Archive for April 2021

The Friday File: In 2001, 17% of NBA shots were threes, in 2011 it was 22%, in 2016 it was 28%, and now it’s 40%! Moreover, players have been making more of their threes since 2017 than they did from 2012-2016! In 2016, when Stephen Curry led the Warriors to the NBA championship, they ranked…

GDP grew at a pleasantly fast 6.4% annualized rate in 21Q1 and is now just 0.9% below its inflation-adjusted level on 12/31/19. It will surpass that level in mid-May 2020. By contrast, it took more than three years for real GDP to fully recover in the last recession. 21Q2 and 20Q3 GDP should easily exceed…

During the upcoming redistricting cycle, Republicans will control map drawing in 188 House districts, Democrats 73, versus a 219-44 edge in 2011. The remaining seats are in states where power is split, a commission is in charge, or states have just one seat. States losing seats: CA (for the first time ever), IL, MI, NY,…

While bank earnings are way up from where they were in 20Q1, looks can be deceiving. The biggest earnings drivers have come from increases in trading, capital markets (fees from stock and bonds sales), and large releases of loan loss provisions that were built up over the past year. Regrettably, not much has come from…

March sales of new homes hit a seasonally adjusted annualized rate 1.02 million, 20% above the very strong February number of 846,000, their best performance since 11/06. Moreover, the inventory of completed homes for sale is at record low, below the 2013 post Housing Bust trough. Low rates, low existing supply, and a booming stock…

The Friday File: In 2015, the average US household had 1.6 streaming subscriptions, it rose to 1.7 in 2016, and 2.0 in 2017. In 2018, it hit 2.2, in 2019 2.7, and in 2020, amazingly 3.1. 75% of households have at least one streaming service. Netflix is the most popular with 61% penetration among US…

In 1996, prior to the current aviation safety regime, US passenger airlines had a fatal accident rate of one crash for every two million departures. That year, there were 350 deaths in domestic airline accidents. By 2006, the rate had been reduced by 80%, and today the fatality rate is down to one for every…

Almost forty years ago, on 10/9/81, the interest rate on a 30-yr mortgage peaked at an amazing 18.63%. Today that rate is just 3.04%, a decline of 83.7%! Conversely, today, the price for a thousand board feet of lumber on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange hit yet another high at $1,300.00/1,000 bd ft. A year ago,…

In Israel, where per capita Covid-19 injection rates are highest, 62% of the adult population have received at least one vaccination (we’re at 50.4%), daily cases/million residents have fallen from a peak of 952 in mid-January (we peaked at 770 in January) to 26 today (we’re at 185), a decline of 97.3% (our decline is…

Last week we learned March retail sales jumped 9.8% M-o-M, their best showing since 5/20 and second best showing ever. In addition, consumer confidence hit its highest level since the pandemic began, while first-time claims for unemployment hit their lowest by far. Additionally, housing starts jumped to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.739 million…