Gas, Electricity, & IPOs

Each week, the Stokes Family Office staff puts together a list of our favorite news and updates on all things wealth management. From financial planning, portfolio construction, tax and estate planning, and retirement plan services to anything we found interesting.  Enjoy this week’s curated list for your weekend reading!

ECONOMY NEWS

America’s Electricity Gap

• Joseph Politano: US power investment is at record highs, driven by a solar & battery boom. It’s still not enough to meet demand growth.

Higher Gas Prices

• Ben Carlson: While current gas prices feel painfully high because they’re so visible and emotionally salient, inflation-adjusted gas prices are actually not much worse than they were decades ago, and energy costs as a share of disposable income have generally declined over time.

Excel and Jevons Paradox

• Torsten Slok: Jevons paradox holds that when technology makes a task more efficient, total consumption of that task increases rather than decreases, because lower costs expand demand. Examples include radiologists, call centers, travel agents, and Excel, which dramatically lowered the cost of financial analysis, reporting, and record-keeping, making these services accessible to a far broader range of businesses and use cases.

Related:

• • • • AI, Inflation, & Vibes
      • An Economy Check-In
      • The Stokes Family Office Q1 Review
      • Private Credit, Recency Bias, and SpaceX

MARKETS NEWS

International Diversification Is Finally Paying Off

• Christine Benz: The dollar’s weakness has contributed to a long-awaited foreign-stock rally and reduced correlations with US equities—at least for now.

What SpaceX’s IPO Tells Us About American Capital Markets

• Julia R. Cartwright: The SpaceX IPO is as good an occasion as any to take stock of what it took to build such incredible investment infrastructure, and what it would mean to let it gradually degrade.

‘Til Death Do Us Part

• Drew Dickson: Like other great technological revolutions, AI may truly reshape the economy, but history shows that even revolutionary technologies can produce disappointing investment returns when expectations and prices get too far ahead of reality.

CHART OF THE WEEK

Via Ben Carlson: The crazy thing about gas prices is that they’ve been relatively stable for a long time now, despite two big spikes in the 2020s. If you inflation-adjust gas prices, they really don’t look that bad. Real (inflation-adjusted) gas prices are basically on par with prices in 1990!

Want to hear more from our team? Check out the Lagniappe Podcast. 

AI Is Fueling An American Manufacturing Resurgence

The market has shifted its story from the Iran conflict to the AI wave. How big and profitable can it be, and will companies grow into their lofty valuations? Greg and Doug break it all down and optimistically explain how this AI surge has brought back American manufacturing dominance.

Stokes Family Office is 100% Family Owned, and has been continually operating in the New Orleans Area for over 35 years.  As a family office, we are focused on family wealth, financial planning, and tax planning. We are your local experts for Gulf South wealth management.