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☆ Behold Wall Street's new bull market, maybe
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Chuck Mikolajczak | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Part of the uncertainty is that there is no set definition of a bull or bear market, or any sort of regulatory body that declares one, such as the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) does with recessions. The most commonly accepted definition is a 20% rise off a low for a bull market and a 20% decline from a high for a bear market, but even that is open to interpretation. "I just think it was a blip within a longer-term bear market." "Certainly it's a bull market in big-cap technology. I wouldn't call it a bull market in a broad market sense, because there are only certain stocks that are really in what we would call bull market territory, and it's just not a broad enough move to call it a sustainable bull market," said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist Ingalls & Snyder in New York.

Persons: Howard Silverblatt, Dow, Silverblatt, Sam Stovall, Stovall, Dan Suzuki, Richard Bernstein, Suzuki, it's, Tim Ghriskey, Ingalls, Snyder, Ned Davis, Chuck Mikolajczak, Noel Randewich, Lewis Organizations: YORK, National Bureau of Economic Research, Reuters Graphics Reuters, Dow Jones, Richard, Richard Bernstein Advisors, Nvidia, Ned Davis Research, Thomson Locations: New York

☆ The No. 1 city to find a remote job, according to new research—it isn't New York or San Francisco
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Morgan Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The job market for remote workers might be shrinking in some cities, but it's flourishing in others. The researchers behind the paper — called "Remote Work across Jobs, Companies and Space"— looked at more than 250 million job vacancies offering remote or hybrid work posted between January 2014 and January 2023. London, Sydney and Toronto — the most populous cities in the U.K., Australia and Canada, respectively — have seen some of the biggest increases in remote work, the report found. In 2022, for example, "one in four new job postings in Washington, D.C. advertised remote work arrangements, compared to one in fourteen in Perth, Australia," the report notes. The number of available remote jobs also fluctuates across regions: In the U.S., for example, remote jobs have become less common in southern cities like Savannah and Miami Beach, compared to northeast and western cities like San Francisco, Boston and Colorado.

☆ This MIT economist helps decide when recessions officially begin and end. Here's why those dates matter
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Annie Nova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

As the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member on the Business Cycle Dating Committee, James Poterba helps determine when a recession officially starts and ends. With Federal Reserve economists predicting that the economy will enter a slump later this year, I spoke with Poterba about his research on recessions. While NBER doesn't make any forecasts, he still had lots of interesting things to say about our downturn worries. What is the chance that an increase of interest rates is associated, sometime afterwards, with a period of declining economic activity? Or, if you see a large run-up in oil prices, does that typically lead to a recession?

Observers often disagree at the time whether the economy is already in recession, and sometimes afterwards whether a recession has occurred or just a “soft patch” in an otherwise uninterrupted business cycle expansion. But the same surveys show the much larger service sector still reporting marginal growth, keeping the economy as a whole out of recession so far. Chartbook: U.S. economic indicatorsThe Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) service sector index stood at 51.9 in April (with more businesses reporting expanding activity than contraction) compared with a manufacturing sector index of just 47.1. In April, the ISM services index was in only the 15th percentile for all months since 1997 compared with the manufacturing index in only the 9th percentile. If the manufacturing sector has already fallen into recession, the services sector is only just avoiding it at the moment.

☆ NBER's Charles Dallara expects a mild recession in the second half of the year
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailNBER's Charles Dallara expects a mild recession in the second half of the yearCharles Dallara, NBER director, joins 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss the banking collapse, recession likelihood and the Beige Book.

☆ Earnings declines usually precede recessions, but bulls say the profit apocalypse hasn't happened
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Bob Pisani | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

They examined the 10 recessions (as defined by the NBER) that occurred from 1955 to 2020 and what happened to the S & P 500 in those time periods. Let's be optimistic and assume that earnings decline 10% in 2022. The S & P currently is at roughly 4,100, so we are talking about a roughly 25% decline in the S & P 500 from current levels. The bulls do have one thing going for them: if a recession is usually preceded by a bear market, the bear market may already have happened. From the January 2022 peak to the October bottom, the S & P 500 declined roughly 25%, about inline with the historic declines during a bear market.

☆ A chief economist who called the 2008 recession sees signs that the economy has already begun to unravel — and says a recession will be apparent as early as this summer
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The unemployment rate will start to rise this summer, says Ian Shepherdson. The US economy is already starting to unravel and a recession will arrive as soon as this summer, according to Ian Shepherdson, the founder and chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics. "We expect to see payrolls falling in the summer, pushing up the unemployment rate." Shepherdson pointed to the National Federation of Independent Businesses Hiring Intentions survey as a leading indicator of where the job market is headed. The current unemployment rate of 3.5% still sits near a more than five-decade low.

☆ High-earning, workaholic men are cutting their work hours the most right now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Men who used to work the most cut their work weeks by three hours on average since 2020. At a conference last week, Yongseok Shin, a Washington University in St. Louis professor who worked on the study, said those groups are educated young men, high-earning men, and men who previously worked the most hours. It contrasts with another important trend for young men in the workforce: even though educated, highly paid men are working fewer hours, they're still working. Having access to remote and hybrid work opportunities likely convinced men making more money that they didn't need to work so hard, Shin said. Men who previously worked 55-hour weeks are paring backIn the NBER study, Shin said, men in the "top hours decile" reduced their hours from 55 hours per week in 2019 to 52 in 2022.

☆ Bank of America shares its recession investing playbook based on 150 years of market history — including 5 ETFs to own now and 3 signals to watch to know when to 'confidently buy' at the bottom
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

For a downturn, the bank likes ETFs like IYK, ANGL, FALN, and CALF. Economists at Bank of America expect a recession to hit the US economy this year. Bank of AmericaThat's bad news for stock market investors, as a recession likely means downward pressure on corporate earnings and share prices. Bank of AmericaWhen the indicator has entered this phase in the past, the strategists said defensive stocks, small-cap stocks, value stocks, and emerging-market stocks have outperformed. In addition to the broader index, they also said materials stocks should outperform when the market begins to recover.

☆ NBER's Charles Dallara on the odds of a recession
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailNBER's Charles Dallara on the odds of a recessionCharles Dallara, former Institute of International Finance CEO and Director at Large at the National Bureau of Economic Research, joins 'Closing Bell Overtime' to discuss increased odds of a recession, the economic reaction to quantitative contraction, and more.

☆ Almost 30,000 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition to fight the company's return-to-office mandate. Read the full copy here.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

New mandate requires most office workers to come into the office at least 3 times a week starting in May. About 3 weeks since the announcement of the new policy, more than 29,200 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition opposing the mandate. Roughly 30,000 Amazon employees have joined that Slack channel, which was created shortly after the RTO announcement. In the petition, Amazon employees added internal data supporting continued remote work and dozens of comments explaining why they oppose the change. A 2013 Stanford University study of Chinese workers found that remote workers are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts.

☆ Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says the US will enter a recession in the 3rd quarter of this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The US will enter a technical recession by the third quarter, according to BofA's Brian Moynihan. Moynihan said Bank of America expects the Fed to begin cutting rates in the second quarter of 2024. "It will be more of a technical recession than it will be a deep drop in the US." The US briefly entered a technical recession last year, but exited in the third quarter of 2022 as economic activity rebounded. But as the economy contracts, Moynihan said Bank of America expects the Fed to begin cutting rates in the second quarter of 2024.

☆ Some companies have used a legal loophole to avoid paying overtime by giving workers exaggerated job titles
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Companies are getting away with not paying their workers for overtime, a new NBER paper shows. That's because of a loophole in federal law where employers don't have to pay managers overtime. Companies have also been cutting pay for other workers by classifying them as contractors. That loophole involves misclassifying workers as managers, even if they don't have actual managerial duties. They weren't getting paid for overtime, and an Atlanta court awarded them $35 million in addition to unpaid overtime.

☆ Bond investors brace for recession as Fed expected to slow pace of tightening
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The rally comes after Treasuries notched the worst year in their history following the Fed's most aggressive monetary policy tightening since the 1980s. Some equity investors are nevertheless playing it safe, expecting the current rally in stocks to wilt if a recession hits. For now, many investors are wedded to a more dovish view, betting that policymakers will blink if growth starts to slow. "The Fed is closer to the end than the beginning, and rates usually fall across the curve when the Fed is finished raising rates." Of course, some investors are happy to take the central bank at its word and are betting rates stay higher for longer.

☆ Forget 'quiet quitting:' High-income men are openly cutting their work hours more than their coworkers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Higher-earning men with college degrees are clocking fewer hours at work. That's as men without degrees have been quitting due to perceived low social and financial prospects. Highly paid men typically work more hours than their peers, Yongseok Shin, an economist who co-wrote the paper, told The Wall Street Journal's Courtney Vinopal. Fueling that figure are young men without college degrees, according to the Boston Fed. Higher-paid men with college degrees have more financial mobility, and likely a stronger social self-estimation.

☆ Forget 'quiet quitting': Men earning six figures are openly cutting their work hours more than their coworkers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Men earning with college degrees earning at least $100k a year are clocking fewer hours at work. That's as men without degrees have been quitting due to perceived low social and financial prospects. Highly paid men typically work more hours than their peers, Yongseok Shin, an economist who co-wrote the paper, told Insider. Fueling that figure are young men without college degrees, according to the Boston Fed. Higher-paid men with college degrees have more financial mobility, and likely a stronger social self-estimation.

☆ Some economists see a 'rolling recession' ahead. Here's what that means
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Jeff Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Termed "rolling recessions," the idea is that rather than contract broadly and all at once, the economy could see different sectors decline in succession, one after the other. I think we will see rolling recession in the future." Sonders is a proponent of the "rolling recession" theory and noted that stocks can perform well even in downturns. A traditional recession looms To be sure, there are detractors to the "rolling recession" theory. "Have we ever had a period where both housing and manufacturing were in recession at the same time and we didn't have a recession?"

☆ As crypto hackers and thieves make off with billions, there's another kind of fraud lurking in the industry.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

I'm sorry to say when you dig deeper into the practices of opaque crypto exchanges, there's little to restore that faith. Timothy Cradle, director of regulatory affairs at Blockchain Intelligence, told Insider that wash trading is market manipulation. NBER researchers estimated that wash trading comprises nearly half of all transactions on Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by volume. Similarly, KuCoin, another top-five crypto exchange, was estimated to have 52.9% of its transactions consist of wash trading (which the company denied). Are you surprised that the researchers found wash trading to be so rampant a practice?

☆ Marijuana might hurt Elon Musk's productivity, but legalization has helped US workers find jobs and earn higher wages, a study finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Jacob Zinkula | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

But a new study found legalization has had a positive impact on Americans' employment and wages. While 68% of the public supports legalization, the authors noted that there is disagreement about the impact it could have on workers' productivity and well being. Elon Musk in 2018: "I'm not a regular smoker of weed...I don't find that it is very good for productivity." The authors speculated the boost in the agriculture sector is tied to the introduction of the cannabis industry. Given marijuana legalization is a relatively new development, the authors said it will take time to decipher any long-run impacts on labor market performance, despite the positive early indicators from their research.

☆ Why everyone thinks a recession is coming in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Patti Domm | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

"Historically, when you have high inflation, and the Fed is jacking up interest rates to quell inflation, that results in a downturn or recession," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. When inflation picks up and the Fed responds by pushing up interest rates, the economy ultimately caves under the weight of higher interest rates." The central bank helped stimulate lending by taking interest rates to zero, and boosted market liquidity by adding trillions of dollars in assets to its balance sheet. It is now unwinding that balance sheet, and has rapidly raised interest rates from zero in March - to a range of 4.25% to 4.5% this month. The Federal Reserve's latest economic projections show the economy growing at a pace of 0.5% in 2023, but it does not forecast a recession.

☆ Is the US in a recession? Not yet, but experts think we could be in one soon.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, told CNBC that there could be a "mild recession induced by the Fed." Here's what experts are saying about a recession in 2023Some Wall Street experts and economists think the US could avoid a recession next year, and that even if one comes, it will likely not be as severe as the downturns after the 2008 financial crisis and the early Covid pandemic. As Insider's Brian Evans reported, economists at Bank of America think there will be a mild recession too. While some think a recession is on the horizon, there's a chance that the US may not enter one at all. "I think we would need to see a significant deterioration in the labor market for me to think we're in a recession, and we have not seen any significant deterioration yet," Bunker said.

"I don't think it would qualify as a recession," Powell said of the growth rate penciled in by policymakers. Recessions in the United States have come in many flavors - deep or shallow, short or long. That's twice the annual growth the Fed says the United States will have experienced in 2022, and what it foresees through 2023. The rise in the unemployment rate then was more than the Fed currently anticipates for next year. The Fed sees unemployment rising from 3.7% now to 4.6% in 2023 and remaining almost unchanged for two years after that.

The Great Recession left an impression on millennials like me, but I'm still not not worried about the next one. They've been rare and brief in my lifetime, except for the 19-month Great Recession, which turned out to be the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression. This isn't the Great RecessionThe main reason I'm not terrified of whatever the economy will do next is that recessions aren't always the Great Recession. We're not afraid of the next recession in my house because my partner and I are both self-employed — he's a freelance graphic designer and I run a financial education startup. Because my partner and I are both service-based business owners, our income is diversified across multiple companies and business sectors.

☆ Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453 Billion
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Emil Skandul | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Even 2 1/2 years later, most city downtowns aren't back to where they were prepandemic. Without more-robust policies to address failing downtowns, cities are going to start hurting. The increased cancellations of office leases have cratered the office real-estate market. Since 2016, only 112 commercial office spaces in the US have been converted, while 85 projects are underway or have been announced, according to CBRE's data. The birth of the central social districtTo avoid a commercial real-estate apocalypse, cities will need to streamline conversions.

The number of working Americans aged 80 or over — such President Joe Biden — has risen from 1980. As seen in the above chart, 5.16% of Americans aged 80 and over had a job in 2022 as of October. Although the share of Americans age 80 and over with a job has tumbled some from it's high in 2018 per Insider's analysis, there are still plenty of older workers working past typical retirement age. And that's evidenced by poverty rates among older Americans standing higher than a decade ago as of 2021. However, not all older Americans want to keep working as they get older and will exit the labor force.

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