Nearly four weeks ago, we put down a marker for what lay ahead for the S&P 500 based on the index' quarterly dividend futures. Looking beyond 2024-Q2, you'll see something unusual. There's projected drop-off in quarterly dividends between 2024-Q2 and 2024-Q3. It's unusual because we would ordinarily expect to see the third quarter's anticipated dividends fall in between the projected values for the second and fourth quarters. And since the outlook for the index' dividends in all quarters has been improving, we would have at least expected to see it close the gap between the second and f ..read more

Inflationary price increases have resumed for Campbell's Tomato Soup. Our monthly survey of the prices at which ten major grocery retailers are selling an iconic Number 1 size can of Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup indicates upward price movement has resumed after stabilizing during the latter half of 2023. The changes we're observing are significant for U.S. consumers because Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) has produced and sold its condensed tomato soup product in this standard 10.75 fluid ounce can continuously since January 1898. Because of that inherent characteristic, its price is not affec ..read more

Solving Sudoku puzzles has become a very popular pastime around the world since the Times of London began publishing them twenty years ago. Although the puzzle itself has been around for much longer, it was its appearance in the Times that prompted its popularity to explode. The puzzle itself can be described as a kind of simplified crossword puzzle, but with numbers. And maybe not so simple. Sudoku.com sets out the basic rules: Sudoku is played on a grid of 9 x 9 spaces. Within the rows and columns are 9 “squares” (made up of 3 x 3 spaces). Each row, column and square (9 spaces each) needs ..read more

The first quarter of 2024 has come and gone. Along the way, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has been rising at one of the fastest clips on record. That observation is a good sign of the extent to which China, the worlds's biggest consumer of coal and the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide emissions, is pushing to grow its economy. But China isn't alone in increasing its emissions at such a fast rate. India is also boosting its consumption of coal and its emissions of carbon dioxide to power its economic growth. Together, the two most populous nations in ..read more

The total value of goods exchanged between the United States and China rose for the first month since October 2022. That month marked the beginning of a serious deterioration of trade between the two countries following President Biden's action to restrict the export of advanced semiconductor technology from the U.S. to China. The fallout from President Biden's anti-free trade policies has been worse than the losses that occurred during former President Trump's 2018 tariff war with China prior to the coronavirus pandemic's negative effect on trade. We measure that loss in trade with the trai ..read more

In February 2024, the median new home price sold in the United States fell to $400,500. While this initial estimate will go through three sets of revisions before being finalized, it so far represents the lowest median price recorded for a new home since June 2021. The typical new home sold in the United States between then and now have exceeded that threshold. Unfortunately that doesn't help the typical American household very much. Even at the lowest price recorded for the median new home sold since June 2021, it still remains out-of-reach for the typical American household. With conventio ..read more

The IIE team has truly gone to the dogs for this edition of Inventions in Everything. We can honestly say that because we've gone through a trove of patents for inventions that solve a technical challenge involving man's best friend and that friend's daily need to do their business, so to speak. But only one of those patents stands out for its solution to that technical challenge. That's because U.S. Patent 6,769,382 perhaps best defines the nature of the problems its inventor, Chui-Wen Chiu set out to solve. That problem is described in the background of the invention: Domestic pets such as ..read more

The first quarter of 2024 has come and gone. Before it did, the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) clocked a new record high of 5,254.35 The index ended 2024-Q1 with a market cap of $45.89 trillion according to Standard and Poor. The Top 10 stocks within the market cap-weighted index together accounted for 32.5% of its total valuation. That's up from the 30.9% share that the S&P 500's Top 10 stocks held at the end of 2023. It would be a mistake however to assume that all the biggest stocks just got bigger over the past three months. At the end of December 2023, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) was the biggest ..read more

The first quarter of 2024 continued following the template set during 2023 for dividend paying stocks in the U.S. stock market. That template has some defining characteristics, measured year-over-year: Fewer firms announced dividend cuts, a favorable change. Fewer firms announced dividend rises, an unfavorable change. Together, these two characterists set the stage for a mixed outcome for dividend paying firms during 2024-Q1, at least as measured year over year, where the point of comparison is 2023-Q1. Quarter-over-quarter, the situation also appears mixed. But this time that's because ..read more

According to Motio Research, median household income dipped in February 2024. The firm's estimate of February 2024's median household income is $77,265, a small decrease of $132 (-0.2%) from the firm's initial estimate of $77,397 for January 2024. Motio Research's estimates are based on income data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau as part of its monthly Current Population Survey. The firm adjusts its monthly estimates to account for the effects of seasonality and inflation in its data, presenting its results in the form of an index, where the median household income of January 2010 is ass ..read more