What Mick Jagger and AARP can teach us about stocks

Published

2 years ago

January 25, 2024

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The geezers are coming! The geezers are coming!

Demographic doomsayers warn slowing birth rates and graying populations will wreak economic havoc and torpedo stocks.

Yet the dire scenarios of zombie-like boomer hoards leeching off their working progeny have it backwards: Aging populations are always, everywhere signs of progress not threats to it.

Yes America, like most developed nations, is aging. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates 9.8% of US residents were 65 or older in 1970. At the start of 2023, it was 17.3%.

In 2000, there were 20.9 folks aged 65 and older for every 100 working age counterparts (What is called the OADR or Old Age Dependency Ratio). Now there are 30.4, and the OECD projects it will top 40 by 2050.

The trend will continue to be a major theme this century, with the Census Bureau projecting Americas agedness will peak about 2080. What to do? Invest in adult diapers?

No. Celebrate.

Every major economy ages as it prospers.

Living standards increase and lifespans follow. Birth rates fall alongside infant mortality. American males born in 1900 on average lived to 46 and females to 48. Now, its 73 for males, 79 for females.

Tremendous advances in healthcare have given us extra fruitful and productive yearsin the US, Europe, everywhere.

Mick Jagger turned 80 before the Stones play MetLife Stadium this May. AARP sponsors that tour not a joke! But boomers aplenty will splurge big-time for tickets.

Want good demographics instead? Careful what you ask for. Nations with low agedness (hence low OADRs) near-consistently suffer poverty, short lifespans, high infant mortality, wretched economies, markets, ecologies, and lifestyles.

Still, demographics arent destiny. Innovation is. History shows agedness doesnt impede growth or stocks. In 1982, Americas OADR was 20. Weve since thrived, not dived. GDP tripled. The S&P 500 returned 11.8% annualized since then.

Yes, periodic recessions and bear markets strucklike always, everywhere. But growth continued and stocks climbed.

Doomers envision oldsters as penny-pinching parasites. Growth killers! Wrong. In 1984, Americans 75 and older spent just half what those 25 to 34 did. By 2023, that leapt to nearly 80%. Again, innovation-derived prosperity rules. Longer lifespans and increased retirement ages mean oldsters earnand spendmore. Yes, the 75-plus crowd only spends 59% of what 45 to 54 do (Americas highest spending bracket). But thats well above 1984s 39%.

We geezers invest, funding capitalisms growthy magic. We give to descendants who spend. Many of us work into our 80s. (Im 73no retirement in sight.) Like legendary financier Bernard Baruch once famously said: To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Age isnt the detriment it was when Baruch was born in 1870. There are now fewer physically demanding and risky agricultural and factory jobs, and more services and information-related work.

Accumulated experience and technology can make oldsters increasingly productive, not less so. (Yes, I know President Biden cant string coherent sentences together consistently and dementia hits many all part of the stats).

Demo-doomsters also erroneously extrapolate recent trends. Who really knows if developed world birthrates keep falling? Or how immigration shifts skilled workers around? Or what efficiencies new innovations bring?

Stocks? They price factors impacting firms profitability three to 30-ish months out. Not further. Demographic trends evolve glacially over decades, giving markets eons to adapt.

So let the demo-doomers keep talking. They are only bricking up the wall of worry driving this bull market higher.

Ken Fisher is the founder and executive chairman of Fisher Investments, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and regular columnist in 21 countries globally.

Business

Jackson Hole summit: US stocks fall for fifth day in a row ahead of key Fed speech

Published

40 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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Jackson Hole summit: US stocks fall for fifth day in a row ahead of key Fed speech

US stocks have fallen for five days running as traders nervously await a speech from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

Central bankers are gathering for an annual summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Mr Powell could indicate whether interest rates will be cut soon.

The Fed hasn’t reduced the cost of borrowing since December – despite repeated calls from Donald Trump to do so.

By contrast, the European Central Bank has slashed rates four times in 2025, with the Bank of England opting for three cuts so far this year.

Money blog: Top tips for entering US under Trump

The US president has nicknamed the Fed chairman “Too Late” Jerome Powell on social media – and has repeatedly called for his resignation.

But Mr Powell has argued that interest rates can only be lowered when there are clear signs that inflation is returning to its 2% target.

Today will mark his final keynote speech at Jackson Hole before his eight-year tenure at the Federal Reserve ends in May 2026.

Past addresses have been known to move the markets, with reaction often amplified because of lower trading volumes during the summer months.

Figures from the CME FedWatch tool show expectations for a US interest rate cut when policymakers next meet in September are on the decline.

One week ago, the probability of a 0.25 percentage point cut was priced in at 85.4%. But that fell to 82.4% on Thursday – and has dropped further to 73.3% at the time of writing.

It comes as other senior officials within the Federal Reserve, speaking on the sidelines of the three-day summit in Jackson Hole, continued to express caution.

Beth Hammack, president of the Cleveland Fed, told Yahoo Finance: “With the data I have right now and with the information I have, if the meeting was tomorrow, I would not see a case for reducing interest rates.”

Of particular concern is the impact that Donald Trump’s tariffs are having on inflation – both in terms of costs for businesses, and what consumers ultimately pay.

Just this week, Walmart – the world’s biggest retailer – warned tariffs are squeezing its profit margins and leading to higher prices at the till.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

40 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.