We’re inundated with bad or scary news all the time. It’s everywhere we look. And to be honest, it’s simply good media and marketing strategy.
A study of 105,000 headlines and 370 million impressions found that each additional negative word in a headline increased the click-through rate by 2.3%. The study showed that headlines containing positive language are significantly less likely to be clicked on. They even compared the effect of negative words across different topics and analysis revealed that people are especially likely to consume political and economic news when it is negative.
However, with this particular newsletter, I don’t care too much about click-through rates.
So, to act as a counterbalance, I figured I’d share some good news in the form of encouraging economic graphs.
Let’s start with the stock market. The U.S. stock market is up over 18% since January.
Not too shabby for a short seven-month stretch. The S&P 500 is also up over 26% since last October.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, many people still remain convinced that an economic downturn is just around the corner. And they may be right. But people have been worried about an upcoming recession for almost two years now.
If you had acted on those worries by cashing out of your investments or stopping contributions to your investment accounts at any point over the past year, you would have missed out on some significant investment growth.
Amidst all of this fear and concern, the stock market has quietly been on a positive run.
The other nice thing about this current economic environment is that the stock market hasn’t been the only place to get a return on your money.
There are a myriad of high-yield savings accounts offering an annual 4%+ return on your cash. This is an easy way to earn money on your emergency fund or any extra cash on hand that you don’t want to expose to the risks of the stock market.
Remember how frightening inflation and high gas prices were last year?
Well, they’ve both been on a consistent downward trend over the past year:
It took 16 months for the inflation rate to go from under 3% to over 9%. It’s taken just 12 months to go from over 9% to under 3%.
Gas prices are down almost 30% from the peak in the middle of 2022:
Many people thought that in order to get inflation under control we would have to see millions of people lose their jobs first.
However, this hasn’t been the case. Inflation has been falling while the unemployment rate has remained steady. As of now, inflation is lower than the unemployment rate:
We currently have the lowest unemployment rate in America since 1969:
Now, could some of this positive economic news turn around in a few months? Sure. We will have a recession at some point. On average, a recession has occurred once every 5.9 years dating back to World War II. Economic contractions are a feature not a bug of our economic system.
Yes, consumer sentiment about the future of the economy remains pretty gloomy. But the good news is people are historically terrible at predicting market and economic performance.
And for one final piece of good news, there’s an awesome Mission Impossible movie out in theaters right now that you can go see with your family when you’re wanting to take a break from the hot summer sun.
Thanks for reading!