Wealth Management News & Insights
Primary Sources
- Consumer Price Index Summary: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.2 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, after increasing 0.1 percent in May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.0 percent before seasonal adjustment. [BLS]
- Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee on June 13–14, 2023: A joint meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System was held in the offices of the Board of Governors on Tuesday, June 13, 2023, at 10:30 a.m. and continued on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at 9:00 a.m. [FRB]
- Speech by Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr on Bank Capital: Thank you to the Bipartisan Policy Center for the opportunity to speak today. I’m here to report on my holistic review of capital for large banks and to outline steps that I believe are appropriate to update our capital standards so that banks can continue to serve our communities, households, and businesses. [FRB]
Financial Markets
- Read the Ingredients Before Buying This $25 Billion ETF: Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix ended up as large holdings in a popular value-investing index created by S&P, an example of Wall Street tripping over itself. [WSJ]
- This Year’s Amazon Prime Day Was The Biggest in Company History: Consumers spent $12.7 billion across the web on July 11 and 12 during Amazon’s Prime Day sales, a 6.1% jump from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics. [CNN]
- Inflation Eased to 3% in June, Slowest Pace in More Than Two Years: Fed officials are still likely to raise interest rates when they meet later this month. [WSJ]
The June Consumer Price Index (CPI) report compared BofA Global Research estimate. The largest difference was “Core Goods” with a discrepancy of -.22%. One of the main contributors to the discrepancy in “Core Goods” was “Transportation commodities less motor fuel”.
Retirement Planning
- America’s Retirees Are Investing More Like 30-Year-Olds: At Vanguard, one-fifth of taxable brokerage account investors aged 85 or older have nearly all their money in stocks. [WSJ]
- How to Retire Better, From Retirees Who Learned the Hard Way: Lessons from retirees on the biggest regrets of their postwork lives. [WSJ]
Next Generation
- Is Your Kid Bad With Money? These Apps Could Help: Children lose cash, forget what they bought when they can’t track where it went. [WSJ]
This graph shows the correlation between COVID-19 pandemic-era and monthly/total excess savings. As of end-May, US consumers had around $675bn in excess savings from pandemic-era fiscal stimulus and spending distortions. Since the pandemic-era has eased, US consumers have fewer excess savings.
Business Strategy
- Meet the CEOs Who Pull In More Than $100 Million a Year: Chief executives at Pinterest, Peloton and Hertz are outearning Apple’s Tim Cook—and hundreds of others leading bigger companies. [WSJ]
- Banana Republic Wants to Outfit Your Home, Too: Responding to a volatile market for work clothes, the retailer hopes that selling home goods will help stabilize its business. [NYT]
- How Netflix Plans Total Global Domination, One Korean Drama at a Time: As “Squid Game” showed, success with audiences around the world can come from a laser focus on local taste. [NYT]
- Chipotle Tests ‘Autocado,’ a Robot to Speed Up Guacamole Production: Meet “Autocado,” a Chipotle robot designed to perform the more tedious tasks of creating the chain’s guacamole, including cutting, coring and peeling avocados. [CNN]
This graph shows that there has been a rise in the percent of unprofitable companies in the Russell 2000 since 1998 – 2022. Since 1998, there has been a non-linear ~26% increase from ~19% to ~45.5% in unprofitable companies in the Russell 2000.
Life & Work
- Discord, the Teen-Favored Chat Service, Is Finally Adding Parental Oversight: Freewheeling platform popular with gamers now offers child-monitoring tools—but not time limits. [WSJ]
- Texas TikTok Ban Challenged for Threatening ‘Academic Freedom’: A lawsuit filed on Thursday says that Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban is compromising research and teaching at public universities. [NYT]
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