Wednesday, August 23, 2017

80 > 50 (0.2% > 43%)

New data from the Internal Revenue Service show just how old the top millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. are. While people over 80 make up only 3.7 percent of the population, the IRS estimates they control a larger share of the nation's top fortunes than people under 50.

The latest study, released this month and estimating personal wealth in 2013, finds 584,000 Americans, or about 0.2 percent of the U.S. population, with a combined net worth of $6.9 trillion. People in their 80s and 90s control $1.2 trillion of that wealth. Adults under 50, roughly 43 percent of the population, hold barely $1 trillion.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Unlucky 7

Finally, it's a year ending in 7. Where is she going with this one, you may be thinking? More attention is being devoted to this phenomenon recently—including in Barron's this past weekend and in The Leuthold Group’s famous "Green Book" for August —given that we are heading into the period in the year when weakness was often most pronounced in those years. Perhaps it's "mystical," as Barron’' opined; or perhaps it ties into the economic or even political cycles; but the pattern is there nonetheless. As you can see in the chart below, nearly every year ending in 7 since the dawn of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has experienced at least a 10% correction … except 1927—when it came close—and this year, so far.