1. Nasdaq Fastest 10% Rally From Correction Ever
Source: Michael Batnick
2. Regional Bank Index +5% on Friday
KRE-watch for new highs.
3. Asset Class Real Returns by Time Horizon
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright.
4. Travel Slowdown Post Labor Day??
5. China Invasion? Taiwan Home Prices Not Worried
Bloomberg By Hailey Wang The median home price in Taipei is 16.1 times median household income, according to Taiwan’s interior ministry. That compares with 3.8 times in Singapore and 7.1 times in New York, though it’s still lower than in Hong Kong, at 16.7 times, according to researchers at Chapman University in California studying data from late last year. Prices in Taiwan are being fueled by mortgage costs that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says have been negative in inflation-adjusted terms for much of the past three years: In May, rates for new loans stood as low as 2.19%, according to the central bank, versus 2.9% in Singapore and 4.1% in Hong Kong.
6. Private Clients Buying Interest Rate Sensitive Sectors-REITS and Financials …Selling Japan
From the Daily Shot Brief https://dailyshotbrief.com/
7. 10 U.S. housing markets where buyers have the most power right now: They’re ‘in a good position to negotiate,’ expert says
CNBC Celia Fernandez@cfernan6 Florida’s housing markets reigned supreme in Realtor.com’s report, with nine out of the top 10 in the Sunshine State.
“Buyers in the easiest markets tend to be relatively slow-moving as supply outpaces demand,” Hannah Jones, Realtor.com’s economist, stated in the report. “Many of these markets saw prices and competition climb significantly during the early days of the [covid-19] pandemic, but the combination of high prices and climbing mortgage rates tempered demand, leading to building inventory.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/26/us-housing-markets-buyers-most-power-realtor-com.html
8. Generation Z Voter Gender Gap is 39 Points
NY Times–When President Biden was still in the race, men ages 18 to 29 favored Mr. Trump by an average of 11 percentage points, while young women favored Mr. Biden by 28 points, according to four national New York Times/Siena College polls conducted from last December to June. That was a 39-point gender gap — far exceeding that of any older generation.
And in Times/Siena polls of six swing states this month — taken after Ms. Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee — young men favored Mr. Trump by 13 points, while young women favored Ms. Harris by 38 points, a 51-point gap. (Our companion article on the shift among young women is here.) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/24/upshot/trump-polls-young-men.html
9. 47% of Teachers in this Poll Say “students showing little to no interest in learning”
Philadelphia Inquirer by Maddie Hanna and Kristen A. Graham
https://www.inquirer.com/education/school-district-mobile-phone-bans-20240825.html
10. A shortage of young men in the workforce could weigh on housing, Social Security, and growth for years to come
Story by jsor@businessinsider.com (Jennifer Sor)
-Declining workforce participation among younger men could weigh on the US economy for years.
- The trend could be a drag on economic growth, housing, and Social Security funds, experts say.
- The effects could last decades as there are no clear ways to spark a turnaround.
America’s job market is mysteriously short of young men.
It’s a trend experts say will drag on the economy and could take years to fix, mainly because men have already been dropping out of the workforce for decades.
According to Carol Graham, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institute, the labor force participation rate of prime working-age men has been declining over the last twenty years. Today, 10% of men aged 25-54 don’t have a job and aren’t looking for one, more than triple the percentage recorded in 1955, when just 3% were out of the workforce, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That amounts to around 7 million prime working-age men who aren’t working — and has introduced a host of problems for the economy, leaving key industries understaffed and adding to the strain on government services and social safety nets, Graham and other experts told Business Insider.
“Some of them drop out [of college] and are just sort of forlorn and have no purpose or meaning in life. They’re not very likely to be married. They’re very likely to be living in their parent’s basement,” Graham said. “They’re lonely, they’re isolated.”
The economic burden can also compound through generations, she added, given that men who have exited the workforce tend to be lower-income and are more likely to report mental and physical health problems, which impact their children’s ability to build wealth.
Zack Mabel, a research professor at Georgetown University, theorizes that falling labor force participation among young men could impact the economy for at least several decades.
“At this point, it’s a long trend over the course of multiple decades that does not appear to be improving, and could have real long-term consequences,” he said.
Straining the economy
The economy appears to already be feeling the decline in male workforce participation. Despite a small post-pandemic rebound, US GDP per employee fell 1% in 2022, the first decline seen since the World Bank began recording productivity data over 30 years ago.
The overall labor force participation rate, meanwhile, has slumped to 62%. Besides the years following the pandemic, US workforce participation rate hasn’t been that low since the 70s, World Bank data shows.
The trend could weigh on key industries, like infrastructure and manufacturing, where women are often less likely to seek work due to social stigma, Mabel said. That means it could be hard for those industries to find workers, which is a big problem considering the need for labor in growing areas like semiconductors, he added.
“In a situation where you have millions of men … foregoing college, and as a result are less productive and less able to hold onto a stable job, yes, that certainly would raise concerns our national productivity would suffer as a result,” Mabel said.
And while the housing market may be booming now, it is also possible that men leaving the labor force will weigh on that market as well. Meredith Whitney, a longtime Wall Street forecaster, predicts home prices could drop as much as 30% over a period of years thanks to men working less, being less interested in starting families, and being more likely to live with their parents.
Those trends all weigh on household formation, which is the most important factor in determining home prices over the long term, Whitney said.
42% of men who have exited the workforce live with at least one parent, a 2017 Brookings study found.
“This is such a seismic shift in the social structure,” she told BI. “It’s hard to say how long it lasts.”
Government benefits are also hugely taxed by men who are not in the workforce.
Men who have dropped out of the workforce, for one, are significantly more likely to suffer from opioid addiction, Graham said. 44% of men who were out of the workforce said they needed to take pain medication — more than double the portion recorded in employed men, where just 20% took pain meds, a separate Brookings study found.
57% of men not looking for work said they had a physical, mental, or behavioral reason, according to a survey conducted by BPC-Artemis.
11% of men who have exited the labor force rely entirely on government welfare programs for income, according to Brookings data.
“They cost the health system. They go to the emergency room and they’re sick, they’re not going to be able to pay the bills,” Graham said. “That’s coming out of somewhere.”
The welfare burden is exacerbated by the fact that unemployed men aren’t contributing to benefit programs such as through Social Security taxes.
“Potentially, more and more people would benefit and depend on resources that we don’t actually have the means to provide … And that then would really present itself as a huge societal conundrum,” Mabel warned.
There’s no clear answer for how to get young men back into the workforce. The causes appear to be multifold — disabilities, incarceration, and wages not being enticing enough, to name a few —but possible solutions could lie in helping train men for the jobs that are available, according to Graham, or finding ways to give young men role models, such as by hiring more male teachers, Mabel said.
“There’s clearly an economic cost for more than one generation if the trends continue,” Graham told BI. “There are lots of ways it costs society in addition to their individual human lives.”
This story was originally published in June 2024. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ar-BB1nTJ6g#image=1