Founder, EPB Research. Business cycle research that helps investors separate economic noise from changes that materially alter recession and market risk.
Joined February 2015
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New home supply looks like 2008, but it isn't.
In 2009, 48% of new homes for sale were completed.
Today, only 23% are completed, and 24% haven't been started.
Margins are under pressure, but builders are absorbing it slowly rather than sitting on finished homes.
I go through the full picture, including builder margins and why construction jobs have held up, in this week's free EPB newsletter.
Sign up here: epbresearch.com/newsletter
Eric Basmajian retweeted
The current economic situation has been confounding to me. Eric has been illuminating.
Jobless claims are running below 2023, 2024, and 2025 for the same week.
172K last week vs. 206K a year ago.
Layoffs remain extremely low.
Hiring is soft, creating some labor market tension, particularly for youth, but the labor market remains low-fire.
Builders have 279,000 homes approved to build but haven't started.
That's 2.37 months of permits, near the highest in 25+ years.
Builders don't sit on approvals when demand is strong.
Housing is the weakest part of the economy and the path to a downturn, not AI.
Eric Basmajian retweeted
Since late 2022, output per worker in the three most AI-intensive industries has grown 5% annually, more than double its historical pace and well above the 1.3% growth recorded across the rest of the private sector.
Source: @EPBResearch
The number of apartment units under construction still outpaces single-family units under construction.
Layoffs Are Near Record Lows.
So Why Is It So Hard to Find a Job?
youtu.be/ddqBWIKcQ4c?si=TTA5…
Residential construction remains depressed.
But housing starts normally decline more sharply ahead of recessionary periods than they have today.
Eric Basmajian retweeted
The stock market is valued at 34.2x corporate profits.
That’s a record, higher than the 33.4x peak in early 2000.
But valuations tell you very little about whether a recession is coming.
What they do tell you is how much damage a recession does...
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The stock market is valued at 34.2x corporate profits.
That’s a record, higher than the 33.4x peak in early 2000.
But valuations tell you very little about whether a recession is coming.
What they do tell you is how much damage a recession does...
1/
And recessions don't spontaneously occur, and they are not caused by high valuations alone.
Recessions are a process that spread from changes in money & credit that ripple through a group of select cyclical sectors like construction and manufacturing.
Unemployment in those early cyclical sectors creates downstream economic and credit stress.
9/
Job losses are the key, and they begin in a narrow group of highly cyclical sectors.
Every month at EPB, we outline the forward 6-12 month recession risk based on a combination of leading and cyclical indicators, corporate profits, and early-stage job losses.
If you're interested, you can sample the research and get in touch with us during a 7-day free trial.
epbresearch.com/research/
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