That’s the takeaway from a major study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine. Scientists led by a team from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that people who most closely adhered to at least one of four healthy eating patterns were less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, cancer or respiratory disease compared with people who did not adhere as closely to these diets. They were also less likely to die of any cause.
“These findings support the recommendations of Dietary Guidelines for Americans that multiple healthy eating patterns can be adapted to individual food traditions and preferences,” the researchers concluded, adding that the results were consistent across different racial and ethnic groups. The eating habits and mortality rates of more than 75,000 women from 1984 to 2020 over 44,000 men from 1986 to 2020 were included in the study.
The four diets studied were the Healthy Eating Index, the Alternate Mediterranean Diet, the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index and the Alternate Healthy Eating Index. All four share some components, including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. But there are also differences: For instance, the Alternate Mediterranean Diet encourages fish consumption, and the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index discourages eating meat.
The Alternate Mediterranean Diet is adapted from the original Mediterranean Diet, which includes olive oil (which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids), fruits, nuts, cereals, vegetables, legumes and fish. It allows for moderate consumption of alcohol and dairy products but low consumption of sweets and only the occasional serving of red meat. The alternate version, meanwhile, cuts out dairy entirely, only includes whole grains and uses the same alcohol-intake guideline for men and women, JAMA says.
The world’s ‘best diets’ overlap with study results
The Mediterranean Diet consistently ranks No. 1 in the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Diets ranking, which looks at seven criteria: short-term weight loss, long-term weight loss, effectiveness in preventing cardiovascular disease, effectiveness in preventing diabetes, ease of compliance, nutritional completeness and health risks. The 2023 list ranks the top three diets as the Mediterranean Diet, the DASH Diet and the Flexitarian Diet.
The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Diet recommends fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, poultry, fish and low-fat dairy products and restricts salt, red meat, sweets and sugar-sweetened beverages. The Flexitarian Diet is similar to the other diets in that it’s mainly vegetarian, but it allows the occasional serving of meat or fish. All three diets are associated with improved metabolic health, lower blood pressure and reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the latest study, said it’s critical to examine the associations between the U.S. government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans and long-term health. “Our findings will be valuable for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which is being formed to evaluate current evidence surrounding different eating patterns and health outcomes,” he said.
Reducing salt intake is a good place to start. In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration issued new guidance for restaurants and food manufacturers to, over a two-and-a-half-year period, voluntarily reduce the amount of sodium in their food to help consumers stay under a limit of 3,000 milligrams per day — still higher than the recommended daily allowance. Americans consume around 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day, on average, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people consume less than 2,300 milligrams each day.
Related: Eating 400 calories a day from these foods could raise your dementia risk by over 20%
Now might be the time to consider hiding out in short-dated Treasurys or corporate bonds and other defensive parts of the stock market.
On Friday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell talked of a willingnessto inflict “some pain” on households and businesses in an unusually blunt Jackson Hole speech that hinted at a 1970s-style inflation debacle, unless the central bank can rein in sizzling price gains running near the highest levels in four decades.
Read: Fed’s Powell says bringing down inflation will cause pain to households and businesses in Jackson Hole speech
Powell’s strident stance had strategists searching for the best possible plays that investors can make, which may include government notes, energy and financial stocks, and emerging-market assets.
The Fed chair’s willingness to essentially break parts of the U.S. economy to curb inflation “obviously benefits the front end” of the Treasury market, where rates are moving higher in conjunction with expectations for Fed rate hikes, said Daniel Tenengauzer, head of markets strategy for BNY Mellon in New York.
To his point, the 2-year Treasury yield
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3.384%
hit its highest level since June 14 on Friday, at 3.391%, after Powell’s speech — reaching a level last seen when the S&P 500 officially entered a bear market.
Investors might consider making a play for the front end of credit markets, like commercial paper, and leveraged loans, which are floating-rate instruments — all of which take advantage of the “most clear direction in markets right now,” Tenengauzer said via phone. He’s also seeing demand for Latin American currencies and equities, considering central banks in that region are further along in their rate-hiking cycles than the Fed is and inflation is already starting to decline in countries like Brazil.
A Fed battle cry
Powell’s speech was a moment reminiscent of Mario Draghi’s “do whatever it takes” battle cry a decade ago, when he pledged as then-president of the European Central Bank to preserve the euro during a full-blown sovereign-debt crisis in his region.
Attention now turns to next Friday’s nonfarm payroll report for August, which economists expect will show a 325,000 job gain following July’s unexpectedly red-hot 528,000 reading. Any nonfarm payrolls gain above 250,000 in August would add to the Fed’s case for further aggressive rate hikes, and even a 150,000 gain would be enough to generally keep rate hikes going, economists and investors said.
The labor market remains “out of balance” — in Powell’s words — with demand for workers outstripping supply. August’s jobs data will offer a peek into just how off kilter it still might be, which would reinforce the Fed’s No. 1 goal of bringing inflation down to 2%. Meanwhile, continued rate hikes risk tipping the U.S. economy into a recession and weakening the labor market, while narrowing the amount of time Fed officials may have to act forcefully, some say.
“It’s a really delicate balance and they’re operating in a window now because the labor market is strong and it’s pretty clear they should push as hard as they can” when it comes to higher interest rates, said Brendan Murphy, the North American head of global fixed income for Insight Investment, which manages $881 billion in assets.
“All else equal, a strong jobs market means they have to push harder, given the context of higher wages,” Murphy said via phone. “If the labor market starts to deteriorate, then the two parts of the Fed’s mandate will be at odds and it will be harder to hike aggressively if the labor market is weakening.”
Insight Investment has been underweight duration in bonds within the U.S. and other developed markets for some time, he said. The London-based firm also is taking on less interest-rate exposure, staying in yield-curve flattener trades, and selectively going overweight in European inflation markets, particularly Germany’s.
For Ben Emons, managing director of global macro strategy at Medley Global Advisors in New York, the best combination of plays that investors could take in response to Powell’s Jackson Hole speech are “to be offense in materials/energy/banks/select EM and defense in dividends/low vol stocks (think healthcare)/long the dollar.”
‘Tentative signs’
The depth of the Fed’s commitment to stand by its inflation-fighting campaign sank in on Friday: Dow industrials
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sold off by 1,008.38 points for its largest decline since May, leaving it, along with the S&P 500
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-3.37%
and Nasdaq Composite
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-3.94%,
nursing weekly losses. The Treasury curve inverted more deeply, to as little as minus 41.4 basis points, as the 2-year yield rose to almost 3.4% and the 10-year rate
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was little changed at 3.03%.
For now, both the inflation and employment sides of the Fed’s dual mandate “point to tighter policy,” according to senior U.S. economist Michael Pearce of Capital Economics. However, there are “tentative signs” the U.S. labor market is beginning to weaken, such as an increase in jobless claims relative to three and four months ago, he wrote in an email to MarketWatch. Policy makers “want to see the labor market weakening to help bring wage growth down to rates more consistent with the 2% inflation target, but not so much that it generates a deep recession.”
With an unemployment rate of 3.5% as of July, one of the lowest levels since the late 1960s, Fed officials still appear to have plenty of scope to push forward with their inflation battle. Indeed, Powell said the central bank’s “overarching” goal is to bring inflation back to its 2% target and that policy makers would stand by that task until it’s done. In addition, he said they’ll use their tools “forcefully” to bring that about, and the failure to restore price stability would involve greater pain.
Front-loading hikes
The idea that it be might be “wise” for policy makers to front-load rate hikes while they still can seems to be what’s motivating Fed officials like Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed and James Bullard of the St. Louis Fed, according to Derek Tang, an economist at Monetary Policy Analytics in Washington.
On Thursday, Bullard told CNBC that, with the labor market strong, “it seems like a good time to get to the right neighborhood for the funds rate.” Kashkari, a former dove who’s now one of the Fed’s top hawks, said two days earlier that the central bank needs to push ahead with tighter policy until inflation is clearly moving down.
Luke Tilley, the Philadelphia-based chief economist for Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors, said the next nonfarm payroll report could come in either “high or low” and that still wouldn’t be the main factor behind Fed officials’ decision on the magnitude of rate hikes.
What really matters for the Fed is whether the labor market shows signs of loosening from its current tight conditions, Tilley said via phone. “The Fed would be perfectly fine with strong job growth as long as it means less pressure on wages, and what they want is to not have such a mismatch between supply and demand. Hiring is not the big deal, it’s the fact that there are so many job openings available for people. What they really want to see is some mix of weaker labor demand, a decline in job openings, stronger labor-force participation, and less pressure on wages.”
The week ahead
Friday’s August jobs report is the data highlight of the coming week. There are no major data releases on Monday. Tuesday brings the S&P Case-Shiller home price index for June, the August consumer confidence index, July data on job openings plus quits, and a speech by New York Fed President John Williams.
On Wednesday, Loretta Mester of the Cleveland Fed and Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed speak; the Chicago manufacturing purchasing managers index is also released. The next day, weekly initial jobless claims, the S&P Global U.S. manufacturing PMI, the ISM manufacturing index, and July construction spending data are released, along with more remarks by Bostic. On Friday, July factory orders and a revision to core capital equipment orders are released.
Renting an apartment in New York City this summer? Say hello to sky-high prices and a fight to the finish.
Amid the heat and the occasional rain, there’s a mad scramble to rent affordable apartments in Gotham, which has been undersupplied for many years. Real estate agents describe the mayhem when it comes to prices.
“It’s nuts,” Jessica Peters, a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman, told MarketWatch. “We can’t even keep up anymore. We’re, like, let’s just put up this crazy number, and we’re getting it.”
Offices in the city are trying to woo more employees back: The city is not near full capacity yet — foot traffic to office buildings in NYC is still down 40.6% compared to pre-pandemic levels. But some workers are coming back, restaurants, movie theaters and Broadway are back, and college students are preparing to start school.
Consequently, the median monthly rent is up $725 in June on the year and $59 on the previous month, according to Zillow. The median monthly rent in NYC is $3,300, 53% higher than the national median of $2,155.
“‘A lot of renters will be in for a rude awakening.’”
— Jessica Peters, a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman
Peters said that the reality was far worse on the ground. “I just rented something … in Williamsburg. It’s a great two-bedroom ground floor unit, with a big backyard,” she said. “We were asking $6,500. We got $7,000.”
Peters, who specializes in the Brooklyn area, said that while rental prices may be fluctuating a little, the reality is clear for someone looking to be in the city.
“If you’re coming back after not renting in either Brooklyn or Manhattan in the last ten years, a lot of renters will be in for a rude awakening,” Peters added.
(Reminder: Realtors and real estate agent make money on a commission basis, meaning the hotter the market, the higher their earnings.)
That said, the rental market in New York is reflecting a broader intensification of the inventory pressures, which is leading to bidding wars among renters across the country.
But in New York, one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., even some tenants in rent-stabilized apartments cannot catch a break. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board has signed off on hikes as high as 3.25% for new one-year leases, and 5% for two-year leases.
One of Gartenberg’s open housing listings in the Two Bridges area of Lower Manhattan.
Screenshot from Streeteasy.com
Mihal Gartenberg, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Warburg, said the market’s wrath was normal; it was just operating on a demand-and-supply basis.
There are people who are simply willing to pay more, he said. “It’s getting to the point where we’re not the ones deciding what these are going for,” Gartenberg added. “This is a true market enterprise.”
Technology was aiding some renters in their search for a home.
A two-bedroom luxury apartment she put on the market for rent two months ago in the Lincoln Square area attracted people streaming in during a two-hour open house in ten-minute increments, on top of prospective renters who joined on FaceTime
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“We priced it in my opinion… quite high,” Gartenberg said, at $7,800, “but we ended up taking even more. The person who ended up taking the apartment offered $400 more… we had an offer of $8,200, and they also offered to pay the broker fee, which is an additional month.”
“‘I feel very uncomfortable with this idea that the first person to see a listing is the first one to get it.’”
Over this past weekend, she had open houses for two apartments in the Two Bridges area in lower Manhattan.
“I’m only going to be showing it at the open house. I like to have a level playing field,” Gartenberg said ahead of the event. “I feel very uncomfortable with this idea that the first person to see a listing is the first one to get it.”
Buying a home was worth considering, the real estate agents said, given how intense the rental market has become.
Peters said many renters are attempting to become homeowners because rents have risen so dramatically. “People are starting to reevaluate whether or not they should just purchase at this point,” she said.
“Why would I want to spend $10,000 a month on a rental if I qualify for a purchase? It might not be exactly what they wanted, it might be slightly smaller, but it’s still going to be better than spending $120,000 a year in rent,” she added.
“Do not go see things at your price point,” Gartenberg said. “Because where the market is today, is going above your price point.”
(PHOTO: Getty Images)
But be prepared for bidding wars when buying for a home, Gartenberg warned. She put a newly renovated apartment in Hudson Heights on the market, which is selling “well above ask,” she said, so much that “it made me scared.” The sale on the apartment is not closed yet so she said she was not able to discuss how far above asking the bidder went.
Gartenberg priced her Two Bridges apartments at $3,550 for a two-bedroom unit on the top floor, and at $3,050 for a one-bedroom unit.
On Saturday, her open houses were full. Everything went above the ask. “We had so much interest, we were able to divert offers to a not-yet-listed apartment and rent that, too,” Gartenberg said in a follow-up email.
Half of the offers that came in were from people who had seen the apartment via FaceTime, or from a video she had sent them.
Gartenberg offered rental tips for the summer.
Get your paperwork in order, such as your proof of income, photo ID, 1040 tax form, bank statements, and other financial documents. Also, get your job to write a letter to say you’re in good standing, Gartenberg said.
Given the number of rentals going for above asking, be prepared to look below your price point, she added. If you know which building you want to live in, get in touch with the landlord’s agent, she said, and find out what’s coming to market.
Hunting for a rental in New York and want to share your thoughts? Write to: aarthi@marketwatch.com
Americans accumulated extra savings during the pandemic, but that money is fast dwindling because of inflation.
Some 70% of Americans are using their savings to cover rising prices, a recent Forbes Advisor survey of 2,000 U.S. adults concluded. Among those polled, older adults were more likely to say they have left their savings intact.
In fact, the personal savings rate for April 2022 hit 4.4% — the lowest level since September 2008 — down from 6% at the beginning of the year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a department of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Another concern: More respondents told a New York Federal Reserve “Survey of Consumer Expectations” that their finances are worse now than they were a year ago. In fact, the average perceived chance of missing a minimum debt payment in the next three months increased by 0.4 percentage point to 11.1%, according to the results of the survey released Monday.
“Median household nominal spending growth expectations increased sharply to 9% from 8% in April,” the NY Fed said. “This is the fifth consecutive increase and a new series high. The increase was most pronounced for respondents between the age of 40 and 60 and respondents without a college education.”
That slump in savings and rise in spending comes at a time when the drum beat of recession grows louder. Case in point: Nearly 70% of 49 respondents expect the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare a recession next year, according to the FT survey published Sunday; the survey was conducted with the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth’s School of Business.
Though some Americans have built up savings during the pandemic, helped by COVID-related government benefits, those savings appear to be running low as people cope with rising prices.
Laura Veldkamp, a finance and economic professor at Columbia University, suggested people try renegotiating salaries with their employers. “Prices will not come back down,” she said. “They never do.” Dipping into savings to cope with rising prices is not a sustainable long-term solution, she added.
The increase in the cost of living is making Americans nervous. Inflation rose 8.6% on the year through May, the highest since 1981. A survey of U.S. consumer confidence fell in May to a three-month low of 106.4. That’s one of many surveys pointing to a pessimistic outlook by people both for their own finances and the U.S. economy.
For the week ending May 29, grocery inflation reached a record high of 14.6% compared to a year ago, according to the latest survey from data company Numerator. The survey shows that middle-income consumers — those who earn $40,000 to $80,000 a year — are paying the greatest price increases among all income levels.
“‘Cutting down on your budget doesn’t need to be painful.’”
— Thomas Scanlon, a financial adviser with Raymond James Financial
In April, consumer spending increased by $152.3 billion, separate Bureau of Economic Analysis data found, with people spending the most money on motor vehicles and auto parts, in addition to food and housing. Compared to the month before, the consumption of gas and other energy decreased by $26.9 billion.
On Sunday, AAA pegged the national average at $5.01 for a gallon of gasoline. That’s 20 cents higher than it was a week ago, 60 cents higher than a month ago, and almost $2 more than the $3.07 average a year ago, according to AAA data.
Thomas Scanlon, a financial adviser with Raymond James Financial in Manchester, Conn., said it’s a good time to adopt thrifty habits, such as borrowing from the public library instead of buying a book, and looking to free leisure activities such as visits to some museums and beaches.
“Cutting down on your budget doesn’t need to be painful,” Scanlon said, “it can be an opportunity to spend a good time with friends and families.”
Amy Faust Liggayu, 32, a market-research project manager based in Tinley Park, Ill., mother of a 7-month-old son, never imagined she would have a life where she could spend five days a week with him, while also working full time. But that was before March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced offices across the country to tell their employees to work from home.
She had previously spent $20 a day commuting four days a week, and worked the fifth day from home, but when her manager called employees back full time, a move many other businesses are making now that vaccines are widely available and the worst days of the pandemic appear to have receded, she was not willing to give up all that freedom remote work had given her.
Those early months of COVID-19 when millions of people worked from home gave them a rare opportunity to reevaluate the role of work in their lives. And in 2022 they have leverage: Unemployment is falling and wages are rising, as companies struggle to attract and retain workers. In fact, there are two job openings for every unemployed American, the highest level on record since 2001.
But many companies want workers back. Google parent company Alphabet
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Apple
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Facebook parent Meta
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and Microsoft Corp.
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have requested workers go back to the office at least a few days a week. Jefferies Financial Group
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JPMorgan Chase
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and Goldman Sachs Group
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are among the financial institutions that have also asked workers to return.
Amid these efforts, Faust Liggayu counts herself among the Great Resistance. “I’m very outspoken about my desire to never work in an office again,” she said. “The quality of life is so much better when you can cut out that commute or spend your lunch break with your family.” She would often not arrive home until 6:30 p.m. if she left the office at 5 p.m. Those were precious hours lost with her son.
When she received news that all employees were going to be back in the offices, she told MarketWatch that she was frustrated. “They haven’t been listening to me,” she recalls thinking. “They know I don’t want to go back.” So she took a stand. “Job recruiters were reaching out to me on LinkedIn. All the jobs they reached out to me about were working from home.”
The outcome was a win-win for her: She found a new job two months ago that paid more money, while working full-time from home. “I went from making $50,000 a year to $80,000. When I get to stop at 5 p.m., I’m done. I get to spend that time with my son. Time moves quickly. It means so much at this age. It means so much to get those extra two hours a night with him.”
Amid labor shortage, employees flex their muscles
The Great Resignation — regarded by some observers as more of a Great Negotiation for better pay and working conditions — has led to the Great Resistance, a battle of wills between senior management and, well, everyone else. For those who are fortunate enough to have the option to work remotely, which other figures put at 40% of the workforce, they’re not giving up.
“There is definitely a sense of resistance amongst employees against the full-week, all-day, in-person work concept,” said Vanessa Burbano, associate professor of business at Columbia Business School in New York. “Remote working enables a degree of flexibility in the day that is practically impossible to recreate in a physical co-working space.”
Faust Liggayu said her breakup with her former employer was respectful and without animosity. She had worked at that previous job from 2017 to March 2022, and it was a small team. But the standoff between some employees and their companies has not always been so free of drama. Apple, for one, has suffered at least one high-profile resignation as a result.
“The Great Resignation has led to the Great Resistance, a battle of wills between senior management and, well, everyone else. ”
A group, “Apple Together,” signed an open letter to the tech giant, claiming over 3,000 signatures from workers, rejecting a hybrid work model and asking the company to allow them to make their own decisions. “Stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do,” they wrote. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment.)
Thus far, workers have successfully dug their feet into their sofas. Some 64% said they would consider looking for a new job if they were required to return to the office full time, a survey by ADP, a provider of human resources management software and services, found. Younger people (18- to 24-year-olds) are the most reluctant (71%) to return to the workplace full time.
“This shift from the traditional 9-to-5, office-based model cannot be undone and has long-term implications for the jobs market,” the report said. “As companies — and employees — re-evaluate their approach to the workforce, it is clear that having a flexible approach is key, as there are advantages and drawbacks to both exclusively, whether fully remote or fully in office.”
Last month, Airbnb acknowledged that the era of full- or even part-time office working is over, telling workers they could work from home or the office, if they choose, and they can work from anywhere in the U.S. without a change in pay. Starting in September, they can also live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location.
Ken Steinbach: ‘There is a special connection when we are in the same space together face to face.’
There’s no such thing as a free lunch
Chris Herd, CEO of Firstbase, which helps companies go remote, said there’s no such thing as a free lunch. “Workers don’t want toys or free food, they want a higher quality of life. Forcing people to commute two hours a day — where they carry laptops to an office to sit in a chair for eight hours and then Slack or Zoom
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people who aren’t in the office all day — has created broken ways of living.”
He said the Great Resignation reflects people’s desperation for better work-life balance and believes that giving ultimatums will lead to “armageddon” inside companies. “Over the last two years, companies have found out people don’t need to be in the office for great work to keep happening,” he said. “Now, companies are pushing back for employees to return to office again.”
Nicholas Bloom, professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, said neither hard nor soft nudges will work. His own poll of 3,000 people revealed a “fiendishly hard” task for managers to get people back. “Nobody commutes for one hour for a free bagel or box or to use a ping-pong table,” he said. “They come in to catch up with friends and work in person.”
“‘If you have to force somebody to come to the office it is not in their interests to come in.’”
— Nicholas Bloom, professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University
Indeed, some Silicon Valley companies pulled out all the stops to entice people back and foster a sense of community, he told MarketWatch. “Google got so desperate they hired Lizzo to give a concert, which is great for one day, but unless you are planning on getting Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and then Justin Bieber after that, this is not a permanent solution.”
“The resistance is there when employees do not see the point in coming in,” Bloom said. “If you have to force somebody to come to the office it is not in their interests to come in. To avoid forcing people you need to make it benefit them to come in. That means setting up typically two or three days a week of office time on anchor days when everyone comes in.”
He said it makes more sense to create a hybrid environment where team members show up on the same day rather than enforce a five-day week and fail. “So I see resistance to returning to the office a symptom of over-ambitious return to office plans. Realistic plans centered around anchor days, probably two to start off with, can work well and firms can build on this.”
For those who can work from home, this may be a luxury problem. The Labor Department says only 7.7% of employees teleworked in April. Millions of jobs necessitate in-person interactions. Retail, manufacturing and essential-services workers such as supermarket and hospital staff and public-transport employees put their lives at risk during the pandemic.
Remote work is a tradeoff for everyone
As managers negotiate with office workers, companies are negotiating with landlords about their office leases. In Manhattan, monthly leasing activity decreased by 11.5% month-over-month to 2.7 million square feet in April, Colliers said. However, companies seem to be betting on some kind of return to office life: Demand more than doubled year over year.
Herd, however, said managers will soon see the advantage of remote work. “E-commerce killed physical stores because people prefer to shop online, it gave them more choice, it was more efficient and costs less,” he said. “E-companies kill office-based companies because workers prefer to work online, it gives them more choice, it is more efficient and costs less.”
It’s obviously not a one-size-fits-all question, even for those who have had the luxury of working from home. “For me, in the mental-health counseling field, I can see both sides,” said Ken Steinbach, a Portland, Ore.,-based counselor. “There is a special connection when we are in the same space together face to face, and I would love to be able to connect that way again.”
“The reality is that most of my clients might not be able to have therapy if they had to block out time to go into an office,” Steinbach told MarketWatch. “Working virtually has made my services much more accessible to a great many people and I can’t see that changing. So yes, I love the idea of being in person, but that may not be the world we live in.”
Peter Gray, professor of commerce at the University of Virginia, said workers miss out on the emotional, social and intellectual stimulation that comes with being around others. For that reason, he favors a hybrid work model. “Employee resistance is to me perfectly natural when people believe that they can be just as effective at home as in the office,” he said.
But spending all that time working from your sofa or kitchen table or — if you’re lucky enough to have one — a home office may be a more expensive tradeoff for employees and management than they anticipate. “What they don’t realize is that their networks will slowly shrink as they spend more time at home, and this can hamper their effectiveness long term,” Gray said.
“Once they realize that some of the rich interactions they used to have in the office have faded, they start to wonder if they might be missing something important,” he added. “And as their broader networks shrink — the ones that expose them to creative new ways of thinking outside of their main work stream — their performance can suffer.”
The resistance appears to be winning
Another obstacle: An empty or half-empty office doesn’t help new employees or interns who rely on those face-to-face interactions for honing their skills and, critically, building a professional network so they can move up the corporate ladder and/or put their name in the hat for a promotion. For every seasoned employee who knows the ropes, there are others who need to be given a helping hand.
Skeptics also worry that some people may be tempted to take advantage of remote work, spend an hour or two catching up on their favorite TV show, while keeping a casual eye on their work emails, or — worse — take the entire day off and go to the beach, while answering the occasional Slack message from under an umbrella. In fact, eight out of 10 workers have admitted to slacking off.
Burbano, the Columbia Business School professor, is not surprised by such polls. “Remote work also comes with increased opportunities for worker misconduct, worker shirking and putting in less effort, as my research has shown, which is likely part of the reason that there is a desire amongst employers to bring people back to the physical office.”
Social media is filled with people claiming they will point-blank refuse to commute again. “I’m not going back to the office with these gas prices,” one person recently wrote on Twitter
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“The gas people and the commercial real-estate people are just gonna have to fight it out amongst themselves.” Another added bluntly: “Not in the mood to work or be around people.”
Recent research suggests such resistance is winning. The Conference Board, a nonprofit organization, says only 4% of companies are requiring staff to return to work full time and only 45% were requiring them to work five days a week from the office — even if a few days a week appears too much for some Apple employees and workers like Amy Faust Liggayu.
Faust Liggayu doesn’t fully buy the brainstorming-by-the-watercooler argument. “At my previous job, we had a meeting every morning to go over the workload for the day. That meeting would sometimes last an hour because we would just bulls*** about everything. But if you have enough calls where you can be spontaneous and a good team that works together well, you can still have that environment.”
And now? She is much happier at her new fully-remote, better-paid job. “I make a point of remembering what people are up to and ask them about their plans for the weekend to keep that community together,” she said. “I love it. I officially turned one of our extra bedrooms into an office. I get to spend my lunch with my son, feed him when he’s hungry. The flexibility is incredible.”
Amy Faust Liggayu: ‘I officially turned one of our extra bedrooms into an office.’
The stock market ended a volatile week on a gloomy note Friday, with the three major U.S. indexes plunging as investors got tripped up in worries like inflation, the Fed’s fight against it and fears of a hard-landing recession.
As confidence got pummeled as well, financial experts recommended that investors not panic, but think about long-term strategies instead.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-2.82%
finished down 981 points, or 2.8%, to 33,811.40. Friday’s performance was the index’s worst daily percentage decrease since Oct. 28, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market data.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite index
COMP,
-2.55%
shrank 2.6% and the S&P 500
SPX,
-2.77%
lost 2.8%.
TGIF, indeed.
See also: ‘Waiting for the perfect moment may not be the best strategy’: 3 things investors should do right now as stocks tumble (again)
Of course, some rattled retail investors could have already said that’s where things have been heading.
Almost 44% of people say the market is moving in a bearish direction, according to the latest weekly sentiment gauge from the American Association of Individual Investors. That’s almost 14 percentage points above the 30.5% historical average on bearish sentiment in the ongoing tracker.
On the other hand, nearly 19% said they were bullish in the week ending April 20. That’s up from a 15.8% read one week earlier. But it’s been May 2016 since bullish feeling in the ongoing tracker hasn’t surpassed 20% for two straight weeks.
Meanwhile, six in 10 investors anticipate an increase in market volatility and seven in 10 say they worry about a recession, according to a poll Nationwide released earlier this week.
In the same poll, roughly four in 10 investors (44%) said they felt more confident in their ability to protect their finances in any upcoming downturn and 38% said they felt confident in their ability to invest in the stock market.
It’s not as if retail investors have some monopoly on the side-eyed view of the market. Investors took $17.5 billion out of global equities during the past week, according to Bank of America. That outflow is the biggest weekly move for the exits this year, they noted.
The difference is, regular investors who are newer to the markets — and maybe started during the pandemic — might not have the same resources or risk tolerance to keep their stomach during shaky moments versus more sophisticated investors, or institutional investors.
Here’s where it’s important to take a breath and avoid doing anything drastic, experts say — especially with the recession talk continuing.
First off, there’s the short-term story.
“While sustained inflation and a more aggressive Fed is a risk to the economy and financial markets, a recession in the next 12 months is not in our base case,” wrote Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management.
The economy can grow even with the series of rate hikes investors are bracing for, and first-quarter earnings results have been “generally good,” Marcelli said in a note.
There is generally an exception, like Netflix
NFLX,
-1.24%
this week reporting a 200,000 net loss of subscribers when analysts were hoping for a 2.5 million subscription addition.
Besides, there’s the long-term story to remember. Think big and think about the long game on investing during downturns and bouts of volatility, said Scott Bishop, executive director of wealth solutions at Avidian Wealth Solutions, based in Houston, Texas.
The downbeat retail investor mood expressed in the surveys and sentiment trackers match what he’s hearing from his clients right now.
Still, Bishop says if people feel it’s time to adjust strategies or cut loses, “It’s time to make tweaks to your portfolio. You should not make wholesale changes.” For example, that means it could be a time to reconsider allocations, take loses for tax loss harvesting. “If you invest your portfolio based on headlines, you will always lose,” he said.
The pandemic feels like it’s stretched much longer, but it’s only been around two years since the COVID-19 market bottom. Then there’s the second part of story for people who stuck the market instead of cashing out.
At a time like this, it’s definitely worth remembering the next chapter in that story, Bishop said. Ultimately, the people who experience the most financial pain are those that “take extreme action , binary action, I’m in or I’m out.”
Today’s home buyers could be in for a shock when the tax man comes calling.
In 2021, around $328 billion in property taxes were imposed on single-family homes across the country, according to a new report from real-estate analytics company Attom Data Solutions. Growth in property taxes decelerated last year, despite the run-up in property values, suggesting that bigger tax bills could be coming down the pike.
Between 2020 and 2021, the amount levied in property taxes only grew by 1.8% on average, representing the second smallest annual increase over the past five years.
“It’s hardly a surprise that property taxes increased in 2021, a year when home prices across the country rose by 16%,” Rick Sharga, Attom’s executive vice president of market intelligence, said in the report. “In fact, the real surprise is that the tax increases weren’t higher, which suggests that tax assessments are lagging behind rising property values, and will likely continue to go up in 2022.”
The rise in home values, which far outpaced the increase in taxes, means that the effective tax rate last year actually decreased to 0.9% from 1.1% the year before.
But in most markets, property taxes increased faster than the national average. The largest increase occurred in Nashville, where property taxes surged 27% on average. Milwaukee was next with an 18.6% uptick in property taxes, followed by Baltimore and Grand Rapids, Mich.
Cities where property taxes declined in 2021 include Pittsburgh (down 35.1%) and New Orleans (down 20.1%). Multiple cities in Texas — Houston, Dallas and Austin — also saw marked decreases in the average property tax bill.
At the state level, Illinois had the highest effective tax rate in the country at 1.86%, followed by New Jersey at 1.73%. Notably, New Jersey had the highest average property tax bill for single-family homes in the country at $9,476. Generally, metro areas in the Northeast and Midwest saw higher property-tax rates than the rest of the country.
The potential for taxes to rise significantly in the future could come to represent a major concern for home buyers at a time when mortgage rates have soared to 5%.
“Prospective homeowners often fail to include property taxes when considering the cost of homeownership,” Sharga said in the report. “But, especially in some of the higher-priced markets across the country, property taxes can add thousands of dollars to annual ownership costs, and possibly be the difference between someone being able to afford a home or not.”
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller has no doubt about how competitive today’s housing market is.
“Trust me, I know it is red hot because I am trying to buy a house here in Washington and the market is crazy,” Waller said in a speech at a housing conference.
But even as home and rental prices have soared over the past couple years, he is not concerned that the housing market is poised for a repeat of the crash that occurred in the mid-2000s and ultimately triggered the Great Recession.
His reasoning has to do with the forces that are contributing to the run-up in housing costs. “My short answer is that unlike the housing bubble and crash of mid 2000s, the recent increase seems to be sustained by the substantive supply and demand issues,” he said, and “not by excessive leverage, looser underwriting standards or financial speculation.”
Waller also noted that mortgage borrowers’ balance sheets were stronger heading into the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning they were more resilient. And banks have proved capable of withstanding downturns in recent stress tests from regulators.
In his speech, Waller outlined the many forces he believes are contributing to the rising cost of housing across the country. On the demand side of the equation, many households sought out larger homes to accommodate remote work and school. There has also been an increase in household formations over the course of the pandemic, reducing vacancy rates across the country for both renter- and owner-occupied homes.
“‘Unlike the housing bubble and crash of mid 2000s, the recent increase seems to be sustained by the substantive supply and demand issues.’”
— Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller
Those pandemic-era changes further magnified the demand-related issues that were pushing housing costs higher before the pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, there was a shift toward urban living, as people sought high-paying jobs in major cities. While the pandemic may have prompted some of these people to flock to the suburbs and exurbs, it’s too soon to tell whether people will return to their offices and reinvigorate demand for city living.
“The supply side has been pushing in the same direction — towards tighter housing markets and more expensive shelter, Waller said. Home builders face multiple challenges, including the rising cost of materials such as lumber, a tight labor market and strenuous land-use regulations. These have slowed the pace of home building, worsening the supply-demand imbalance.
Though Waller may not be concerned about the potential for a burst housing bubble, he did signal that the cost of housing is becoming a bigger concern for monetary policy.
“With housing costs gaining an ever-larger weight in the inflation Americans experience, I will be looking even more closely at real estate to judge the appropriate stance of monetary policy,” Waller said. At the same time, he echoed recent research that has suggested that measures such as the consumer price index likely underestimate the true scale of housing inflation.
Economists have suggested that housing inflation will only continue to grow in the coming months, given that there is typically a lag between when housing and rental costs rise and when those increases are recorded in the surveys that are used to produce inflation measures.
The recent run-up in interest rates could change the equation, though. February data on new and existing home sales showed some weakness, and many economists believe that higher mortgage rates will begin to constrain home-buying demand as affordability challenges mount.
On that front, Waller said that he was “hopeful that at least some of the pandemic-specific factors pushing up home prices and rents could begin to ease in the next year or so.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is telegraphing his first punch in the fight against inflation — his intention to support a 25 basis-point increase on a benchmark interest rate, the first in a number of potential rate hikes this year.
Now it’s time for consumers to make their own maneuvers, particularly those who are planning to pay down credit-card debt or build up their savings in 2022.
By itself, a quarter-percentage-point increase will not make a big difference to a credit card’s annual percentage rate (APR) or their savings account’s annual percentage yield (APY), experts say. But stack several rate increases together and consumers will start to feel the pinch, they note.
In Congressional testimony Wednesday and Thursday, Powell previewed what’s he’s considering at a crucial policy meeting scheduled for mid-March. That way, markets do not have to wait in the lurch when there’s already so much uncertainty — due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and they aren’t blindsided when the increase happens to the federal funds rate now near zero.
“I do think it will be appropriate to raise our target range for the federal funds rate at the March meeting in a couple of weeks. And I’m inclined to propose and support a 25-basis-point rate hike,” he told lawmakers Wednesday.
On Thursday, he reiterated plans for a 25-basis-point increase and said he supports a “series” of 2022 hikes. If price inflation rates stay high, the Fed would be ready with rate hikes exceeding a quarter percentage point, Powell said.
Markets liked the certainty, and it’s a helpful heads up for consumers because the federal funds rate strongly influences a credit card’s APR and a savings account’s APY. Here’s more on that relationship:
Added credit-card costs
If a rate hike does comes this month, it could be April or May when credit-card holders see the higher APR reflected on their bill, said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree. For anyone with credit-card debt, “any rise in rates is unwelcome, but the truth is that the Fed’s move in March isn’t likely to rock most people’s financial world, if it is only a quarter-point increase. The danger comes if the rate increases keep coming — and in bigger chunks.”
Consider this scenario:
A person carries a balance of $5,000 and makes $250 monthly payments, with a 16.44% APR (the average credit card interest rate in 2021’s fourth quarter, according to the Fed). To pay off the balance, the person will pay $884 in interest, Schulz said.
In comes a 25-point basis point increase:
That would bring the APR to a potential 16.69% because the prime rate — which issuers use to make their credit-card rates — historically absorbs the full amount of the federal funds rate increase, Schulz said. Now the same person is paying $900 in interest to pay down the balance, a $16 increase over the life of the loan, he said.
And another 25-basis-point increase:
With an APR of 16.94%, that turns into $917 in interest, an additional $32 during the loan’s duration.
If there are six, quarter-percent rate increases — which isn’t out of the ballpark when some observers say there could be seven hikes — that turns into a 1.5% rise for APR, Schulz said. Now the borrower has to pay $985 in interest, he said. That’s $101 extra during the life of the loan.
In a time of high inflation, an extra $101 being paid to interest instead of groceries or gas will be a tough reality for families living paycheck to paycheck. Average hourly earnings were flat from January to February, but up 5.1% year-over-year according to Friday’s jobs report.
Americans had approximately $860 billion in credit-card debt during 2021’s fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Borrowers had an average $4,857 in credit-card debt during the third quarter, according to TransUnion
TRU,
+2.13%,
one of the big three credit bureaus.
It’s worth noting that some rates will be higher depending on a cardholder’s credit history. In February, the average rate for all new card offers was 19.53%, according to LendingTree.
Higher savings-account yields
“The good news about interest-rate hikes is that consumers who put their money in high-yield savings accounts will grow their money faster so continuing to shore up savings this year will yield more returns than last year,” said Gannesh Bharadhwaj, general manager of credit cards at Credit Karma
INTU,
-1.64%.
Savings accounts are a place to safely store easy-to-access cash, rather than to reap large returns. Extra interest yields after a rate hike will be modest at first but can pile up depending on how many rate increases occur, said Ken Tumin, founder and editor of DepositAccounts.com.
Right now, an online savings account has an average 0.49% APY, he said. Historically, rate increases haven’t all been passed along to the APY, at least at first, Tumin said.
A 25 basis point hike could mean a potential average APY around 0.55% – 0.6%, he estimated. If a savings account has $10,000, that little step up bears an extra $10, Tumin said.
But the talk is of multiple rate increases. If there are six, quarter-percentage-point increases, that same $10,000 account could produce an extra $100 in a year, he estimated.
Online savings accounts are the places to find the elevated APYs, not the “brick and mortar” banks, Tumin said.
During the previous rate-hike cycle from 2015 to 2018, there were three, quarter-point increases “before the average high-yield savings account APY had any significant gain,” he noted. “The rise may be faster this time due to high-yield savings account rates that have fallen to levels much lower than the bottom levels before 2015.”
‘A marginal impact’ for mortgage rates
“For housing, the Fed’s short-term rate has a marginal impact on mortgage rates,” said George Ratiu, senior economist and manager, economic research at Realtor.com.
There’s a different Fed action connected to those rates, he said. Along with dropping the federal funds rate during the pandemic’s early days, the central bank also bought up Treasury debt and agency mortgage-backed securities. The central bank has decided it’s a good time to end that.
From 2020 to 2021, those Fed purchases injected liquidity and sent mortgage rates to the basement, Ratiu said. “As the Fed announced it planned to finalize its tapering of [mortgage-backed securities] purchases later this month, we have seen rates surge to highs not seen since mid-2019.”
So prospective homeowners are already paying for Fed actions. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 3.76% this week, Freddie Mac
FMCC,
-1.41%
said. To put that in context, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was closer to 2.7% a year ago.
One basis point is equal to one-hundredth of a percentage point. It’s major shift from just a few weeks earlier when the average rate for the 30-year loan jumped to the highest level since May 2019, close to 4%.
February’s median listing came to $392,000, according to Realtor.com. Compared to a year ago, a buyer would pay $278 more on their monthly mortgage, Ratiu noted. That’s more than $3,300 added to the buyer’s yearly financial burden.
“Additional increases in mortgage rates will further squeeze buyers’ budgets and may limit first-time buyers’ ability to qualify for a mortgage, especially with prices continuing to advance,” he said.
Home buyers are seeing temporary relief from rising interest rates as markets react to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But in the longer term, inflation remains a serious concern.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.89% for the week ending Feb. 24, down three basis points from the previous week, Freddie Mac
FMCC,
+1.59%
reported Thursday. The slight decline marks a retreat from the highest benchmark mortgage rates in years.
And there’s a chance rates will move even higher. As the U.S. and other countries move to impose sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, gas prices are likely to surge due to Russia’s position as a major producer of oil and natural gas.
“An extended war in Eastern Europe could lead to higher global energy prices and higher U.S. inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy aggressively, and higher interest rates could become a larger headwind for the U.S. economy,” said PNC chief economist Gus Faucher.
“Even with this week’s decline, mortgage rates have increased more than a full percent over the last six months,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in the report.
“‘An extended war in Eastern Europe could lead to higher global energy prices and higher U.S. inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy aggressively.’”
— PNC chief economist Gus Faucher
The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell one basis point over the past week to an average of 3.14%. The 5-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 2.98%, unchanged from the previous week.
The decline in mortgage rates roughly tracks movements in long-term bond yields. The 10-year Treasury note’s yield
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.968%
has slid in recent days as tensions in Eastern Europe exploded into armed conflict.
“As the world reacts to developments in Ukraine, the uncertainty will likely mean a pause in the recent pace of increases,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.
But even with this momentary pause, mortgage rates remain significantly higher than in recent months. According to Hale, only two previous events compare with this recent surge in rates. Following the 2016 presidential election, mortgage rates soared 85 basis points over 10 weeks, and in 2013 during the “taper tantrum” when the Federal Reserve scaled back its stimulus activities interest rates increased by more than 1% over 11 weeks’ time.
“In both cases, home sales momentum slowed in the following year due to the impact on affordability, since rising rates mean higher homeownership costs even if home prices are unchanged,” Hale said, noting the effects were more pronounced for those who had less money to put toward a down payment.
It remains to be seen whether a similar string of events will occur in 2022, though signs point in that direction. Recent mortgage-application data from the Mortgage Bankers Association suggests that home-buying demand has ebbed in the face of rising rates.
Bruce Kasman, JPMorgan’s chief economist, told CNBC that the Russian invasion of the Ukraine makes the Federal Reserve’s position more complicated. “There is a scenario where the growth hit starts to get more substantial. There’s also scenarios where the price increases are not as damaging to growth and it’s feeding inflation.”
