Finance -- Economy -- Rambling -- March 30, 2022

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

Jobs:

• private payrolls rose by almost half a million; topped expectations --- yeah, that was the headline; LOL:
• estimate: 450,000 jobs
• actual: 455,000 jobs
• so, yes, headline technically correct; but more accurate, "in line"
• giving the Biden administration a little extra help with this headline
• perhaps this should be the headline:
• job growth in the U.S. private sector has decelerated in every month since December, when nearly 800,000 payrolls returned in a single month

GDP, 2021: story here.

• for all of 2021, the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — jumped by 5.7%, the fastest calendar-year growth since a 7.2% surge in 1984 in the aftermath of a brutal recession.
• previous estimate was a 7% jump
• the writer downplays it, but a drop from 7% to 5.7% is not trivial
• a 23% downgrade, as it were
• the "small" downgrade (23%) reflected a smaller increase in consumer spending and fewer exports, both of which could worse going forward
• this strengthens the argument for those who see stagflation around the corner
• but look at that: strongest calendar-year growth since 1984 when US coming out of a brutal recession
  
• having said that, the post-Covid surge has not yet begun

EU energy crisis: Germany warns of natural gas rationing

Proxies: developing a list of one ticker for each sector as a proxy of overall trend

• Big Oil: CVX
• shale: DVN
• rail: UNP
• auto/EV: F
• semiconductor: up for grabs; perhaps AMD by default;
  
• chip foundry: TSM
• graphic cards: NVDA
• midstream: SRE
• value: BRK-B
• wow factor: AAPL

Old people and Covid: okay to get additional booster. Starting to lose count, but those that need to know, know

More later: taking Olivia to school