News & Insights

The shift to electric vehicles has been impressive. In the first half of this year, approximately 14% of light vehicle sales globally were either Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) or Plug-in Hybrids (PHEV). Leading the pack of adopters were a mix of Scandinavian countries like Norway, and China. U.S. car buyers are also warming to BEV/PHEVs. […]

The pandemic profoundly changed U.S. labor markets. Between March and April of 2020, a total of 20.5 million people left their jobs – the largest one-month drop since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began its employment survey in 1939. The labor market has since recovered. The unemployment rate today stands near a record low of […]

In recent newsletters we covered the concept of “lock-in”, the trend of people staying in their homes purchased with historically low interest rates to avoid facing higher rates and an extremely unaffordable housing market. Lock-in has contributed to the lack of affordability by gumming up housing turnover, reducing available inventory, and putting upward pressure on […]

Are you wealthy? Bloomberg recently wrote, “Billionaires know they are,” and “Low-wage workers are very well aware that they aren’t.” But how about the people in between? Charles Schwab’s 2023 Modern Wealth Survey asked 1000 people between ages 21 and 75 what it took to be wealthy in the U.S., and the average number was […]

When first introduced, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) were considered a novel improvement to the existing passive mutual fund structure. In addition to tracking a stated market index, ETFs allowed investors to trade at market prices throughout the day. Up until then, standard mutual fund investors had to settle for trading at only end of day […]

Last month we wrote about how unaffordable housing has become as the sharp rise in home prices and interest rates have outpaced income growth. But that was for those buying a home – what about for renters who don’t have to take out a mortgage? Renters have not experienced quite as dramatic a decline in […]

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School Professor who died much too young in 2020, was one of the most important business thinkers of his generation. One of his breakthrough observations was that of “disruptive innovation,” the idea that existing producers of goods, after they become successful, are inclined to move up the value curve to […]

An article in The Wall Street Journal recently noted that people’s financial literacy peaks around 53 or 54. At this age they are best able to make sound decisions around things like credit cards, interest rates, and whether a given fee is worth it or not. This is good news, that people understand the importance […]

Few industries were as hard hit as the automotive sector during the pandemic. Supply chain disruptions, most specifically a shortage of semiconductor chips, sent production levels plummeting across the globe. Here in the U.S., new vehicle inventories fell from just over 3.5 million in early 2020 to below 1.0 million in the summer of 2021 […]

Since the summer of 2021, housing affordability has declined at the sharpest rate in 25 years. The situation has not gotten any better recently. Affordability can be estimated from three moving parts: mortgage rates, home prices, and household income. A common way to think about it is how much of your monthly income is eaten […]

Are we collectively reading more than we used to, or less? Most would probably guess less, and so would I, which is why I was surprised to read in one of Kevin Kelly’s books that “The amount of time people spend reading has almost tripled since 1980.” I haven’t found anything to back up Kevin […]

That’s a stupid question. Of course, I know the year I was born. I know how old I am. Yes, you do indeed know how old you are chronologically, but your mind can play games and the age you feel in your head is not necessarily the age on your birth certificate. Jennifer Senior writing […]