Daily roundup of research and analysis from The Globe and Mail’s market strategist Scott Barlow
Macquarie strategist Viktor Shvets details an even worse concentration of wealth in America,
“The top 0.1% (~130,000) continued to pull away from the rest, with their wealth rising to ~US$21trn (~US$157m per household), up from US$13trn in 3Q’19 and US$5trn in 3Q’04 … However, households between 0.1% and 1%, have lost some ground, dropping from 18% pre-Covid to below 17%. Similarly, those between top 1% and 10% are losing ground, with ~37% of national wealth vs ~40% pre-Covid. While the bottom 50% (66m households) slightly improved, these own only ~2% vs 3.5% in 3Q’89 or sub-US$60,000 per household. The rise of inequalities is still the dominant trend: the bottom 50% own nothing while 0.1% continue to rapidly pull away from the top 1%, top 10% and the bottom 50% …US wealth also continues to be highly concentrated in older cohorts, with Millennials only owning ~9%. At a comparable age, Baby Boomers owned ~20%. Another way of looking at it: in 3Q’89, those under 40 years of age controlled 12% while today it is closer to 7%. Although over $30 trn will be inherited by younger cohorts, unlike 1950s-80s, US is now far more unequal, and hence, the bulk of these inheritances will flow into the top 1% … While still some ways off from the Gilded Age of the early 1900s (when top 10% owned over 80% of wealth vs ~70% today), it is a considerable deterioration when compared to the 1950s-80s”
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BMO chief economist Doug Porter surveyed the employment situation in Canada,
“Ottawa has announced a tightening in the temporary foreign worker program for below[1]median wage earners. To which we would say “not a moment too soon”. As a brief reminder, the program was loosened significantly in mid-2022, an exceptional period for the labour market. At that point, there were roughly 1 million job openings, and also roughly 1 million unemployed Canadians—essentially full employment. However, that episode truly did prove to be “exceptional”, and conditions have more than normalized. There are now fewer than 560,000 open jobs (and falling fast), while there are 1.4 million unemployed people. Aside from the pandemic, we’re close to the highest number of unemployed since 2011. So, instead of the ultra-tight conditions of 1 unemployed person per vacant job, we’re now at 2.5:1, not at all a tight market”
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The research committee at BofA Securities added a new company, American Healthcare REIT, to its U.S. 1 List of top stock picks. T
The list is now, in no particular order: Spotify Technology SA, Amazon.com Inc, Marriott International, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, NVR Inc, Duolingo, Costco Wholesale Corp, Mccormick & Co, Blue Owl Capital Inc, Fidelity National Info Serv, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, S&P Global Inc, Progressive Corp, Renaissancere Holdings Ltd, Boston Scientific Corp, Intuitive Surgical Inc, Eli Lilly & Co, Vertiv Holdings Co, Union Pacific Corp, Kirby Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp, RTX Corp, Uber Technologies Inc, Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Cicso Systems Inc, Nvidia Corp, Welltower Inc, Mid-America Apartment Comm, and American Healthcare REIT Inc.
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Diversion: “Summer Box Office Winners, Losers, and Head-Scratchers” - The Ringer (podcast)