Markets

The Latte Index: Using the Impartial Bean to Value Currencies

Published

5 years ago

December 1, 2017

Jeff Desjardins

The Latte Index: Using the Impartial Bean to Value Currencies

The Impartial Bean

Using the price of a coffee to estimate currency value

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

Like any other market, there are many opinions on what a currency ought to be worth relative to others.

With certain currencies, that spectrum of opinions is fairly narrow. As an example, for the world’s most traded currency – the U.S. dollar – the majority of opinions currently fall in a range from the dollar being 2% to 11% overvalued, according to organizations such as the Council of Foreign Relations, the Bank of International Settlements, the OECD, and the IMF.

For other currencies, the spectrum is much wider. The Swiss franc, which some have called the world’s most perplexing currency, has estimates from those same groups ranging from about 13% undervalued to 21% overvalued.

Such a variance in estimates makes it hard to come up with any conclusive consensus – so in today’s chart, we refer to a more caffeinated and fun measure that also approximates the relative value of currencies.

The Impartial Bean

The “Latte Index”, developed by The Wall Street Journal, uses purchasing-power parity (PPP) – comparing the cost of the same good in different countries – to estimate which currencies are overvalued and undervalued.

In this case, the WSJ tracked down the price of a tall Starbucks latte in dozens of cities around the world. These prices are then converted to U.S. dollars and compared to the benchmark price, which is a tall Starbucks latte in New York City (US$3.45).

The Latte Index

The Latte Index is mostly for fun, but it’s also broadly in line with predictions made by the experts.

For example, the price of a latte in Toronto, Canada works out to US$2.94, which is about 14.8% under the benchmark NYC price. This suggests that relative to the USD, the Canadian dollar is undervalued. Interestingly, estimates from the aforementioned sources (BIS, OECD, CFR, IMF) have the Canadian dollar at being up to 10% undervalued – which puts the Latte Index not too far off.

Given the wild range of estimates that exist for currency values, using the relative cost of a cup of joe might be as good of a proxy as any.

Related Topics:starbucks currency USD fx latte index

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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.

Creator Program

Published

4 days ago

May 24, 2023

Dorothy Neufeld

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 Rank	Name	Contribution to S&P 500 Return	Average Weight
1	Apple	1.49%	6.61%
2	Microsoft	1.15%	5.72%
3	NVIDIA	1.00%	1.62%
4	Meta	0.66%	1.15%
5	Amazon	0.51%	2.56%
6	Tesla	0.50%	1.39%
7	Alphabet (Class A Shares)	0.34%	1.72%
8	Alphabet (Class C Shares)	0.31%	1.53%
9	Salesforce	0.19%	0.51%
10	Advanced Micro Devices	0.16%	0.39%
11	General Electric	0.10%	0.28%
12	Visa	0.10%	1.08%
13	Broadcom	0.09%	0.73%
14	Intel	0.09%	0.35%
15	Walt Disney	0.08%	0.55%
16	Booking Holdings	0.07%	0.28%
17	Exxon Mobil	0.06%	1.37%
18	Netflix	0.06%	0.44%
19	Oracle	0.06%	0.40%
20	Adobe	0.06%	0.49%
	Top 20 Companies	7.05%	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.

4. AI is fueling the stock market

A handful of stocks are spearheading the S&P 500's impressive 9% rally this year.

Here’s the kicker: if you excluded AI stocks, the S&P 500 would be down over 1% (according to Societe Generale). pic.twitter.com/SME1mJVpoW

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) May 22, 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.