“Don’t worry, be happy. In every life we have trouble, but when you worry you make it double.” Bobby McFerin from his hit song Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Ok, now that you have that song in your head, let’s talk about some good news. We get it, the news and headlines are constantly bad. This has greatly impacted consumer confidence surveys and overall investor psyche. But are things really that bad? Listen, we could always find reasons to worry, and trust me, we are paid to worry when you manage money and risk. Still, I’ve noticed a few under-the-radar things that are suggesting things are much better than we keep hearing.
The Quietest All-Time High Ever
Let’s start with the second largest company in the world. As of Friday, Apple had a market cap of $4.89 trillion compared with Nvidia standing at $4.91 trillion. Who knows, by the time you read this, Apple could once again be the most valuable company in the world, but what stood out to me was that last week Apple finally hit a new high (remember, it had been lagging by a wide margin), yet no one seemed to care.
There was a time when Apple would hit new highs, and it would be all over TV, and investors would rejoice; when the next high came, no one cared. Well, I like to see new highs and no excitement, so this could be another clue that Apple (and perhaps the other lagging names in the Mag 7) could be ready to take back the baton. I don’t think that is a bad thing for this bull market.
More Businesses Are Being Created
The Census Bureau tracks how many businesses are started, and last month we saw another surge in people willing to take the ultimate chance and start a business. Yes, the bear would say they have to do this, as the labor market is so bad that this is their only option. I disagree and think this is a clue that things aren’t nearly as bad as we keep hearing; if people are willing to start a new business, they must have confidence not only in themselves but also in how they think the economy will be next year.
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Getting to the data, business applications for June 2026, adjusted for seasonal variation, were 531,423, an increase of 1.1% compared to May 2026. If this sounds familiar, we noted an uptick in business applications in 2022 as a reason to avoid a recession in our 2023 Outlook. That time you might recall was full of bears and economists telling us that a recession in 2023 was imminent, all of whom were proven extremely wrong. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather trust Main Street than an economist in a bowtie, and to see more businesses created is a positive you won’t hear about on TV.
Lower Income Consumers Are Improving
This next one is more controversial, but the data is the data. Let’s first off be clear, people are clearly struggling out there, as our economy is divided between those that have assets (think stocks and real estate) and those that don’t. This is what economists mean when they say a K-shaped economy, some are going up and others are going lower.
Back to that K-shaped economy, spending continues to narrow the gap between lower- and higher-income brackets, with last month marking the smallest gap since July 2025. Likely surprising many, the biggest boost in spending was lower incomes at 4.8% YoY in June.
Another angle on this is that in June, higher-income households’ after-tax wage growth eased to 4.2% YoY, while that of the lower-income cohort improved to a similar level. But the trends are what I’m watching here, as higher incomes have rolled over, while lower incomes are firmly trending higher. Yet again, not something you hear about on TV. Thanks to my friend Mike Zaccardi, who noted this recently.
The Shrinking Middle Class
Lastly, the media keeps telling us about the ‘shrinking middle class’, which is true, but not for the reasons they claim. Thanks to more and more households benefiting from this booming bull market in equities and real estate, data points to the fact that the middle class is indeed shrinking, but it appears that way because people are moving up to the upper middle class.
In fact, in 1979, nearly 30% of families were poor or near-poor, and that has since fallen to less than 19%. Meanwhile, the upper-middle class has risen from about 10% in 1979 to more than 31% now. As you can see below, across all classes the trend has been improvement over the decades. The podcasting and writing machine known as Ben Carlson wrote about this recently, and it got on my radar.
In conclusion, no, things aren’t perfect, but they don’t appear to be nearly as bad as we are fed each day. Thanks, as always, for reading, and for more of my thoughts on the latest out there (and Apple hitting new highs), I joined Dom Chu on CNBC’s Morning Call yesterday to discuss it all.
For more content by Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist, click here.
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