Quick Bite – A Few Random Interesting Charts
Someone reputedly said, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This adage is known in multiple languages and cultures, and its universality presumably indicates its truth: that often complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single image, which might communicate a meaning or essence more than lots of words.
As an investment analyst, I literally see hundreds of images every day, mostly in the form of charts, and I find many of them so interesting that I often share with colleagues. Some provide insights into market movements or valuations, others might represent a new emerging trend or change of trend, or even something entirely random that might not connect to financial matters at all (on the surface), but still provide an interesting insight.
As a lifelong investor, I often view random information through an “investor prism” – that is, “How can I make money out of that?” A friend mentioned that he read somewhere that the price of paprika had gone up. My first reaction was to dive into the internet and explore. What is the history of paprika prices? (The global export and import prices of Paprika have been on the rise over the past two years: in 2023, export and import prices ranged from $1.31 to $5.67 USD per kg. By 2024, these prices increased to a new range of $1.42 to $9.04 USD per kg, highlighting strong growth in the international price of paprika). Who produces it? (big producers are Hungary and Spain). What factors drive price changes? Are there listed companies that will benefit or suffer materially as a result? Is there an index that tracks paprika? And so on. You get the picture.
Source: Data Bridge
In any event, what follows are ten charts that I hope readers find interesting, and I’ll try source them accurately. I’ll provide mostly charts that require minimal commentary – presumably, the image can tell the story without much help. Where the source material includes a headline or brief note, I’ll try including that too. If Clime readers find this edition of Quick Bites interesting and informative, I might repeat in a future edition.
Chart 1: 16% of homes in Japan are left vacant due to declining population.
Source: Apollo
Chart 2: Since Covid, people are returning to the office, but women appear to be resisting the trend more than men.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Chart 3: This shows the high correlation between company earnings and share prices, using monthly data since 1871. But notice the periods where the correlation is low during times of extreme stress (e.g. the GFC). Also, the use of monthly data means that weekly or daily volatility is ignored. That’s why it sometimes pays to avoid the daily noise.
Source: TKer
Chart 4: The price of Bitcoin continues to confound me. I admit I’ve never made a cent out of Bitcoin, never really understood it, and will leave it to the next generation to play with.
Source: MacroVisor
Chart 5: Top stock performances since the 2022 Bitcoin low, and the IPO launch of Bitcoin/IBIT on 11 Jan 2024.
Source: MacroVisor
Chart 6: Troubling trends in Japanese bonds, which are having spillover effects on other sovereign bond markets. (The rise in yield on bonds represents a fall in value.)
Source: Bloomberg
Chart 7: Latest Bank of America Global Fund Managers Survey shows global fund managers are holding exceptionally low cash levels – often indicating too much optimism about stocks (contrarians would say this signals a sell on stocks).
Source: Callum Thomas, BoA
Chart 8: From the Financial Times using 20 year history. Note that the US market is trading at close to its highest PE ratio at about 23x, versus say Emerging Markets (EM) trading closer to their usual range at around 13x.
Source: Financial Times
Chart 9: The most crowded trades: investors are short the USD and long the Magnificent 7, gold and European equities.
Source: Evans and Partners
Chart 10: Is it safe? An index of geopolitical risk from Alphaville covering the last 40 years.
Source: FT
I hope you enjoyed examining some of these charts, and gained an insight or two. Let us know if you did, and if we notice a robust positive response, we’ll repeat.
