Archive for May 2020

The Friday File: While only 38% of eggs are consumed outside the home, in places like restaurants and schools, 54% of pork and beef are eaten in such places. That percentage rises to 59% for turkey and 60% for chicken. But it is 70% for seafood! Not surprisingly, seafood prices are plummeting. Shrimp and catfish…

Surprisingly, healthcare was responsible for almost half of the 5% seasonally adjusted annual rate of decline in 20Q1 GDP, despite the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. Turns out 1.5 million healthcare workers lost jobs in Q1 because hospital and doctors’ office revenues collapsed. Why? Because health insurance pays for procedures and generally not for outcomes. With hospitals full…

Housing is rebounding surprisingly well! Home prices are solidly rising by the low to mid-single digits, new home sales probably bottomed in March at 619,000, first-time mortgage applications are up 9% Y-o-Y after being down 35% just six weeks ago, and existing sales will bottom no later than June (reflecting contracts signed in April and…

While the personal savings rate has skyrocketed from 7.5% in 12/19 to 13.1% in 3/20, and wage growth has jumped from 3%/year in 12/19 to 7.9%/year in 4/20, the two are unrelated. Wages are up because many low wage workers have lost jobs. Savings rates have risen because spending has fallen faster than income. Savings…

The Friday File: The most foul-mouthed film, based on swears/1,000 words is Nil by Mouth at 41.3, followed by Uncut Gems at 35.1 and The Wolf of Wall Street (TWWS) at 29.4. Counting by number of swear words/movie, TWWS wins at 715, followed by Uncut Gems at 646 and Casino at 606. The most foul-mouthed…

Tragically, 38.6 million persons have lost jobs since mid-March. While that number will grow over the next 6 weeks, it is slowing and should hopefully plateau by July. Thus, initial unemployment claims is no longer the key labor number. Rather, watch continuing unemployment claims. It tells us how many people remain unemployed and continue to…

Since peaking in 2007 at six billion tons, US carbon dioxide emissions have steadily fallen and were roughly 5 billion tons in 2019, a level first breached in the late 1980s. Falling coal consumption, from a peak of 1,150 million short tons in 2007 to less than 600 million short tons in 2019, is primarily…

April housing starts came in at 891,000, down 29.7% Y-o-Y and a level last consistently seen in 2013, but through April starts are up 3.7% YTD. Starts will probably be down Y-o-Y for the next four or five months but low inventories and forbearance limit supply, while favorable Millennial demographics and low interest rates boost…

In a proposed merger that regulators must prevent, Uber Technologies is trying to acquire Grubhub for $6 billion. Grubhub competes directly with Uber subsidiary Uber Eats. The combined firm would control slightly more than half of the third-party meal delivery business. Both sides talk of synergies, and improved platforms and logistics. In the end, consumers…

The Friday File: Back in the heyday of TV 1955-2000, when there were growing numbers of local TV affiliates, the average TV series lasted two years and had about 20 episodes/year. With the rise of streaming and away from syndication, exclusivity, novelty, and binge-ability are paramount rather than consistency and broad popularity. Not surprisingly the…