I would not be surprised (nor alarmed) if the economy moved sideways since COVID. You know, COVID was tough.
That appears to be the case if we measure thing like truck tonnage.
But this strong divergence makes it look like there is some kind of bubble in the financial markets.
If the real economy is moving sideways, well, sideways is not bad.
But if that happens while the stock market, bond market, real estate market, insurance market, university endowments etc. etc. spiral upward that is disturbing.
I would expect that as we make stuff lighter, switch to doing stuff online, and buy every meal in a box or bag of premade pre cooked stuff these two lines would diverge slowly and steadily.
But a slow steady divergence is NOT what is happening.
Last time the S&P got this far ahead of the real-economy-measured-by-truck-tonnage was a real real bad time for financial markets (Crash of 2008 or whatever we are calling it today.)
I’d say at least when the last was that people weren’t able to buy more and had to tighten their belts (under a Dem admin then too, IIRC).
Interestingly enough, I currently have a 14,000 gallon rain catch in the backyard if fecal matter ever hits the rotary blades. I’d hate to use it for anything other than a recreational pool, but if times call for it…
I would still much rather prefer to get a 10,000 closed gallon tank, but I can purify any water. In the end, rooftop water is just as parasitic as standing water.
The thing is. looking back,
This (the extreme drop, in cardboard box shipments) does not equate with “just before” recent recessions, and it does not equate with “the beginning of” recent recessions.
It indicates something like “deep in the middle of a recession.”
