Volatility Pulse - Earnings Heroes
Two Stocks, $1.4 Trillion
Since earnings season began on July 13, Microsoft and Nvidia added $1,414.8 billion of market value between them. The other 71 tech stocks in the index lost $22.3 billion combined.
Source: Bespoke Investment Group
Fast Forward One Year
On the August 26 earnings call, capex for the top five hyperscalers in 2027 was guided to $1.3 trillion. The Street had that same figure pencilled in for 2028.
Source: Marlin Capital
$1 Billion To $279 Billion
Nvidia's supply and capacity purchase commitments jumped from $119 billion to $279 billion in a single quarter. At the start of 2020 the figure was $1 billion.
Source: Fiscal.ai via @StockSavvyShay
50x In Three Years
Combined annualised revenue at OpenAI and Anthropic went from $2.1 billion at the end of 2023 to $105 billion by mid-August. That is roughly fifty times in under three years.
Source: Epoch AI
Deficits without Interest payments
Before a dollar of interest is counted, the US budget gap is 3.59% of GDP, the widest in this group of advanced economies. Greece runs a primary surplus of 5.53%.
Source: Bloomberg
The Greenback's Slow Fade
The dollar's share of global reserves is down to roughly 40%, from about 58% in 2019, and sits at its lowest reading on a series that starts in 2006. Gold's weighting has been climbing since 2024.
Source: IMF via @Barchart
European Banks Beat Big Tech
Since January 2022, European bank stocks have returned roughly 325% on a total return basis against about 112% for US mega-cap tech. Nobody put that one on a mug.
Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research via Meb Faber
Inflation is not uniform
Since January 2000 average hourly wages are up 133%, ahead of overall inflation at 98%. Hospital services are up 293%, college tuition 199% and child care 161%. Televisions are down 98%.
Source: Chartive via @Mayhem4Markets
But we're enjoying ourselves!
Americans are putting nearly 5% of their goods spending into hobbies, the highest share on a record that starts in 1960 and above the 2002 peak of about 4.5%.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis via @unusual_whales
Isolation Generation?
About one in ten Americans aged 23 to 29 now spends an average day with no in-person contact at all. Before 2020 that figure sat near 3.5%.
Source: Financial Times via @unusual_whales
Guess The Scariest Decade
The S&P 500 has spent 4% of the 2020s more than 20% below an all-time high. Since the 1960s ended only the 1990s, at zero, has been quieter. The 2000s spent 57% of the decade down that much.
Source: @OddStats
Prices Vs Earnings History
Global tech prices are up 287% since 2020 while forward earnings are up 355%. In the late 1990s the ratio ran the other way, with prices up about 670% at the 2000 peak against earnings near 190%.
Source: Pictet Asset Management via @steve_donze
Just Because...
Japan Named Your Unread Book Pile
Tsundoku is the practice of buying books and letting them stack up unread. It is not a modern joke about Amazon: the word shows up in print in 1879, in Japan's Meiji era, mocking a teacher who owned many books and read none of them. The habit is older than the paperback.
