1. QQQ Never Made New Highs on Chart after Summer Sell Off
StockCharts
2. Consumer Discretionary Stocks Sideways Chart for 12 Months
StockCharts
3. Same Store Sales Still Growing 5%
The Irrelevant Investor
4. Retail Sales Ex-Gas Stations Still Trending Up
Not even sky-high gasoline prices could dent their spending on bars & restaurants, ecommerce, cannabis stores, etc. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Gasoline prices soared in August, and consumers continued to buy gasoline, but paid much higher prices, and so sales at gas stations in dollars (not gallons) also soared and pushed up overall retail sales, which spiked by 1.2% in August from July, to $773 billion, seasonally adjusted, and were up by 6.0% year-over-year, according to data from the Census Bureau today.
But even without gas station sales, retail sales spiked by 1.1% seasonally adjusted in August from July, and rose by 4.9% year-over-year.
It’s not all based on Americans suddenly throwing their entire inheritance at retailers. Part of the month-to-month increase in August was due to the effect of recapturing the drop in July that in turn was due to Amazon Prime Day having shifted into June this year, from July last year, made worse by quirky seasonal adjustments, which we discussed at the time, and today’s jump wasn’t a surprise here. But it shows that spending at retailers continues growing at a solid rate, even without gasoline sales, and despite the gasoline price spike.
Wolf Street
5. S&P Performance After Rate Hikes
6. Bitcoin New Correlations to Dollar, S&P and Nasdaq
Marketwatch That’s according to analysis from CoinMarketCap Research, who say in commentary sent Wednesday “the usual macro playbook for how bitcoin reacts to a rate decision is unreliable this afternoon.” Bitcoin selling on Tuesday reflected a market that had positioned for a yes vote on the crypto regulating Clairity Act and was forced to unwind when it didn’t come, according to CMC.
And while the Clarity Act drove that selling, bitcoin’s correlations with other assets was dwindling. “Bitcoin’s short-window correlation to the dollar index sits at +0.08, versus -0.54 over the past 30 days. Its correlation to the S&P 500 has fallen to 0.43 from 0.75 yesterday, to the Nasdaq to 0.30 from 0.60 yesterday, and to gold to 0.28 from 0.69 over 30 days,” said CMC. https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-s-p-500-nasdaq-federal-reserve-interest-rate-decision-september-meeting?mod=home_lead
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7. Higher Interest Rates Negative for Small Stocks -6.5% One Month
8. Russia Cheap New Weapons Full of Chinese Parts-WSJ
WSJ
9. Japan has 100,000 People Over 100 Years Old….90% Women
OLD NEWS
Japan has a problematic age gap
Unsplash
For the first time in its history, Japan has more than 100,000 people over the age of 100—and nearly 90% of them are women. The surge of centenarians is straining the country’s resources and making the male/female ratio at senior home mixers impossibly unbalanced.
To put the official total of 107,677 into context, that’s enough 100-year-olds to nearly fill AT&T Stadium in Dallas. When paired with Japan’s record-low fertility rates, the number of centenarians—which has risen for 56 straight years—is creating a host of fiscal problems:
Around one-third of the country’s ~120 million residents are drawing from public pensions.
The health ministry asked for $218 billion for pensions and medical care for next year’s fiscal budget, representing about a quarter of the overall requests.
The government estimates that it will need 2.4 million elder care workers in 2026, up from 2.1 million in 2024.
To supplement its withering workforce, Japan is recruiting care workers from abroad. After reaching 66,000 last year under a skilled-worker visa program, the government will now allow nearly three times that many under a new foreign-aid worker plan despite its usually strict immigration policies.—DL
10. Close to 50% of Millennials Looking at Prenups
Perplexity