Carpenters working to frame houses with high ceilings have a unique challenge. Setting studs to be both vertical and the right length becomes hard because the standard tape measures they use for nearly all their measurements are designed to work best when used to take measurements in a horizontal orientation. But when they're used to make vertical measurements over a span that's longer than the carpenter can reach, things go awry.
Here, if they can get the tape to stay straight, the measurement they need to read is often well above them and hard to read. But over a long enough span, the tape will start to flop under its own weight. That makes it hard to keep straight, stay in the right orientation, and cover the distance they need to get an accurate measurement. It almost ensures they have to go through a lot of trial and error to successfully cut a vertical stud to the right length for every board they need to cut. They can cut the boards long, but will often have to do extra work with multiple iterations to trim it down to the right size. And if they cut it short, they will have wasted material because once it's cut short, it cannot be used how they intended.
A Kickstarter project that will run to 10 March 2025 aims to address that challenge with some true outside the box thinking. In the following 3-minute video, Ray, a framing carpenter, describes how he developed the prototype along with a design team from Ox Tools for the Speedframe, an extendable measuring level that solves the problems of taking long vertical measurements for professional carpenters, masons, and glaziers.
In modern construction, lasers are often used to take measurements over distances that are too long for traditional measuring tapes to be used successfully, but have the problem of being slow. Professionals using the Speedframe can often take the measurements they need up to eight times faster than laser measuring tools, which is a huge advantage.
The good news is this Kickstarter project is already fully funded. The Speedframe extended measuring level will make it to the marketplace, which they're aiming to do in July 2025.
Labels: technology
Several weeks have passed since our previous look at the expected future quarterly dividends of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) in 2025.
Our last snapshot was taken on 21 January 2025, our new picture of the outlook for the index' dividends in 2025 was snapped on 14 February 2025. In between, investor expectations for how many dividends per share will be paid out before the end of the current quarter of 2025-Q1 rose from $19.95 to $20.15, which is quite a bump. The outlook also improved for the upcoming second quarter of 2025, although to a lesser extent as the forecast rose from $19.04 per share to $19.15 per share.
Looking further out, the future prospects for the S&P 500's quarterly dividend payouts were either slightly negative or slightly positive. Projected dividends in 2025-Q3 dipped from $19.41 per share to $19.38, while 2025-Q4's dividends rose from $19.44 per share to $19.46.
The following animated chart shows these changes for current and future quarterly dividends along with the final recorded reading of the dividend futures for each previous quarter from 2022-Q4 through 2024-Q4. If you're reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to see the animation.
How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future affects stock prices is described by this math.
More About Dividend Futures Data
For this series, we have been taking a snapshot of the CME Group's S&P 500 quarterly dividend futures data shortly after the second or third week of each month.
Dividend futures indicate the amount of dividends per share to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter's dividend futures contracts, which start on the day after the preceding quarter's dividend futures contracts expire and end on the third Friday of the month ending the indicated quarter. So for example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now "current" quarter of 2025-Q1 began on Saturday, 21 December 2024 and will end on Friday, 21 March 2025.
That makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures reported by Standard and Poor. S&P reports the amount of dividends per share paid out during regular calendar quarters after the end of each quarter. This term mismatch accounts for the differences in dividends reported by both sources, with the biggest differences between the two typically seen in the first and fourth quarters of each year.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A crystal ball with the word 'SP 500' written inside it". And 'Dividends' written above it, which we added.
Labels: dividends, forecasting, SP 500
Every three months, we take a snapshot of the expectations for future earnings in the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) at approximately the midpoint of the current quarter, shortly after most U.S. firms have announced their previous quarter's earnings.
The latest snapshot is a little early, but still 90 days since the Fall 2024 snapshot. During this time, remarkably little changed in the outlook for the collective earnings of the companies that make up the S&P 500 index. That relative lack of change is a new development that's taken place over the past six months.
That's remarkable because it runs counter to the pattern we typically see in how the outlook for earnings changes with time. That pattern is one in which the expectations for future earnings tend to erode with each later snapshot.
To be sure, that pattern holds in the Winter 2025 snapshot but the amount of erosion is tiny. Looking at the S&P 500's anticipated earnings per share for the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, we find those expectations dipped by $1.49 per share. That's a decline of just 0.6%.
The following chart, covering how earnings expectations have changed from the end of 2021 through 11 February 2025 illustrates both the typical pattern and the relative lack of change in those expectations since 13 August 2024:
The current projection for the S&P 500's earnings per share through the end of 2025 is $249.13, which would represent 18.2% year-over-year earnings growth over December 2024's level of $210.81. Given the typical pattern for how earnings projections develop over time, that figure represents the likely ceiling for potential earnings growth during 2025.
The Winter 2025 snapshot also includes the first projection of the index' expected earnings per share through the end of 2026. The first estimate of what those earnings will be is $289.64 per share.
Reference
Silverblatt, Howard. Standard & Poor. S&P 500 Earnings and Estimates. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 13 November 2024. Accessed 17 February 2025.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A crystal ball with the word 'SP 500' written inside it". And 'Earnings' written above it, which we added.
Labels: earnings, forecasting, SP 500
The market-moving headlines in the week that was were pretty bad for Wall Street bulls. A higher than expected consumer inflation report on Wednesday, 12 February 2025 would all but seem to have diminished the chances of even one rate cut during 2025. At least, that's the news the market-moving headlines proclaimed.
But by the end of the trading week, investor expectations for the outlook for interest rate cuts in 2025 changed to go in a different direction. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool closed out the week anticipating a quarter point rate cut to be announced after the Fed meets on 7 May (2025-Q2), about 12 weeks earlier than it forecast a week earlier. While that remains the only rate change expected in 2025, the FedWatch tool suggests another quarter point rate cut is likely in January 2026, which could move up into 2025-Q4 if the momentum for the change in expectations continues.
That change coincided with investors shifting their attention once again to 2025-Q4, which coincides with a 1.5% increase in the level of the S&P 500 over the previous week. The index reached 6,114.63 on Friday, 14 February 2025, just several points shy of its all-time record high of 6,118.71 from 23 January 2025. The latest update of the alternative futures chart tracks the trajectory of the S&P 500 changing with along with the changing investment horizon for investors.
Here are the week's market moving headlines, in which the business news media missed the late breaking change in investor expectations for how the Federal Reserve will be setting the Federal Funds Rate in 2025 and beyond.
- Monday, 10 February 2025
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- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Trump raises tariffs on aluminum, steel imports in latest trade war salvo
- Where does the US get its steel and aluminum from?
- US copper price premium soars to record after Trump tariff moves
- US steel makers stocks rise, foreign peers fall on Trump tariff plans
- Looming tariffs turned into a mad dash north for one US manufacturer
- Oil gains nearly 2% despite trade war concerns
- Fed minions expected to sit on hands for months before next interest rate move:
- Bigger trouble developing in China:
- China to roll back clean power subsidies after boom
- China's consumer inflation at 5-month high, producer deflation persists
- Nasdaq, S&P, and Dow ended in the green as investors await inflation data
- Tuesday, 11 February 2025
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Fed minions say US economy is okie dokie and so are their monetary policies, so there's no need to rush to cut interest rates faster:
- Fed's Powell, quizzed about trade, Musk, and bank safety, says economy is fine
- Fed's Williams says monetary policy is in right place to achieve Fed goals
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
- Shares of Chinese steelmakers slide as Trump's fresh tariffs add uncertainty on exports
- China's car sales post biggest drop in almost a year in January
- Eurozone minions thinking about responding to US steel, aluminum tariffs:
- Wall Street ends mixed on tariff drama, Fed comments; focus shifts to consumer inflation
- Wednesday, 12 February 2025
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- US consumer inflation increases at fastest pace in nearly 1-1/2 years in January
- Inflation heats up more than expected in January CPI
- Hotter January inflation jolts markets, dimming rate cut hopes
- Few mourn the US penny as Trump moves to kill it
- Oil prices retreat after report of U.S. crude stockpile rise
- US fourth-quarter 2024 earnings growth set to be highest in three years
- Fed minions surprised by inflation, thinking about stalling more rate cuts:
- Fed's Powell sees a ways to go on shrinking Fed holdings
- US inflation jump puts Fed officials on notice as Powell testifies
- Hot Jan US CPI surprise argues for Fed staying in neutral
- BOJ minions say they're going to aim at 2% inflation for Japan's economy:
- BOJ to conduct monetary policy to achieve 2% inflation target, Governor Ueda says
- BOJ governor says higher food prices in Japan may alter inflation expectations
- ECB minions say they're excited to keep cutting Eurozone interest rates, have dark outlook for Eurozone economy:
- ECB can keep cutting rates even if Fed takes it slow, Vujcic says
- ECB's Nagel wary of blurry 'neutral' rate target, U.S. tariff damage
- ECB's Villeroy reaffirms that Trump policies will likely be negative for economy
- S&P 500 ends down as hot US inflation data hints at fewer rate cuts
- Thursday, 13 February 2025
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- US producer inflation trends higher; labor market remains stable
- Trump outlines reciprocal tariff plan in latest bid to reshape trade on his terms
- US power companies increase data center demand spending as DeepSeek fears wane
- Higher inflation pushing back timing of Fed minions' expected 2025 rate cut:
- BOJ minions expected to keep delivering interest rate hikes because of inflation in Japan:
- Japan's wholesale inflation jumps, reinforcing BOJ rate-hike bets
- Most economists expect BOJ to hike rates in latter half of 2025, survey shows
- Nasdaq, S&P close up 1% as Trump tariff directive staves off new immediate levies
- Friday, 14 February 2025
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Oil edges lower as potential Ukraine peace deal eases supply worries
- US retail sales post biggest drop in nearly two years amid winter freeze
- US manufacturing output falls in January on weak motor vehicle production
- Fed minions to address criticism of how they measure inflation by becoming less clear about it; also say they want to go slower on rate cuts:
- Fed may only nuance much-maligned ‘averaging’ strategy
- Fed's Logan calls for caution on rate cuts, even if inflation cools
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
- Chinese exporters brace for 'rat race' in shift away from US
- China January bank lending hits record high on policy stimulus
- China's property loan contraction eases after government support
- Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq closed mixed as markets snapped a two-week losing streak
The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of what real GDP growth will be in the 2025-Q1 dropped from last week's +2.9% to +2.3% on 14 February 2025.
Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull excited by good earnings news". This is pretty generic cartoon for which we dropped in a headline to capture what the market-moving headlines missed!
Mathematician John Conway loved playing games. He also loved using math to invent games, the best known of which is his Game of Life. Not the Hasbro board game, but rather a game based on simple mathematical rules that simulates the life and death of simple organisms.
Since its Valentine's Day, we thought we'd take inspiration from Conway's Game of Life by playing the game in a way that he might have done. We drew the outline of a heart on the Game of Life grid, much like the one on the left hand side of our featured image, and let the game play out to see what patterns might emerge from that starting design. We next drew another heart, the same size as the first one, but this time, filling in the inside of the heart.
But before we clicked the button to "start reproducing", we wondered how that simple difference might change the outcome of the game. Would the filled-in heart produce similar patterns to the simple outline of a heart? Would it "live" longer, or rather, would it go through more generations than the outlined heart before it might either stagnate (reach a pattern that doesn't significantly change) or die out (disappear altogether)?
We're not going to tell you the outcome, because it's easier to find out for yourself. Draw your own heart in the grid below by clicking the squares to make it, then click the "start reproducing" button to bring it to life. Then try again with a variation of your first heart design. If you're accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click through to our site to access a working version.
Click on table cells to toggle the cells as alive or dead.
Click the Start Reproducing button to Start and Stop
We will say we were surprised by the symmetry in the patterns that emerged from our initial hearts. If you play the game again, you might try making your heart design a little different. Would the outcomes change if you made it bigger or smaller? What would happen if you only filled in half of the heart? Would that live longer or shorter than your previous longest-lasting initial heart design? What would change if you made that design asymmetric? Is it possible to tweak your heart design to make its descendant patterns stay alive forever?
We don't know the answers to any of those questions. Yet. The best way to find out is to play. Have fun and a happy Valentine's Day!
Previously on Political Calculations
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