Six-Chart Sunday – Nothing’s On The Level

Six reminders to maintain a healthy skepticism & read past the headline.

Michigan’s ICS survey switched from phone to web in mid-2024, and the sample now runs +30 net-Democratic in an era when partisanship moves sentiment more than prices do. While the pessimism is real, it’s not a record. (Joel Wertheimer, Silver Bulletin, “Is the Vibecession real - or is the survey broken?”)

New business filings are indeed booming. But roughly 70% aren’t expected to hire a single person, and the high-propensity share has halved in two decades. The trend also started before ChatGPT. An LLC takes 15 minutes & $130 to launch — cheaper than a date. (Ed Elson “The Fake Business Boom”)

Companies do much of their growing in private these days. By the time they IPO, the products are built, the hires are made, and the early money is exiting… nothing very initial about that. (Trend Labs, “The Public Is the Exit”) Apollo also finds that most IPO classes since 1980 have lagged the market over the next three years.

While overall House control is highly competitive, most individual House seats are not. Three straight Houses have seen single digit majorities, the first such run since the 1790s — even as the number of genuinely balanced districts has collapsed. (David Wasserman, Cook Political)

a16z reports that Berkeley Lab / Brattle data finds that since 2019, load growth and price increases have been negatively correlated — more demand = lower prices — because grids could spread big fixed costs across more consumption. That said, the 2019-2025 window mostly predates AI load, & it can't tell "demand lowers prices" from "high prices killed demand." So also be skeptical of the skeptics!

WSJ found that roughly 70% of Polymarket users lost money, while 0.1% of accounts captured 67% of profits. That suggests a steep information and trading advantage — not necessarily a rigged market. (WSJ, “Why Almost Everyone Loses — Except a Few Sharks — On Prediction Markets”)

Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan’s Regime Change is the #1 NYT bestseller and deservedly so. Jonathan & I chatted this week about the book, Trump 2.0 and what comes next.