Top 0.1% Of American Households Hold Same Wealth As Bottom 90%

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The US has a serious inequality problem according to a huge study by Credit Suisse: The top 0.1% of households now hold about the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90%. The Gini coefficient is a measurement of the income distribution within a country that aims to show the gap between the rich and the poor. The number ranges from zero to one, with zero representing perfect equality (everyone has the same income) and one representing perfect inequality (one person earns the entire country’s income and everyone else has nothing). A higher Gini coefficient means greater inequality. Developed-market economies such as those in Germany, France, and Sweden tend to have a higher GDP per capita and lower Gini coefficients. On the flip side, emerging-market economies in countries like Russia, Brazil, and South Africa tend to have a lower GDP per capita but a higher Gini coefficient.

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The US, however, is a big outlier. Its GDP per capita is on par with developed European countries like Switzerland and Norway, but its Gini coefficient is in the same tier as Russia’s and China’s. On a global scale just 0.7% of the world's adult population owns almost half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 73% have less than $10,000 each. The 3.5 billion adults with wealth below $10,000 account for 2.4% of global wealth. In contrast, the 33 million millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth. The past year saw a slight increase in the number of US dollar millionaires and high net worth individuals, with Japan the main beneficiary due to appreciation of the yen. 

The top tiers of the wealth pyramid – covering individuals with net worth above $100,000 – comprised 5% of all adults at the turn of the century. The proportion rose rapidly until the financial crisis, but has remained quite stable since that time. It currently comprises 8.2% of the global total, exactly the same as in mid-2015. The US, home to 41% of the world's millionaires, dominates the wealth league tables, while the UK had a terrible year in dollar terms. Britain lost by far the greatest number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals – those with more than $50 million – down 700 to 4,700. The UK also lost the most amount of millionaires, down by 422,000 to 2,225,000 people. Because the data is denominated in dollars, the pound's 18% collapse after the vote to leave the European Union will have driven a lot of the change. 

Sandy Jadeja: September 26th Potential Market Crash

Source: Business Insider (Aug 26, 2016)

JFYI: Someone just wrote me stating that In an earlier version of the above Business Insider article
Sandy Jadeja's crash date was not September 26th but the 15th! However, couldn't find the earlier version.

Alphee Lavoie's Neural Network-Forecast for the SPY (inverted correclation - HERE)

Who Owns What In The FTSE 100?

HERE

SPX vs P/E Ratios 1900 - 2015

Stock performance has been weak for the past 15 years. If history
is a guide, it's likely to stay weak for at least another 10 years.
Why? Because stocks are still fantastically expensive relative to most
of recorded history. Credits: Business Insider UK

Business Insider UK (Oct 4, 2015) - Over the past century, the market has gone through distinct "bull" and "bear" phases. These last, on average, 10-25 years each. [...] Some people think the latest "bear" phase ended in 2009. They also think we're in the middle of a glorious "bull" phase again. But based on valuation — stock prices relative to the fundamentals of the underlying companies — we unfortunately appear to still be in the middle of the latest "bear" phase. [...] Throughout history, stock prices have loosely gravitated around the "fundamentals" of the underlying companies — namely, earnings. Specifically, stocks have traded in a range of 5X cyclically adjusted earnings (at bear-market lows) to 44X earnings (at the peak of the biggest bull market in history — the one that ended in 2000). The "average" P/E ratio over this period, meanwhile, has been about 15X. When you add P/E ratios to the charts above, you quickly notice a pattern: Sustained bear-market periods have begun when the P/E is very high (~25X+). Sustained bull-market periods, meanwhile, have begun when the P/E is very low (5X to 9X).