Author: smarttalksucce

Overall U.S. household wealth has never been this high, thanks largely to gains in the stock market that are a bigger share of that prosperity than ever before.

In fact, equity holdings now make up about half of the $109.2 trillion of financial assets that households owned through the second quarter of 2021, according to Bank of America. Other than stocks, financial assets also include bonds, cash, certificates of deposit and bank deposits.

The equity share of assets is a 70-year high, Bank of America said.

Overall household net worth jumped to $141.7 trillion in the second quarter, the result of a $3.5 trillion increase in the value of corporate equities as stocks continued their climb during the period. Including nonprofits, the equity share of net worth is 41.5%, according to the Federal Reserve.

While the news has been good for individuals who own stocks, there’s an ever-present specter of risk-taking that raises worries should the market’s fortunes change. Wall Street saw the longest bull market in history end early in 2020, then quickly resume and power to records through the back part of 2021.

“Money goes where money grows,” said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy. “As the stocks value keep going up, they’re continuing to put money there. They’re going to keep putting money into it until there’s a better place to put it.”

The S&P 500 has risen just over 15% in 2021, on the backs of friendly fiscal and monetary policy and robust growth in corporate earnings.

A significant part of the policy backdrop has been record-low interest rates and aggressive money pumping from the Federal Reserve, along with massive fiscal stimulus from Congress.

With the Fed making the first noises about tightening and Washington politicians battling over more spending, Goldberg wonders what will happen if the market-friendly policies start to turn around.

“People’s wealth are up on two things, stocks and houses, and they’re both more or less tied to interest rates,” he said. “There have been a lot of policies that have pushed the value of these assets up. What happens when the policies go away? That’s the $64 trillion question.”

Fed officials have indicated they likely will begin reducing the pace of their monthly asset purchases by the end of the year. Still, interest rate rises seem a ways off, with Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker affirming Friday that the central bank is unlikely to start hiking until late 2022 or early 2023.

Bank of America’s chief investment strategist, Michael Hartnett, noted Friday that clients “have sold stocks (modestly) past 5 weeks.” The bank’s indicator of sentiment has gone from almost bullish enough to trigger a contrarian “sell” signal to a bit more cautious.

Still, investors have poured about $34.5 billion into U.S. equity mutual funds and ETFs alone over the past 12 months, according to Morningstar, indicating there’s still plenty of appetite for stocks.

Goldberg said he’s cautious in that kind of environment, and is advising his older clients to trim their holdings somewhat and start building up cash in what could be a more challenging environment.

“Everyone who is invested today is investing the same way, based on falling interest rates, globalization, great supply-demand chains and low inflation,” he said. “Those are huge macroeconomic cycles, and it looks like we’re seeing the reverse now. While we go through those changes, it’s going to create a lot of volatility, a lot of peril and a lot of opportunity.”

Inflation ran at a fresh 30-year high in August as supply chain disruptions and extraordinarily high demand fueled ongoing price pressures, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy costs and is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, increased 0.3% for the month and was up 3.6% from a year ago. The monthly gain was slightly higher than the 0.2% Dow Jones estimate and the annual forecast of 3.5%.

That’s the highest since May 1991 and reflective of inflationary pressures that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier this week he finds “frustrating.”

On a headline basis, PCE prices rose 0.4% for the month and 4.3% year over year, the highest since January 1991. That reflected a 24.9% increase in energy prices and a 2.8% rise in food.

Goods prices rose by 5.5% while services increased by 3.6%.

The rise in inflation came as personal income increased 0.2% for the month, in line with estimates but indicative that real income is falling as inflation rises. Spending accelerated 0.8%, slightly above the 0.7% forecast.

Personal savings totaled $1.71 trillion, running at a 9.4% rate and a decrease from 10.1% in July. The savings rate peaked at 33.8% in April 2020 in the early days of the pandemic as the government rushed out payments to individuals and businesses were shut down to combat the Covid spread.

A separate report Friday morning showed that manufacturing continued to expand.

The ISM Manufacturing index for September registered a 61.1 reading, representing the percentage of companies seeing expansion. Anything above 50 represents growth; the Dow Jones estimate was 59.5.

The survey also showed prices rising, with 81.2% of respondents reporting increases against 79.4% in August.

Order backlogs decreased to 64.8, a drop of 3.4 points from a month ago, but companies overall were still reporting delays.

“Supply chain concerns are growing beyond electronics and chips into most other commodities. Lead times are extending, shipping lanes are slowing, and we will not see an end to this in 2021,” said one respondent in the electrical equipment, appliances and components industry.

Also, consumer sentiment improved, according to the University of Michigan’s index, which rose to 72.8 in September compared to 70.8 in August and a 71 estimate.

With a potential default looming for the U.S. in October, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday she would just as soon see the power over debt limits taken away from Congress.

A bill introduced in May would repeal the national debt ceiling, and Yellen said “yes, I would” when asked during a House hearing if she backs the effort.

She noted Congress makes the decisions on taxes and spending, and should provide the ability to pay those obligations.

“If to finance those spending and tax decisions, it’s necessary to issue additional debt, I believe it’s very disruptive to put the president and myself, the Treasury secretary, in a situation where we might be unable to pay the bills that result from those past decisions,” she said in response to a question from Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill.

The remarks were made during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve’s economic response to the Covid pandemic.

Casten said he was asking Yellen about the concept of removing the debt ceiling and not the particular bill, introduced by Rep. Bill Foster, also an Illinois Democrat, along with a trio of Democratic senators.

Yellen this week warned that extraordinary measures her department is using to keep funding the government’s operations expire Oct. 18.

Earlier in the hearing, she said the consequences would be dire if Congress fails to raise the spending limit.

“I think it would be catastrophic for the economy and for individual families,” she said.

The U.S. currently is $28.4 trillion in debt, nearly $700 billion of which has been incurred since President Joe Biden took office and chose Yellen to head the Treasury. The budget deficit through the first 10 months of the fiscal year stood at $2.71 trillion.