Torsten Slok, Ph.D. Chief Economist, Partner Apollo Global Management Equity analysts continue to increase their earnings expectations to the S&P500, see chart below. There are simply no signs of a slowdown in corporate earnings, the economy continues to power ahead fueled by easy financial conditions, and this is an upside risk to inflation over the coming months.
8. Natural Gas and Nuclear Top Sources of Electric Power
Farnam Street -Success is often a product of environment.
While a polar bear might thrive in the Arctic, it would not thrive in a desert. People are no different. The person who excels in one environment fails in another.
Understanding how environments impact performance changes how you hire. Employees who thrive in one environment easily fail in another if their performance was contingent on the workplace conditions. This is why hiring a superstar away from a competitor, without understanding the role of environment on performance, often fails.
1.Not Many People Would Win This Trivia Question—Gold Outperformed S&P on 100-Year Basis.
Jim Reid Deutsche Bank Gold has got a lot of attention in the last couple of months. It’s now up around +17% since the start of March, making it one of the best performing global assets in that time frame.
In today’s CoTD we give a brief annotated history of Gold. Regular readers of my long-term studies will know that my big picture view on inflation has always been based around gold. When you have a gold standard where money is linked to gold you don’t get long-run inflation, since the ability to create new money is constrained by the fact it’s linked to gold. But when you break ties with Gold, inflation is always likely to be just around the corner when viewed from a longer-term perspective, as that constraint disappears and the temptation to create more money eventually wins out. So in a world of fiat money and high debt, Gold is always going to be an attractive part of a portfolio. The fact that it’s out-performed the S&P 500 this century, even with US equities seemingly bullet proof, tells you a lot about the macro environment we’ve seen this millennium so far.
2.Gold vs. S&P 5-Year…Gold Wins.
3.S&P Pullback by Sector.
4.Equity Risk Premium
I am not an expert is this chart
5.KRE Regional Bank ETF
Closed back below 200-day
6.China Selling U.S. Treasuries.
Zerohedge For the 9th month of the last 11, China’s Treasury holdings declined in February (the latest TIC data), dropping by $22.7BN. Additionally, it has now been 24 of the last 28 months that China’s Treasury holdings have declined, now back at practically its lowest level since June 2009…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries surged to a record in February, its fifth straight monthly rise, Treasury Department data released on Wednesday showed.
Holdings totaled $7.965 trillion, up from a revised $7.945 trillion in January. Treasuries owned by foreigners rose 8.7% from a year earlier.
Holdings of Treasuries grew the most in Belgium, by $27 billion, to hit $320 billion. Japan, the largest non-U.S. holder of Treasuries, increased its U.S. government debt to $1.167 trillion, the largest since August 2022 when the country’s holdings were at $1.196 trillion.
Investors have been alert to the threat of Japanese intervention in the currency market to boost the yen, which plunged to a 34-year low of 154.79 per dollar on Tuesday.
The Bank of Japan intervened three times in 2022, selling the dollar to buy yen, first in September and again in October as the yen slid toward a 32-year low of 152 to the dollar.
In September and October 2022, Japan’s Treasury holdings declined $131.6 billion from $1.196 trillion in August.
China’s pile of Treasuries also fell in February to $775 billion, data showed. The monthly decline of $22.7 billion was the second biggest among the 20 major countries on the Treasury’s list.
Holdings of Treasuries by China, the world’s second largest economy, have been declining, reaching $763.5 billion in February, the lowest since March 2009.
Britain listed its Treasury holdings at $700.8 billion, up about $9 billion from January.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield started February at 3.863% and ended the month at 4.252%, up nearly 39 basis points. Yields rose as a slew of solid economic data was released that month, reflecting expectations that the Federal Reserve will delay cutting interest rates.
Major U.S. asset classes had inflows during the month, the data showed.
On a transaction basis, U.S. Treasuries posted inflows of $88.8 billion, up from $46.3 billion in January.
Foreign buying of U.S. corporates and agencies persisted in February, with inflows of $52.7 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively.
U.S. equities showed a minor inflow of $400 million, compared with outflows of $15.4 billion in January.
Overall, net foreign acquisitions of long- and short-term securities, as well as banking flows, showed a net inflow of $51.6 billion in February, up from outflows of $30.8 billion the previous month, Treasury data showed.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Richard Chang)
8.House panel says China subsidizes fentanyl production to fuel crisis in the United States—Communism Sucks
BY KEVIN FREKING WASHINGTON (AP) — China is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of materials that are used by traffickers to make the drug outside the country, according to a report released Tuesday by a special House committee focused on countering the Chinese government.
Committee investigators said they accessed a government website that revealed tax rebates for the production of specific fentanyl precursors as well as other synthetic drugs as long as those companies sell them outside of China.
“Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the special House committee. “It wants the chaos and devastation that has resulted from the epidemic.”
In November, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a resumption of bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics with a focus on reducing the flow of precursor chemicals and synthetic drug trafficking. But the congressional report raises questions about whether China is following through.
The report’s findings were released Tuesday as part of a hearing examining China’s role in the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. Most overdose deaths in the U.S. continue to be linked to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Inexpensive fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge.
For starters, less happiness, more loneliness, and worse sleep.
KEY POINTS
The typical American breakfast is notoriously unhealthy.
What the brain prefers us to eat for breakfast, and when, is not always good for the rest of the body.
Frequent breakfast skipping was associated with lower happiness, loneliness, and poor sleep.
The mantra “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper” could help.
In online forums, some bodybuilders seem convinced that skipping breakfast will not harm the body or interfere with adding more muscle mass. Some contributors to this myth suggest that our hunter/gatherer ancestors did not eat breakfast because they had to start hunting for breakfast as soon as they woke up.
In reality, we do not know what our ancestors ate for breakfast, but I would not be surprised if they tossed down some raw roots, nuts, and seeds before heading out onto the savannah to find food. Still, what we know about breakfast, in general, suggests these particular bodybuilders are incorrect.
What is Breakfast?
The typical American breakfast is notoriously unhealthy. As a result, some proponents of the “skip breakfast” ideology defend their position by arguing that breakfast does not involve eating nutritious foods.
Americans indeed tend to prefer a nice blend of fat, salt, and sugar for breakfast. Donut stores are positioned along the most popular routes to work because that’s what we want to eat in the morning.
What’s more, most American adults, when queried, perceive that typical American breakfast foods are well suited for breakfast despite their poor nutritional value. People feel that more nutritious alternatives that they usually consume at lunch or dinner are simply less appropriate for breakfast.
Consequently, people are reluctant to include more nutritious alternatives to their breakfast selections. This likely explains why the cereal aisle at my grocer offers only one brand without added sugar.
Should You Eat Sugar at Breakfast?
Yet some sugar at breakfast may be a good thing. Sugar is an effective cognitive enhancer—you can read Your Brain on Food for more on this topic—and studies of people who ate breakfast found that increased blood sugar improved memory function. The improvement in memory function correlated with blood glucose concentrations.
In contrast, skipping breakfast adversely affected the ability of subjects to recall a word list and a story read aloud. They also had difficulty recalling items while counting backward. Skipping breakfast did not affect intelligence, just memory.
Fortunately, the decline in memory performance associated caused by skipping breakfast was reversed by the consumption of a sugary beverage. It appears that the consumption of simple carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, e.g. cereals and donuts, influenced memory abilities by temporarily increasing blood glucose.
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The Physical Effect of Unhealthy Breakfasts
However, what the brain prefers us to eat, and when, is not always good for the rest of the body, and a bad breakfast can have mental and physical consequences.
There is a relationship between eating an unhealthy breakfast and abdominal obesity and body mass index (BMI). Further, some indicators of mental health—including self-rated health, body satisfaction, and life satisfaction—are significantly related to breakfast quality. Age and gender also play a role: Girls and older people have a higher risk of diet quality negatively affecting their mental health.
Interestingly, skipping breakfast of any type significantly increased the probability of depression, stress, and psychological distress in all age groups. Frequent breakfast skipping was associated with lower happiness, loneliness, short sleeping, long sleeping, restless sleep, and poor academic performance. Eating and sleeping are clearly related to good mental and physical health.
What if I Delay Breakfast Until Later?
The body is influenced by our daily rhythms of eating. One recent study examined the effects of eating the majority of each day’s calories later in the day. Overweight women were divided into a breakfast group (700 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 200 kcal dinner) or a dinner group (200 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 700 kcal dinner) for 12 weeks.
The breakfast group showed greater weight loss and waist circumference reduction. Fasting glucose and insulin decreased significantly in the breakfast group. Average triglyceride levels decreased by 33.6 percent in the breakfast group and increased significantly in the dinner group.
Skipping breakfast and then overeating in the evening appear to play a significant role in weight gain and obesity. Furthermore, people who skip breakfast report not feeling as satisfied by their food and being hungry between meals.
If this sounds like you, then it may be time to enjoy breakfast again—and overall, the take-home message from many human studies is to eat a big breakfast and a small dinner. I suggest the new mantra: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
Small caps have been laggards for the last decade when compared to large caps. Since 2014, the Russell 2000 Index (RUT) has only beaten the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in a calendar year twice, in 2016 and 2020. As it stands today, RUT is looking to mark its fourth consecutive year of underperformance against the SPX which would mean that RUT would have outperformed the SPX only once in the last eight years if this were to hold. It would be easy to say that large caps are simply more dominant and perform better than small caps if one looked back at the last few years. However, despite small caps’ struggles over the last decade, RUT has more often than not outperformed the SPX annually with data going back to 1979. RUT has outperformed SPX in just over half of all years (54.35%) since 1979. If one ignores the last decade, the percentage of years RUT outperformed SPX jumps up to 65.71%. The underperformance of RUT against the SPX is abnormal by historical standards but it’s also not without precedent. The chart below displays the excess return of RUT against the SPX for every year since 1979. A second data point is included, the 5-year average annual excess return, to help highlight longer periods of strength and weakness for small caps.
8.Not Sure “Terrifying” but Apartment Construction Slowing to Covid Levels.
9.Rural America’s working-age adults die at wildly higher rates than their counterparts in cities. Why?
MSN.COM Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez Three words are commonly repeated to describe rural America and its residents: older, sicker and poorer.
Obviously, there’s a lot more going on in the nation’s towns than that tired stereotype suggests. But a new report from the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service gives credence to the “sicker” part of the trope.
Rural Americans ages 25 to 54 — considered the prime working-age population — are dying of natural causes such as chronic diseases and cancer at wildly higher rates than their age-group peers in urban areas, according to the report.
The USDA researchers analyzed mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from two three-year periods — 1999 through 2001, and 2017 through 2019. In 1999, the natural-cause mortality rate for rural working-age adults was only 6 percent higher than that of their city-dwelling peers. By 2019, the gap had widened to 43 percent.
The disparity was significantly worse for women — and for Native American women, in particular. The gap highlights how persistent difficulties accessing health care, and a dispassionate response from national leaders, can eat away at the fabric of rural communities.
Iam struggling today. If you’ve ever struggled to be consistent with something you care about, maybe my struggle will resonate with you too.
It has been 939 days since November 12, 2012. That’s the date when I first published an article on JamesClear.com and it’s almost 2 years and 7 months ago. During these 939 mostly glorious, sometimes frustrating days, I have written a new post every Monday and Thursday. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
Today, I Feel Like Giving Up
But today? Well, today I am struggling. Today, I don’t feel like writing. Today, I don’t feel like sticking to the routine. Today, I don’t feel like I have any great ideas and I don’t feel like I have enough time to make the good ideas great. Today, I feel like giving up.
Here’s what I try to remind myself of when I feel like giving up…
Your Mind is a Suggestion Engine
Consider every thought you have as a suggestion, not an order. Right now, my mind is suggesting that I feel tired. It is suggesting that I give up. It is suggesting that I take an easier path.
If I pause for a moment, however, I can discover new suggestions. My mind is also suggesting that I will feel very good about accomplishing this work once it is done. It is suggesting that I will respect the identity I am building when I stick to the schedule. It is suggesting that I have the ability to finish this task, even when I don’t feel like.
Remember, none of these suggestions are orders. They are merely options. I have the power to choose which option I follow.
Discomfort Is Temporary
Relative to the time in your normal day or week, nearly any habit you perform is over quickly. Your workout will be finished in an hour or two. Your report will be typed to completion by tomorrow morning. This article will be finished in just a moment.
Life is easier now than it has ever been. 300 years ago, if you didn’t kill your own food and build your own house, you would die. Today, we whine about forgetting our iPhone charger.
Maintain perspective. Your life is good and your discomfort is temporary. Step into this moment of discomfort and let it strengthen you.
You Will Never Regret Good Work Once It is Done
Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” So often it seems that we want to work easily at work worth doing. We want our work to be helpful and respected, but we do not want to struggle through our work. We want our stomachs to be flat and our arms to be strong, but we do not want to grind through another workout. We want the final result, but not the failed attempts that precede it. We want the gold, but not the grind.
Anyone can want a gold medal. Few people want to train like an Olympian.
And yet, despite our resistance to it, I have never found myself feeling worse after the hard work was done. There have been days when it was damn hard to start, but it was always worth finishing. Sometimes, the simple act of showing up and having the courage to do the work, even in an average manner, is a victory worth celebrating.
This Is Life
Life is a constant balance between giving into the ease of distraction or overcoming the pain of discipline. It is not an exaggeration to say that our lives and our identities are defined in this delicate balance. What is life, if not the sum of a hundred thousand daily battles and tiny decisions to either gut it out or give it up?
This moment when you don’t feel like doing the work? This is not a moment to be thrown away. This is not a dress rehearsal. This moment is your life as much as any other moment. Spend it in a way that will make you proud.
Let the World Decide
So, what do I do when I feel like giving up? I show up.
Do I show up at my best? I doubt it. But my job isn’t to judge how good or how bad I am.
