My Favorite Chart Takes A Huge Jump -- April 18, 2023

Locator: 44416I.

My favorite chart, link here. 

I remember the first time I posted this chart, and told folks it was my favorite chart -- that must have been a year ago -- and some reader said I was nuts. The reader couldn't think of a more boring, mundane economic chart. LOL. The reader may still feel that way.

But wow. What a move. Since January, 2020, the beginning of the plague year, we haven't seen such a move. If you go to the link, you can "hover" over the chart and get specific information. Truly amazing. 

$4 trillion just prior to January, 2020. Now it appears to be about $5.8 trillion. 

$4 trillion --> $5.8 trillion: a 45% jump? Say what?

The chart:

Two things:

• when the Fed pivots, a lot of folks are going to rush back into equities;
• a lot of those folks are going to dump their mid- to long-term bonds to get back into the equity market.

That should start happening by the end of this year.

My favorite chart.

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Late Night Reading

The Atlantic.

Awesome issue.

"The Myth of the Broke Millennial." Jean M. Twenge. Five pages. Millennials have not been economically unlucky when it comes to home-ownership. If anything, the reverse is true.

"The Ice-Cream Conspiracy: Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream." Scientists don't want to talk about it. David Merritt Johns. Seven pages. The Harvard group didn't like the ice-cream finding: it seemed wrong. One scientist said that the ice-cream effect was "similar" in magnitude to, or "slightly stronger" than, the one for yogurt.

"Is holocaust education making anti-Semitism worse?" Dara Horn. Fifteen pages. Page 35: Southlake, Texas. Absolutely frightening, disgusting. This is a huge, huge issue in the DFW area.

"The Magic Kingdom of Ron DeSantis." The writer's very British romp through America's weirdest state. Helen Lewis. Eleven pages. Although the sunshine state forged DeSantis, he's not a true Florida man. But he is a hater. 

"American Madness." Americans suffering from severe mental illness have been failed by a dysfunctional system. Jonathan Rosen. Nineteen pages.

"How Taylor Swift infiltrated dude rock." Spencer Kornhaber. Two pages.

"The Pornography Paradox." Laura Kipnis. Four pages.

"How to look at a Vermeer." Susan Tallman. Ten pages.