Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Monday, July 14, 2025
Kevin Hassett is full of it as usual
Saturday, July 5, 2025
SPX since August 2000 continues to underperform the pre-Reagan era by almost 20% in real terms, the Reagan bull market era by almost 68%
SPX 8/2000-5/2025: 7.62% per annum nominal, 4.95% per annum real (inflation rate 2.54% per annum)
SPX 1/1871-7/1982: 8.15% per annum nominal, 6.18% per annum real (inflation 1.86%)
SPX 7/1982-8/2000: 18.99% per annum nominal, 15.28% per annum real (inflation 3.22%)
We'll get the June 2025 Consumer Price Index report on Tuesday July 15th. The previous read was 2.4% yoy overall, and 2.8% yoy for the core.
SPX vs. gold since 1913
Gold 1913-2025 ($20.67-$3500.05 peak on April 22, 2025): 4.689% compound annual growth rate, nominal.
The S&P 500 did better than that in nominal terms. SPX 4/1913-4/2025 (8.79-5369.50, monthly average prices): 5.895% compound annual growth rate, which does not include dividends reinvested; the nominal per annum plus dividends reinvested produced 10.14% total nominal per annum.
In real terms the $20.67 price of gold in April 1913 is only $676.62 in April 2025, or 3.164% CAGR inflation over the period. So in real terms gold is up just 1.478% per annum over the period (from $676.62 to $3500.05).
Again in real terms SPX is up more, 2.65% per annum without dividends reinvested over the period, and even more with dividends reinvested, 6.76% per annum.
Spot gold on July 4th was lower than in April, at $3329.67.
SPX made a new high for the Fourth of July.
Friday, June 27, 2025
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Methinks J. D. Vance doth protest too much about Jerome Powell
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Food items making new all time high average prices in the United States in May 2025
All prices are FRED data from the St. Louis Fed in U.S. dollars.
Ground Chuck 6.018/lb
Coffee 7.931
White Sugar 1.054
Bananas 0.655
Potato Chips 6.731
Ice Cream 6.466/half gallon
100% Ground Beef 5.981/lb
All Uncooked Ground Beef 6.245
American Cheese 5.063
Beer 1.834/pint
Thursday, June 19, 2025
The world's population of everyday normal millionaires heh since the year 2000 has more than quadrupled to 52 million
... There is not much data on individuals in the $50 million to $1 billion range, which distorts the picture, according to Mazeau. He also said the wealth growth among middle and lower wealth brackets is underappreciated. For instance, the number of individuals with $1 million to $5 million, whom UBS dubs “everyday millionaires,” has more than quadrupled since 2000 to about 52 million.
“They have more wealth collectively than all the billionaires in the world,” he said. “It is often overlooked how much wealth is rising and is going towards the middle of the pack.”
The middle of the pack. Yeah right.
It takes $33 million in 2025 to be a 1913 millionaire.
More in "The U.S. added a thousand new millionaires a day in 2024: Report".
Meanwhile . . .
Thursday, June 12, 2025
It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy
May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.
Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.
March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.
February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.
January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.
December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.
The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3.
Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.
Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.
Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
The average price of gasoline in May 2025 was $3.306 per gallon, 7.2% lower than the average under Biden but still much higher than under Obama or Trump I
Under eight years of Obama gasoline averaged $2.974 per gallon.
Under four years of Trump gasoline averaged $2.488.
Under four years of Biden gasoline averaged $3.563.
The average price of a dozen eggs in May 2025 was $4.548, which is 157% higher than the average price of $1.769 2010-2020
The homeowner with the coop up the street sells his for $5 a dozen, but he was out this morning.
The homeowner with the coop down the street sells his for $4 a dozen, but he was out, too.
At the corner convenience store I had to pay $6.49.
Core cpi inflation year over year in May 2025 is 2.8% for the third month in a row, 55% higher than 2010-2020 average of 1.8%
The not seasonally adjusted trend is flat as a pancake.
The seasonally adjusted trend puts a little down-tilting lipstick on the trend pig, but still rounds to 2.8%.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Friday, June 6, 2025
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Low-inertia renewable energy systems are prone to blackouts such as in Spain in April because they cannot maintain stable frequencies in the absence of high-inertia fossil fuel, hydro, and nuclear energy systems
When
a grid failure plunged 55 million people in Spain and Portugal into
darkness at the end of April, it should have been a wake-up call on
green energy. Climate activists promised that solar and wind power were
the future of cheap, dependable electricity. The massive half-day
blackout shows otherwise. The nature of solar and wind generation makes
grids that rely on them more prone to collapse—an issue that’s
particularly expensive to ameliorate. ...
Grids
need to stay on a very stable frequency—generally 50 Hertz in Europe—or
else you get blackouts. Fossil-fuel, hydro and nuclear generation all
solve this problem naturally because they generate energy by powering
massive spinning turbines. The inertia of these heavy rotating masses
resists changes in speed and hence frequency, so that when sudden demand
swings would otherwise drop or hike grid frequency, the turbines work
as immense buffers. But wind and solar don’t power such heavy turbines
to generate energy. It’s possible to make up for this with cutting-edge
technology such as advanced inverters or synthetic inertia. But many
solar and wind farms haven’t undergone these expensive upgrades. If a
grid dominated by those two power sources gets off frequency, a blackout
is more likely than in a system that relies on other energy sources. ...
Just a week prior to the blackout, Spain bragged that for the first time, renewables delivered 100% of its electricity, though only for a period of minutes around 11:15 a.m. When it collapsed, the Iberian grid was powered by 74% renewable energy, with 55% coming from solar. It went down under the bright noon sun. When the Iberian grid frequency started faltering on April 28, the grid’s high proportion of solar and wind generation couldn’t stabilize it. This isn’t speculation; it’s physics. As the electricity supply across Spain collapsed, Portugal was pulled along, because the two countries are tightly interconnected through the Iberian electricity network. ...