💸 Cassandra and the Capital Cycle At the risk of sounding a bit Cassandra-esque, I return this week with my cautionary tale of the potential for poor returns on capital in the coming years from the current AI cycle. You may remember Cassandra, a...

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) 👶 The Baby Bummer Meets the Machines I firmly believe that the key to successful investing over the coming decade or more will be what happens at the intersection of demographic shifts,...

🍼 From Birth to 80, and the 80 That Follow TMost weeks, the article discussing the Chart of the Week focuses on investing or financial market related topics. But every now and again, I run across a chart or, in the case of this week, an...

Is the Gap in the K-Shaped Economy Narrowing? The “K-shaped economy” became shorthand for a two-track world: the top arm of the K climbing while the bottom stalls or slides. We have been living inside that letter for several years now, and most of...

🪜 The First Rung Is Missing Two charts this week, and together they tell a story about our younger generations.The first chart shows that new business applications are still strong; Americans keep forming companies at a healthy clip. But look at...

💥 Situational Awareness: Oh, The Irony! This week’s Chart is a vivid illustration of the power of leverage, in both directions. George Soros’ term “reflexivity“ comes to mind when one looks at the forced selling that occurred in July in many of the...

When Bonds Stop Helping The case for a 60/40 stock and bond portfolio largely rests on one assumption: when stocks fall, bonds rise and cushion the blow. This week’s Chart shows how conditional that assumption really is. It shows the rolling...

The Rate That Prices Everything The 30-year real Treasury yield is the price of patient money. It’s what you earn, after inflation, for handing capital to Uncle Sam for three decades and asking no favors in return. Nearly every other asset gets...

📈 The Estimates Are Climbing, And That’s The Weird Part The most dangerous words in investing are “this time is different.” This week’s Chart does show us something that looks different. You can decide if it is.Sell-side analysts almost always...

Source: Electricity generation per capita (Ember / Energy Institute, via Our World in Data) and population (UN), 2023; GDP per capita in current US$ (World Bank, 2023; Afghanistan 2022). Bubble area is proportional to population. Both axes are...