Consumers Gear Up for the Holidays November 20, 2024 The Resilient U.S. Consumer Carries On Retail spending in October remained above trend with improved data for September. Let us think about the big picture: over the last three months, annualized retail sales are up 4.6% y/y. This compares to the 20-year average increase of 4.2% […]

A New Dawn of Health Care November 13, 2024 The Turnaround of a Global Epidemic? In September, the CDC reported that 40.3% (~134 million) of adults in the United States were considered obese (defined as a body-mass index (BMI) reading above 30).1 These statistics have risen steadily in the U.S. and across the globe. In the […]

A Market-Moving Trump Victory November 06, 2024 Wednesday Morning: What We Know Donald Trump has been elected as the 47th President of the United States. As it stands Wednesday morning, Trump has obtained 276 electoral college votes, surpassing the 270 needed for victory. Additionally, the Republican party has flipped three Senate seats and taken hold […]

Inflation Ticking Down    November core CPI was released this week and continued to show progress at 4% y/y growth from the 4.1% figure a month ago. Importantly, the 3-month annualized rate is now 3.4% vs. the 4% reading in the first half of 2023.     While progress has been made on inflation, the stickier parts […]

Congressman McCarthy Ousted The House voted to remove its speaker, Kevin McCarthy, on the evening of October 3. Ex-Speaker McCarthy is now the first Speaker of the House to be removed since 1910, just nine months after being elected. The U.S. government recently passed a stopgap budget agreement that narrowly avoided a government shutdown. With […]

Shopping in the Home Section Last week, we learned more about the consumer from retail sales data and big box retailers that reported quarterly earnings. In July, retail sales increased +0.7% m/m and are now up +3.2% y/y, led by strength in non-store and health and personal care categories. On a two-year stack, retail sales […]

Onshoring Commodities We have been discussing the onshoring trend for months now, and we firmly believe it will be a secular theme that will continue for years. The main idea is that manufacturing will come back to North America to strategically protect supply chains from any exogenous events. There is evidence of onshoring in many […]

Management Teams are Actively Protecting Margins This S&P 500 earnings season is nearly complete with 444 out of 500 companies having reported. 79% of S&P 500 companies have beaten earnings expectations while 16% have missed expectations, and the remaining companies reported in-line results. In the run-up to earnings, the dominant theme was the artificial intelligence […]

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approach to China China has long been one of the driving forces in the global economy. While China-U.S. relations have steadily deteriorated since the Trump tariffs in 2018, China continues to dominate global trade, increasing its share of global good exports to 14.4% in 2022 from 13% in the prior year.1 China has […]