There was an interesting article yesterday on Bloomberg about the changing demand for various metals as more cars shift to hybrids or fully electric vehicles (EV’s). Every major car maker is now starting to come out with their own EV’s and Volvo just announced last month that by 2019 all of their cars will be…
Chart of the Week: Valuations and Forward Returns
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. -Warren Buffett Here’s a chart showing the relationship between the S&P 500’s Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio and annualized returns over the next 2 years. It simply shows that your expected return is high when you buy something cheap, and low when you buy something expensive. On…
Chart of the Week: Trying to Understand the Change in Politics
In the wake of Brexit, I thought the charts below would be helpful in understanding the political changes we’re seeing throughout the world. They might seem unrelated, but it’s the same story in most of the developed world and it’s all tied together. I’ve had quite a few discussions with people following the Brexit vote and everyone seems…
Chart(s) of the Week: Demographics, Health Trends & the Economy
Here are some recent charts from Bloomberg on demographics and health trends. Following the demographics of various countries is one of the best ways to get a sense of long-term trends. The first shows the number of children under age 5 vs people age 65 and above. For the first time ever, seniors are about…
Chart of the Week: One Way I “Time” Buying & Selling Decisions
I haven’t posted anything on the blog lately because there hasn’t been much to talk about in terms of new updates. Overall, things have been playing out “to a T” this month, following the same playbook as back in October/November (you can read about it here). Early April is when we’ll start to see whether the analog will continue…
Chart of the Week: Not a Good Sign for Global Stock Markets
The chart below was going around a lot last week. It shows a composition of AP Moller-Maersk (the world’s largest container shipping company) and Sotheby’s (the auction house of high-end art, etc.) in blue vs. the MSCI World Stock Index in orange. That’s a pretty tight correlation and a pretty wide gap we’re seeing right…
Chart of the Week: Effects of QE, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
This week’s Chart of the Week comes from Jesse Felder, a very astute investor. I’ve posted charts like this in the past, illustrating the effects of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing on asset markets, but it’s worth revisiting after the former head of the Dallas Federal Reserve branch, Richard Fisher, openly stated that the main goal of…
Chart of the Week: Tertiary Impact of Lower Oil Prices
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this week discussing the approximately 5-fold rise of Sovereign Wealth Fund assets off the back of rising oil prices over the past decade. Now that oil prices have fallen from over $100 per barrel to the mid-$30’s, most countries have begun tapping their funds to fill the…