Executive Summary According to the New York Fed’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter 2025 (released May 2025), total consumer debt has reached $18.2 trillion. Consumers are strapped as higher interest rates on growing debt balances are eating up a larger portion [...]

Executive Summary The first chart below from Vetta-Fi illustrates the average of four separate valuation methodologies. Currently, this average is about 152% above the long-term average, which is slightly above three standard deviations from the mean. Statistically speaking, observed data falls within three standard deviations 99.7% of [...]

Executive Summary As is typical with financial media, the 139,000 new jobs number released Friday was a celebrated “beat.” However, looking under the hood, one may conclude the “beat” is not indicative of the real employment picture. The first graph shows the Employment-Population Ratio dropped (first graph). [...]

Executive Summary In this missive I share five charts of various valuation methodologies for the current stock market. The first is an average of four different measures, which shows valuations over three standard deviations from the mean. Warren Buffet’s favorite, thus called the Buffet Indicator, is near [...]

Executive Summary There are currently almost 43 million holders of student loans totaling $1.6 trillion (see first graph). Since the Covid relief measures as well as talk of loan forgiveness by the previous administration, many debtors were optimistic they would never have to pay. As of May [...]

Executive Summary Last Friday Moody’s joined its peers in downgrading U.S. credit one level, from Aaa to Aa1. This came after Fitch lowered their rating in 2023, and S&P took theirs down one notch in 2011. Many are speculating as to why; however, the important thing is [...]

Executive Summary On Friday the BLS stated 177,000 new jobs were created in April, beating expectations. Digging into the data, the first graph shows the declining number of respondents to the survey. Next, understand the new jobs number includes an estimate for jobs created or lost through [...]

Executive Summary Understanding residential real estate values vary by location, nationally home prices have begun to decrease. On a real, inflation-adjusted basis, values are down close to 10% from their 2022 peak (first graph below). Many have stated home values have not decreased along with the rise [...]

Executive Summary In 1971 President Nixon took the U.S. off of the gold standard. Since then, the U.S., like most countries, has operated with an “unbacked” or “fiat” currency. Then, the U.S. deficits began to explode (see first graph). In a perfect world, surplus years would be [...]

Executive Summary Consumers drive our economy, and the Consumer Sentiment Index is a measure of how consumers are feeling. The April 2025 reading of 50.8 is the second lowest level on record (see first graph). As shown, that is lower than during the Technology Bubble burst and [...]