Originally written May 27th, 2022:

In this chart, sourced from analysis previously published by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, we relay an interesting trend in college enrollment in Tennessee. It’s declined steadily over the last four years (across both men and women).

However, this pattern contrasts with what’s going on across the United States as a whole. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the college enrollment rate in 2019 was not any different from what it was in 2010.

What might be happening in Tennessee? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or any other research you’ve seen studying the drivers of college enrollment.

Follow @initiatingcoverage for more research and reporting on higher education in the United States.

Originally written May 26th, 2022:

Natural gas supplied 24% of energy demand in the EU in 2020, according to the scientific journal Nature. It’s a crucial commodity for the European continent, and changes in natural prices affect households from Finland to Portugal.

Since mid-2020, natural gas prices in Europe have ripped higher, especially relative to prices in the United States.

In this chart, we show European natural gas prices against American natural gas prices since the middle of 2020. Both prices have been converted to equivalent (Euros per mmbtu) units.

The run up in European prices has a variety of contributing causes, including a particularly cold 2020-21 winter, according to the Economist. The Russian war in Ukraine has exacerbated supply concerns and elevated prices even further, as Russia is a major supplier of natural gas to the EU.

Let us know what you think about energy price volatility in the comments. As always, we’ll continue to cover this topic going forward.

Originally published May 24th, 2022:

Snapchat shares just had their worst day ever, trading down 43%. A very bearish downward guidance revision released last night is to blame.

The official 8-K from SNAP (filed after market close on Monday May 23rd) reads: “Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated. As a result, we believe it is likely that we will report revenue and adjusted EBITDA below the low end of our Q2 2022 guidance range.”

Snapchat stock is down 73% YTD, but the long-term fundamental story at the company is more interesting. After burning over $3 billion in cash cumulatively since the end of 2014, Snapchat has now put together three consecutive quarters of positive free cash flow. Baby steps.

Let us know what you think of Snapchat’s business in the comments. Follow us on Instagram for more Snapchat coverage going forward.

Originally written May 24th, 2022:

Avis and Hertz are worth $54k and $45k per car, respectively, up ~2x from early 2019. Is this too much? Maybe. According to CNBC, the average price of a used car in the United States topped out at around $42k in early January 2022.

It’s worth noting that both Avis and Hertz operate globally (in more than 150 countries each). Used car prices are certain to vary across countries and may differ significantly from prices in the U.S.

In this analysis, we show the value of AvisBudget and Hertz on an enterprise-value-per-vehicle basis. This metric has ripped higher as both companies have downsized their fleets and been well-positioned for a post-pandemic recovery in travel and demand for rental cars.

Let us know what you think about the market for rental cars and used vehicles in the comments. Follow us on Instagram for more on this topic in the future.

Originally written May 23rd, 2022:

2020 was not a bad year for some brick and mortar retailers in the U.S. Just take a look at top line revenue figures for the big public names.

Wal-Mart? Up 7%. Target? Up 20%? Dollar General? Up 22%.

Tractor Supply, though, had them all beat. 2020 was a +27% sales growth year for TSCO, and the double-digit rate of sales expansion has continued since then.

During the early months of the pandemic, Tractor Supply proved its critical role in the supply lifecycle of rural customers (farmers, livestock owners, and pet owners). The brand has continued its upward run.

TSCO has a 13% EBITDA margin, a 11.0x EV/EBITDA valuation, and modest capex as a % of EBITDA. What do you think about TSCO? Let us know in the comments. We’ll continue covering it going forward.

Originally written May 18th, 2022:

TerraUSD isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.

TerraUSD (or “UST”) is an example of a stablecoin, designed to be pegged to the value of another currency. In the case of UST, the peg is a fiat currency: the United States Dollar.

Over the last year and a half or so, the stablecoin has generally delivered. UST has traded in a range right around USD $1.00, give or take a few cents on some occasions.

However, on May 7th this all changed, and the coin has plunged to a value of only $0.09 in USD terms.

Originally published May 17th, 2022:

Buying a home with a mortgage is common practice in the United States (setting aside the recent trend of all-cash buyers willing to pay well above listing prices…)

And in most of northern and western Europe, the story is the same. However, there is a clear geographic pattern to the presence of mortgage lending in Europe, which we illustrate here. Darker shaded countries have higher percentages of owned homes with mortgages, and lighter shaded ones have lower percentages.

Any thoughts on why this might be? Let us know in the comments.

Originally written May 16th, 2022:

Inflation has always been present in the American economy. Only three years since the end of World War Two have seen negative price changes in the CPI (ie., negative inflation). Most central banks even have inflation targets, where they strive for inflation to exist at a certain level greater than zero. So why do we care about inflation, and when does it become a problem?

One answer (and there are many) is that it can make living unaffordable for the general population when it quickly outpaces wage growth. In this analysis, we illustrate U.S. private sector wage growth (in green) against CPI inflation (in blue). While price inflation has lingered just above zero since this wage data became available in 2012, the recent upward move has left wages well behind, at least for now.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Originally written May 15th, 2022:

Life expectancy is the key metric for measuring population health, according to Our World in Data. While average life expectancy has improved dramatically across the world over the last century (up 2x+ since 1900), the progress has not been uniform across countries. The difference between the country with the highest and lowest life expectancies, for example, is around 30 years.

In this analysis, we focus on the United States, which has begun to lag behind its peers over the last several decades in life expectancy improvement. This chart uses World Bank data to show life expectancies in the G7 countries over time (the dotted blue lines), the average of the G7 ex-U.S. (the solid blue line), and the difference between the ex-U.S. average and the U.S. itself (in shaded red).

The gap is widening. Americans lived lives only 0.4 years shorter than the rest of the group in 1975, but this spread has widened to 3.8 years as of 2019 (the last data before the Covid-19 pandemic). A variety of reasons could explain this change, but research within the U.S. has convincingly demonstrated that healthier lifestyles lead to longer lives for individuals.

Originally written May 13th, 2022:

For years, cryptocurrencies have been viewed as an attractive asset class in part due to low correlations with publicly traded stocks. Over certain stretches of time, this low degree of correlation has been apparent. See the inset chart at the bottom right here to see the relationship between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq from March 2021 to February 2022.

However, over the last two months, as the equity market has tumbled, Bitcoin has seemingly developed a (maybe temporary) correlation to the stock market, with an R-squared coefficient of 0.90 to the Nasdaq over all the trading sessions since March 1st.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that we can fully predict crypto prices by following moves in the stock market, but the recent uptick in correlations is interesting and potentially head-scratching for investors who have followed crypto for its uncorrelated appeal.