Services up
Housing Up
Lots of overreaction
From the web:
Profits have grown faster than labor costs for seven of the past eight quarters. As Paul Donovan, chief economist for UBS’s Global Wealth Management, wrote last week, “today’s price inflation is more a product of profits than wages.”
Corporate profits surged to a record high of $2.08tn in the third quarter of this year, even as inflation continued to squeeze workers and consumers. Over the last two years, quarterly profits have ballooned more than an 80%, from around $1.2tn to more than $2tn.
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It’s very accurate assessment even though the cartoonist probably has no idea why.
Surprised I need to says this but…don’t go to cartoonist for economic opinion.
Monthly CPI was up Dec 2021 by .5% and the month before was up .8%. Those are 6% and 9.6% annualized rates. Historically well above avg.
Flash forward to Nov 2022…and CPI is up just .1%. .1%. That’s 1.2% annualized rate. Historically below average.
You can smile now.
What else will you cry babies make up to pretend the economy is in the shitter next?
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Prediction…we’ll have a month or two of CPI deflation next year and posters will once again claim the sky is falling.
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Sounds exactly like what I have heard.
It makes intuitive sense; the O&G industry has been complaining about refining capacity for decades. It’s one of the reasons many oil companies spun off their refining and distribution businesses in the 1990’s. Because if the shortage, most companies felt that they could make more money in that area by being independent than being vertically integrated.
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I have no confidence in this Fed or this Treasury Secretary.
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Senator Jon Tester Senate banking Committee from Montana, Nobody understands what the hell crypto even is."
Chron had an article about growth in housing in Houston
This part caught me eye
The Woodlands
Houston-based national apartment firm Camden Property Trust announced they are moving forward this year with plans to dive into the increasingly popular single-family, build-to-rent sector in the Houston area.
The company told investors in October that it broke ground on a 189-home singly-family rental community called Camden Woodmill Creek in The Woodlands.
I posted about "shadow banking " in China and the risk it reprhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/18/shadow-banking-financial-risk/esents. Now we have our own issues
And consumer confidence rises unexpectedly ? ! ?
The weirdness of our economic times continues.
The business think tank’s latest consumer confidence index registered 108.3 this month, a significant jump from the upwardly revised measure of 101.4 in November. Economists were expecting the index to come in at 101, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/21/economy/consumer-confidence-index-december/index.html
Consumer confidence = gas prices
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Good for you Mark and great for you to recognize it.
I got a high yield savings account thru AMEX about 2 weeks ago. It offered 3% while my bank offered 1%. Got an email today they were bumping up to 3.3%.
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I use Wealthfront for savings and they’re at 3.8%.
I’ve been on AMEX Savings acct for 3+ yrs with our hey go grab 2, 3, 5 or 10k money. It started rt under 2%, then went down steadily to like .3% then over the last year+ as Interest rates rise , at least so does the Savings acct interest rate%. Got back to 1% and kept rising ea month or even every 2 weeks. Went to 3% abt 2-3 weeks ago then got email the other day that it was going to 3.3% Holy Moly. I won’t say how much Interest we made the last month or of course prev mos but I’ll say it’s very significant for just a Savings acct. We probably have too much in there but it’s our Safe money n don’t have to worry how the Dow, S&P did for the day like lot of our other Retirement money.
Sorry got long but Yes, AMEX is excellent plsce to put your general Savings acct $$. Very very easy to transfer back n forth from/to your Bank acct. We send consistent amt ea month so it has built significantly. Good luck!
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Discover bumped up to 3.3% but it looks like Wealthfront is easier to move money into from different sources. Curious have you ever transferred money in from a cashapp or venmo? Might make sense for me to go with them. Also I might wait to fund my Roth this year. Usually I do the full contribution the first week of January, but doesn’t look like the smart move.