Will

Excluding education and healthcare we should probably believe that employment in America is contracting -- and in the middle of a capex boom no less!

Fed holds the 4.25%-4.50% Fed Funds target range in July.

Yeah. Still a good chance of some vol from here to end of the week though.

Now this is how you actually go about a corporate turnaround.

Novo stock has now underperforming T-bills since GLP-1’s went mainstream.

Don’t forget the hours spent watching QVC, dreaming of a Mantle autographed ball. Or some other memorabilia from a legend.

Yeah for sure. I just follow a very narrow window of folks now.

😂. 100% truth.

I wasn’t on today during this. But I’ve found during other shootings and breaking events it’s very very difficult now to filter out the garbage. I’ve noticed I’ve just tuned out more and more over the last year. And it’s likely I continue to do so.

Oh man. Tv and social media (twitter and b sky) were all bad?

Yeah the Braves and Cubs being on tv every day for almost every household in America was a big part of it too.

Sandberg, Dawson, and Murph are the 3 baseball players I have vivid childhood (pre braves 91) memories of.

Being a kid in the pre-internet early ‘90s, baseball had so much cultural clout — I spent a good portion of my time thinking about Ryne Sandberg, Ozzie Smith, Will Clark, Fred McGriff, Roger Clemens. Don’t think that was unusual either. Can’t imagine many kids are like that today.

What happened?

It’s a strong take. And I would love to see rural Americans embrace something like the New Deal again. But I just don’t see any evidence of it. To the contrary, The generations of southerners that sing along to Alabama lyrics fully reject the idea of doing it again. A lot would have to change.

And the most frustrating part of it all is the “liberals” are the ones that want to regulate it out of existence.

It’s both a loser political stance and it runs counter to the American spirit.

So where I’m kinda at at the moment is that when housing turns back on, we will see some slowing in travel, restaurants, live events. But it probably won’t amount to a recession in the discretionary sector. And it most likely will lead to economic expansion in the over-all data.

That being said, when housing activity turns back on, economic data may actually improve on an overall basis.

There’s also a lot of older millennials, Gen X, and younger Boomers that already own homes and will continue to engage in experiences as well as speculative trading.

Therefore, it would make sense that once housing activity comes back to life that these folks could slow down their spending on experiences and/or possibly engage in less crypto and meme stock trading.

The idea behind this view is that many folks that would normally be looking to buy a home are not doing so, because of high rates, perceived high prices, etc.

So they are using that money to partake in the experience economy. And also to invest in high flying speculative stuff.

I honestly think the thing (could) lead to the recession in the experience economy is the housing market turning back on.

You guys eluded to this on AS. Josh & Michael discussed it in regards to $ thrown at meme stocks & crypto.

Not saying it will equal a recession in discretionary but it could.

He was on the compound a couple of years ago. I didn’t realize or remember he had a hedge fund. I just recall him being into micro stocks. Pink sheet that sort of thing, if I am remembering correctly.

He was bullish on carvana and open door both a few years ago.

@bencarlson007.bsky.social & @downtownjoshbrown.bsky.social making this argument on Animal Spirits & Compound pod this week.

They also expand the argument beyond my take about travel/experiences spend. They & their guests make a strong argument it’s contributing to crypto & meme stocks inflows too.

Well and the position is anti-liberal. With liberalism comes human freedoms and rights.

I believe it’s contributing to some of the constant discretionary spending too. I’ve posted a few thoughts this summer kinda pondering the thought that once housing turns back on if it will slow the discretionary spend some. Especially for things that cater to under 40 crowd.

The S&P 500's rebound from April is now 26%, a move so extreme it's divided consumer sentiment in half - if you own stocks (top 30% of households), confidence is back. If you don't, sentiment is at the lows of '22.

When people say "the consumer" is doing this or that, ask "which consumer?"

To me this is more about a vibe than a specific income level.
-reasonable housing costs relative to income (allowing for leisure/discretionary spending)
-certain kinds of consumption habits (travel, dining, apparel brands, etc)

Especially headed east on the interstate. Atlanta to Nashville is a breeze. But Nashville to Atlanta is unbearable.

*to me Atlanta metro range from somewhere around Fayetteville to canton. And from Douglasville to Buford.

Yes! This is an important point that is easy to overlook, especially for folks that grew up here or in other large metros. But for those of us from the rural Deep South or from many areas around the world, there’s definitely a unique appeal here that doesn’t exist in most other metros in the south.

Greenville also does get some of the top concerts. I should have mentioned that earlier.