Breathing Exercises, Consumer Credit, Consumer Sentiment, Consumer Price Index, Tariffs, Billionaires, Easter, and who is Samir Mane?
Breathe In, Breathe Out…
I think we’ve finally found some sort of support for the stock market. It appears that everyone has revealed that their expert opinion on how tariffs will affect the market is what is commonly known as a WAG, or Wild Ass Guess.
It’s a financial term used by middle management when senior management asks how they came up with their sales projections.
Evidently, it can also be applied to the estimation of the economic effects of tariffs. But I digress…
Back to stuff we can measure.
Consumer Credit – In January, consumer credit (revolving credit and term loans) increased by $8,900,000,000. Expectations for February were that it would increase another $15,500,000,000. So what happened? It dropped by $810,000,000.
Revolving credit, such as credit cards, saw a slight 0.1% increase while term debt (car loans, mortgages, etc) saw a 0.3% reduction.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that a record 11.12% of credit card accounts were making the minimum payments necessary, an increase from the previous month.
Cash could be tightening up.
Consumer sentiment continues to slide. Tariffs will do that.
It was 57% in March and was expected to go to 55%. For April, it dropped to 50.8%.
It’ll be interesting to see what it is for May.
Meanwhile, in other news that was completely overlooked by the focus on tariffs…
The Consumer Price Index for March was released. Drum roll please….
The CPI year over year came in at 2.4%, down from 2.8% the month before. It was expected to be 2.6%.
Core CPI – that’s CPI without food or fuel factored in – fell from 3.1% to 2.8%. 3% was expected. Good news, indeed.
Let’s leave on that note.
Tariff Trivial Pursuit
China imported $1,400,000,000 in rice in 2023. Considering that tariffs on rice from the USA were 1%, how much of that $1.4 billion came from the USA?
$44.
That’s not a typo. Ask ChatGPT.
You can fit $44 of rice in your carry-on going to Beijing. Now that I think about it, that’s probably how it got in. I’m betting that person was ‘detained’.
Why so little? Because of conditions that are put on American rice that make it impossible for the US to export to China. That’s also known as a trade barrier.
Just throwing that out there. China can put 125% tariffs on rice, or anything else, but 125% of nothing is still nothing.
Millionaires and Billionaires!
Well, maybe just billionaires. As of three weeks ago, anyway.
Forbes came out with its latest list of billionaires around the world.
There are 3,028 of them. That’s a lot.
That’s 247 more than last year.
Newcomers include Schwarzenegger, Springsteen and Jerry Seinfeld.
I guess 2024 was a good year for entertainment.
The richest? Elon at $342 billion.
#2 at $216 billion is Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) is #3 with $215 billion, and Larry Ellison (Oracle) is #4 at $192 billion.
Bernard Arnault (Louis Vuitton-Moet-Hennessy) wraps up the top 5 at a paltry $178 billion.
The United States has the most billionaires, with 902, China has 516, and India has 205.
32 died last year resulting in at least one widow newcomer coming in at $31 billion.
Speaking of women, there are 406 female billionaires.
The richest is Alice Walton at $101 billion – yes, that is a Walmart Walton.
The wealthiest self-made female billionaire is Rafaela Aponte-Diamant at $37.7 billion.
She buys ports. Not the wine, the ones that ships park in.
Including two in Panama.
The youngest self-made billionaire is Alexandr Wang at 28 years old with $2 billion.
You know you are rich when you can arbitrarily leave vowels out of your name.
The youngest billionaire is 19-year-old Johannes Von Baumbach. $5.4 billion.
Albania picked up its first billionaire.
107 fell out of the list. It doesn’t suck to be them anyway.
Easter Week
If you are a business owner, the odds are pretty good that at some point you’ve prayed to make payroll, get that loan, or win that big contract.
Coincidentally, this week is the holiest week of the year for 62% of U.S. adults.
That’s the percentage of U.S. adults who identify as Christian.
29% are religiously non-affiliated. Otherwise known as “nones”.
7% make up other faiths, such as Judaism at 2%, and Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism at 1% each.
In case you are curious, Passover ends the same day as Easter this year.
Just in case you wonder why your favorite store is closed this Sunday, like: Costco, Target, Apple, Best Buy, Staples, Sam’s Club, Target and Lowe’s, to name a few.
Who is Samir Mane?
He was born in 1967 in Albania, then under communist rule.
He received his degree in geology and mining, and with the fall of communism in 1991 (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”), he saw an opportunity and left Albania to go to Austria, where he worked as an interpreter.
He recognized he was making some serious connections and he learned from the contacts he made.
In 1993, he identified a burgeoning demand for electronic goods in post-communist Albania, so as any good entrepreneur would do, he founded Alba Trade.
This venture rapidly expanded, evolving into Albatrade, a leading name in Albania's electronics market.
This laid the foundation for the BALFIN Group (Balkan Finance Investment Group), established in Austria. Under Mane's leadership, BALFIN diversified into sectors such as retail, real estate, tourism, and banking.
Long story short, he is Albania’s first billionaire.
Funny what can happen when you take away the constraints of the communist state.
For many of us, it’s a special week where family gets together to celebrate Easter; we will host 28 at our house. That’s a lot of family, so there may or may not be a Russell Report next week. Regardless, use this week (and next) to reflect on what makes you and your business successful, whether it’s your own skill set, a reliance on your team, or other factors. Now see if you can improve on that.
Have a wonderful Easter!
