1. Most Crowded Trade
Dave Lutz Jones Trading Below the surface, there are encouraging signs the rally has legs, even though few investors had much confidence in it until recently. Investor sentiment rose last week to the highest level in a year and a half. Market breadth, or the number of stocks participating in the rally, has finally widened beyond shares of big technology companies, WSJ notes
2. SPY and QQQ Hitting Next Level of Resistance
3. Amazon Running Up to 200 Week Moving Average
4. Cardboard Box Demand
The Daily Shot Blog Subdued demand for cardboard boxes suggests a deceleration in economic activity.
Source: BofA Global Research
5. T-Bills Pay More Than 10-Year
6. S&P 500 Short-Term Most Overbought Since 2017
https://twitter.com/bespokeinvest
7. Megacap vs. Small Cap Last 5 Months Biggest Spread Since 2002
https://twitter.com/PeterMallouk
8. Countries Expanding Nuclear
Found at Zerohedge
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/these-countries-are-expanding-their-nuclear-arsenal
9. Millionaires are fleeing China at a faster pace as the post-COVID economic rebound fizzles-Business Insider
- Millionaires are fleeing China at a faster pace as the post-COVID economic rebound fizzles.
- China will see a net loss of 13,500 in 2023, up from 10,800 in 2022, the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report said.
- Meanwhile, the US will see a net gain of 2,100 millionaires, up from 1,500 last year.
China will see a net loss of 13,500 high-net-worth individuals in 2023, up from 10,800 in 2022, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report.
The world’s second largest economy continues to lead the world in the number of lost millionaires, a trend that has been going on over the last decade, according to Henley.
“General wealth growth in the country has been slowing over the past few years, which means that the recent outflows could be more damaging than usual,” wrote Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth, in Henley’s report.
After China’s economy expanded strongly from 2000 to 2017, the growth of millionaires since then has been negligible, he added.
And in more recent years, bans by the US and other other countries on Huawei technology was a major blow for China, Amoils said, as was the worsening in international relations from the fallout over the coronavirus and tensions over Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The Henley report also comes as China’s post-COVID economic recovery has disappointed. First-quarter GDP growth saw a bounce from the prior quarter. But more recent data have pointed to slowing growth in retail sales as well as drops in home sales, industrial production and fixed-asset investment.
The yuan and Chinese stock indexes have tumbled this year, with some commentators calling the rebound narrative a “charade” and even predicting that China is headed for a “lost decade.”
Meanwhile, India is poised to lose fewer millionaires, even though it just topped China as the world’s most populous country and overtook the UK last year as the world’s fifth largest economy. This year, India will lose 6,500 millionaires on a net basis, down from 7,500 in 2022.
Among the world’s top millionaire gainers, Australia leads with a net addition of 5,200, up from 3,800 last year, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 4,500 and Singapore with 3,200. The US is expected to see 2,100 more millionaires this year, up from 1,500 in 2022.
“In general, wealth migration trends look set to revert to pre-pandemic patterns this year, with Australia reclaiming the top spot for net inflows as it did for five years prior to the Covid outbreak, and China seeing the biggest net outflows as it has each year for the past decade. The notable exceptions are former top wealth magnets, the UK and the US,” said Henley & Partners CEO Juerg Steffen.
10. Why Do We Need to Sleep?
Neuroscience research provides some answers. Joseph A. Buckhalt Ph.D.
KEY POINTS
- Neuroscience research is revealing mechanisms underlying the purposes of sleep.
- During waking hours, new neuronal connections are made. During sleep, less important connections are weakened.
- This process allows for learning to occur the next day.
The purpose of sleep is widely regarded as a mystery yet to be solved. I have frequently heard laypeople, academics in other disciplines, and even sleep researchers say “Nobody knows why we sleep.” Recently I attended Sleep, the annual meeting of the Sleep Research Society and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in Indianapolis and heard an invited address by Dr. Chiara Cirelli, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin. The title was “The Burden of Wake and the Reasons of Sleep: How Sleep Promotes Synaptic Homeostasis”. In the presentation, Dr. Cirelli elegantly summarized some of what sleep neuroscience research has revealed in the last decade.
Her first point was that since we are relatively vulnerable when we sleep a large part of the 24-hour day, sleep must serve a very important function, or evolution would not have selected for it. Early humans had to hunt and gather food, find and build shelter, and protect themselves from predators and competing groups. Those activities consume a lot of time, so unless sleep served very important purposes, those who slept less would have an advantage. Yet sleeping for long hours of the night was maintained over the millennia. But until recently, scientists had only vague ideas about what exactly happens during sleep that is so beneficial.
Neurons in the brain are connected through synapses, the junctions that allow linkages of neural networks whereby signals are transmitted throughout the brain and onto cells in all parts of the body. During waking hours, new learning can strengthen connections through an electrophysiological process called potentiation. You can think of knowledge you have that has been acquired over long periods of time as a group of well-connected neural paths. When you learn something new, new paths are connected to the older, already-established paths. During the waking hours, your brain processes massive amounts of new information through the sensory systems. Some of that information seems trivial, such as remembering where you parked your car. But that memory (which is often weak!) has to be preserved at least until you reach the car. It establishes a connection to your memory of what your car looks like, a well-established “old” memory. The brain creates multitudes of these kinds of connections daily. During the course of the day, the connections can become “saturated” such that even though there are billions of neurons and trillions of connections among neurons, particular circuits can become overwhelmed. Everyone is familiar with the concept of “information overload” whereby new information is being processed too fast to accommodate it all.
Dr. Cirelli explained that during sleep, a great many synaptic connections are weakened so that connections are more available for new learning the next day. Continuing with the parked car example, the exact location where the car was parked is not needed again, so the connections made are weakened. In fact, if it were not, you might retain memories of hundreds of places where you have parked, leading to considerable confusion! Evidence is available from multiple independent labs conducting studies on animals and humans that show weakening through measurement of the processes in several ways: by measuring electrical potentials; assessing molecular changes; and observing structural changes. Furthermore, genetic research is revealing which genes direct these processes to unfold. If you don’t sleep, or if you sleep less than an optimal number of hours relative to your typical sleep period, learning may be compromised the next day. This body of research adds to that showing other benefits of sleep such as downregulation of emotional arousal and clearance of waste byproducts of metabolism.
You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that not sleeping at all or not sleeping well exerts a cost in terms of next day functioning — this is common cultural wisdom. This research is an example of science showing the “why” and “how” mechanisms and physiological processes that underlie that wisdom.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/child-sleep-from-zzzs-to-as/202306/why-do-we-need-to-sleep