Why wouldn’t it be?
The home vacancy rate is the proportion of the homeowner inventory that is vacant for sale.
The rental vacancy rate is the proportion of the rental inventory that is vacant for rent.
Here are the home and rental vacancy rates for each state of the United States (Data Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census),
Continue reading “Home and Rental Vacancy Rate for each state of the United States”
Some surprises in Intra European Union (EU) Trade Statistics for 2017: Germany was the largest exporter as expected but unexpectedly also the largest importer. The Netherlands (and not Germany) had the largest trade surplus. The United Kingdom had the largest trade deficit (no trade deal Brexit still on the table?)
Here is additional information, the complete dataset and maps,
We haven’t written about bond yields for some time. Government bond yields have largely been falling despite Central Banks announcing reductions or end to their bond buying programmes.
The only notable countries where yields are still up over the past year are the United States, Canada, Italy and Emerging Markets.
It wouldn’t appear that the market is anticipating interest rate rises in the short term. We will write about that in a few days but in the meanwhile here are 10-year government bond yields as of 14th July 2018 (figure in brackets indicate absolute 1-year change),
Central Banks have grown their balance sheets significantly in the past 20 years and almost exponentially since the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s how much the balance sheets of the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have grown in the 21st century,
Total assets: 540.8036 trillion Yen (JPY) = 4.93 trillion US Dollars (USD)
As of date: May 1, 2018
Asset size as percentage of GDP: 101% of GDP
Interesting information: The Bank of Japan has a target to buy 6 trillion Yen ($54 billion) worth of exchange traded funds a year. It now holds almost 82% of all ETFs in Japan and is indirectly the largest shareholder in many large Japanese companies, almost about half of listed companies in Japan.
We recently posted about population percentage for each country by age. The data was for 2016 from the World Bank and is the latest set of available data. Here is a map of population percentage for age 65 and above:
And here is a map of interest rates for each country as of June 8, 2018:
See some correlation – direct or inverse?
Temperature records worldwide are being broken shattered by the ongoing global heatwave.
Continue reading “The global economy is scorching hot right now (just like the weather) but … Winter is Coming”
Some states in the United States have done exceptionally well over the past decade creating massive number of new jobs and reporting record low unemployment. There are reports of major labour shortages in at least some states currently.
Here are maps of the unemployment rate in each state in May 2008 and May 2018,
The business of aging or the youth economic dividend? Or both? Well, we have written up something on both but in the meanwhile here’s the percentage population for each country (Data Source: World Bank) by three age groups – Under 15, 15 to 64 and 65 and over.
Continue reading “Percentage population for each country by age”
Due to unexpected circumstances new posts will be published next on July 8 or July 9.
This is a consolidated and slightly edited version of the series on economic fundamentals we ran last month.
Do economic fundamentals matter today? We look at the strange market conditions today. We are living in truly interesting times …
Stock Market Valuations
Equities globally have never been more valuable with market capitalization hitting $90 trillion.
Amazon trades at what a Price to Earnings ratio of some 200. Apple is worth some $900 billion. Even Tesla which makes no profit and is unlikely to make any profit any time soon is worth some $55 billion, more than Ford or General Motors.
Netflix is valued at $159 billion (13.6 times revenues of $11.7 billion) with 110 million paid (and 117 million total) subscribers. Netflix trades at a price to earnings ratio of 220. The company expects free cash flow of -$3 to -$4 billion in 2018 (yes, that is negative cash flow). Yet Netflix’s market cap is now greater than Disney’s and Comcast’s.
Don’t mention fundamentals …
