Archive for June 2023

The Friday File: By scanning publicly available websites, the most popular language on the Internet is English with 55.6% of domains using it. Russian is the second most popular language at 5%, followed by Spanish at 4.9%, German at 4.3%, French at 4.2%, Japanese at 3.6%, Turkish at 2.4%, Portuguese at 2.3%, and Italian at…

New-lease asking rent growth is plummeting! After rising 14.5% Y-o-Y through last May, new-lease rent increases rose just 2% in 5/23 compared to 5/22, and may well turn negative, something that since the Housing Bust only happened during the first few months of Covid in 2020. With new-lease rents barely rising, renewal rent increases are…

In a surprise to nobody, the Fed, after raising rates at 10 consecutive meetings over 15 months, left rates unchanged. However, today’s action was hardly benign. Powell elegantly kept the committee united around tightening policy without raising rates. By signaling that there may well be two hikes on tap, he suggested this rate pause may…

The Y-o-Y percent change in cardboard box demand as measured by the three-month moving average (which is used to reduce monthly volatility) is down 8.3%. This is the largest decline since the Great Recession when demand fell 12%. The last four times Y-o-Y demand has fallen by 4% or more, a recession has occurred three…

While last week’s first-time unemployment claims were at their highest level since the week ending 10/30/21, the rise in continuing claims is more concerning. Currently, 19 states show a 25% Y-o-Y increase in continuing claims, the highest percentage outside a recession since 1990. The long-term average is nine states, and every time that level is…

The Friday File: Last month, the SEC’s whistleblower program paid out a gargantuan award of $229 million to one recipient. This blew away the previous record of a $114 million award to an individual in 2020. This most recent award resulted in a $1.1 billion settlement followed by another $207 million settlement against Swedish telecommunications…

Earlier this week, in a somewhat surprising move, the Bank of Canada bumped rates 25bps to 4.875%, after a two-meeting pause in hikes, and the Reserve Bank of Australia also raised rates, it’s 12th rate hike since 5/22, by 25bps to 4.1%. Moreover, the RBA suggested that more rate hikes are on the way. These…

The largest firm in the U.S. by revenue is, for the 11th year in a row, Walmart, with sales of $611 billion. In second is Amazon at $514 billion, followed by ExxonMobile at $414 billion, and Apple at $394 billion. ExxonMobile was the last firm other than Walmart to be #1. The smallest firm on…

In 2019, venture capitalists raised $3.3 billion from investors for investment in various stage private crypto firms. In 2020, the amount grew to $5.5 billion, to $14.4 billion in 2021, and $21.6 billion in 2022. So far this year, the total is $0.5 billion. Similarly, the amount invested in crypto firms is down 80% Y-o-Y,…

May payrolls grew by a strong 339,000, March and April employment was revised up by 93,000, and wage growth remained strong at 4.3%, largely unchanged since 1/23. But the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%, its highest rate since 10/22, and worryingly, the workweek keeps falling, from 34.4 to 34.3 hours M-o-M, its lowest level,…