Eye On The Market

Growing Pains: The Renewable Transition in Adolescence

Renewables are growing but don’t always behave the way you want them to.  This year’s topics include the impact of rising clean energy investment and new energy bills, how grid decarbonization is outpacing electrification, the long-term oil demand outlook, the flawed concept of levelized cost when applied to wind and solar power, the scramble for critical minerals, the improving economics of energy storage and heat pumps, the transmission quagmire, energy from municipal waste, carbon sequestration, a whydrogen update, the Russia-China energy partnership, methane tracking and some futuristic energy ideas that you can just ignore, for now.

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Winter Heating

The large language model battles begin: a look at the future of web search, conventional wisdom machines, hallucinating bears in space, some early application successes and how far they still are from humans.

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American Gothic

The Federal debt and how the Visigoths may try to break the system if no one fixes it

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The End of the Affair

The affair with the market catalysts of the last decade is over now, and a new era of investing begins

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Holiday Eye on the Market: Non-Fungible Trainwreck

Holiday Eye on the Market: the YUCs, the MUCs, FTX, the Gensler Rule and the Summers Rule

A CH₄, HR4346 and mRNA-1273 Thanksgiving

In the October Eye on the Market I wrote about how in 6 of 7 post-war recessions, equity markets preceded the decline in profits, employment and GDP by several months at least. I also mentioned that the best indicator to follow was the ISM survey, which tends to coincide with the equity market bottom +/- 2 months. So, in the interest of thinking about when equities could bottom, the first chart below projects the ISM survey by looking at new orders and inventories. Using this crude approach, the ISM would bottom in the mid-40’s in December. If so, 3570 on the S&P 500 Index reached in mid-October could actually mark the low for the cycle; such a scenario should not be discounted entirely, and would be consistent with market history.

Reruns

Reruns: how equity declines precede the fall in earnings, growth and employment during recessions; new US semiconductor export policies on China and the clash of empires; and other press article extolling the renewable energy virtues of a country with little relevance for anyone else

Arrested Development

Arrested Development: the pressure on profit margins, the tightest labor markets in decades and whether “second chance” policies for those with criminal arrest records can expand the labor force

On CPI, S&P, GHG and the IRS

Three topics in this month’s Eye on the Market. First, an update on the Fed, inflation and corporate profits since we believe the June equity market lows may be retested in the fall. Second, a detailed look at what would have to happen for the climate bill’s projected GHG savings to actually occur; the answer matters given the implications for the US natural gas industry. And finally, will all the new IRS agents really stick to auditing taxpayers above $400k? Data from the GAO suggests there may not be enough of them to meet the Administration’s revenue targets.

Independence Days

Topics: A revised map of the United States; investing in equities before a recession; Russia’s natural gas squeeze on Europe leads to another rescue program for Italy; the high cost of pariah status for the oil refining industry