Upside: Simple Market Data Tells Us The "Impending Home Value Crash" Is Not Coming (Not Yet At Least). Downside: Robots Are Coming For Your Job. | (3.6.23)
“Sometimes you’ve just got to lick the stamp and send it.” - Daniel Ricciardo
Let’s Kick Off This Week With The Best Charts/Visuals I Saw Over The Weekend:
• As long as buyer demand continues to eclipse supply we will not be seeing a major crash in home values. There, I said it. So far, of major metros, only Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin are seeing supply levels above where they were in January 2020.1
TL;DR — Sometimes it is as simple as Supply & Demand.
• AI is a HOT topic right now as various companies have rolled out their own chat-based tools — namely OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Bing AI. With this technology on the rise, there seems to be a lot of anxiety for some surrounding the idea that their jobs will be replaced by software (robots, essentially). Is this true? Well, who am I to say… I can only inform you that the historical increase in productivity facilitated by automation is unfortunately unlikely to alleviate these concerns.2
TL;DR — It takes half as many people to generate $1m in revenue for S&P500 companies as it did 20 years ago.
• So far in 2023 initial jobless claims remain below 2014-2022 levels signaling for tight labor market remains despite continued efforts by the fed to slow the economy which in theory should lead to increased unemployment metrics...3
…That said, continuing claims are now slightly above 2022 levels meaning that unemployed individuals are having a tougher time finding new employment than they were at this time last year.
TL;DR — The labor market remains tight and we are not yet seeing consequences that would typically be associated with mass-economic slowdown.
Chart Of The Day:
If you share my curiosity about the world of "alternative investment vehicles," then you may already know that purchasing luxury items as speculative investments (with the hopes of generating future capital gains) became increasingly popular following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although anecdotal, I have seen this trend play out through my own experiences online reaching a wide variety of items ranging from rare cars to vintage Pokémon cards. While many of these items have experienced significant fluctuations in value over the past few years, some have proven to be reliable long-term investments as per the below graphic.4
TL;DR — *frantically googles rare whisky bottles*
Source: Zillow & Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research.
Source: Semafor Business.
Source: The Daily Shot.
Source: Statista — The Most Lucrative Luxury Investments.