surprised by which group sits atop the list: the S&P Mid Cap 400 Index (IJH).
2. 10% Plus Per Year Sales Growth is Rare
From Zach Goldberg at Jefferies –GS noted, it’s hard to grow revenues fast for long. There are many examples of companies that can grow sales by more than 10% in a year, even 2 years, but very few examples of companies that can grow sales more than 10% year-after-year. Persistently high growth is rare and special — and unusual; the odds are against it happening
3. S&P Best Performance 2024 is not NVDA….VST +180%
4. Crypto High Correlation to Stocks Right Now
From The Daily Chartbook Crypto vs. stocks. “A 40-day correlation coefficient for a gauge of the largest 100 digital assets and the S&P 500 Index is at about 0.67, a level exceeded only in the second quarter of 2022 when it topped 0.72.”
Sherwood News But over the past year, the S&P 500’s rise has been unusually consistent. In 35 of the past 52 weeks, the benchmark US index has gained. This is rarefied air: going back to March 1957, only 5% of the time has the S&P 500 posted more weekly wins over a one-year span.
8. Teen Girls’ Brains Aged Rapidly During Pandemic, Study Finds
NYT- By Ellen Barry Neuroimaging found girls experienced cortical thinning far faster than boys did during the first year of Covid lockdowns
The thinning of the cortex is seen by scientists as the brain rewiring itself as it matures.Credit…Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington
A study of adolescent brain development that tested children before and after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in the United States found that girls’ brains aged far faster than expected, something the researchers attributed to social isolation.
The study from the University of Washington, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured cortical thinning, a process that starts in either late childhood or early adolescence, as the brain begins to prune redundant synapses and shrink its outer layer. Thinning of the cortex is not necessarily bad; some scientists frame the process as the brain rewiring itself as it matures, increasing its efficiency. But the process is known to accelerate in stressful conditions, and accelerated thinning is correlated with depression and anxiety.
Scans taken in 2021, after shutdowns started to lift, showed that both boys and girls had experienced rapid cortical thinning during that period. But the effect was far more notable in girls, whose thinning had accelerated, on average, by 4.2 years ahead of what was expected; the thinning in boys’ brains had accelerated 1.4 years ahead of what was expected.
Barrons By Karen Hube The tax code grew in length by 40% to about four million words between 1994 and 2021 and has expanded steadily since, and that pales when compared with ballooning regulations published annually to interpret the changes, along with tax court case law that sets precedents for how the tax code applies in specific circumstances. From 2000 to 2022, the Department of Treasury’s annual volume of regulations grew 35% to 17,631 pages from 13,070, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
10. Put Yourself in Position for Success -Farnam Street Blog
“So much of life isn’t about intelligence or luck but putting yourself in a position for success.
The cash-rich investor thrives in crashes. The well-rested athlete outperforms the exhausted star. The student who studies daily aces the pop quiz. The employee who leaves early gets to the meeting with the CEO on time while the other person sits in the unanticipated traffic. All seem lucky, but they’ve positioned themselves to succeed.
Master your circumstances before they master you.”
Many investors wonder if the economy is late cycle. But as Fundstrat Head of Research Tom Lee points out, businesses became cautious about over-expanding in early 2022, when the Fed began signaling intentions to raise interest rates sharply. They have remained cautious ever since. “The private investment-to-GDP ratio sits at 25%, below the long-term average of 27%, and with the exception of the pandemic, no major recession has started since 1970 without this figure exceeding 28%,” he told us this week. Our Chart of the Week illustrates this
4. Small Cap Russell 2000-7 Straight Days of Gains-First Time in 3 ½ Years
Bespoke Investment Group The latest rally in the Russell 2000 has also been impressive given that yesterday was the seventh straight day of gains for the index which is the longest winning streak for the index in three and a half years. Seven-day winning streaks are by no means uncommon or extreme in the Russell 2000’s history. As shown in the chart below, since 1980 there have been 110 other winning streaks of at least seven trading days, and the longest was more than three times longer at 22 in March 1988. What is interesting about the chart below, however, is how common 7-day winning streaks were from 1980 through the dot com bust (86 from 1980 through the end of 2022) and how uncommon they have been since (24 since 2003).
Torsten Slok, Ph.D.Chief Economist, PartnerApollo Global Management Long-term loans to corporates are moving away from being financed by overnight deposits to instead being financed by long-term liabilities such as insurance and pensions, thereby making the financial system more stable, see chart below
Zerohedge BY TYLER DURDEN Despite efforts to decarbonize the economy, global coal consumption surpassed 164 exajoules for the first time in 2023. The fossil fuel still accounts for 26% of the world’s total energy consumption. In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti shows global coal consumption by region from 1965 to 2023, based on data from the Energy Institute.
Living life is about making decisions, but if you fear making a “wrong” decision, you can become immobilized.
The underlying obstacles are self-criticism and worry about future regrets and what others may think.
The key is to realize when anxiety has taken over—you can’t control the future or make everyone happy.
Like it or not, everyday life is a factory of decision-making: What to wear for a first date, whether to take the new job, whether to circle back to the argument you had on Saturday night with your partner, or what to make for a dinner with friends. Some decisions are bigger, some smaller, but making choices is always a part of running your life. But because decisions have consequences, decision-making can often be challenging; for some, even minor decisions can feel like big ones. If you have a difficult time making up your mind, here are three common underlying obstacles along with ways to resolve them to help you be more decisive.
You’re self-critical or perfectionistic.
If you tend to be self-critical, always giving yourself a hard time over some “mistake,” or worse, are perfectionistic, needing everything to come out perfectly, every decision—the clothes, the job, the dinner, and the argument—feels equally important. Your mind flips through a checklist of criteria your decision needs to meet: Is this what I really want? Am I overreacting? Is the timing right? What will others think?
Consequences: You start to obsess, and that checklist is long. So you go online and look at dress combinations, make endless pro-and-con lists about the job, scour through dozens of recipes, and plug in multiple AIquestions to compose the perfect sentence that tells your partner how you feel without creating resentment.
Solution: Your brain is telling you that the only way to put this to rest is to work harder to get it right—get more information so you don’t make a mistake. But the real problem isn’t what to wear or say, but that your self-critical or perfectionistic mind has taken over, pressuring you to make every decision, however small, the right one.
Time to get your rational brain back online: Realize that every decision doesn’t have the same weight—the job may be more important than the dinner—and that you’re spinning your wheels going down rabbit holes. Next, take concrete action to move forward: Talk to someone who works at the potential job about their experience or ask for a follow-up interview to answer your lingering questions; say what you want to say to your partner, and if they get defensive, back off but circle back later to mop up and clarify. Only by moving forward, no matter how small the baby steps, will you discover what to do next.
You worry about having future regrets.
This is a variation of the other. Even if you know what you want to do, you worry about the results in the future: You’ll take the job, but you’ll wind up hating it; you’ll talk to your partner, but it won’t go well, and your bringing it up will only add fuel to the emotional fire, eventually leading to divorce.
Consequences: Obsessing all future worst-case scenarios undermines your confidence in your decision.
Solution: Just as it’s easy to go down rabbit holes of information, you can do the same with future worst-case scenarios. The reality check is that not only can’t you control the future, but your past is constantly being recreated through the lens of the present: If two years from now you’re happy at the new job, you’ll not only pat yourself on the back for making a good decision but also think you should have switched jobs sooner. If you’re miserable two years from now, you’ll wish you had stayed at your old job. It’s a moving target. The best you can do is the best you can do right now. You can only deal with future problems if and when they arise.
You worry that others will judge your decisions.
I’ve met folks who struggle with decisions because they worry that “other people” won’t approve of their choices. This fear is usually part of a learned childhood hypervigilance where “I’m happy only if the whole world is happy.”
Consequences: The thinking is understandable, but the solution is not. You can’t be sensitive to the whole world. With that large an audience looking over your shoulder, you get paralyzed.
Solution: You may care what those close to you think, and you want to be assertive and help them understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but agreement isn’t always necessary. Worrying that you need to explain yourself to those outside your intimate circle pushes you off course from what you want; you wind up living their lives, not yours.
The underlying driver is anxiety.
Indecisiveness is a solution to the problem of creating the right outcome, whether it is about making your present plan work out the way you want, having no regrets in the future, or making everyone happy. The best you can do is make the best decision in the present and see what happens. If it works out, great—good for you. If not, it’s not because you screwed up, but you now have a new problem, and hopefully you’ve learned what not to do. Take each problem and each decision one at a time.
The key is seeing anxiety as the driver, stepping back, and realizing that your anxious brain is taking over—causing you to obsess and fall into little-kid emotions and irrational thinking. Stop doing what your anxious brain tells you to do; realize that your thoughts are running you rather than you running your thoughts.
Learning to be decisive is learning not to let anxiety run your life, learning that there are no mistakes, focusing on doing the best you can right now, recognizing that all decisions are not equally important, and accepting that you can control only this moment.
1. Largest Fed Pause Rally in History Before 50 bps. Cut
2. Will Lower Rates Spark Small Caps?
R2K streak. The Russell 2000 has now risen for 7 days in a row, a feat accomplished only 27 other times while also trading above the 200SMA. Forward returns have been mixed.
Gold vs. first cut. “After a cut, there has only been one time, 1998, when gold has trended significantly lower after a rate cut throughout the next year, and even then, close to the one-year mark, it surged as the Dot Com crash started.”
8. 30-Year Mortgage Getting Close to Breaking 6% Mark
9. American People Dislikes Federal Government, Advertising and Pharma
10. The Daily Stoic
As we work and achieve, we pile up titles and money. We accumulate assets and influence. We build a life, as they say. And a life is made up of things: Our job. Our house. Our car. Our relationships. Our reputation. Looking around at what we possess, what we’ve poured so much sweat and blood into, is an immensely rewarding experience. As Margaret Atwood writes in a beautiful poem, The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, But the Stoic knows that we never really own anything. All that we possess in this life, Marcus Aurelius says, even life itself, is really ours only in trust. We are renters. Our lives are here on loan…loans that can get called in at any time. We can be fired. Someone can dislodge our seemingly dominant market position. A loved one can leave. People die. That’s why Margaret Atwood warns against the pride and satisfaction of surveying one’s possessions. The moment you do that, she says, nature rebels. Almost out of spite, they feel the need to rebuke you for your pride. No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. None of us own anything. Everything is constantly in flux. What we have today may be gone tomorrow—we ourselves may be gone tomorrow. Understand that. Appreciate everything accordingly. Be grateful and humble…or life will rebuke you. Fate will remind you who is in charge and nature will reclaim what is hers.
Once, it was Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management, who got to play godfather to a generation of hedge fund stars. Now, it’s Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management who are taking up that role — whether they want to or not. With the multistrategy hedge fund titans closed to outside cash amid a dearth of talent able to manage their money, Citadel and Millennium traders are seizing the chance to go it alone. And investors are backing them with an avalanche of assets.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $766,550 or less decreased to 6.15% from 6.29%
Applications to refinance a home loan jumped 24% from the previous week and were 127% higher than the same week one year ago.
Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home increased 5% for the week but were still 0.4% lower than the same week one year ago.
Total mortgage application volume rose 14.2% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Last week’s results included an adjustment for the Labor Day holiday. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $766,550 or less decreased to 6.15% from 6.29%, with points increasing to 0.56 from 0.55, including the origination fee, for loans with a 20% down payment. That is the lowest rate since September 2022 and is 116 basis points lower than it was the same week one year ago. “Application activity was up significantly last week, as market expectations of a rate cut from the Fed pulled mortgage rates lower,” said Joel Kan, an economist with the Mortgage Bankers Association.
9. The Federal Government Owns 27.4% of the Land in America. 80% of Nevada and 62% of Alaska….
10. Baby Boomer Housing Market Statistics
List with Clever
More than half of boomers who currently own a home (54%) never plan to sell it and hope to live in it for the rest of their lives.
90% of boomer homeowners have concerns about homeownership as they age, with maintenance/upkeep issues and rising costs the most common.
Nearly two-thirds of boomers who own homes (65%) expect to profit more than $100,000 when selling their home, while 40% expect to clear $200,000 or more.
More than three-quarters of boomer homeowners (76%) say owning a home is the primary reason they’re financially secure.
Almost half of current boomer homeowners (46%) would consider themselves failures if they didn’t own a home.
Fewer than half of boomers (47%) required a double income to purchase their home.
Half of boomers who have owned a home (50%) bought their first one for $75,000 or less, while almost two-thirds (64%) paid less than $100,000.
42% of boomers believe younger generations had an easier time than they did buying a home in their 20s.
Only 6% of boomer homeowners say their biggest challenge when buying their first place was that homes were too expensive.
When factoring in inflation, just half of boomers (50%) believe they would still be able to afford a home today.
Among boomers who have never owned a home, two-thirds (66%) say they regret never achieving that milestone.
Nearly two-thirds of this group (63%) say they simply couldn’t afford to buy a home.
About half of boomers who once owned a home but don’t now (47%) wouldn’t recommend homeownership to younger generations, but barely a quarter of current boomer homeowners (27%) feel this way.
Boomers view themselves as the generation least responsible for the affordable housing crisis, a view held by 41% of respondents.
69% of boomers feel the government should do more to help first-time home buyers afford a house.
About two-thirds of respondents (65%) believe America would be a better place to live if more people prioritized homeownership.
87% of boomers think buying a home was part of the American dream when they were younger, but only 73% think it still is.
57% of boomers believe younger generations could afford homes if they tried harder, and 64% believe younger generations could be homeowners if they were more responsible.
