Yunnan produced 2.5% more cigarettes than last year, yet the industrial value added from tobacco fell by 1.9%. The first negative growth in ten years.
It’s not that smokers have disappeared. It’s that no one’s willing to pay those extra ten-odd yuan for the most expensive part of the pack.
Break down a 50-yuan pack: ten-odd yuan buys the nicotine; the remaining 30-plus buys the status of handing it over. When business dinners shrink, that 30-plus is the first thing to go.
Sales of high-end cigarettes priced above 40 yuan have halved this year. Sales of everyday cigarettes priced between 15 and 25 yuan have doubled.
Retailers are even more blunt about it. A carton costs 780 yuan wholesale, with a suggested retail price of 800, but it sells for 750. You lose dozens of yuan on every carton. Who’d do that?
The number of tobacco and liquor shops fell by about 19% last year. 320,000 closed—900 a day.
The same pattern has been playing out with baijiu for two years. Shede’s mid- to high-end liquor sales fell 22%, and net profit dropped 67%. Porsche deliveries fell 16% in the first three quarters, while the 911 rose 12%. One up, one down.
A lot of people read this as consumers trading down. I don’t think so. Moutai is still rising, and everyday cigarettes have doubled. Both ends are fine.
It’s the middle that’s collapsing. The extra money people used to pay was propped up by the brand, by appearances—not by the cigarette itself.
And this isn’t the only thing getting squeezed. The US 10-year Treasury yield returned to 5% this week. Do nothing, hold it for a year, and you get five points.
Gold fell 4% this week, and Bitcoin fell 1.8%. Two things often called inflation hedges fell together. That shows what’s really driving prices right now: risk-free money has become too expensive.
The crypto market has the same pattern. $BTC fell 1.8% this week, $ETH fell 2.7%, and Dogecoin fell 2.9%.
The two that rose were the ones with a story behind them: $ZEC was up 7.2%, and ENA was up 7.4%.
The ones caught in the middle, that all look fine on the surface, are the first to get sold.
Is this a one-off? There’s no clear answer. The data only proves that people are pulling back on the extra money they were paying.
Once a store closes, reopening it is hard. That much is certain.
What’s really worth remembering is this pattern. Anything priced on the basis of a hard-to-explain reason for why it’s expensive will eventually have its books recalculated.
Because scarcity speaks for itself. Someone still has to explain the premium.
Bitcoin at 80,600, Ether at 2,340. Take a look at your holdings. How many of them really need you to explain their value?
#比特币 #美联储 #币安广场
It’s not that smokers have disappeared. It’s that no one’s willing to pay those extra ten-odd yuan for the most expensive part of the pack.
Break down a 50-yuan pack: ten-odd yuan buys the nicotine; the remaining 30-plus buys the status of handing it over. When business dinners shrink, that 30-plus is the first thing to go.
Sales of high-end cigarettes priced above 40 yuan have halved this year. Sales of everyday cigarettes priced between 15 and 25 yuan have doubled.
Retailers are even more blunt about it. A carton costs 780 yuan wholesale, with a suggested retail price of 800, but it sells for 750. You lose dozens of yuan on every carton. Who’d do that?
The number of tobacco and liquor shops fell by about 19% last year. 320,000 closed—900 a day.
The same pattern has been playing out with baijiu for two years. Shede’s mid- to high-end liquor sales fell 22%, and net profit dropped 67%. Porsche deliveries fell 16% in the first three quarters, while the 911 rose 12%. One up, one down.
A lot of people read this as consumers trading down. I don’t think so. Moutai is still rising, and everyday cigarettes have doubled. Both ends are fine.
It’s the middle that’s collapsing. The extra money people used to pay was propped up by the brand, by appearances—not by the cigarette itself.
And this isn’t the only thing getting squeezed. The US 10-year Treasury yield returned to 5% this week. Do nothing, hold it for a year, and you get five points.
Gold fell 4% this week, and Bitcoin fell 1.8%. Two things often called inflation hedges fell together. That shows what’s really driving prices right now: risk-free money has become too expensive.
The crypto market has the same pattern. $BTC fell 1.8% this week, $ETH fell 2.7%, and Dogecoin fell 2.9%.
The two that rose were the ones with a story behind them: $ZEC was up 7.2%, and ENA was up 7.4%.
The ones caught in the middle, that all look fine on the surface, are the first to get sold.
Is this a one-off? There’s no clear answer. The data only proves that people are pulling back on the extra money they were paying.
Once a store closes, reopening it is hard. That much is certain.
What’s really worth remembering is this pattern. Anything priced on the basis of a hard-to-explain reason for why it’s expensive will eventually have its books recalculated.
Because scarcity speaks for itself. Someone still has to explain the premium.
Bitcoin at 80,600, Ether at 2,340. Take a look at your holdings. How many of them really need you to explain their value?
#比特币 #美联储 #币安广场
