Connect with us

International

Russell Napier: Central Banks Have Become Irrelevant

Russell Napier: Central Banks Have Become Irrelevant

Published

on

Russell Napier: Central Banks Have Become Irrelevant Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2020 - 14:00

Two weeks ago, we wrote that one by one the world's legendary deflationists are taking one look at the following chart of the global money supply (as shown most recently by DB's Jim Reid) and after seeing the clear determination of central banks to spark a global inflationary conflagration, are quietly (and not so quietly) capitulating.

One month ago it was SocGen's Albert Edwards, who after calling for a deflationary Ice Age for over two decades, finally threw in the towel and conceded that "we are transitioning from The Ice Age to The Great Melt" as "massive monetary stimulus is combining with frenzied fiscal pump-priming in an attempt to paper over the current slump."

At roughly the same time, "the world's most bearish hedge fund manager", Horseman Global's Russell Clark reached a similar conclusion writing that "all the reasons that made me believe in deflation for nearly 10 years, do not really exist anymore. China looks okay to me, and potentially very good. Commodity supply is getting cut at a rate I have never seen before. The US dollar is strong but will likely weaken from here. And it is clear to me Western governments will only ever attempt fiscal austerity as a last resort, not a first. The conditions for both good and bad inflation are now in place."

Finally, it is the turn of another iconic deflationist, Russell Napier, who in the latest Solid Ground article on his Electronic Research Interchange (ERIC) writes that "we are living through another deflation shock but [he] believes that by 2021 inflation will be at or near 4%."

In the lengthy report , Napier wrote that similar to Albert Edwards' conclusion that MMT, i.e., Helicopter Money, is a gamechanger, "what has just happened is that the control of the supply of money has permanently left the hands of central bankers - the silent revolution." As a result, "the supply of money will now be set, for the foreseeable future, by democratically elected politicians seeking re-election." His conclusion: "it is time to embrace the silent revolution and the return of inflation long before such permanency is confirmed." (read our summary of his full report in the article we published on July 12 "Another Iconic Deflationist Capitulates: According To Russell Napier, "Control Of Money Supply Has Permanently Left The Hands Of Central Bankers.")

* * *

In a follow up published two days later to clarify his position, Russell sat down with Mark Dittli of the Swiss website TheMarket.ch in which he laid out his reasoning for why investors should prepare for inflation rates of 4% and more by next year. The main reason, as we expounded on previously: central banks have become irrelevant as governments have taken control of the money supply.

The full article is below, courtesy of TheMarket.ch:

Central Banks have Become Irrelevant

In the years following the financial crisis, numerous economists and market observers warned of rising inflation in the face of the unorthodox monetary p0licy by central banks. They were wrong time and again.

Russell Napier was never one of them. The Scottish market strategist has for two decades – correctly – seen disinflation as the dominant theme for financial markets. That is why investors should listen to him when he now warns of rising inflation.

"Politicians have gained control of money supply and they will not give up this instrument anymore", Napier says. In his view, we are at the beginning of a new era of financial repression, in which politicians will make sure that inflation rates remain consistently above government bond yields for years. This is the only way to reduce the crushing levels of debt, argues Napier.

In an in-depth conversation with The Market/NZZ he explains how investors can protect themselves and why central banks have lost their power.

Mr. Napier, for more than two decades, you have said that investors need to position themselves for disinflation and deflation. Now you warn that we are in a big shift towards inflation. Why, and why now?

It’s a shift in the way that money is created that has changed the game fundamentally. Most investors just look at the narrow money aggregates and central bank balance sheets. But if you look at broad money, you notice that it has been growing very slowly by historical standards for the past 30 or so years. There were many factors pushing down the rate of inflation over that time, China being the most important, but I do believe that the low level of broad money growth was one of the factors that led to low inflation.

And now this has changed?

Yes, fundamentally. We are currently in the worst recession since World War II, and yet we observe the fastest growth in broad money in at least three decades. In the US, M2, the broadest aggregate available, is growing at more than 23%. You’d have to go back to at least the Civil War to find levels like that. In the Eurozone, M3 is currently growing at 8,9%. It will only be a matter of months before the previous peak of 11.5% which was reached in 2007 will be reached. So I’m not making a forecast, I just observe the data.

Why is this relevant?

This is the big question: Does the growth of broad money matter? Investors don’t think so, as breakeven inflation rates on inflation-linked bonds are at rock bottom. So clearly the market does not believe that this broad money growth matters. The market probably thinks this is just a short-term aberration due to the Covid-19 shock. But I do believe it matters. The key point is the realization who is responsible for this money creation.

In what way?

This broad money growth is created by governments intervening in the commercial banking system. Governments tell commercial banks to grant loans to companies, and they guarantee these loans to the banks. This is money creation in a way that is completely circumventing central banks. So I make two key calls: One, with broad money growth that high, we will get inflation. And more importantly, the control of money supply has moved from central bankers to politicians. Politicians have different goals and incentives than central bankers. They need inflation to get rid of high debt levels. They now have the mechanism to create it, so they will create it.

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, central banks started their quantitative easing policies. They tried to create inflation, but did not succeed.

QE was a fiasco. All that central banks have achieved over the past ten years is creating a lot of non-bank debt. Their actions kept interest rates low, which inflated asset prices and allowed companies to borrow cheaply through the issuance of bonds. So not only did central banks fail to create money, but they created a lot of debt outside the banking system. This led to the worst of two worlds: No growth in broad money, low nominal GDP growth and high growth in debt. Most money in the world is not created by central banks, but by commercial banks. In the past ten years, central banks never succeeded in triggering commercial banks to create credit and therefore to create money.

If central banks did not succeed in pushing up nominal GDP growth, why will governments succeed?

Governments create broad money through the banking system. By exercising control over the commercial banking system, they can get money into the parts of the economy where central banks can’t get into. Banks are now under the control of the government. Politicians give credit guarantees, so of course the banks will freely give credit. They are now handing out the loans they did not give in the past ten years. This is the start.

What makes you think that this is not just a one-off extraordinary measure to fight the economic effects of the pandemic?

Politicians will realize that they have a very powerful tool in their hands. We saw a very nice example two weeks ago: The Spanish government increased their €100bn bank guarantee program to €150bn. Just like that. So there will be mission creep. There will be another one and another one, for example to finance all sorts of green projects. Also, these loans have a very long duration. The credit pulse is in the system, a pulse of money that doesn’t come back for years. And then there will be a new one, and another one. Companies won’t have any incentive to pay back these cheap loans prematurely.

So basically what you’re saying is that central banks in the past ten years never succeeded in getting commercial banks to lend. This is why governments are taking over, and they won’t let go of that tool anymore?

Exactly. Don’t forget: These are politicians. We know what mess most of the global economy is in today. Debt to GDP levels in most of the industrialized world are way too high, even before the effects of Covid-19. We know debt will have to go down. For a politician, inflation is the cheapest way out of this mess. They have found a way to gain control of the money supply and to create inflation. Remember, a credit guarantee is not fiscal spending, it’s not on the balance sheet of the state, as it’s only a contingent liability. So if you are an elected politician, you have found a cheap way of funding an economic recovery and then green projects. Politically, this is incredibly powerful.

A gift that will keep on giving?

Yes. Theresa May made a famous speech a few years ago where she said there is no magic money tree. Well, they just found it. As an economic historian and investor, I absolutely know that this is a long-term disaster. But for a politician, this is the magic money tree.

But part of that magic money tree is that governments keep control over their commercial banking system, correct?

Yes. I wrote a big report in 2016 titled «Capital management in the age of financial repression». It said the final move into financial repression will be triggered by the next crisis. So Covid-19 is just the trigger to start an aggressive financial repression.

Are you expecting a repeat of the financial repression that dominated the decades after World War Two?

Yes. Look at the tools that were used in Europe back then. They were all in place for an emergency called World War II. And most countries just didn’t lift them until the 1980s. So it’s often an emergency that gives governments these extreme powers. Total debt to GDP levels were already way too high even before Covid-19. Our governments just know these debt levels have to come down.

And the best way to do that is through financial repression, i.e. achieving a higher nominal GDP growth than the growth in debt?

That’s what we have learned in the decades after World War II: Achieve higher nominal GDP growth through higher rates of inflation. The problem is just that most active investors today have had their formative years after 1980, so they don’t know how financial repression works.

Which countries will choose that path in the coming years?

Basically the entire developed world. The US, the UK, the Eurozone, Japan. I see very few exceptions. Switzerland probably won’t have to financially repress, but only because its banking system is not in the kind of mess it was in in 2008. Government debt to GDP in Switzerland is very low. Private sector debt is high, but that is mainly because of your unique treatment of taxation for debt on residential property. So Switzerland won’t have to repress, neither will Singapore. If Germany and Austria weren’t part of the Eurozone, they wouldn’t have to repress either. Of course there is one catch: If the Swiss are not going to financially repress, you will have the same problem you had for a long time, namely far too much money trying to get into the Swiss Franc.

So we will see more upward pressure on the Franc?

Yes. But financial repression has to include capital controls at some stage. Switzerland will have to do more to avoid getting all these capital inflows. At the same time, other countries would have to introduce capital controls to stop money from getting out.

The cornerstones of the last period of financial repression after World War II were capital controls and the forcing of domestic savings institutions to buy domestic government bonds. Do you expect both of these measures to be introduced again?

Yes. Domestic savings institutions like pension funds can easily be forced to buy domestic government bonds at low interest rates.

Are capital controls really feasible in today’s open financial world?

Sure. There are two countries in the Eurozone that have had capital controls in recent history: Greece and Cyprus. They were both rather successful. Iceland had capital controls after the financial crisis, many emerging economies use them. If you can do it in Greece and Cyprus, which are members of the European Monetary Union, you can do it anywhere. Whenever a financial institution transfers money from one currency to another, it is heavily regulated.

What’s the timeline for your call on rising inflation?

I see 4% inflation in the US and most of the developed world by 2021. This is primarily based on my expectation of a normalization of the velocity of money. Velocity in the US is probably at around 0.8 right now. The lowest recorded number before that was 1.4 in December 2019, which was at the end of a multi-year downward trend. Quantitative easing was an important factor in that shrinking velocity, because central banks handed money to savings institutions in return for their Treasury securities. And all the savings institutions could do was buy financial assets. They couldn’t buy goods and services, so that money couldn’t really affect nominal GDP.

What will cause velocity to rise?

The money banks are handing out today is going straight to businesses and consumers. They are not spending it right now, but as lockdowns lift, this will have an impact. My guess is that velocity will normalize back to around 1.4 some time next year. Given the money supply we have already seen, that would give you an inflation rate of 4%. Plus, there is no reason velocity should stop at 1.4, it could easily rise above 1.7 again. There is one additional issue, and that is China: For the last three decades, China was a major source of deflation. But I think we are at the beginning of a new Cold War with China, which will mean higher prices for many things.

Most economists say there is such a huge output gap, inflation won’t be an issue for the next three years or so.

I don’t get that at all. You can point to the 1970s, where we had high unemployment and high inflation. It’s a matter of historical record that you can create inflation with high unemployment. We have done it before.

The yield on ten year US Treasury Notes is currently at around 60 basis points. What will happen to bond yields once markets realize that we are heading into an inflationary world?

Bond yields will go up sharply. They will rise because markets start to realize who is controlling the supply of money now, i.e. not central banks, but politicians. That will be the big shock.

For a successful financial repression, governments and central banks will need to stop bond yields from rising, won’t they?

Yes, and they will. But let me be precise: It will be governments who will act to stop bond yields from going up. They will force their domestic savings institutions to buy government bonds to keep yields down. The bit of your statement I disagree with is that central banks will put a cap on bond yields. They won’t be able to.

Why not? Even the Fed is toying with the idea of Yield Curve Control, an instrument they successfully used between 1942 and 1951, when they capped yields at 2.5%.

I think this is a bad parallel, because from 1942 to 1951, we also had rationing, price controls and credit controls. With that in place, it was easy for the Fed to cap Treasury yields. Yield Curve Control is easy when everyone is expecting deflation, which the current policy of the Bank of Japan shows. But once market participants start to expect inflation, they will all want to sell their bonds. The balance sheet of the central banks will just balloon to the sky. They would be spreading fuel on the fire, given that their balance sheets would expand with rising inflation expectations. Yield Curve Control in an environment of rising inflation expectations is not going to happen.

You are saying that governments now control the supply of money, and it will be governments who will make sure policies of financial repression are successfully implemented. What will be the future role of central banks?

They will be sidelined. They will become more a regulatory than a monetary organization. The next few years will be fascinating. Imagine, you and I are running a central bank and we have a 2% inflation target. And we see our own government print money with a growth rate of 12%. What are we going to do to fulfill our mandate of price stability? We would have to threaten higher interest rates. We would have to ride a full-blown attack on our democratically elected government. Would we do that?

Paul Volcker did in the early 80s.

Yes. But Paul Volcker had courage. I don’t think any of today’s central bankers will have the guts to do that. After all, governments will argue that there is still an emergency given the shocks of Covid-19. There is a good parallel to the 1960s, when the Fed did nothing about rising inflation, because the US was fighting a war in Vietnam, and the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson had launched the Great Society Project to get America more equal. Against that background of massive fiscal spending, the Fed didn’t have the guts to run a tighter monetary policy. I can see that’s exactly where we are today.

So central banks will be mostly irrelevant?

Yes. It’s ironic: Most investors believe in the seemingly unlimited power of today’s central banks. But in fact, they are the least powerful they have ever been since 1977.

As an investor, how do I protect myself?

European inflation-linked bonds are pretty attractive now, because they are pricing in such low levels of inflation. Gold is obviously a go-to asset for the long term. In the next couple of years, equities will probably do well. A bit more inflation and more nominal growth is a good environment for equities. I particularly like Japanese equities. Obviously you wouldn’t buy government bonds under any condition.

How about commodities?

In a normal inflationary cycle, I’d recommend to buy commodities. There is just one complicating factor with China. If we really enter into a new Cold War with China, that will mean big disturbances in commodities markets.

You wrote in the past that there is a sweet spot for equities up to an inflation rate of 4%, before they tip over. Is this still valid?

Yes, this playbook is still in place. But once governments truly force their savings institutions to buy more government bonds, they will obviously have to sell something. And that something will be equities. Historically, inflation above 4% hasn’t been too good for equities.

How high do you see inflation going?

If we’re taking the next 10 years, I see inflation between 4 and 8%, somewhere around that. Compounded over ten years, combined with low interest rates, this will be hugely effective in bringing down debt to GDP levels.

In which country do you see it happening first? Who will lead?

The one I worry about the most is the UK. It has a significant current account deficit, it has to sell lots of government bonds to foreigners. I never really understood why foreigners buy them. I wouldn’t. Now we have Brexit coming up, which could still go badly. I don’t think it will, but it could. So we would see a spike in bond yields in the UK.

What will it take for an investor to successfully navigate the coming years?

First, we have to realize that this is a long term phenomenon. Everyone is so caught up in the current crisis, they miss the long term shift. This will be with us for decades, not just a couple of years. The financial system is a very different place now. And it’s a very dangerous place for savers. Most of the skills we have learned in the past 40 years are probably redundant, because we have lived through a 40 year disinflationary period. It was a period where markets became more important and governments less important. Now we are reversing that. That’s why I recommend to my clients that they promote the people from their emerging markets departments to run their developed world departments. Emerging markets investors know how to deal with higher levels of inflation, government interference and capital controls. This will be our future.

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

The Great Silence

The Great Silence

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar…

Published

on

The Great Silence

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower.

Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records.

Each one of these, and many more besides, are continued fallout from the pandemic response that began in March 2020. And yet here we are 38 months later and we still don’t have honesty or truth about the experience.

Officials have resigned, politicians have tumbled out of office and lifetime civil servants have departed their posts, but they don’t cite the great disaster as the excuse. There is always some other reason.

This is the period of the great silence. We’ve all noticed it. The stories in the press recounting all the above are conventionally scrupulous about naming the pandemic response much less naming the individuals responsible.

Maybe there is a Freudian explanation: things so obviously terrible and in such recent memory are too painful to mentally process, so we just pretend it didn’t happen. Plenty in power like this solution.

Everyone in a position of influence knows the rules. Don’t talk about the lockdowns. Don’t talk about the mask mandates. Don’t talk about the vaccine mandates that proved useless and damaging and led to millions of professional upheavals.

Don’t talk about the economics of it. Don’t talk about collateral damage. When the topic comes up, just say, “We did the best we could with the knowledge we had,” even if that is an obvious lie.

Above all, don’t seek justice.

Where’s the National Commission?

There is this document intended to be the “Warren Commission” of COVID slapped together by the old gangsters who advocated for lockdowns. It is called Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report.

The authors are people like Michael Callahan (Massachusetts General Hospital), Gary Edson (former deputy national security adviser), Richard Hatchett (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard University), Carter Mecher (Veterans Affairs), and Rajeev Venkayya (former Gates Foundation and now Aerium Therapeutics).

If you have been following this disaster, you might know at least some of the names. Years before 2020, they were pushing lockdowns as the solution for infectious disease. Some claim credit for having invented pandemic planning. The years 2020–2022 were their experiment.

As it was ongoing, they became media stars, pushing compliance, condemning as disinformation and misinformation anyone who disagreed with them. They were at the heart of the coup d’etat, as engineers or champions of it, that replaced representative democracy with quasi-martial law run by the administrative state.

The first sentence of the report is a complaint:

We were supposed to lay the groundwork for a National COVID Commission. The COVID Crisis Group formed at the beginning of 2021, one year into the pandemic. We thought the U.S. government would soon create or facilitate a commission to study the biggest global crisis so far in the 21st century. It has not.

That is true. There is no National COVID Commission. You know why? Because they could never get away with it, not with legions of experts and passionate citizens who wouldn’t tolerate a coverup.

The public anger is too intense. Lawmakers would be flooded with emails, phone calls and daily expressions of disgust. It would be a disaster. An honest commission would demand answers that the ruling class is not prepared to give. An “official commission” perpetuating a bunch of baloney would be dead on arrival.

This by itself is a huge victory and a tribute to indefatigable critics.

‘We Didn’t Crack Down Hard Enough’

Instead, the “COVID Crisis Group” met with funding from the Rockefeller and Charles Koch foundations and slapped together this report. Despite being celebrated as definitive by The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has mostly had no impact at all.

It is far from obtaining the status of being some kind of canonical assessment. It reads like they were on deadline, fed up, typed lots of words and called it a day.

Of course it is whitewash.

It begins with a bang to denounce the U.S. policy response: “Our institutions did not meet the moment. They did not have adequate practical strategies or capabilities to prevent, to warn, to defend their communities or fight back in a coordinated way, in the United States and globally.”

Mistakes were made, as they say.

Of course the upshot of this kvetching is not to criticize what Justice Neil Gorsuch calls “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” They hardly mention those at all.

Instead they conclude that the U.S. should have surveilled more, locked down sooner (“We believe that on Jan. 28 the U.S. government should have started mobilizing for a possible COVID war”), directed more funds to this agency rather than that and centralized the response so that rogue states like South Dakota and Florida could not evade centralized authoritarian diktats next time.

The authors propose a series of lessons that are anodyne, bloodless and carefully crafted to be more-or-less true but ultimately structured to minimize the sheer radicalism and destructiveness of what they favored and did. The lessons are clichés such as we need “not just goals but road maps,” and next time we need more “situation awareness.”

There is no new information in the book that I could find, unless something is hidden therein that escaped my notice. It’s more interesting for what it does not say. Some words that never appear in the text: Sweden, ivermectin, ventilators, remdesivir and myocarditis.

‘Look, Lockdowns and Mandates Worked!’

Perhaps this gives you a sense of the book and its mission. And on matters of the lockdowns, readers are forced to endure claims such as “all of New England — Massachusetts, the city of Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — seem to us to have done relatively well, including their ad hoc crisis management setups.”

Oh really! Boston destroyed thousands of small businesses and imposed vaccine passports, closed churches, persecuted people for holding house parties, and imposed travel restrictions. There is a reason why the authors don’t elaborate on such preposterous claims. They are simply unsustainable.

One amusing feature seems to me to be a foreshadowing of what is coming. They throw Anthony Fauci under the bus with sniffy dismissals: “Fauci was vulnerable to some attacks because he tried to cover the waterfront in briefing the press and public, stretching beyond his core expertise—and sometimes it showed.”

Ooooh, burn!

“Trump Was a Comorbidity”

This is very likely the future. At some point, Fauci will be scapegoated for the whole disaster. He will be assigned to take the fall for what is really the failure of the national security arm of the administrative bureaucracy, which in fact took charge of all rule-making from March 13, 2020, onward, along with their intellectual cheerleaders. The public health people were just there to provide cover.

Curious about the political bias of the book? It is summed up in this passing statement: “Trump was a comorbidity.”

Oh how highbrow! How clever! No political bias here!

Maybe this book by the Covid Crisis Group hopes to be the last word. This will never happen. We are only at the beginning of this. As the economic, social, cultural, and political problems mount, it will become impossible to ignore the incredibly obvious.

The masters of lockdowns are influential and well-connected but not even they can invent their own reality.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 16:00

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Pandemic babies’ developmental milestones: Not as bad as we feared, but not as good as before

Research findings are mostly reassuring for parents — despite the disruptions to nearly every aspect of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, most children…

Scientists and physicians raised concerns early in the pandemic that increased parental stress, COVID infections, reduced interactions with other babies and adults, and changes to health care may affect child development. (Shutterstock)

The COVID-19 pandemic created conditions that threatened children’s healthy development.

Scientists and physicians raised concerns early in the pandemic, pointing out that increased parental stress, COVID infections, reduced interactions with other babies and adults and changes to health care could affect child development. Furthermore, some children could be especially vulnerable to the pandemic circumstances.

With these concerns in mind, we started a longitudinal study of pregnant Canadians to understand how pandemic stressors might influence later child development.

Our initial findings were alarming: the rates of anxiety and depression among pregnant individuals were two to four times higher during the early phase of the pandemic compared to numerous pregnancy studies prior to the pandemic. This worrisome increase in mental health problems was seen worldwide.

Impact on children’s development

To determine how the pandemic might be affecting children’s development, we measured developmental milestones in 3,742 12-month-old infants born during the first 18 months of the pandemic. We then compared these infants to a similar group of 2,898 Canadian infants born between 2015 and 2018.

A pregnant woman and a doctor both wearing face masks in the doctor's office
Rates of anxiety and depression among pregnant individuals were two to four times higher during the early phase of the pandemic compared to numerous pregnancy studies prior to the pandemic. (Shutterstock)

The study evaluated developmental milestones using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3. The ASQ-3 is a parent report of child behaviour that can help identify children at risk of developmental delays in five separate domains: Communication, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Personal-Social and Problem Solving.

In a study to be published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, we found that most children born during the pandemic were doing fine, with almost 90 per cent meeting their key developmental milestones in each area. This should be reassuring for parents, caregivers and communities, because it suggests that most children are developing normally despite adverse early circumstances.

However, a slightly higher proportion of children born during the pandemic were at risk of developmental delay in Communication, Gross Motor and Personal-Social domains, compared to children born before the pandemic. Our findings are consistent with prior smaller studies showing only small increases in the risk for poor verbal, motor and cognitive performance among 12-month-old infants born during the pandemic.

A woman smiling and playing with her baby in her lap
Engaging an infant in conversation or song (even a pre-verbal infant) is a powerful way to encourage language learning. (Shutterstock)

The largest effects we observed were in the Communication and Personal-Social domains. Infants born during the pandemic were almost twice as likely to score below cutoffs compared to pre-pandemic infants.

This represents an increase of about one to two additional children in 100 who are at risk, but highlights some potentially concerning effects of the pandemic on early child development. Across Canada, this could result in service demands for 20,000-40,000 additional preschool children.

Although small in absolute terms, these increases have important implications, since already limited resources will need to increase to meet the needs of more children. Certainly, it will be important to continue monitoring infants/children born during the pandemic to determine how long-lasting these effects are.

Reassuringly, early interventions can be highly effective for children who are struggling.

Concerns about child development

A smiling baby crawling towards the camera in the foreground, and a young man smiling in the background
Provide your child with many opportunities for one-on-one interaction with a caring and responsive adult. (Shutterstock)

Parents should be mostly reassured by these findings. Despite the disruptions to nearly every aspect of life during the pandemic, the majority of children continue to show healthy development. Parents with concerns about their child’s development may find these suggestions helpful:

  1. Provide your child with many opportunities for one-on-one interaction with a caring and responsive adult. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child describes the back-and-forth interactions that form the key processes of child development as “serve and return.”

  2. Believe in “ordinary magic.” This is the phrase that child development expert Ann Masten uses to describe how resilience emerges from ordinary, everyday processes and interactions. Children develop resilience when they have access to the right environments, the right relationships and the right chances to be able to safely explore themselves and the world around them.

  3. Talk and sing with your child. Engaging an infant in conversation or song (even a pre-verbal infant) is a powerful way to encourage language learning.

  4. There is a wide range of development that is considered “normal.” It is okay for your child to be at a different stage than other children their age, as long as your child is still showing signs of development.

  5. If you are concerned about your child’s development after some time of monitoring, discuss your concerns with a qualified health professional to determine if further investigation is needed.

Overall, the findings of our study (and others) suggest that the effects of the pandemic on infant development (at least to one year of age) have not been as bad as we feared. However, a greater number of children will likely require further evaluation and support compared to pre-pandemic.

Gerald Giesbrecht receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation.

Catherine Lebel receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Brain Canada, the Azrieli Foundation, Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation, and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Brain Canada, Calgary Health Trust, the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation and the Weston Foundation.

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Nasdaq statistics in 2023

The Nasdaq is the world’s largest electronic stock exchange and second-largest stock exchange globally in terms of market capitalization behind the New…

Published

on

The Nasdaq is the world’s largest electronic stock exchange and second-largest stock exchange globally in terms of market capitalization behind the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).  It was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in New York City. The Nasdaq stock exchange lists over 3,500 companies, including many of the world’s leading technology companies.

The Nasdaq Composite Index, which is the largest index on the Nasdaq, measures all domestic and international common type stocks. The market-capitalization-weighted index is the second-largest stock market index in the world, after the S&P 500. 

In terms of performance, Nasdaq stocks have often outperformed the broader stock market, with the Nasdaq 100 doing better than the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average in recent years. 

Here is a summary of key Nasdaq stocks statistics for 2023.

Key takeaways

  • More than 3,500 companies are listed on Nasdaq.
  • Nasdaq’s listed companies have a total market capitalization of $25.3 trillion.
  • Over 4.3 billion shares are traded daily on the Nasdaq exchange.
  • Technology stocks make up more than half of companies in the Nasdaq Composite. 
  • The Nasdaq 100 index comprises the largest 100 companies traded on the Nasdaq, with nearly 60% being in the tech sector.

Nasdaq stocks: market summary

1.There are over 3,500 companies listed on Nasdaq

More than 3,500 companies are listed on the NASDAQ stock market. According to this FactSheet by Nasdaq, these companies represent a wide variety of industries, including technology, healthcare, and financial services.

2. The market capitalization of the nasdaq stock market is $25.3 trillion

The total market capitalization of all Nasdaq stocks is $25.3 trillion (as of May 29, 2023). This is the second-largest market capitalization in the stock exchange industry, only behind the NYSE. Compared in terms of growth, the Nasdaq shows a faster pace since January 2018, when it had a market cap of about $11 trillion. The NYSE had a market cap of $23 trillion at the time.

3. Over $200 billion worth of stocks trade on Nasdaq daily

In 2023, an average of over $200 billion worth of stocks were traded on Nasdaq daily, with $290 billion traded on 25 May 2023. 

4. An average of 4.3 billion shares are traded daily on Nasdaq

According to daily market data for Nasdaq, an average of 4.3 billion shares in volume are traded daily on the Nasdaq exchange.

5. There are over 1000 international stocks listed on the Nasdaq

There are a total of 1,000 foreign companies listed on the Nasdaq stock market. These companies represent a wide variety of countries, including China, India, and Japan.

Nasdaq markets and indices stats

6. Nasdaq operates 29 markets, a clearinghouse, and 5 central securities depositories

The Nasdaq’s operations encompass 29 markets for stocks, bonds, derivatives and commodities.  It also operates a clearinghouse and five central securities depositories.

7. Nasdaq’s trading technology is used by over 100 exchanges globally

Nasdaq’s growth as a leading electronic stock exchange has seen its proprietary trading technology deployed by 100 exchanges across 50 countries.

8. Nasdaq trades under the ticker NDAQ and part of the S&P 500 since 2008

The Nasdaq Inc stock trades under the symbol NDAQ on the Nasdaq exchange. The company has also been a component of the S&P 500 Index since 2008.

9. The Nasdaq has two major indexes

Nasdaq has two major indexes that track the performance of Nasdaq stocks daily. There’s the Nasdaq Composite and the Nasdaq 100. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tracks most securities on the Nasdaq exchange (except for mutual funds, preferred stocks, and derivatives).  

10. More than half of Nasdaq Composite stocks are tech companies

Tech stocks account for 52% of the total market weight of Nasdaq Composite, with 457 tech companies currently making up the index. Consumer Discretionary is next with about 18% and 450 stocks while healthcare is the third largest with 9% and 1,078 companies.

11. About 6 out of 10 companies in Nasdaq 100 are tech stocks

Nearly 60%, or approximately six out of every 10 of the companies that make up the Nasdaq 100 are in the technology sector.  

12. Apple is the top stock by market capitalization in the Nasdaq Composite

The top 3 components on the Nasdaq Composite are Apple, Microsoft and Amazon with 13.2%, 10.87% and 5.36% respectively. Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet and Meta Platforms are in the top 10. Apple has a market capitalization of $2.76 trillion. 

Nasdaq IPOs and ETFs

13. A total of 156 IPOs went live on Nasdaq in 2022

There were a total of 156 IPOs on the NASDAQ stock market in 2022. According to market details the exchange’s website, there were also 29 exchange transfers.

14. IPOs on Nasdaq raised $2.1 billion in Q1, 2023

IPOs statistics show the Nasdaq attracted $2.1 billion in new listings in the first quarter of 2023, making the stock exchange the fourth largest in Q1.

15. The Nasdaq also lists more than 2,300 ETFs

There are a total of 2,300 etf listings on the Nasdaq stock market. These etfs track a wide variety of asset classes, including stocks, bonds, and commodities.

Nasdaq stocks: performance, key milestones and facts

16. The Nasdaq Composite stocks are 24% up year-to-date

As of May 2023, the Nasdaq Composite has returned over 24%, with gains in the past month nearly at 7%.

17. The Nasdaq Composite’s YTD return is higher than that of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average

This Nasdaq statistic will surprise investors, but the 24% year-to-date returns for the Nasdaq Composite index are higher than the 9.97% for the S&P 500 and -0.13% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

18. Nasdaq-100 ‘s YTD and 1-Year returns are 13% and 32% respectively

Over the past year, the Nasdaq-100 Index has returned roughly 13% after most stocks dipped in 2022 amid economic and geopolitical headwinds headlined by rising inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war. However, the index is 32% up so far (as of May 29, 2023).

19. NVIDIA, Meta and Tesla are the best performing Nasdaq stocks in 2023 so far

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is the best performing mega cap on Nasdaq with 172% YTD return so far. It was followed by Meta (NASDAQ:META) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), up 110% and 78%, respectively. Nvidia’s stock exploded in May as the company highlighted major revenue gains in coming quarters due to demand for AI-powered chips.

20. Nasdaq-100 Index stocks have added just 101% in five years

Over a 5-year time frame, the Nasdaq-100 Index has yielded a positive return of 101%. The period with the sharpest climb for the index in the last five years was between March 2020 and November 2021.

21. Nasdaq-100 Index’s 10-year return is about 358%

The NASDAQ-100 Index has returned +358.37% over a 10-year period and an impressive +3,088% since May 1995.

22. Nasdaq Composite stocks have returned about 71% in the past five years

Nasdaq statistics over the past five years show that the Nasdaq Composite Index has gained 71% in that period and 285% over the past 10 years. Since 1983 (40 years), the index has gained by over 4,000%. This suggests that investing over extended time frames can come with considerable returns on investments.

23. Nasdaq’s largest point increase: 760.97 points

On October 11, 2022, the Nasdaq Composite witnessed an unprecedented positivity to record a historic surge. The index closed a staggering 760.97 points higher, marking its largest ever single-day points increase.

24. The Nasdaq Composite declined 13.3% in April 2022, its worst monthly performance since October 2008

After notching its all-time high in November 2021, the Nasdaq Composite declined sharply by 23%. This included a 13.3% dip in April 2022 that was the index’s worst monthly return since October 2008. At the time, it had fallen 17.4% as the global financial crisis raged.

25. The largest single-day points decrease for Nasdaq Composite was 970.28 points

The Nasdaq Composite experienced its most substantial single-day points drop on March 16, 2020. Amid the global panic due to the covid-19 pandemic, the index plummeted by 970.28 points.

26. Nasdaq’s highest daily trading volume was over 12 billion trades

January 27, 2021, stands as a historic day for Nasdaq in terms of trading volume. On this day, the total trading volume reached a record-breaking 12,030,107,207 trades.

Conclusion

The Nasdaq stock market is currently one of the most important stock exchanges in the world. It is home to a wide variety of companies, lists thousands of companies and its indexes have outperformed the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average in recent years. 

The strong performance of the Nasdaq stock market is due to a number of factors, including the growth of the technology and healthcare sectors. This sees the Nasdaq Composite Index up over 24% year-to-date.

In terms of investment, the Nasdaq is a popular choice for investors who are looking for exposure to growth stocks and international exposure as it lists over 1000 companies from more than 100 countries.

The post Nasdaq statistics in 2023 appeared first on Invezz.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending