The Dividend Cafe The Bahnsen Group

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/44ut20E

The jobs report Friday was the talk of the town, with 175,000 new jobs being created in April, well below the 240,000 estimate. It was the government sector that most missed expectations, with the private sector representing 167,000 of the new jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%.

Wages were only up +0.1% on the month and are now up +3.9% year-over-year. There is a real irony in how this gets digested, because some say, “oh no, wage growth lower than we want is bad” and others say “yay, too much wage growth creates a wage-price inflation spiral so this is good to see as a disinflationary sign. I think both camps have it wrong.

29 million of the roughly 158 million people employed in the United States works for a S&P 500 company (18% or so). Some I have shared this with expressed surprise it wasn’t higher, and some were shocked it was so high. Data is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

The bottom 50% of health care spenders account for a grand total of 3% of total health care costs (less than $390 per year). The top 5%, on the other hand, account for 51% of all health care spending.

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4bjQ9x6

“Sell in May and go away” became an adage some people love to say in our business, and I really have no idea where it came from. Whenever people ask me if we follow that adage I reply the same as I do about any other “adage” – things that are made up to offer a cute rhyme may not necessarily be the best way to formulate an investment policy.

Some months markets go down. Some months really good investment plans see the holdings in a portfolio increase in price, and other times decrease in price, The investment plan is not better or worse in some months than the others – it is all part of the plan presumably put together.

Various calendar correlations, almanac tidbits, and nursery rhyme poetry are not investment strategies. They are actually not even good at understanding correlations, let alone causations, as most of these things on their own merits and claims are merely 50/50 propositions.

But what is a real investable philosophy is what you can find in the pages of Dividend Cafe. And for a discussion of all those things and more, we start … now …

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4dd0xsl

Economic Front
The big economic news last week was the 1.6% annualized real GDP growth for Q1 when +2.5% had been expected. The 3.4% of Q4 (again, all these numbers are annualized, which is just how they get discussed) was not going to repeat itself, but 1.6% vs. 2.5% projected and 2.7% in the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model was a big step down.
The positive side is that manufacturing appears to be picking up, New Orders are on the rise, and low inventories now mean more manufacturing later.

Net exports were the biggest drag (-0.9%), and, as is almost always the case, consumption was the largest contributor (+1.7%). Capex contributed just +0.4%.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) was up +2.7% year-over-year last month, matching expectations.
Personal Income rose +0.5% in March, in line with expectations.

54% of people worked at firms with less than 500 employees in 1980. That number is just over 46% now.
The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to 1.62 last year, the lowest on record. Our fertility rate has been below the 2.1 replacement level for 17 years now.

Links mentioned in this episode:
DividendCafe.com
TheBahnsenGroup.com