{"id":8672,"date":"2020-06-01T18:39:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zackspcg.com\/blog\/?p=8672"},"modified":"2022-02-26T13:06:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T13:06:39","slug":"u-s-economy-reviving-slowly-shaky-shale-industry-u-s-getting-older","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/u-s-economy-reviving-slowly-shaky-shale-industry-u-s-getting-older\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Economy Reviving Slowly, Shaky Shale Industry, U.S. Getting Older"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In today\u2019s Steady\nInvestor, we look at the current state of the market, what could be next, and key\nfactors that we believe are currently impacting the market such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The U.S. Economy is slowly reopening<\/li><li>Projections for the shale industry in 2020<\/li><li>Older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The U.S. Economy is\nMoving Again, But Slowly \u2013 <\/strong>Signs of life are starting to appear again\nacross the United States, now that all 50 states have eased restrictions to\nvarying degrees. Truckloads are starting to move and grow again; flight, hotel,\nand restaurant bookings are ticking up slightly; mortgage applications are up, and\ndata compiled by Google shows that people are moving around more. On balance,\nhowever, the return of economic activity is happening at a much slower pace so\nfar, and plenty of weakness remains \u2013 retail sales data for April showed steep\ndeclines, and Americans are still losing jobs, albeit at an increasingly slower\npace.<sup>1<\/sup> The bottom line is that the worst of the economic crisis may\nbe over \u2013 which may help explain the ongoing stock market rally \u2013 but no one\ncan know for sure at what pace the economy is likely to recover from here. According\nto the Fed\u2019s recent beige book survey, many businesses \u201cexpressed hope that\noverall activity would pick up as businesses reopened, [but] the outlook\nremained highly uncertain and most [businesses] were pessimistic about the\npotential pace of recovery.\u201d For stocks, the question may not be how quickly\nand\/or robustly the economy recovers, but whether the economic recovery <em>exceeds expectations.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>______________________________________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/go.steadyinvestor.com\/arrow-9-retirement-mistakes?source=website&amp;medium=blog&amp;term=steadyinvestor_blog_2020_5_30&amp;content=9_retirement_mistakes_guide\">9 of the Biggest Financial Mistakes You Should Avoid During this Crisis!<\/a><\/strong><br> \u00a0<br> Looking at the current state of the economy and the unknowns surrounding the pandemic and how quickly the economy can recover, many investors may be wondering what to do and how to prepare for what\u2019s to come, especially when it comes to retirement planning.<br> \u00a0<br> While there are many unknowns at present, we believe there are nine common mistakes that many investors make when planning for retirement. In our guide, <em>9 Retirement Mistakes to Avoid<\/em>, we outline these mistakes and how you can potentially avoid them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn more, click on the link below to get your free copy:<br> \u00a0<br> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/go.steadyinvestor.com\/arrow-9-retirement-mistakes?source=website&amp;medium=blog&amp;term=steadyinvestor_blog_2020_5_30&amp;content=9_retirement_mistakes_guide\">Learn About the 9 Retirement Mistakes to Avoid!<\/a><sup>2<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>______________________________________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Shaky State of\nthe Shale Industry \u2013 <\/strong>Before the pandemic spread across the world, the US\nwas producing a record of 13+ million barrels of oil per day. Many shale\ncompanies were slightly stretched with oil prices hovering in the $60 range,\nbut times were largely good. Then the economic shutdowns happened, and large-scale\ndemand disruption caused oil production to fall over 10% to 11.5 million\nbarrels a day by mid-May. As a result, crude oil prices have sunk. According to\nRystad Energy AS, U.S. companies spent an average of $35.60 to produce a barrel\nof oil, which is about where the price for a barrel of Brent Crude stands\ntoday. In other words, margins for shale producers are basically non-existent.\nAs a result, several companies have had to file for bankruptcy, and even the\nbigger players, like Exxon Mobil, are making major cuts to capital spending. According\nto the International Energy Agency (IEA), investment in the US shale sector is\nlikely to fall by 50% in 2020. The IEA similarly expects global spending on oil\nand gas production to fall by a third, with financing for new energy projects\nalso plummeting.<sup>3<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The U.S. Population Keeps Getting Older \u2013 <\/strong>America is aging. In 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older, and immigration is projected to overtake births as the primary driver of population growth. By 2034, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in US history. Not helping matters is the fact that American women had babies at record-low rates in 2019, pushing US births to their lowest levels in 35 years. About 3.75 million babies were born in the US last year, which may sound like a lot, but actually represents the lowest fertility rate since the government started collecting data in 1909.<sup>4<\/sup> The Millennial generation appears to be the culprit for the lower birth rates, as they have been slower to form families than previous generations and are less financially secure than the generation before them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can\u2019t predict or control what is in store for\nthe market or how quickly the market will recover, but investors can stay\nfocused on making sure their own actions help guide their investments to\nsucceed. One way to do this is not to fall prey to common investing mistakes.<br>\n&nbsp;<br>\nThere are common mistakes and habits that we\nbelieve can help some investors succeed while others fail. To help you\nunderstand some of these mistakes and how to avoid them, we have created the guide,\n<em>9 Retirement Mistakes to Avoid<\/em>.<sup>5<\/sup><br>\n&nbsp;<br>\nIn this guide, we provide our thoughts on what\nwe believe are&nbsp;<strong>9 of the biggest retirement mistakes investors\nshould avoid<\/strong>. If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn\nmore, click on the link below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economic activity ticks up slowly, low demand threatens shale industry, record-low U.S. births in 2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-private-client-group","category-steady-investors-week"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10597,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8672\/revisions\/10597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacksim.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}