Summary Points: I launched Rubinson Research 9 months ago. So far, we’ve published 18 reports on substantive topics including: inventory, the “wealth effect”, the low-end consumer, housing, Amazon, pricing power, and more. We’ve also sent out 12 mini reports to clients and hosted 2 webinars. This report is a summary of our November 7th webinar. If you’d like to watch my animated delivery of the content, here is a link to the replay. A Perspective

Summary Points: The consumer is still spending at a decent clip. However, so long as inflation is Enemy #1, investors may interpret that as bad news, a sign that the Fed’s job isn’t done. The best outcome for stocks would be if inflation were to moderate before the consumer cries “uncle”. With wages and inflation at a standoff, the consumer will need an assist from its balance sheet if it’s to outlast inflation. Households are

Summary Points: We built a new framework called the Idea Generator. The goal is to help clients pick consumer-oriented stocks in an uncertain environment. We model 50+ stocks using four underlying elements – Supply and Demand, Valuation, Operating Leverage, and Financial Leverage. The outputs for each element are shown in tabular form below. The overall rankings are shown in Figure 17. On the back of this analysis, we’ve made a number of adjustments to our

Summary Points Jerome Powell has all but put a target on the back of the U.S. consumer. He’s squarely focused on taking the froth out of the labor market and home prices – two key underpinnings of PCE. Our PCE Predictor points to slower spending growth now that we’ve incorporated a decline in home prices and a weaker outlook for employment into our model. Excess savings still provide a meaningful buffer, though, offering 2 percentage

Summary Points Consumer staples have been a great place to hide. Over the past 12 months, the stocks have outperformed the broader market by +25 percentage points, one of the best stints on record. On a multi-year basis, the sector’s performance is nothing to write home about. The question we pose in this report is where the staples stocks will go from here? It’s hard to separate a view on staples from one’s macro-economic outlook.

Summary Points: Managing inventory is a tough balancing act in normal times. Over the past few years, it’s been a nightmare. Demand trends were upended during the pandemic and that coincided with seismic shifts in the supply chain. The net effect is that inventories have been on a roller coaster ride, and the latest indication is that many consumer-facing businesses are swimming in inventory. The aim of this report is to see which companies are