A very important chart to understand for America's future, both economically and politically.
Source: David Ditch, CBO
B of A: “.. At the current monthly rundown pace, excess savings should continue to support consumer spending at least through the rest of 2024."
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US defense spending vs interest on Federal debt
Source: www.zerohedge.com
A picture is worth 10,000 words...
By: Raman Khanna
High R&D spending does NOT guarantee growth and/or high shareholder returns
The chart below courtesey of Eric | AI & Tech Investing shows semiconductor companies ranked by R&D over the last 12 months. $INTC $QCOM $NVDA $AMD $TSM lead the way. Intel has spent over $100B in R&D over the last decade. Despite that, they have the 2nd lowest shareholder return of all these companies (see addt'l chart below). Intel has generated $52.9B in revenue over the last twelve months. A decade ago, Intel generated $52.4B in revenue. An important cautionary tale for investors: R&D doesn't guarantee growth. Source: Eric | AI & Tech Investing
Record holiday spending: good news, just one problem: consumers used buy-now-pay-later schemes to spend $7.3BN from Nov. 1 to Nov. 26, up 14% from a year ago, per Adobe
These are basically vendor/3rd party financing programs which don't show up on already maxed out credit cards... Source: Statista, www.zerohedge.com
For some shoppers, the upcoming holiday season may lead to piling on more debt
About 25% of Americans are still paying off holiday debt from 2022, according to WalletHub’s November holiday shopping survey. But those already carrying a balance could find themselves sinking further into the red if they don’t get a handle on their credit card debt. “If you’re in a hole, stop digging,” Ted Rossman, Bankrate’s senior industry analyst, tells CNBC Make It. One reason you may want to avoid racking up more debt is that higher interest rates are making it more expensive to pay down. As of November, the average credit card interest rate has risen from around 16% to nearly 21% since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March 2020 in an effort to combat inflation, according to Bankrate. A higher interest rate means it could take longer and be more expensive to pay down your credit card debt. Source: make it, www.zerohedge.com
Microsoft $MSFT is devoting more than 13% of CAPEX to artificial intelligence, the highest amount out of the world’s top cloud service providers
Baidu $BIDU follows with nearly 10%, while Google $GOOG and Meta $META are putting between 6-7% of CAPEX to AI. Source: FT
