America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 FOMC Chair Jerome Powell gave his scheduled March 2025 FOMC Press Conference. (link of video and related materials) Below are Jerome Powell’s comments I found most notable – although I don’t necessarily agree with them – in the order they appear in the transcript. These comments are excerpted from the “Transcript …
The St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index (STLFSI4) is one index that is supposed to measure stress in the financial system. Its reading as of the March 20, 2025 update (reflecting data through March 14, 2025) is -.2264: source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index [STLFSI4], retrieved from FRED, …
S&P500 earnings trends and estimates are a notably important topic, for a variety of reasons, at this point in time. FactSet publishes a report titled “Earnings Insight” that contains a variety of information including the trends and expectations of S&P500 earnings. For reference purposes, here are two charts as seen in the “Earnings Insight” report of March …
As many are aware, Refinitiv publishes earnings estimates for the S&P500. (My other posts concerning S&P earnings estimates can be found under the S&P500 Earnings tag) The following estimates are from Exhibit 24 of the “S&P500 Earnings Scorecard” (pdf) of March 14, 2025, and represent an aggregation of individual S&P500 component “bottom up” analyst forecasts. For reference, the …
As many are aware, Standard & Poor’s publishes earnings estimates for the S&P500. (My posts concerning their estimates can be found under the S&P500 Earnings tag) For reference purposes, the most current estimates are reflected below, and are as of March 11, 2025: Year 2024 estimates add to the following: -From a “bottom up” perspective, operating earnings of $233.48/share -From …
For reference purposes, here is Total Household Net Worth from a long-term perspective (from 1945:Q4 through 2024:Q4). The last value (as of the March13, 2025 update) is $169.360793 Trillion: (click on each chart to enlarge image) – Also of interest is the same metric presented on a “Percent Change from a Year Ago” basis, with …
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk post of March 13, 2025 titled “Fed’s Flow of Funds: Household Net Worth Increased $.2 Trillion in Q4.” It depicts Total Household Net Worth as a Percent of GDP. The underlying data is from the Federal Reserve’s Z.1 report, “Financial Accounts of the United States“: As seen in …
On March 12, 2025, the Business Roundtable released its CEO Economic Outlook Survey for the 1st Quarter of 2025. Notable excerpts from this release, titled “Business Roundtable Economic Outlook Index Dips Modestly“: The overall Index dipped modestly by seven points from last quarter to 84, roughly at its historic average of 83. The small dip …
The February 2025 NFIB Small Business Optimism report was released today, March 11, 2025. The Index of Small Business Optimism decreased by 2.1 points to 100.7. Here is an excerpt that I find particularly notable (but don’t necessarily agree with): This is the fourth consecutive month above the 51-year average of 98 and is 4.4 …
My overall analysis indicates a continuing elevated and growing level of financial danger which contains many worldwide and U.S.-specific “stresses” of a very complex nature. I have written numerous posts on this site concerning both ongoing and recent “negative developments.” These developments, as well as other exceedingly problematical conditions, have presented a highly perilous economic environment …