The Top Financial News from May, 2025

Jun 4, 2025

I hope you’re doing well and enjoying the start of Summer.

Below are a few interesting data points from the past month related to the stock market, real estate, and a reminder from The Millionaire Next Door. Hope you enjoy.

Investing / Stock Market
  • International stocks are now at an all-time high. Europe in particular is doing very well, +20% since the start of the year.
  • US stocks are close to flat for the year, and are within 3% of their all-time high. 
  • May > 5%? – A fun stat to consider: “When the S&P 500 gains more than 5% in May (as it did this year) the next 12 months have never been lower and gained nearly 20% on average.”
  • ⬇️ US Company Earnings May Decline – With the average tariff rate up from 2-3% a few years ago to ~18% today, analysts are making downward revisions to future earnings.
  • 🛒 Walmart – This one surprised me. On a price-to-earnings basis, Walmart is more expensive than Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Meta.
  • This shows that Walmart investors expect very high growth rates going forward.
Real Estate
  • “There are an estimated 1.9 million home sellers in the U.S. housing market and an estimated 1.5 million homebuyers. In other words, there are 33.7% more sellers than buyers (or 490,041 more, to be exact). At no other point in records dating back to 2013 have sellers outnumbered buyers by this large of a number or percentage. A year ago, sellers outnumbered buyers by just 6.5%, and two years ago, buyers outnumbered sellers.”
  • ⚖️ Buyer’s Markets – From the same Redfin report, these are the top buyer’s markets
  • 🏠 Housing Inventory Changes by State – The number of homes for sale across the U.S. is quite a bit higher than last year. As more supply comes online, you would think that would be beneficial to buyers.
  • Price declines thus far have been very slight overall. The state with the biggest drop in prices, Florida, has seen a price decline of only 0.55%.
  • Housing Supply – An alternative view of the increasing housing supply nationwide:

Life

  • Here are the seven common denominators among people who build wealth:

Quote of the Month

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

– Herbert A. Simon

I hope you found these interesting.

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or would like to connect.

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