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A growing share of US household assets is owned by people age 55 and above, see chart below. A contributing factor is the aging of the population, as there are more and more people in this age group.
Sources: Federal Reserve, Macrobond, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if AI results in permanently higher GDP growth and permanently lower inflation, it could solve the US fiscal problem, see chart below.
Sources: The Long-Term Budget Outlook Under Alternative Scenarios for the Economy and the Budget | Congressional Budget Office, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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To calculate CPI inflation, BLS teams collect approximately 90,000 price quotes every month covering 200 different item categories, and there are several hundred field collectors active across 75 urban areas.
When data is not available, BLS staff typically develop estimates for approximately 10% of the cells in the CPI calculation. However, the share of data in the CPI that is estimated has increased significantly in recent months and is now above 30%, see chart below.
In other words, a rising share of prices going into the CPI at the moment are guesses based on other data collections in the CPI.
Note: Different cell imputation is where uncollected prices are imputed from collected prices of the same item in other geographic areas or from collected prices of related item categories in the same geographic area. Sources: BLS, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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If you had invested $1 million in the S&P 500 on January 1, 2021, your return today would be $660,000, of which more than half would have come from the top 10 biggest companies in the index, see chart below.
The bottom line is that returns in the S&P 500 are not diversified but instead remain extremely concentrated in a small group of tech stocks.
AI will continue to have a dramatic impact on all our lives, but the question remains whether the Magnificent 7 are correctly priced, and if they will even be the best AI investments over the next five to ten years.
Note: Top 10 companies are NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Broadcom, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan. Sources: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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Academic papers quantifying the impact on 10-year interest rates of a one percentage point increase in US government debt-to-GDP find an effect of 3 basis points, see chart below.
The CBO forecasts that US government debt-to-GDP over the coming decade will increase by roughly 20 percentage points, and the estimates below imply that this will permanently increase 10-year interest rates by 60 basis points.
Source: Apollo Chief Economist and James Thomas See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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If 3,000 people are deported every day, the labor supply will decline by about 1 million in total in 2025.
Combined with additional immigration restrictions, job growth is slowing down.
If legal immigration continues at current levels and illegal immigration declines to zero, the new level of monthly nonfarm payrolls will be 72,000.
Deportations and immigration restrictions are likely to increase wage growth in agriculture, construction, and leisure & hospitality.
Deportations and immigration restrictions lower demand for housing.
The bottom line is that immigration policy has implications for labor supply, nonfarm payrolls, wages, and housing demand. To better understand these effects, we have compiled a chart book, which is available here.
Note: Calculations use Congressional Budget Office demographic data as well as current Bureau of Labor Statistics reports to project monthly changes in employment. Sources: Congressional Budget Office: The Demographic Outlook 
Sources: US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Labor Statistics 
Sources: ICE, Haver Analytics, Apollo Chief Economist 
Source: US Customs and Border Protection 
Source: US Customs and Border Protection See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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The dollar has depreciated more in the first half of 2025 than yield differentials would have predicted, see charts below and the chart book available here.
Regression models indicate that this was due to the trade war and economic policy uncertainty, including concerns among foreign investors about Section 899 and the Mar-a-Lago Accord.
Looking ahead, with Section 899 behind us and the trade war likely to be resolved within the next couple of weeks, the US dollar is expected to appreciate again.
Renewed strong appetite for US assets after Liberation Day is also visible in the Treasury International Capital data for May.
Note: 1-year yield differential = 1-year German government bill minus 1-year T-bill. pp = percentage points. Sources: Bloomberg, Macrobond, Apollo Chief Economist 
Sources: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist 
Sources: US Department of Treasury, Macrobond, Apollo Chief Economist 
See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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China’s working-age population will shrink dramatically over the coming decades, driven by the lagged effects of the one-child policy, an aging population, and a significant decline in fertility rates—which currently stand at 1.09 births per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population size.
This decline in the working-age population will have significant implications for economic growth, the fiscal outlook due to an aging population, and investment and productivity growth.
These risks to China’s long-term outlook are, in many ways, similar to those we have seen in Japan in recent decades.
Sources: UN Population Forecasts, Macrobond, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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The narrative in bond markets today is that all-in yield levels are high. The narrative in stock markets is that it is a good strategy to buy stocks when the S&P 500 is at all-time highs.
Where are these narratives coming from? They are based on the recent performance of bond markets and stock markets: Yield levels were much lower before 2022, and stock markets continue to go higher and higher no matter what happens.
In other words, the market puts more weight on recent events in investment decisions. In short, the market has a short memory because many traders have never seen anything else.
But what if this way of investing is wrong? What if the stock market is about to enter a high inflation period similar to what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s (as shown in the chart below)? Maybe it was the period from 2009 to 2022 that was unusual in fixed income? If that is the case, then yield levels today are not high. Maybe the market today is putting too little weight on the US fiscal problems?
The bottom line is that markets will continue to hold on to yesterday’s narrative until it becomes completely clear that the narrative has changed.
Note: Returns are calculated in the S&P 500 index for the following 10 years for people investing in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020. Annualized returns for 2020 are calculated using data from January 2020 to July 7, 2025. Sources: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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Clean energy is playing a bigger and bigger role in new power installations, see chart below.
Note: GW = Gigawatts. Sources: IRENA, Apollo Chief Economist See important disclaimers at the bottom of the page.
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