1.Emerging Markets Valuation Vs. S&P Back to 2004 Levels.
Emerging Markets: This chart shows the overall EM trailing price-to-earnings ratio vs. the S&P 500 (LTM = “last 12 months”). EM stocks haven’t been this undervalued relative to the US in quite a while.
Source: Deutsche Bank Research
2.Japanese Markets Near Lowest Valuation in 30 Years.
Looking Past the Narrative on Japan into Fundamentals
09/21/2018
Jeremy Schwartz, CFA, Director of Research
https://www.wisdomtree.com/blog/2018-09-21/looking-past-the-narrative-on-japan-into-fundamentals
3.Home Construction ETF Rolling Over.
4 Lower Highs…Apartments Still Lead.
4.Brent Crude Closes Over $80…+72% In 18 Months.
5.The Weakest Week – 2018 update
Posted on September 24, 2018 by Rob Hanna
From a seasonality standpoint, there isn’t a more reliable time of the year to have a selloff than this upcoming week. In the past I have referred to is as “The Weakest Week”. Since 1961 the week following the 3rd Friday in September has produced the most bearish results of any week. Below is a graphic to show how this upcoming week has played out over time.
As you can see the bearish tendency has been pretty consistent over the last 57 years. There was a stretch in the late 80’s where there was a series of mild up years. Since 1990 it has been pretty much all downhill. Below is a table showing results of buying Sept. op-ex Friday and then selling X days later from 1990 – 2017.
The consistency and net results appear quite strong. I note the only instances that didn’t post a lower close at some point during the following week was in 2001 and 2017. The 9/11 attacks certainly made for unusual circumstances in 2001, and 2017 did not see a decline, but it only rose 2 points, so it was not much of a victory for the bulls.
http://quantifiableedges.com/the-weakest-week-2018-update/
6.Who Owns U.S. $21 Trillion Debt.
And here’s how that rapidly growing elephantine US debt is now divvied up:
American private-sector investors are buying with a new-found passion. Yields have risen quite a bit, though they remain below the rate of inflation for everything up to three-year maturities: The one-month yield closed today at 2.05%, the one-year yield at 2.58%, the two-year yield at 2.81%, and the 10-year yield squiggled over the 3% line again, to close at 3.05%.
The fact that the 10-year yield is still so low, compared with short-term yields, shows that there is huge demand for long-term maturities. If there were less demand, the yield would have to rise to lure new investors into buying (prices fall when yields rise). And anytime the yield rises just a little bit on the 10-year, these new buyers emerge in force and that demand pushes the price up and pushes the yield back down. And this demand for US Treasuries is not coming from foreign entities, the Fed, or US government funds, but from American investors.
And investors are buying anything to get higher yields. Today’s megadeal, the ninth-largest ever, is one of the riskiest, and reminiscent of the deals in 2006 and 2007. And they’re still blowing off the Fed. Read… Just How Wildly Exuberant is the Junk-Credit Market?
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https://wolfstreet.com/2018/09/18/who-bought-1-47-trillion-of-new-us-national-debt-past-12-months/
7.Drivers for Uber, Lyft are earning less than half of what they did four years ago, study finds
By Elisabeth Buchwald
Published: Sept 24, 2018 4:02 p.m. ET
Drivers earned 53% less in 2017 than they did in 2013
Bloomberg News
A driver uses an Uber Technologies Inc. car service app on a mobile device while driving in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017.
Drivers for online platforms including Uber and Lyft are making less than half of what they did four years ago, even as more and more people are drawn into working for them.
A new report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, based on payments directed to 2.3 million families, showed that average monthly platform earnings dropped considerably — by 53% — between 2013 and 2017.
These drivers made $783 per month in 2017 versus $1,469 in 2013.
In the first quarter of 2014, nearly half of drivers who work for on demand platform such as Uber and Lyft, earned $900 a month or more. However during the first quarter of 2018, less than 25% of drivers were able to earn more than $900, the report found.
A limitation of the report is that it only took into account monthly earnings as opposed to hourly earnings. The reason for this being that it was not possible for the researchers to extract hourly earnings data from customers’ bank accounts. “We observe when customers are cashing out, but we don’t know how much they have been working,” said Amar Hamoudi, senior research lead at the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
“These declines in monthly earnings among drivers may reflect the fact that the growth in the number of drivers could have put downward pressure on hourly wages; they may also reflect a potential decline in the number of hours drivers are driving,” the report stated.
“Regardless of whether the drop in earnings was caused by a fall in wages or hours or both, it indicates that driving has become less and less likely to replace a full-time job over the past five years, as more drivers have joined the market.”
Having said that, both Uber and Lyft disputed the findings of the study. “The fact that this study did not examine hourly earnings, the metric that drivers care most about, has resulted in misleading headlines,” said Adrian Durbin, senior director of communications at Lyft. “Had it done so, the results would have shown stable driver earnings in recent years.”
Uber made a similar point in a statement: “The study’s findings reinforce what we and many others have said for some time: that the growth in on-demand work is driven, in large part, by people who use platforms like Uber on the side. Given the growing share of people who use platforms like Uber only occasionally, a more appropriate metric to focus on would be hourly average earnings, which have remained steady over time.”
Taking into account fees as well as other expenses incurred, Uber drivers typically end up earning just $9.21 an hour, a different report published by Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. found.
Related: This is how much Uber drivers really make
In his research, Mishel said he has found that there has been an increase in the amount of Uber drivers over the course of four years who are driving fewer hours each week. “Driving for Uber has become much more of an ancillary earning activity,” he said citing data from his report which equates eight Uber drivers to one full-time worker.
For many drivers the flexibility that driving for ride hailing companies like Uber allot them is the reason why they are willing to accept lower wages as opposed to taking on second job with set hours.
8.He’s 63, just joined the Navy and says “I’m in my prime.”
- By Brock Vergakis
The Virginian-Pilot - Jul 13, 2018
- Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Maxwell Anderson | U.S. Navy
NORFOLK (July 13, 2018) Dr. Tyrone Krause, the Chief of Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, recites the commissioning oath given by his daughter, Ensign Laura Krause, the Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61), during a commissioning ceremony aboard the ship. Krause was inspired to join the Navy shortly after his daughter’s commissioning in 2015.
- S. Navy | Mass Communication Specialist Will Hardy
NORFOLK (July 13, 2018) Ensign Laura Krause, Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61), commissions her father, Dr. Tyrone Krause, Chief of Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, into the U.S. Navy in Norfolk, Virginia. Krause was inspired to join the Navy shortly after his daughter’s commissioning in 2015.
Ensign Laura Krause, left, commissioned her father, Dr. Tyrone Krause, right, as a commander in the U.S. Navy’s medical corps during a ceremony aboard the USS Ramage at Naval Station Norfolk.
- 10001SharesNORFOLK
When most people enter their 60s, they start thinking about retirement.
Dr. Tyrone Krause decided it was the perfect time to start a new career.
At 63, the heart surgeon from Skillman, N.J., joined the Navy after receiving a waiver that permitted him to enter the Reserves a year past the typical age limit because people with his skills are in demand.
“Sometimes I say to myself, ‘How did I get into this? Why don’t I just relax and sit in my backyard and drink some beer?’ But that’s not my style. I’ve always been on the move. And hopefully I’ll always be on the move,” Krause said.
“I feel, surgically, I’m in my prime. I could still operate very well, and if I can give back and help some of our young men and women in the military, that’s what I want to do.”
Krause was commissioned as a commander Friday aboard the destroyer USS Ramage
, where his 27-year-old daughter, Laura, is an ensign and performed the ceremony.
She was the first person he saluted.
“I can’t even describe to you what this means right now,” she said.
U.S. Navy | Mass Communication Specialist Will Hardy
NORFOLK (July 13, 2018) Ensign Laura Krause, Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61), commissions her father, Dr. Tyrone Krause, Chief of Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, into the U.S. Navy in Norfolk, Virginia. Krause was inspired to join the Navy shortly after his daughter’s commissioning in 2015.
The two have always shared a close bond that has included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro together and watching sports. He was inspired to join the Navy after speaking with his daughter’s recruiter, Lt. Natalie Schibell, who also is in the medical service corps and mentioned that the Navy had a shortage of surgeons.
He saw it as one more way to connect with his daughter while also helping others.
“I don’t ever see this man ever retiring,” Laura Krause told her shipmates on the Ramage’s flight deck.
She has good reason to believe that.
After all, her father had already worked in private medical practice for decades when he earned a law degree at night after his hospital shifts while he was in his 50s. He also moonlighted as a philosophy professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Krause said he doesn’t have any plans to slow down. He notes that in his own practice, people who come to him with heart problems are often recent retirees and those who live to 100 tend to stay active.
“That’s a good motto,” he said. “Just don’t stop.”
U.S. Navy | Seaman Will Hardy
NORFOLK (July 13, 2018) Dr. Tyrone Krause, Chief of Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, is presented shoulderboards from his wife, Laura, and daughter, Michelle, during a commissioning ceremony aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61). Krause was inspired to join the Navy shortly after his daughter’s commissioning in 2015.
He wants to help young hospital corpsmen learn about treating patients with trauma and is excited about the possibility of working aboard a hospital ship, like the USNS Comfort, which is home ported in Norfolk.
For now, he’ll serve once a month at a Navy clinic in Sandy Hook, N.J. But just minutes after he was commissioned, he started serving in another way: by doing a bit of recruiting of his own to let others know it’s never too late to try something new.
“A lot of people don’t even you know you can join the Reserves and contribute. A lot of people in the private sector have a lot of skills they can bring to the Navy and military in general,” he said. “You can be 40 years old, 50 years old and your profession may be something that’s necessary in the military. You can certainly give back by joining the Reserves.”
Seaman Maxwell Anderson | U.S. Navy
NORFOLK (July 13, 2018) Cmdr. Tyrone Krause, a newly commissioned officer in the United States Navy, hugs his daughter, Ensign Laura Krause, the Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61), during a commissioning ceremony aboard the ship. Krause was inspired to join the Navy shortly after his daughter’s commissioning in 2015.
Brock Vergakis, 757-222-5846, brock.vergakis@pilotonline.com
Reporter
Brock Vergakis writes about the military for The Virginian-Pilot. He joined the newspaper in 2015.
brock.vergakis@pilotonline.com