Such a treat to join Jeff DeGraaf and his Renaissance Macro team for their Off-Script podcast. We hit stocks, macro, credit, Fed, memories of days gone by at Barron’s and why markets thrive on “just the right amount of wrong.” urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Everyone knows the deal: Good years for stocks tend to end strong. The market's pricey but this tends not to bite when profits are rising and the Fed cutting rates. Still, it's an uneven rally and very few in history have gone much longer or stronger without a proper gut check. Weekend column.

Such a treat to join Jeff DeGraaf and his Renaissance Macro team for their Off-Script podcast. We hit stocks, macro, credit, Fed, memories of days gone by at Barron’s and why markets thrive on “just the right amount of wrong.” urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

As a rewarding year for markets pivots from the season of feigned fright to a month of thanksgiving, a look at the risk-reward setup from here. History says let it ride, wary investors ponder locking it in as 3-yr S&P 500 returns sit among the best ever. New column, free to read with email signup.

Even the companies can't know or say for sure how many of the layoffs are due to AI. We're just in a mode where corporate managers are going after past over-hiring, padding margins, navigating big tech-spending commitments and conveying to investors they are forward-thinking and efficiency-minded.

My standard spoilsport take on this: A company's market cap in real time is an inherently imprecise abstraction. Apple has been buying back about 100m of its shares per quarter so we'll probably find out from its earnings report on Thursday that it didn't hit $4T when it seems it did.

Street pegs prediction-market volumes +91% in October from last month driven by sports contracts, the NBA in particular. Piper Sandler figures 30% of Kalshi activity is coming via clients of Robinhood, a firm that's enthusiastically blurring zero-sum betting with positive-sum investing activities.

Look familiar? From my friend Jonathan Mahler’s smart new political/cultural history of late-‘80s NYC, “Gods of New York,” real-estate interests panicking in advance of the 1989 Democratic primary, in which David Dinkins ultimately beat Ed Koch on his way to becoming the city’s first Black mayor…

Questions for investors with stocks back at a record: Was a two-week pause enough to refresh the rally? Was enough froth skimmed from speculative momentum stocks? Can no news remain good news without government data, or is a stealth “growth scare” brewing? Weekend column, free with email signup.

The best runners go faster, have a smoother gait and need less recovery time. Was a two-week pause enough to refresh a tenacious and at times overheated bull market? New column details the setup into what everyone knows is (usually) the best time of year for stocks. (Free to read w/ email signup.)

Some chatter this morning about how today's date historically has been the single most profitable day for stocks for 3-month forwards. Of course, almost three months ago we hit the single worst date to buy, and the S&P 500 is up nearly 5% since. Seasonal patterns are climate, not weather...

JP Morgan's downgrade of Goldman Sachs (by a London-based analyst) serves as a kind of shadow downgrade of JPM itself based on the rationale behind the call. For comparison, JPM trades at 13.3x 2027 forecast earnings and 2.8x tangible book value.

Credit hiccups, trade frictions and erratic action in junky speculative stocks were excuses for a calm rally to break stride ten days ago. What now, after a modest pullback and an indecisive choppy week, as corporate results rush into a void of government data? Column sets up the week ahead.

Credit hiccups, trade frictions and erratic action in junky speculative stocks were excuses for a calm rally to break stride ten days ago. What now, after a modest pullback and an indecisive choppy week, as corporate results rush into a void of government data? Column sets up the week ahead.

A fairly strong week for the market which nonetheless felt like a struggle after a long, calm climb. Wall Street confronted ghosts of crises past: regional-bank credit jitters, US-China trade static, a purge in speculative froth. Just a “normal seasonal pause” or something more? New column.

Gold and stocks have been moving inversely all day. With equities, bond yields, the dollar, oil and bitcoin under pressure the past week, gold's unhinged surge came to be seen as an unwelcome anomaly and reflective of erratic flows, rather than just part of an "everything rally."

Jamie Dimon says you never see just one, but then I doubt he takes the subway.

Sellers sleeping late this week, waiting for the reflex morning rally to engage. Third straight intraday wobble. Bitcoin heavy, wild spec stuff off the boil, S&P 500 spending the entire week within Friday's range as traders sort out whether it opened the way for more chop. VIX >21, wary action.

Plenty of excitement in the morning run of market analysis about the apparent breakout in the small-cap Russell 2000 relative to S&P 500. The charts don't lie, but they don't tell you why...

Not to impose logic where there isn't much of it, but one could tell a story about the rolling hot-money speculative waves as crypto lottery winners with windfall paper profits grabbing for other assets that would hedge a "crypto failure" moment. Quantum (could crack crypto encryption), gold/silver.

The geographic sample in Piper Sandler's teen-spending survey seems built to capture trends on a lagging basis...

This phase of the market advance has been led by higher-volatility, lower-quality stocks. Here's the S&P 500 quality-factor ETF relative to the broad S&P 500, back to a 10-year relative-performance low.

Never forget...

The bid abides. That’s the central reality for stocks, the market bypassing plenty of excuses to falter in an often-bumpy time of year, anchoring to an entrenched story: The Fed is cutting rates into an economy supported by a huge tech capex boom and affluent-consumer spending...

The bid abides. That’s the central reality for stocks, the market bypassing plenty of excuses to falter in an often-bumpy time of year, anchoring to an entrenched story: The Fed is cutting rates into an economy supported by a huge tech capex boom and affluent-consumer spending...

No predictions here, but the last couple of times Tesla went vertical into this price zone in a buying crescendo, the Nasdaq was on the verge of a rough patch...

Wall Street is having a mild AI-nxiety attack. The simmering unease about a possible AI bubble began boiling over last week. A proper warning of an undisciplined capital-burning binge or a helpful dose of caution to refresh the rational exuberance? New column. www.cnbc.com/2025/09/27/s...

Wall Street is having a mild AI-nxiety attack. The simmering unease about a possible AI bubble began boiling over last week. A proper warning of an undisciplined capital-burning binge or a helpful dose of caution to refresh the rational exuberance? New column. www.cnbc.com/2025/09/27/s...

The market has concluded that Intel is Too Rigged to Fail after the US government took a 10% stake, Nvidia injected some capital as part of a product-development deal and Intel has reportedly talked to Apple and Taiwan Semi about investing or partnering, becoming a quasi meme stock along the way...

Shares of leveraged Bitcoin-hoarding firm Strategy (the former Microstrategy) have now officially been dead money since just after the election, when the stock first went vertical. Still valued at a decent premium to its $71B in Bitcoin holdings. Market cap is $85B, enterprise value $100B...

What do you get for the market that has everything? Investors got a dovish Fed turn in a steady economy, with stocks at a record, credit markets blissed out, capital investment running in torrents into the economy. What could be next, as bubble talk percolates? New column, free with email signup.

A recent shift among market pros: Framing the prospect of a runaway AI bubble with warmth rather than alarm. By most measures the wild extremes of the tech mania 25+ years ago aren’t here, and may never arrive, but are now being invoked by bullish investors rather than doomers. Weekend column…

What do you get for the market that has everything? Investors got a dovish Fed turn in a steady economy, with stocks at a record, credit markets blissed out, capital investment running in torrents into the economy. What could be next, as bubble talk percolates? New column, free with email signup.

So much criticism and dissent surrounding Fed Chair Powell these days. But when he said, "A reasonable base case is that the effects on inflation will be relatively short-lived," all can celebrate that he continues to pronounce "short-lived" correctly, with a long "i."

With Mega Tech looking a bit extended as yields/ the dollar sit at 2025 lows, the market's trying to front-run the Fed-rate-cut playbook of rotating into lower-quality small caps. (Fed days tend to have multiple feints and jukes before/after the decision, players will find something to play...)

The S&P 500 index futures tick to four sixes.. The generational low in the cash index in March of 2009 was 666.

The bull market believers have everything they think they want: An easy path to an easier Fed, gain without much pain, another AI spending wave to ride. Next stop euphoria or time for a rethink? New column. Free to read with email registration.

The bull market believers have everything they think they want: An easy path to an easier Fed, gain without much pain, another AI spending wave to ride. Next stop euphoria or time for a rethink? New column. Free to read with email registration.

The stock market’s resilience shows how hard it is to dislodge an entrenched macro narrative affirmed by longer-term asset-price trends: A Fed about to trim rates into a steady economy and a generational AI capex bonanza. Still a plausible setup? Weekend column, free to read with email signup.

The stock market’s resilience shows how hard it is to dislodge an entrenched macro narrative affirmed by longer-term asset-price trends: A Fed about to trim rates into a steady economy and a generational AI capex bonanza. Still a plausible setup? Weekend column, free to read with email signup.

A weaker-than-hoped jobs report, Nvidia rolling over, Treasury yields sliding toward the "growth scare" zone, Bitcoin flagging. Yet the market executed the silver linings playbook, rotating deftly, fixated on Fed help, leaving the S&P 500 within 1% of a record. Delusion or durability? New column.

"Shares of exchange operator CBOE pull back sharply as the Powerball jackpot's growth to $1.7 billion draws speculators away from short-dated options trades..."

Happy 10th anniversary of Disney shares' first reaching today's price. A pretty rough run, dating to the peak of the pay TV ecosystem and the glory days of superhero box-office magic. And yet, Disney's been the best of the bunch from legacy media over that span, until Fox recently edged ahead.

"Valuation is not a timing tool," everyone says as they avoid fighting the trend or the Fed. And it's hard to disagree. Maybe just a coincidence, then, that the Nasdaq 100 during this bull market keeps getting repelled at 28x forward earnings, allowing prices to reset and profits to catch up...

This observation predates broadly legalized sports betting, but the sentiment has only grown stronger with every football season since...

Another wobble to start a new month. In August the initial stumble tested a level from a couple weeks prior and created the low for the month. Maybe a bit too much to ask that it repeats so neatly in September, but can't rule it out...

A two-day round trip in the S&P 500, each day about the same range, one phantom closing drop, then a sudden closing pop. Market doing its rotational-churn thing digesting Friday's rally, held in place by impending Nvidia results, finding little in particular to reprice in the Trump-Lisa Cook flap...

Intel shares finish down 1%, and 5% off the morning high, as investors read the fine print and digest the implications of the government turning a grant made by Congress into a 10% equity stake in the company...

As I've said in years past when the population of all mutual funds and ETFs exceeded the number of stocks, raising alarm about this is a bit like worrying that there are more books than words. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The constant comparisons between today's AI-centric bull market and the late-'90s boom-to-bubble phase is some mix of logical, interesting and beside the point. The current extremes in market concentration, equity valuation and growth outperformance vs. value are the closest rhymes with 1995-2000.