Charts today - US economic observations, volatility, geopolitics, fragility, deals and the best investors in the world (historically)

Charts today starts with a few US-based observations.  I am still trying to understand if Janet Yellen said anything particularly different or interesting yesterday but I was struck by this comment:

'Too many Americans remain unemployed, inflation remains below our longer-run objective'

Mix that in with the recent trend in monthly seasonally adjusted retail sales...

March +1.5%, April +0.6%, May +0.5%, June +0.2%

...and no wonder @Fullcarry can make the interesting observation that:
              

'It takes more than 95 hours of average hourly earnings to buy the SP500. It was higher only during the tech bubble'

 

 

Of course despite all this volatility remains low versus history as nicely captured by GaveKal Capital in this posting.  The most striking chart however is this one...or the asset class that is showing a volatility spike:

 

 

 As I have noted a number of times recently geopolitics is a volatility concern as shown well here...

...and inevitably that leads to fragility.  At first glance this looks as our 'gut feel' should suggest...

 

...but via this interesting write-up here perhaps we should start to realise that just like geopolitics and global economic power matters are getting much more mixed up:

 

'A look back at Ukraine’s 2013 score, for instance, gives no evidence that the country was about to be carved up. In 2010, states like Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia fell into the same bracket as Brazil, Turkey, and Russia. Another way perhaps to avoid its perennial failure at anticipating events is for the index to examine provinces, given the vast amount of sub-variation within countries. That might require a messier map of the world, but at least it would be more accurate (and account for what anthropologists call “alternatively governed” spaces)'

 

To bring it back to volatility this all suggests the scope for much greater variation than we have seen in the last few years.

 

(h/t for highlighting the article to @patriciavalerio)

       

More deals ('best since YTD '07') but did anyone notice how hard both Reynolds American and Lorillard fell yesterday?  (as an aside I will be posting today on the implications for Imperial Tobacco aka the potential winners from the deal). 

(h/t @dealintel)

Finally, if you make this chart...then you have done rather well as an investor!

 

(h/t @harrimanhouse)