CaptainChew personal page - To The Moon

CaptainChew

CaptainChew

No personal profile

17Follow

0Followers

1Topic

0Badge

2021-06-11

Like and comment

Here’s why Art Cashin says the S&P 500′s move to a new record may be ‘slightly suspect’

08-26

$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$

2021-06-08

Like and comment please

The AMC Stock Dilution Can’t Fix its Budget Problems

2021-06-21

Like and comment please

Answering the great inflation question of our time

2023-10-29

Happy Halloween

@FatKid:Happy Halloween everyone.

Go to Tiger App to see more news

{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"userPageInfo":{"id":"3555067620831256","uuid":"3555067620831256","gmtCreate":1593568392839,"gmtModify":1603774058904,"name":"CaptainChew","pinyin":"captainchew","introduction":"","introductionEn":null,"signature":"","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","hat":null,"hatId":null,"hatName":null,"vip":1,"status":2,"fanSize":0,"headSize":17,"tweetSize":8,"questionSize":0,"limitLevel":999,"accountStatus":4,"level":{"id":0,"name":"","nameTw":"","represent":"","factor":"","iconColor":"","bgColor":""},"themeCounts":1,"badgeCounts":0,"badges":[],"moderator":false,"superModerator":false,"manageSymbols":null,"badgeLevel":null,"boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"favoriteSize":0,"symbols":null,"coverImage":null,"realNameVerified":"success","userBadges":[{"badgeId":"7a9f168ff73447fe856ed6c938b61789-1","templateUuid":"7a9f168ff73447fe856ed6c938b61789","name":"Knowledgeable Investor","description":"Traded more than 10 stocks","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e74cc24115c4fbae6154ec1b1041bf47","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d48265cbfd97c57f9048db29f22227b0","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/76c6d6898b073c77e1c537ebe9ac1c57","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"redirectLink":null,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":0,"stamp":null,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2024.11.06","exceedPercentage":null,"individualDisplayEnabled":0,"backgroundColor":null,"fontColor":null,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1102},{"badgeId":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493-3","templateUuid":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493","name":" Tiger Idol","description":"Join the tiger community for 1500 days","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8b40ae7da5bf081a1c84df14bf9e6367","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f160eceddd7c284a8e1136557615cfad","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/11792805c468334a9b31c39f95a41c6a","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"redirectLink":null,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":0,"stamp":null,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2024.08.10","exceedPercentage":null,"individualDisplayEnabled":0,"backgroundColor":null,"fontColor":null,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1001},{"badgeId":"a83d7582f45846ffbccbce770ce65d84-1","templateUuid":"a83d7582f45846ffbccbce770ce65d84","name":"Real Trader","description":"Completed a transaction","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2e08a1cc2087a1de93402c2c290fa65b","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4504a6397ce1137932d56e5f4ce27166","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4b22c79415b4cd6e3d8ebc4a0fa32604","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"redirectLink":null,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":0,"stamp":null,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2022.03.12","exceedPercentage":null,"individualDisplayEnabled":0,"backgroundColor":null,"fontColor":null,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1100}],"userBadgeCount":3,"currentWearingBadge":null,"individualDisplayBadges":null,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"location":null,"starInvestorFollowerNum":0,"starInvestorFlag":false,"starInvestorOrderShareNum":0,"subscribeStarInvestorNum":0,"ror":null,"winRationPercentage":null,"showRor":false,"investmentPhilosophy":null,"starInvestorSubscribeFlag":false},"baikeInfo":{},"tab":"hot","tweets":[{"id":342429800554496,"gmtCreate":1724622961149,"gmtModify":1724633734455,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/NVDA\">$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;","listText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/NVDA\">$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;","text":"$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/342429800554496","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":140,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":235439293706240,"gmtCreate":1698513089891,"gmtModify":1698513093171,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Happy Halloween","listText":"Happy Halloween","text":"Happy Halloween","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/235439293706240","repostId":"235438245965912","repostType":1,"repost":{"id":235438245965912,"gmtCreate":1698512933954,"gmtModify":1698512938900,"author":{"id":"4090418903913760","authorId":"4090418903913760","name":"FatKid","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/f6692ab34697d0d2f7947fa3f34c6421","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4090418903913760","authorIdStr":"4090418903913760"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Happy Halloween everyone.","listText":"Happy Halloween everyone.","text":"Happy Halloween everyone.","images":[{"img":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/0bb17998f0438a655ff0844d5098ed26","width":"682","height":"685"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/235438245965912","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":0,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":1,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":561,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164543677,"gmtCreate":1624231402199,"gmtModify":1703830862243,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","listText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164543677","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-20 09:19","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Answering the great inflation question of our time","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1133385197","media":"finance.yahoo","summary":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up","content":"<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”</p>\n<p>The current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?</p>\n<p>Before I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.</p>\n<p>As an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.</p>\n<p>Until now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/87f75dfcb98fb5a0e7c3f9d3f8d336e2\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"412\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Used car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.</p>\n<p>To be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)</p>\n<p>But that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&amp;P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.</p>\n<p>Given this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.</p>\n<p>Now I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.</p>\n<p>As for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.</p>\n<p>“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”</p>\n<p>“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.</p>\n<p>COVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.</p>\n<p>A prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.</p>\n<p>Another secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.</p>\n<p><b>Anti-inflation forces</b></p>\n<p>But here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?</p>\n<p>I say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”</p>\n<p>To buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.</p>\n<p>To me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.</p>\n<p>Not only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.</p>\n<p>So technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.</p>\n<p>There is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.</p>\n<p>After World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)</p>\n<p>Like its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.</p>\n<p>The internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.</p>\n<p>So technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.</p>\n<p>COVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.</p>\n<p>How significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.</p>\n<p>More downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”</p>\n<p>And so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”</p>\n<p>I don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)</p>","source":"lsy1612507957220","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Answering the great inflation question of our time</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAnswering the great inflation question of our time\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-20 09:19 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html><strong>finance.yahoo</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1133385197","content_text":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”\nThe current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?\nBefore I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.\nAs an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.\nUntil now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)\n\nUsed car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.\nTo be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)\nBut that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.\nGiven this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.\nNow I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.\nAs for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.\nWhich brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.\n“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”\n“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.\nCOVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.\nA prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.\nAnother secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.\nAnti-inflation forces\nBut here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?\nI say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”\nTo buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.\nTo me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.\nNot only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.\nSo technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.\nThere is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.\nAfter World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)\nLike its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.\nThe internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.\nSo technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.\nCOVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.\nHow significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.\nMore downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”\nAnd so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”\nI don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":313,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":181053218,"gmtCreate":1623368499234,"gmtModify":1704201685987,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment","listText":"Like and comment","text":"Like and comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/181053218","repostId":"1195294102","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":543,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":117650105,"gmtCreate":1623139788807,"gmtModify":1704196867770,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment please","listText":"Like and comment please","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/117650105","repostId":"1171979447","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":416,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":181053218,"gmtCreate":1623368499234,"gmtModify":1704201685987,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment","listText":"Like and comment","text":"Like and comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/181053218","repostId":"1195294102","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1195294102","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1623339220,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1195294102?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-10 23:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Here’s why Art Cashin says the S&P 500′s move to a new record may be ‘slightly suspect’","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1195294102","media":"cnbc","summary":"TheS&P 500hit an all-time high early Thursday, but longtime traderArt Cashin told CNBC he’s taking a","content":"<div>\n<p>TheS&P 500hit an all-time high early Thursday, but longtime traderArt Cashin told CNBC he’s taking a wait-and-see approach before determining whether stocks are entering a steady upside move.\n“The ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/art-cashin-sp-500s-move-to-a-new-record-may-be-slightly-suspect.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n","source":"cnbc_highlight","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Here’s why Art Cashin says the S&P 500′s move to a new record may be ‘slightly suspect’</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nHere’s why Art Cashin says the S&P 500′s move to a new record may be ‘slightly suspect’\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-10 23:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/art-cashin-sp-500s-move-to-a-new-record-may-be-slightly-suspect.html><strong>cnbc</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>TheS&P 500hit an all-time high early Thursday, but longtime traderArt Cashin told CNBC he’s taking a wait-and-see approach before determining whether stocks are entering a steady upside move.\n“The ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/art-cashin-sp-500s-move-to-a-new-record-may-be-slightly-suspect.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".SPX":"S&P 500 Index"},"source_url":"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/art-cashin-sp-500s-move-to-a-new-record-may-be-slightly-suspect.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/72bb72e1b84c09fca865c6dcb1bbcd16","article_id":"1195294102","content_text":"TheS&P 500hit an all-time high early Thursday, but longtime traderArt Cashin told CNBC he’s taking a wait-and-see approach before determining whether stocks are entering a steady upside move.\n“The market is a great tease here,” Cashin said on“Squawk on the Street.”“They go up, look like they’re breaking out, and then they hesitate. They pull back into that rectangle [trading range], so we’re going to give it a couple of days of testing and see what happens.”\nThe S&P 500 was up by about 0.3% on Thursday. The broad equity index has gained about 1% in the past month, compared with a roughly 4% gain for the tech-heavyNasdaq Composite.\nCashin, who serves as director of floor operations for UBS at the New York Stock Exchange, said he’s looking for an indication of strong buying pressure to help sustain the S&P 500′s move higher.\n“You’d like to believe when you punch through the upside of a market pattern, that inspires both breakout buying and, in some cases, short covering, so you should see a kind of burst after you move out,” Cashin said. “No burst so far, and without that then you’ve got to say the moves are slightly suspect.”\nThe Wall Street veteran also weighed in on the bond market following Thursday’shotter-than-expected read on May consumer prices, the latest data point showing inflationary pressures across the economy.\nThe yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasurywas steady Thursday,trading around 1.49%. Yields, which move inversely to prices, have trended lower in recent weeks afterhitting 1.7% about a month ago.\nCashin said a critical yield level to watch is 1.35%.\n“If any of these disinflationary, deflationary moves become evident, then I would have to back up. I think we might again start to move lower,” Cashin said, noting that there’s already been a relative cooling off in some commoditiessuch as lumber.\nIf the 10-year yield slides all the way back to 1.35% and “we move through it, then that will tell me that there is something going on here, that people are saying, ‘Inflation? No. Not at all,’” Cashin said. “We’re going from transitory to possibly deflationary. The question is wide open out there.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":543,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":342429800554496,"gmtCreate":1724622961149,"gmtModify":1724633734455,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/NVDA\">$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;","listText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/NVDA\">$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;","text":"$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/342429800554496","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":140,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":117650105,"gmtCreate":1623139788807,"gmtModify":1704196867770,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment please","listText":"Like and comment please","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/117650105","repostId":"1171979447","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1171979447","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1623138025,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1171979447?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-08 15:40","market":"us","language":"en","title":"The AMC Stock Dilution Can’t Fix its Budget Problems","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1171979447","media":"InvestorPlace","summary":"The share sale will only harm investors, as the funds raised can't cover AMC's debt.\n\nAMC Entertainm","content":"<blockquote>\n <b>The share sale will only harm investors, as the funds raised can't cover AMC's debt.</b>\n</blockquote>\n<p><b>AMC Entertainment</b>(NYSE:<b><u>AMC</u></b>)sold 11.55 million sharesof AMC stock on June 3 at $50.85 a share. The stock sale raised$587.4 millionin equity proceeds before fees.As a result of the sale, it now has513.3 million shares outstanding, 10 times the amount a year ago.</p>\n<p><i>Axios’</i>Felix Salmon recently discussed how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prevented<b>Hertz Global Holdings</b>(OTCMKTS:<b><u>HTZGQ</u></b>) fromselling sharesof its stock during bankruptcy proceedings.Salmon wrote that the SEC’s actions actually hurt the company and its investors.I say he’s wrong. Here’s why.</p>\n<p><b>Valuation and AMC Stock</b></p>\n<p>As Salmon mentioned, Bank of America has stopped covering both<b>GameStop</b>(NYSE:<b><u>GME</u></b>) and<b>Bed Bath &amp; Beyond</b>(NASDAQ:<b><u>BBBY</u></b>) because their shares have no fundamental basis for their current valuations.</p>\n<p>GameStop has a $19 billion market capitalization and Bed Bath &amp; Beyond’s is $3.6 billion. As I write this, AMC’s is $27.3 billion. Let’s consider AMC’s valuation for a moment.</p>\n<p>I went back through AMC’s financials through April 2, 2009. That’s 11 years of results. Its best year in terms of revenues was 2019, when it generated$5.47 billionin sales. Its highest operating profit was in 2018, when AMC made $265 million. Finally, the best operating margin was in 2015, when its operating profit of$237.1 millionwas 8% of its $2.95 billion in top-line sales.</p>\n<p>Using 2015 as AMC stock’s baseline valuation, it finished that fiscal year with97.44 millionshares — 21.61 million Class A and 75.83 million Class B. It had a market cap of $2.31 billion based on a 2015 year-end closing price of $23.71.</p>\n<p>AMC stock closed out 2015 trading at about 0.78x sales. If you assume the markets look six months ahead and use AMC’s March 2015 high of $36.13 per share, you get a market cap of $3.52 billion and a price-to-sales ratio of 1.19x.</p>\n<p>As I write this, based on a market cap of $24 billion and 2019 sales of $5.47 billion, AMC stock is trading at 4.39x sales.When you consider itstrailing 12-month salesare $450 million through first quarter 2021 and $1.24 billion for all of 2020, its P/S ratios should be 0.02x and 0.52x, respectively.</p>\n<p>It gets even worse when you look at the analysts’ perspectives.Those covering AMC stockexpect it to lose95 centsin 2022 and 61 cents in 2023. Analysts expect 2022 sales of $4.79 billion, or about 88% of its 2019 pre-pandemic top-line numbers.</p>\n<p><b>The Share Sale Scratches the Surface of AMC’s Debt</b></p>\n<p>I have a hard time believing that AMC shareholders are better off because management was able to sucker enough people into buying shares at $50.85.</p>\n<p>The sale of 11.55 million shares to raise $587 million will not cure AMC’s debt problem — a situation that’s gotten worse in recent years.</p>\n<p>At the end of 2015 — arguably the best year in its history — the company had $465 million in long-term debt, which required $21.2 million in interest payments that year. Based on a year-end market cap of $2.31 billion, its long-term debt represented 20% of AMC’s market cap.</p>\n<p>While manageable, its debt levels have skyrocketed in the years since.In part, that’s because accounting rules changed. Companies now have to list any future operating lease as a liability on the balance sheet. Still, AMC’s long-term debt rose to$4.73 billionin 2019, with an annual interest expense of $292.8 million.</p>\n<p>AMC has never generated more than $265 million in operating income in a given year. So how is it going to cover the interest on its debt?</p>\n<p><b>Diluted Shares Won’t Help AMC Stock Investors</b></p>\n<p>If nothing else, the company’s stock sale gave it room to breathe. But I find it hard to believe that this will benefit investors in the long run. For example, at the end of 2015, if you owned 10% of AMC stock, you held 9.74 million shares. Those shares today are good for a 1.9% stake.</p>\n<p>From where I sit, losing more than 80% of your ownership stake to dilution is hardly a cure. These stock sales will be the AMC shareholders’ undoing.</p>\n<p><i>On the date of publication, Will Ashworthdid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the</i>InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines<i>.</i></p>","source":"lsy1606302653667","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>The AMC Stock Dilution Can’t Fix its Budget Problems</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nThe AMC Stock Dilution Can’t Fix its Budget Problems\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-08 15:40 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://investorplace.com/2021/06/amc-stock-dilution-cant-fix-budget-problems/><strong>InvestorPlace</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>The share sale will only harm investors, as the funds raised can't cover AMC's debt.\n\nAMC Entertainment(NYSE:AMC)sold 11.55 million sharesof AMC stock on June 3 at $50.85 a share. The stock sale ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://investorplace.com/2021/06/amc-stock-dilution-cant-fix-budget-problems/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AMC":"AMC院线"},"source_url":"https://investorplace.com/2021/06/amc-stock-dilution-cant-fix-budget-problems/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1171979447","content_text":"The share sale will only harm investors, as the funds raised can't cover AMC's debt.\n\nAMC Entertainment(NYSE:AMC)sold 11.55 million sharesof AMC stock on June 3 at $50.85 a share. The stock sale raised$587.4 millionin equity proceeds before fees.As a result of the sale, it now has513.3 million shares outstanding, 10 times the amount a year ago.\nAxios’Felix Salmon recently discussed how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) preventedHertz Global Holdings(OTCMKTS:HTZGQ) fromselling sharesof its stock during bankruptcy proceedings.Salmon wrote that the SEC’s actions actually hurt the company and its investors.I say he’s wrong. Here’s why.\nValuation and AMC Stock\nAs Salmon mentioned, Bank of America has stopped covering bothGameStop(NYSE:GME) andBed Bath & Beyond(NASDAQ:BBBY) because their shares have no fundamental basis for their current valuations.\nGameStop has a $19 billion market capitalization and Bed Bath & Beyond’s is $3.6 billion. As I write this, AMC’s is $27.3 billion. Let’s consider AMC’s valuation for a moment.\nI went back through AMC’s financials through April 2, 2009. That’s 11 years of results. Its best year in terms of revenues was 2019, when it generated$5.47 billionin sales. Its highest operating profit was in 2018, when AMC made $265 million. Finally, the best operating margin was in 2015, when its operating profit of$237.1 millionwas 8% of its $2.95 billion in top-line sales.\nUsing 2015 as AMC stock’s baseline valuation, it finished that fiscal year with97.44 millionshares — 21.61 million Class A and 75.83 million Class B. It had a market cap of $2.31 billion based on a 2015 year-end closing price of $23.71.\nAMC stock closed out 2015 trading at about 0.78x sales. If you assume the markets look six months ahead and use AMC’s March 2015 high of $36.13 per share, you get a market cap of $3.52 billion and a price-to-sales ratio of 1.19x.\nAs I write this, based on a market cap of $24 billion and 2019 sales of $5.47 billion, AMC stock is trading at 4.39x sales.When you consider itstrailing 12-month salesare $450 million through first quarter 2021 and $1.24 billion for all of 2020, its P/S ratios should be 0.02x and 0.52x, respectively.\nIt gets even worse when you look at the analysts’ perspectives.Those covering AMC stockexpect it to lose95 centsin 2022 and 61 cents in 2023. Analysts expect 2022 sales of $4.79 billion, or about 88% of its 2019 pre-pandemic top-line numbers.\nThe Share Sale Scratches the Surface of AMC’s Debt\nI have a hard time believing that AMC shareholders are better off because management was able to sucker enough people into buying shares at $50.85.\nThe sale of 11.55 million shares to raise $587 million will not cure AMC’s debt problem — a situation that’s gotten worse in recent years.\nAt the end of 2015 — arguably the best year in its history — the company had $465 million in long-term debt, which required $21.2 million in interest payments that year. Based on a year-end market cap of $2.31 billion, its long-term debt represented 20% of AMC’s market cap.\nWhile manageable, its debt levels have skyrocketed in the years since.In part, that’s because accounting rules changed. Companies now have to list any future operating lease as a liability on the balance sheet. Still, AMC’s long-term debt rose to$4.73 billionin 2019, with an annual interest expense of $292.8 million.\nAMC has never generated more than $265 million in operating income in a given year. So how is it going to cover the interest on its debt?\nDiluted Shares Won’t Help AMC Stock Investors\nIf nothing else, the company’s stock sale gave it room to breathe. But I find it hard to believe that this will benefit investors in the long run. For example, at the end of 2015, if you owned 10% of AMC stock, you held 9.74 million shares. Those shares today are good for a 1.9% stake.\nFrom where I sit, losing more than 80% of your ownership stake to dilution is hardly a cure. These stock sales will be the AMC shareholders’ undoing.\nOn the date of publication, Will Ashworthdid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":416,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164543677,"gmtCreate":1624231402199,"gmtModify":1703830862243,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","listText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164543677","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-20 09:19","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Answering the great inflation question of our time","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1133385197","media":"finance.yahoo","summary":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up","content":"<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”</p>\n<p>The current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?</p>\n<p>Before I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.</p>\n<p>As an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.</p>\n<p>Until now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/87f75dfcb98fb5a0e7c3f9d3f8d336e2\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"412\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Used car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.</p>\n<p>To be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)</p>\n<p>But that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&amp;P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.</p>\n<p>Given this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.</p>\n<p>Now I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.</p>\n<p>As for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.</p>\n<p>“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”</p>\n<p>“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.</p>\n<p>COVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.</p>\n<p>A prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.</p>\n<p>Another secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.</p>\n<p><b>Anti-inflation forces</b></p>\n<p>But here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?</p>\n<p>I say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”</p>\n<p>To buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.</p>\n<p>To me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.</p>\n<p>Not only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.</p>\n<p>So technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.</p>\n<p>There is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.</p>\n<p>After World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)</p>\n<p>Like its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.</p>\n<p>The internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.</p>\n<p>So technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.</p>\n<p>COVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.</p>\n<p>How significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.</p>\n<p>More downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”</p>\n<p>And so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”</p>\n<p>I don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)</p>","source":"lsy1612507957220","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Answering the great inflation question of our time</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAnswering the great inflation question of our time\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-20 09:19 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html><strong>finance.yahoo</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1133385197","content_text":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”\nThe current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?\nBefore I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.\nAs an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.\nUntil now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)\n\nUsed car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.\nTo be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)\nBut that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.\nGiven this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.\nNow I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.\nAs for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.\nWhich brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.\n“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”\n“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.\nCOVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.\nA prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.\nAnother secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.\nAnti-inflation forces\nBut here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?\nI say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”\nTo buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.\nTo me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.\nNot only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.\nSo technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.\nThere is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.\nAfter World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)\nLike its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.\nThe internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.\nSo technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.\nCOVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.\nHow significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.\nMore downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”\nAnd so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”\nI don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":313,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":235439293706240,"gmtCreate":1698513089891,"gmtModify":1698513093171,"author":{"id":"3555067620831256","authorId":"3555067620831256","name":"CaptainChew","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ae109884a218679389fe68e4aa6f28d3","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3555067620831256","authorIdStr":"3555067620831256"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Happy Halloween","listText":"Happy Halloween","text":"Happy Halloween","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/235439293706240","repostId":"235438245965912","repostType":1,"repost":{"id":235438245965912,"gmtCreate":1698512933954,"gmtModify":1698512938900,"author":{"id":"4090418903913760","authorId":"4090418903913760","name":"FatKid","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/f6692ab34697d0d2f7947fa3f34c6421","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4090418903913760","authorIdStr":"4090418903913760"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Happy Halloween everyone.","listText":"Happy Halloween everyone.","text":"Happy Halloween everyone.","images":[{"img":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/0bb17998f0438a655ff0844d5098ed26","width":"682","height":"685"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/235438245965912","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":0,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":1,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":561,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}