5 of Friday's best charts and insights:

"The BLS preliminary estimate of the national benchmark revision to total nonfarm employment for March 2025 was a downward revision of 911,000 jobs (a decline of 0.6%) ... We think that figure will be closer to 720,000." Joe Brusuelas

"It is very difficult to be bearish on the US economic outlook, and later this year the conversation in markets will change from talking about Fed cuts to instead talking about the Fed having to hike." -Apollo Slok

"After navigating last year’s challenges from US tariffs, Latin America is poised to have steady though not exuberant economic growth in 2026" -GS Ramos

"Global growth fared surprisingly well in 2025, with acceleration into the end of the year despite strain from tariffs and geopolitics" -Bloomberg

"With the AI boom, it’s no surprise that Information Technology (IT) companies made up over 25% of 2025 (non-SPAC) IPOs. Together, IT and Industrials companies were over half of 2025 IPOs." -Phil Mackintosh, Nasdaq

"In 2025, we saw a total of 354 U.S. equity market IPOs — that’s 136 more than in 2024 and 206 more than in 2023, but still well below 2021’s high" -Phil Mackintosh, Nasdaq

For Q4, companies generating more than 50% of sales outside the US are reporting higher top (11.9% vs. 7.7%) and bottom line (17.7% vs. 10%) YoY growth rates relative to those with more domestic revenue exposure. via John Butters, FactSet

"Positioning in the software sector remains bearish, which is raising concerns of a spillover." -Bloomberg

"If you look under the hood a bit, there are plenty of individual names that are in outright crashes right now." Ben Carlson

"The sectors that mostly underperformed the S&P 500 last year have outperformed so far this year" -Yardeni

"Capex by S&P500 companies is 21% of total capex in the US economy" -Apollo Slok

“At or near their recent record highs are the DJIA and the DJTA. So Dow Theory is confirming that the bull market remains intact.” -Yardeni

"The Mag Seven topped out vs the energy sector in December of 2025, at the same level it did back in October of 2020 ... Markets rarely rinse and repeat that easily. But price is confirming..." -Ricardo Sarraf, All Star Charts

The Nasdaq bounced 2% after 3 straight ≤ -1% days. That’s happened 28 other times, with more than half of those instances clustering during the early 2000s. Signals that occurred outside that range were generally bullish.

“Our US Panic Index is now a 9.2 / 10 - Going back 10 years, here is what happened after we crossed above 9.” -Cullen Morgan, Goldman Sach

Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index rose 2.4% MoM (and 2.4% YoY) in January to 210.5, the highest reading since Sep’23. via Cox Automotive

"Global sales of light-duty electric vehicles totaled 20.6 million in 2025, up 20% YoY. Another record was set as well: 26% of global auto sales were electric, with December at 32%" -Larry Adam, Raymond James

"The number of employees notified with layoffs increased from 15k employees in December to 33.2k in January." -Revelio Labs

"Currency options markets had the two busiest days ever last week, reflecting the rush for hedges and speculative bets." -Bloomberg

"Japanese equities ... are seeing strong earnings momentum but light positioning" -TS Lombard

"Korean export growth has been driven by strong demand for semiconductors and autos" -Apollo Slok

"A closely-watched measure of Bitcoin mining revenue has dropped to the lowest on record" -David Pan, BBG

"Bitcoin is no longer beating the big asset classes." -Bloomberg

"More than $17.7 billion of US tech company loans in a Bloomberg index dropped to distressed trading levels during the past four weeks to the most since October 2022 ... That figure ... s dominated by firms in software-as-a-service, or SaaS" -Bloomberg

"There is an ongoing thematic revival..." -Todd Sohn, Strategas

"4% of GitHub public commits are being authored by Claude Code right now. At the current trajectory, we believe that Claude Code will be 20%+ of all daily commits by the end of 2026. While you blinked, AI consumed all of software development." -SemiAnalysis

"The forward 1-week average annualized total return of the S&P 500 Index from top quintile stock/bond volatility readings is an astounding 32.4% compared to only 7.8% the rest of the time!" Jim Paulsen

The Nasdaq has fallen by at least 1% for 3 straight days. Going back to 1978, that’s happened 116 other times (most recent was Feb’25). Short-term mean reversion has typically followed, though the effect fades with 6-12 month returns lagging baseline performance.

“There’s now a record correlation between the weakening greenback and volatility, another sign bigger swings are on the way.” -Vassilis Karamanis, BBG

"Still awaiting signs of labor market improvement in other data that I take as seriously as this..." Guy Berger

5 of Thursday's best charts and insights:

”Cyclical leadership is usually a positive for stock market returns; however, Energy leadership has been the exception. The S&P 500 has fallen at a greater than 7% annualize pace when Energy has been the top-performing sector, on average.” www.dailychartbook.com/p/848 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

"When Gallup asked people around the world what single issue matters most to their countries in 2025, the answer was the same nearly everywhere: the economy." Gallup

"The dollar is a strong driver of sovereign credit spreads, and we believe the global re-rating in EM currencies is just getting started, which should underpin sovereign credit spreads." -TS Lombard

"EM sovereign credit spreads have rallied significantly over the past 12 months, driven by resilient EM growth, sturdy risk sentiment, an expectation of stronger fiscal positions in many EMs over the next 12 months and a steep decline in the dollar." -TS Lombard

"The share of Chinese exports going to the US has declined to 10%, down from 20% in 2018" -Apollo Slok

"The population grew at a rate of 0.5% [in 2025], a sharp decline from the near 1.0% growth in 2024. The growth rate was the lowest since 2021 when it grew at 0.2%." @nahb.bsky.social

Despite weakness at the index level, S&P 500 breadth—as measured by the percentage of members trading above key averages—improved yesterday.

“This is a very split market. 16% of S&P 500 stocks are at 52 week highs while 5% are at 52 week lows. This only happened 3 other times: July 1990, August 2015, March 2025. Each were followed by at least a -10% $SPX correction in the next 2 months”. -TheMarketStats

“Cyclical leadership is usually a positive for stock market returns; however, Energy leadership has been the exception. The S&P 500 has fallen at a greater than 7% annualize pace when Energy has been the top-performing sector, on average.” -Rob Anderson, NDR

"The takeaway of the chart is clear: companies within the Energy, Materials, Staples, and Industrials sectors are are crushing it while companies in Comm Services and Financials are lagging" Matt Cerminaro

“By 2050, the world will be consuming lots of oil - or almost nothing. The annual [IEF] review of all the major energy scenarios shows that the high and low points for oil demand in 20250 are apart by ~119m b/d, more than today’s consumption.” Javier Blas

“US service providers registered the strongest back-to-back growth since 2024 last month as business activity picked up ... While a pickup in business activity underpinned the overall measure, orders growth cooled and employment barely expanded.” -Julia Fanzeres, BBG

5 of Thursday's best charts and insights:

”Over the past week, we have observed a clustering of Nasdaq Hindenburg Omens. The Nasdaq 100 Index tends to perform weakly in the following 3 to 6 months.” www.dailychartbook.com/p/847 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

5 of Tuesday's best charts and insights:

"The median luxury home sale price in America rose 4.6% year over year to $1.31 million in December. By comparison, non luxury prices rose 1.4% to $375,000—the slowest growth in records dating back to 2013." -Redfin

"The latest homeownership rate rose to 65.7% in the last quarter of 2025 ... Compared to the peak of 69.2% in 2004, the homeownership rate is currently 3.5 percentage points lower and remains below the 25-year average rate of 66.3%." @nahb.bsky.social

"It’s possible that at some point the dollar will no longer be the global reserve currency, but not anytime soon." Joe Brusuelas