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Great analysis on a very confusing landscape. Most people don't get the meanings of the underlying numbers in these jobs and unemployment reports. There's much more to it than the political headlines. Add to that the weirdness of our economic and inflation universe right now and you get a lot of misunderstandings. I will offer one opinion.

In a kind of, sort of defense of corporate profits... I think that many companies are taking larger profits and holding them in self-defense. They don't know where all this is heading and the smart ones are banking capital reserves to stay alive.

On one side, let's look at Meta. They just announced over 11,000 people were going to get laid off and major restructuring and realignment within the company. They were caught with their pants down and need to take drastic action to survive this weirdness.

On the OTHER side, the Oil & Gas industries have record profits and are retaining massive amounts of cash and other assets. Why? Because they do not know what the government has in store for them. They need to be ready AND ABLE to jump and pivot or reinvest when the landscape becomes visible to them. I know this doesn't make it any better for us in the short term, but it may mean everything in the long term.

Thanks for the article. It was great. David

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