Working through some thoughts but should probably wait to post until people are awake on the east coast. In defeat, the Dem coalition got more efficient:
-In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1% but had 241 House Republicans in 2017
-Last night, Trump won the popular vote by 1-1.5% (?) but might only have 217-220 House Republicans in 2025

24-month forward P/E for $COST and $CMG -- my brain just doesn't work this way:

$WMT too -- not quite as extreme but the same mega quality bid:

Idea I’m toying with:
-20-somethings have far better jobs/more money than the 20-somethings of 10-15 years ago
-At the same time, they either can’t afford or are being outbid on houses by older Millennials
-that leaves a lot of excess cash for leisure/gambling/investing Even as the labor market has improved, it doesn’t seem like marriage/having kids/buying houses is happening earlier for this cohort of 20-somethings, so where else is the money supposed to go? Not sure if this is a one-time dynamic or a new normal.

1/Biggest structural changes since 2019:
-impact on urban downtowns/CRE from remote/hybrid work
-auto industry capex (and sales) shifting from ICE to EV, particularly outside the US
-Silicon Valley firmly focused on AI instead of the 2010’s growth vectors
-dawn of the GLP-1 era 2/
-Abortion/courts now being an issue that benefits Democrats rather than Republicans
-Solar energy being a much larger share of global power generation/installation
-Streaming has won, the cable bundle in “runoff mode”
-the decade of college-educated burbs rather than cities

Something you hear at the end of every US expansion is “We’ve exhausted [growth pattern of the last cycle], where’s the growth going to come from?” And the magic of the US is we always find some new growth model that’s different from the prior one. I didn’t appreciate this in 2008 when critics said “We don’t need any more big box stores, everyone has borrowed too much money, the suburbs are tapped out” which was true, but then we got an urban/tech-centric growth cycle plus the fracking boom.

While “textbook macro pessimists” wait for another shoe in the economy to drop, another thing for them to consider is coming into the pandemic, we were at the tail end of a 15-month downtown/stall in the manufacturing economy: This is part of what made the March 2020 equity selloff so tough — we were at the start of a cyclical upturn. And obviously, we then got one a month later from stimulus and such, but it’s important in the context of thinking about typical recession risk dynamics.

It’s too early for this but my gut feeling is we’re looking at a 217-217 House pending Palm Springs CA-41. Realistically we should be prepared for both parties to have the majority at some point (or multiple points) of 2023-24.

This isn’t scientific but right now I’d guess the House will be 220-215 or 219-216 GOP. Everything that’s happening right now is weakening the leverage of Freedom Caucus-type interests.

In the US recessions we've had over the past 25 years we've had lots of interdependencies/fragilities that broke (tech/TMT capex, leverage/mortgage underwriting, immunonaive population). At this point (Sept '22) it's not clear what those are and how rate hikes will create them. I do think the Fed can (and will) create a lot of damage overseas. I'm more skeptical they'll have that impact on the US labor market any time soon.

From 2008 through 2021 the economic cycle hinged to some extent on national politics. First it was bailouts and fiscal stimulus, then the lack thereof/austerity, then the false dawn of a Trump manufacturing boom, then the ratcheting up of trade wars, then pandemic stimulus. But looking out a few years, with the prospect of gridlock in DC and where monetary policy is acting to restrain inflation, it doesn’t seem like national politics will have a big impact on the economic cycle. So I see myself withdrawing somewhat from that conversation.

5-year breakevens with another big move down today, have mostly unwound the Ukraine invasion/oil surge now: Between the move in rates, equities (and what both have done/will do to decision-making by key economic actors), plus supply chain healing, I think the inflation trajectory will be good enough in 6 months, it’s now just waiting for the data to confirm.

I don’t think house prices will ever really get cheaper because even if you upzone or we get productivity growth you’ll just get more luxury townhomes with sky decks, things like that. It’s like how improvements in fuel economy went into more horsepower. “Rather than 8 3,500sqft single family homes at $1mm we’ll build 20 2,500sqft luxury townhomes at $1mm. Works for us.”

“So far in 2021, rental prices have grown a staggering 9.2 percent. To put that in context, in previous years growth from January to June is usually just 2 to 3 percent.” apartmentlist.com/research/natio…

The most Boomer thing about Millennials is those farcically untrue “Boomers had it so easy in their 30’s lol” memes. They had like 7% unemployment and 12% mortgage rates to buy homes smaller than Millennials would consider livable. Boomers in their 30’s: lots of crime and pollution, expensive oil, high inflation and interest rates, fear of nuclear annihilation

Millennials in their 30’s: making memes, lots of avocado toast, working at a crypto startup remotely

I’m personally not convinced that long-term investments deserve preferential tax treatment relative to any other form of income. In my 15-20 year career I don’t see what problem they’ve solved. Where are the sawmills? Where are the semiconductor fabs? Where is the housing inventory?

We're seeing a breakup between big business and the GOP in Georgia imo. Like I said — the CEO of Delta basically called the state GOP a bunch of liars and nobody has really worked through the next steps yet:

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1377282067076108292

Media hasn’t caught up with how much of a free for all vaccinations are now. Lots of young people are getting it, word’s getting out. Things I’ve heard of:
-end of day/expiring doses (helps to have a connection who will alert you)
-saying you’re a caretaker for an elderly person
-website loopholes
-places not verifying medical conditions

Been thinking about the @davidshor “low trust voter” dynamics since @Wertwhile brought them up, and covid, and the Electoral College, and my related thought is do high trust conservative voters still exist, or is conservatism today defined by being a low trust person? To the extent the GOP is now a low trust party, they need to do very well in states like AZ/WI/MI/PA/NC/GA, but the tension is the higher trust suburbs and exurbs continue to move away from them. A low trust path to 270 gets tougher.

YoY % OpenTable seated diner data for yesterday:

Denver -25%
Charlotte -25%
San Antonio -29%
Houston -32%
Dallas -34%
Austin -36%
Las Vegas -37%
Atlanta -37%

Boston -51%
Chicago -58%
DC -59%
Portland -62%

LA -71%
Seattle -78%
NYC -82%
SF -83% In June/July the saying of “there’s no tradeoff between virus suppression and the economy” was true, but I wonder if that’s going to break down in September/October.

If you have an election model based on economic data, something to consider is the nature of what happened in Q2/Q3 economic activity and how that flows into Q3 GDP numbers. Say you had 7 units of economic activity in April, and then 10 units of economic activity in each of May-September. 27 units in Q2, 30 in Q3.

Okay, this is better than my tweet.