Business

For all the talk about a "coordinated global recovery", it may come as a surprise that 57% of the acceleration in global GDP this year has come from a handful of commodity exporters (those whose food/metals/fuel exports are > 40% of total), which together combine for just 17% of global GDP growth. A slightly different way of looking at the same data, is that 66% of the global acceleration in GDP is due entirely to emerging markets.

We've frequently warned about the myriad of potential risks arising from the massive capital flows from active to passively managed accounts which will eventually, and inevitably, wreak havoc upon the markets.  It is, in fact, this transition which is inextricably linked to the market's apparent disregard for traditional valuation metrics as it surges to all new highs with each passing day.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Just recently, the New York Post a very interesting article entitled “Millennials should start taking stocks seriously.” While I am sure the author is well-intentioned, it is a very misguided article in its assumptions.

The author jumps right in with both feet:

After retail bankruptcies soared an astonishing 110% in the first half of 2017 (something we discussed here: The Amazon Effect: Retail Bankruptcies Surge 110% In First Half Of The Year), it seems that the new wave of retail operators are finally figuring out that in-store payrolls and excessive mall rents are simply an insurmountable economic disadvantage in the post-Amazon world.  The following info-graphic from the Wall Street Journal helps to put the offline vs. online cost structure of apparel retailers into perspective:

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

This week has seen yet more examples of poor internals despite new highs in the major averages.