The Wednesday Letter #193 - 11/8/2023

THIS WEEK: The Year 2024; Return to Manila; Trump vs. Biden; Amazon; S&P Sectors Update; Tweets & Charts.

THE YEAR 2024

The year 2024 is less than eight weeks away and it promises to be an important year in several respects.

There are now two hot wars in Ukraine and in Gaza that cannot be considered regional. Each has the potential to involve other nations and to expand well beyond its current purposes. This risk is compounded by the fact that the secondary actors are the same in both conflicts, the US and its allies on one side, and the new axis of Russia and Iran (and China to a lesser degree) on the other. The optimist will expect that both wars will end in 2024. The pessimist will expect that they will grind on and that one of them will expand.

Then there is the state of the global economy, driven by its two giants, the US and China. The US economy has been surprisingly resilient and is showing signs of reacceleration. But this new vitality can be attributed in large part to 1) high government spending and 2) spending by the 1% and the 0.1% wealthiest consumers. It is not ideal to have e…