1. American Energy Independence
From Bespoke Investment Group: The chart below shows how US crude oil production started to take off after 1901. According to the Department of Energy, in 1900, the US produced 63 million barrels of crude oil annually. Within 10 years, production tripled. Another 10 years later, it more than doubled again and kept rising from there until peaking in 1970.
Production was nearly cut in half from 1970 through 2008 as analysts started to fear the world was running out of oil and prices shot well into the triple-digits. Then, proving the adage, that the cure for higher prices is higher prices, the shale boom arrived, and production since then has rebounded to a historic degree. So much for running out of oil.
Even as the US oil industry exploded in the early 1900s, exports were practically non-existent until more than 100 years after Lucas’ first discovery. Beginning in the 2010s, though, exports surged like nothing ever seen before and now total a record 4+ million barrels per day.
2. Decline in Volume by “Professional Investors”
From the DC Lite Blog: The decline in demand from professional investors suggests the potential for elevated equity volatility.
Goldman Sachs via @wallstjesus
3. Insurance ETF Trades -10% to 200-Day
Stockcharts
4. AMD Now -35% from Highs
Right on long-term 200 week moving average.
Stockcharts
5. Vanguard Total Bond ETF Trades Back to August Levels
Stockcharts
6. Dividend Growth By Sector
Lawrence C. Strauss for Barrons
7. Crypto Pullback Week
From The Daily Shot Brief: Cryptocurrency: It has been a tough week for cryptos so far, with DeFi tokens underperforming.
@TheTerminal
8. Chinese Investors Can’t Get Enough Money Out of Country
From Bloomberg: Chinese Traders’ Demand for Global Stocks Prompt Rare ETF Halts: Chinese investors’ fierce appetite for overseas shares has triggered rare, full-day suspensions on a pair of exchange-traded funds tracking global equities.
The Invesco Great Wall S and P Consumer Select ETF QDII and Harvest Der Dax ETF QDII have been suspended from trading until further notice after their premiums soared, according to exchange filings issued after market hours on Thursday. This marks an escalated degree of risk warning to investors, as halts on such funds usually last for an hour.
Bloomberg
9. Ultraprocessed Food Half of American Calories
From the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health: U.S. home consumption of ultraprocessed foods increasing at faster pace than consumption outside the home.
A new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.
Ultraprocessed foods contain substances with little or no nutritional value, such as colorings, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and sweeteners. Examples cover a wide range of products, from chips and hot dogs to prepackaged meals. Researchers have long understood that a substantial proportion of the U.S. diet comes from ultraprocessed foods but it was not clearly understood where those calories were consumed.
Consuming high amounts of ultraprocessed food has been linked to chronic health conditions—cardiovascular disease, obesity, colorectal cancer, among others. The new findings suggest additional measures are needed to promote healthier alternatives for preparing meals at home.
The study was published online December 5 in the Journal of Nutrition.
“The perception can be that ‘junk food’ and ultraprocessed foods are equivalent,” says Julia Wolfson, PhD, MPP, associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health and the study’s lead author.“Yet ultraprocessed foods encompass many more products than just junk food or fast food, including most of the foods in the grocery store. The proliferation and ubiquity of ultraprocessed foods on grocery store shelves is changing what we are eating when we make meals at home.”
For their analysis, the researchers used data from the 2003–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative annual survey of more than 34,000 adults over 20 years of age.
10. Comments from CES Conference
Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA on the Global Tech Showdown.
Korean companies are really dominating screen technology. LG and several other Korean companies showed off transparent, glass-like LCD screens at CES. Imagine sitting in your self-driving car, and your windows are both regular see-through glass and LCD screens at the same time. Our lives are slowly becoming what we used to see in sci-fi movies, and these screens are definitely a leap in that direction.
CES is a truly global show, with technology on display that spans every aspect of our future. There were a lot of companies from Asia (especially China). In certain pavilions focused on consumer or business hardware, China completely dominated the exhibits. There were quite a few large American companies and many American startups, mostly focused on software (though all their hardware was manufactured in Asia). America still dominates in software.
A few, mainly Chinese, companies were showcasing their humanoid robots. One robot was slowly but accurately moving and stacking boxes in a defined area. Others were roaming more freely and were good at avoiding objects. At this point, these robots have the IQ of a smart dog, an average cat (now cat lovers will love me), or Siri. I bet in a few years this will have changed.
I was only mildly surprised by how few European companies were at the show.It’s a very broad generalization, but Europe seems to be running on fumes of past glory.Western Europe has become a pro at regulation and mastered the redistribution of wealth (activities that don’t help innovation or economic growth), and not much else.Yes, there are exceptions, but that’s the point – they are exceptions.If Europe doesn’t change course, eventually it will run out of fumes.
The beauty of learning is that you don’t always know everything you’ve learned at the moment of learning. Often, you’re just depositing data points that will crystallize into insights at a much later date.I don’t know if CES will become an every-year tradition or something I do sporadically, but it’s definitely fertile ground for learning.