This story explains what BETA is, shares a list of 16 negative BETA stocks for the past year, then shares what it means to investors. BETA is the measure of the systematic risk, or degree to which a stock moved as a multiple of the overall stock market. …

There are around 300 unique categories of spend that are tracked and reported monthly by the US Department of Commerce here. Although total spend increased $144B from June to July 2023, we were interested in where consumers were cutting spending. We downloaded that data in a .csv …

The lower income US consumer is shifting their spend to consumables and increasing theft at the ‘value’ stores designed to serve them. Dollar General issued a press release today, August 31, 2023, which had 19,488 stores as of August 4, 2023. “Same-store sales in the second quarter of 2023 included declines in each of the home, seasonal, and apparel categories, partially offset by growth in the consumables category.”

Consumer spending grew significantly faster than disposable personal income in July. According to the US Commerce Department (here) personal income increased $45B (0.2%) while consumer spending increased $145B (0.8%). Personal savings was 3.5% of disposable personal income, down from 4.2% the previous month. In short, the consumer fell $100B behind in July. — Personal income was flat (0.0%) in July but personal consumption expenditures rose 0.6%, after accounting for inflation.

By Jeffrey Cohen, President and Founder, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. A consultancy and investment advisory firm. This story is a mirror image of our last story, where we spoke about forces pushing stocks lower. Of the 14 factors, most today are supporting the market’s push higher. …

Many corporate updates In the past few days. This management team moves very quickly. Will share more in either an update or new post.

By Jeffrey Cohen, President and Founder, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. A consultancy and investment advisory firm. We read about investors betting that US stocks will go lower. We see seemingly rational people call a top and say that stocks will fall. …

By Jeffrey Cohen, President and Founder, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. A consultancy and investment advisory firm. Today we ran our model after selecting for US-listed common stocks from profitable companies with a positive book value whose shares traded continuously for the past year. …

By Jeffrey Cohen, President and Founder, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. A consultancy and investment advisory firm. There is no edge when you remove risky companies in your stock portfolio. Last night we updated our Chicago Quantum Net Score to reflect market conditions. US stock indices are showing weakness and…