The easing of our US Consumer Pressure Proxy helps explain retail sales numbers and why consumers are still spending. The gap between nominal wage growth and growth in credit card, rent, and medical expenses is shrinking. Easing consumer pressures tend to lead retail sales by 12…

Otavio (Tavi) Costa Capex trends are incorporated in our calculation of Capital Cycle scores, which remain high for commodities and energy globally.

Capital cycles are powerful predictors of long-term equity returns: over-investment is a destroyer of capital and should be avoided, while capital-starved industries/regions consistently outperform.

We define capital scarcity by using three ratios: capex + R&D as % of assets,…

My new post is out:

Re: Macro/USD/Oil - The Battle of the BADS.

A tour of the key Scylla/Charybdis Dilemmas facing major policymakers on the world stage. As you will see, the policy choices in most cases are between BAD and BADDER — a true BATTLE OF THE BADS.…

#Gold is now in the seasonally dull period of the year... usually picks up again towards the end of summer

Great thread!

We continue to suspect micro-business labor mismatch/hoarding is the key reason for the resilient headline US labor market data, despite under-the-hood data showing stress.

Micro-businesses have seen muted hires since Covid despite a surge in job openings.

In contrast, openings…

Great write-up on Reckitt Benckiser by Steve Clapham, Analyst Author Podcaster Substacker. $RKT.L's Crowding Score has been low for a while.

Britain’s Broken Compounder, open.substack.com/pub/behindtheb…

VP's Crowding Score on $TSLA Tesla is now at multi-year lows... when stocks become this uncrowded, any positive news could drive an asymmetric squeeze

At the beginning of the year, our neutral rate model was at 1.8%. Using the Fed's PCE projection of 2.4% at YE 2024 implied a nominal policy rate of 4.2%, compared to Jan 25 Fed Funds Futures then implying 3.8% (6 cuts).

This supported our view that market rate cut expectations…