The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule

  This week’s chart takes a look at the relationship between stocks and gold, a classic rivalry between growth and safety. Each dot on the chart represents a calendar year from 1952 through 2025, plotting the S&P 500’s annual price return (vertical axis)...
Sprint, Then Jog

Sprint, Then Jog

  I’ve got an interesting chart for folks this week. It shows how the stock market (S&P 500 Index) has historically performed, on average, after a 6-month rally of at least 35%. That’s the blue line—the average. Why is that interesting? Because the orange...
A Tale of Two Profits

A Tale of Two Profits

    This week’s chart compares S&P 500 reported earnings (orange line, top panel) with after-tax corporate profits from the National Income and Product Accounts, or NIPA (green line, top panel). NIPA profits track economy-wide corporate earnings,...
Shutdown—but Not Shutout

Shutdown—but Not Shutout

  Well, it happened again. The U.S. government went into “shutdown” this week after Congress couldn’t agree on a stopgap funding bill. We’ve seen this before, and while it makes for plenty of high drama in Washington, for the stock market it tends to be more of a...
Growth Swing

Growth Swing

  The U.S. economy is looking pretty strong again—or at least it was last quarter. Real GDP growth was revised in the second quarter to 3.8%, a sharp rebound from the -0.6% decline in the previous quarter. As a reminder, real GDP is a measure of...
Stagflation-lite

Stagflation-lite

  Well, it didn’t come as a surprise, but the Fed went ahead and cut rates this week—their first move since last December. What was more interesting, though, were the new economic projections. This week’s chart shows the Fed’s outlook for 2025. The bars track...