Global Research Unlocked

Construction spend strong on structural tailwinds

Construction spending, excluding housing, is running at a rate of about $1-$1.2 billion annually, near record levels. Much of this spend is driven by recently passed legislative acts, according to Mike Feniger. But reshoring and AI are also having significant positive impact and the annualized capex for big tech has increased from $138 billion to $229 billion in just a year. Still, ...

GenAI: Coming Soon to a Sector Near You

Alkesh Shah views Generative AI (GenAI) as the beginning of the third major tech cycle of the past 50 years. Over the past 10 years, development of more powerful chips and a new neural network architecture has raised the upper bounds of storage and computation exponentially, consequently reducing the time and cost to train increasingly large models powering apps like ChatGPT. Alkesh expects G...

Labor market remains key to consumption

Discretionary services grew unusually quickly as the economy reopened and savings buffers were high. In 2023, spending received another boost in the form of the Social Security cost of living adjustment, which contributed to rapid 4% GDP growth in the second half of the year. But now, things are slowing to a more normal, trend-like pace of 2%. And there's evidence to suggest that after outsiz...

A weakening relationship between nat gas and temps

In the US, natural gas has struggled for nearly two years to cope with a storage surplus. Meanwhile, solar power generation has jumped to new highs. These are among the reasons that natural gas prices have languished despite growth in US electricity demand. And growth in solar capacity has weakened the formerly positive relationship between summer temps and gas prices. Francisco Bl...

Value in Vegas has kept consumer demand resilient

The number of people traveling by air in the US continues to make records, but some airlines have posted disappointing results. That's because pricing has been weak as airline capacity has grown faster than demand. Andrew Didora does expect that airline capacity growth will slow after the summer, easing these pressures. But while demand for airline seats continues to make new highs,...

Slam dunk for streaming media in acquiring NBA rights

Earlier this month, Head of US Media and Entertainment Research Jessica Reif Ehrlich hosted her annual Media in Montauk conference. As is typical, discussions at the conference were most focused on long-term trends and strategy. Women's sports got a lot of focus, especially as the WNBA has seen rising ratings an...

Volume picture better for restaurants than packaged food

Food companies are seeing negative volumes, both in their grocery businesses and their food service businesses. The volume picture looks a bit better for the largest restaurants but it's also sluggish. Consumers seem to be economizing more than they were a year or two ago, one way is by eating more leftovers, or eating breakfast at home, and that poses some important question...