Deep Dive

DEEP DIVE: S&P 500 Earnings In The Roaring 2020s

Nov 15, 2024 5 min read paid

Strategy I: Roaring Ahead In Sunday’s QuickTakes, Eric, Joe, and I raised our outlook for S&P 500 earnings as well as our price targets for the index. We did so because we believe that Trump 2.0 represents a major regime change from Biden 1.0 (or was that Obama 3.0?). The corporate tax rate will be lowered from 21% to 15%. Personal income from tips,

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: Ten Useless Macroeconomic Theories

Nov 1, 2024 6 min read

It’s difficult to count the number of mainstream macro theories that we’ve debunked over the past few years. Many long-used relationships and correlations have been upended by record monetary and fiscal stimulus during the pandemic, a wave of early retirements by Baby Boomers, and interest-rate hikes off ultralow levels. We’ve been busy shooting them down since early 2022. Taking great pains to keep it short, below is

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: The Case for a Higher R-Star

Oct 25, 2024 3 min read paid

Fed officials indicated that the September 18 rate cut was likely to be followed by more cuts. They deemed that 5.25%-5.50% was too restrictive, which is why they cut it by 50bps to 4.75%-5.00%. That’s still restrictive, in their opinion. According to their September 18 Summary of Economic Projections, collectively they seem to be aiming to lower the federal funds rate to 2.

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: Why Aren't Consumers Happier?

Oct 19, 2024 6 min read

The Misery Index is the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate (measured as the yearly percent change in the CPI) (Fig. 4 below). It was 6.5% during September, well below its average since 1947 of 9.1% (Fig. 5 below). So misery is relatively low. On the other hand, the Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI), which is inversely correlated with the Misery Index, was 68.9 during

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: The Widely Feared Phantom Recession Is Over

Oct 14, 2024 4 min read paid

This is an excerpt from our October 7, 2024 Yardeni Research Morning Briefing. It was written after the release of September's blowout employment report on Friday, October 4. Pagliacci (Clowns, 1892) is an opera in a prologue and two acts with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The play tells the tragedy of a jealous husband and his wife in a commedia dell'arte theatre company. At

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: No Hard Feelings

Oct 6, 2024 8 min read paid

This is an excerpt from our September 30, 2024 Yardeni Research Morning Briefing. It was written before the release of September's blowout employment report on Friday, October 4. US Economy I: Permabulls Versus Permabears. ]Some of our best friends are permabears. They are smart economists and strategists who tend to be bearish. We look to them for a thorough analysis of what could go wrong for the economy

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: China Goes For Broke

Sep 27, 2024 5 min read paid

On Tuesday, China announced a raft of policies aimed at boosting the economy and encouraging consumption. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) cut its seven-day reverse repo rate from 1.7% to 1.5%. The central bank will also cut the amount of funds that lenders must hold in reserve by 0.5ppt, with more cuts expected later this year. And regulators will recapitalize China’s largest commercial banks;

Ed Yardeni
Jackie Doherty

DEEP DIVE: What Will The Fed Do?

Sep 13, 2024 4 min read paid

The financial markets have been expecting more cuts in the federal funds rate (FFR) than Eric and I have all year so far. At the start of this year, the markets anticipated six to seven rate cuts in 2024 (Fig. 1 below). We expected two to three at most. The markets were more dovish on the rate outlook than we were because of investors’ widespread belief that the Fed would

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: Disruptive Technologies Series: Optimus vs Figure 2.0

Aug 30, 2024 3 min read paid

Millions of humanoid robots, those that look and move like humans, could become regular fixtures in factories and homes, bringing down manufacturing costs, eliminating dreary and dangerous work, and launching humanity into an age of abundance, according to the CEOs of Tesla and Figure AI. Both companies have humanoid prototypes that look amazingly lifelike and are trained using artificial intelligence. Here’s a head-to-head comparison of these humanoid robots and

Jackie Doherty
Ed Yardeni

DEEP DIVE: Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Aug 24, 2024 5 min read paid

Artificial Intelligence: Good vs Evil. There’s a lot of controversy over AI. The passion of those for and against its propagation is almost religious in nature, with zealots and heretics. The zealots believe that AI is a revolutionary technological innovation that will quickly transform our lives for the better, a good development for humanity. A few of these believers do concede that it has the potential to be evil,

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: Record High Earnings Giving Stock Market A Lift

Aug 16, 2024 3 min read paid

There’s no sign of an imminent recession in the latest earnings reporting season. Joe notes that more than 90% of the S&P 500 companies have reported their earnings for Q2. Collectively, S&P 500 operating earnings per share (EPS) rose 10.9% y/y during the quarter to a record high of $60.19 (Fig. 1 below and Fig. 2 below). Here’s more related happy

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

DEEP DIVE: The Fed Faces Some Challenges

Jul 28, 2024 3 min read paid

The financial markets and most economists seem to agree that the Fed’s next move will be to cut the federal funds rate (FFR) by 25bps following the September 17-18 meeting of the FOMC. However, there is still a debate about whether restrictive monetary policy operates with a “long and variable” lag, thus requiring more rate cuts this year to avert a recession later this year or in 2025. If

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Page 3 of 10