Macro Minute: Week of October 14, 2024

This week I want to highlight a couple of cool charts I have seen lately and make some observations. This week I will keep it brief. First up is a chart from the Federal Reserve showing household wealth levels. 

This chart corroborates the view that I have been talking about for weeks, the average household is doing well. I have had the view that households are and will continue to be a center of strength. Implicit in this graph are home values at highs, financial assets at highs, and debt levels are low. With this set up we can expect the U.S. Consumer to be a continued center of strength and should continue to surprise to the upside. There is a lot to like in this chart. 

Next, we are going to look at a cool demographics and generations graphic from a Charles Schwab survey. 

As a logical thinker, this makes me so happy. With each generation that comes, more Americans are making the smart decision to begin investing earlier. We know that compounding is the name of the game to generate returns. We also know that the only way to get more time to compound is to start early.  

Putting these two charts together, we can intuit a lot. We can assume looking into the future there will be a lot of wealthy households. We can also assume that each generation should be wealthier than the one before. This is not even including the wealth that will be transferred from one generation to the next. The impact of this wealth creation will have long-lasting and broad effects in the future. These charts highlight a few reasons that I remain optimistic about the future, and that the best is yet to come. 

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