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Over the Next Year, Germany Will Hit a Scary Demographic Milestone

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5 years ago

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In Europe, the economy is humming along at its fastest pace in 10 years.

According to the European Central Bank, the most recent forecast for the eurozone pegs growth at 2.3% for the year ahead, a significant upgrade from the central bank’s previous estimate of 1.8%.

But as Europe regains its economic mojo, a key part of the machine is seeing demographic reality take shape.

A Scary Milestone

It’s been no secret that Germany, which has a reputation as the economic engine of Europe, is in a troubling demographic predicament. With one of the oldest populations in Europe, and a low fertility rate of just 1.5 births per woman, it is only a matter of time before the rubber hits the road to affect growth in the country.

That time may be finally creeping in, and the country is poised to hit a dubious milestone in the next year that really crystallizes concerns around the demographic composition of Germany’s population.

By 2019, there will be fewer Germans under 30 years old than there are Germans that are 60+ years:

This ratio is certainly extreme on a global level – after all, 24.4% of the world population is under the age of 14, and only 12.3% is older than 60 years.

However, it’s also pretty extreme in comparison to other developed countries. The U.N., for example, recently estimated that the 60 and older population made up an average of 22.1% of the total for all high-income countries.

Conversely, the last time the 60+ group made up the same proportion in the German economy was in 1997.

A Closer Look at Germany

For a closer look at this trend, here’s an animated and interactive chart of Germany’s population pyramid. Notice that by 2020, the shape starts to represent the negative population growth pattern that we showcased in a previous post.

Use the “lock” button to save an imprint of particular year, and then use the play button to animate future years.

Visualizing Negative Growth

With more people in the 60+ age bracket than in the younger generation, it’s inevitably a prelude to population decline in the native population.

Here is this negative growth projection shown, using a more conventional graph:

German population growth

Based on these United Nations projections, the German population is likely to decline by over 10 million people as we move towards the end of the 21st century.

This is a stark contrast to other parts of the world, such as the booming megacities in Asia and Africa, that will soon dominate the world’s future demographic landscape.

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Technology

Just 20 Stocks Have Driven S&P 500 Returns So Far in 2023

From Apple to NVIDIA, megacap stocks are fueling S&P 500 returns. The majority of these firms are also investing heavily in AI.
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4 days ago

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May 24, 2023

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Just 20 Stocks Have Driven Most of S&P 500 Returns

Just 20 firms—mainly AI-related stocks—are propping up the S&P 500 and driving it into positive territory, signaling growing risk in the market.

The above graphic from Truman Du shows which stocks are making up the vast majority of S&P 500 returns amid AI market euphoria and broader market headwinds.

Big Tech Stock Rally

Tech and AI stocks have soared as ChatGPT became a household name in 2023.

The below table shows data from last month, highlighting that just a small collection of companies drove most of the action on the U.S. benchmark index.

Company RankNameContribution to S&P 500 ReturnAverage Weight
1Apple1.49%6.61%
2Microsoft1.15%5.72%
3NVIDIA 1.00%1.62%
4Meta0.66%1.15%
5Amazon0.51%2.56%
6Tesla0.50%1.39%
7Alphabet (Class A Shares)0.34%1.72%
8Alphabet (Class C Shares)0.31%1.53%
9Salesforce0.19%0.51%
10Advanced Micro Devices0.16%0.39%
11General Electric0.10%0.28%
12Visa0.10%1.08%
13Broadcom0.09%0.73%
14Intel0.09%0.35%
15Walt Disney0.08%0.55%
16Booking Holdings0.07%0.28%
17Exxon Mobil0.06%1.37%
18Netflix0.06%0.44%
19Oracle0.06%0.40%
20Adobe0.06%0.49%
Top 20 Companies7.05%29.17%
S&P 500*7.55%100.00%

*Based on the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF as of April 11, 2023. Source: Vanguard S&P500 ETF, Bloomberg.

Microsoft invested $10 billion into OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. It has also integrated generative AI into its search engine Bing. This large language model is designed specifically to make search capabilities faster, generate text, and perform other automations.

Also of interest is NVIDIA, which is the most valuable chipmaker in America. It sells $10,000 chips called A100s that allow machine learning models to run. These models perform multiple tasks simultaneously to develop neural networks and train AI systems, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Companies that are developing AI-related services, such as chatbots or image generation, may use up to thousands of these chips.

Despite being the world’s most valuable company and a key driver of returns, Apple is an outlier among tech giants with no major projects announced in AI (so far).

Implications of Market Divergence

The problem with the strong gains seen in a few select AI-related stocks is that it clouds wider stock market performance.

Without the AI-led rally, the S&P 500 would be returning -1.4%. as of May 17, 2023.

This form of steep divergence, known as market breadth, often signals higher risk in the market.

When more companies experience positive returns it is less risky than a small handful seeing the majority of the gains. Today market breadth is very narrow, and these companies make up over 29% of the entire index’s market capitalization.

How long AI-related firms mask the broader performance of the S&P 500 remains to be seen. A growing number of market pressures, from higher interest rates to banking uncertainty could add further challenges.

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