The market’s benign churn has left a sort of bland baseline bullishness for 2026 intact. A few questions on possible swing factors: Would a “broader” market truly be better? Can huge onrushing demand for AI capital be met? Is bitcoin now “normie” money with less speculative juice? New column.

The industry aims to build a superintelligence by assimilating unthinkable volumes of data dating to the dawn of the written word, yet apparently tweaking the models to account for separate regulations across several states is a level of complexity that would paralyze the whole project...

A high-torque rotation into economically sensitive stocks post-Fed offseting another wobble in the AI theme. The market's been pressing its bets on a reacceleration into 2026, as “run-it-hot” policies kick in. (It tried this a year ago too). Is the stampede into value looking a bit panicky yet?

Stocks rise above their record closing high, set Oct. 28, the day before the prior Fed meeting. The tension release pushes market-implied volatiltiy down to levels likewise seen in late October. This is how it goes when the market clenches up for a "hawkish cut" that turns out not so hawkish...

Santoli's Tuesday market wrap-up: Stocks remain on hold ahead of Fed meeting with a few interesting sector rotations

Noted on the air just now that the market has not quite completed a "V" bottom from the November pullback, the S&P 500 going sideways the past few days and creating more of a Van Halen logo pattern...

The market‘s back in gear after a November wobble, last week’s gentle rise nearly completing its rebound. The tape is posiitoned for a Fed rate cut into a reaccelerating economy, with banks, transports, retailers leading. Heathy shift or head fake? Is the Street too bullish on ‘26? Weekend column.

There are quiet weeks on Wall Street but not meangless ones. The S&P 500's rebound rally slowed, yet below the surface the market is emphatically executing an "early cycle" playbook to posiiton for a peppier economy and looser Fed. Do investors have it right this time? New column.

The market setup for the week and the rest of the year. (CNBC Pro column free to read with email registration.)

Wall Street thinks you don‘t own enough stock. More so than usual, even. It’s the season when business news slows, the Fed’s plan is priced in, and so the bulls’ story leans on “performance chase” logic. Works most years, didn’t in ‘24. Did that 5% shakeout really recharge the market? New column.

$SPX 60' RSI(5) = 95. Turkey might be getting a little overcooked. Similar in past 11-months highlighted.

Always fun when the mechanical upward drift of a pre-holiday market takes three wildly disparate indexes - with components ranging from 30 stocks to 3,900 - up the same amount...

Santoli's Monday market wrap-up: Buyers seize on some oversold conditions and pull the S&P 500 out of the hole

Market setup for the week. Indexes tentatively bouncing off support after disgorging two months of gains, purging some froth, resetting sentiment. Varuious long-building imbalances now in the open: K-shaped/AI-centric growth, crypto as chaos agent. New CNBC column, free with email registration.

"We own these two stocks that attract the gullible and conspiracy-minded and were surprised to learn that many of those same investors have lots of exposure to bitcoin..."

The market trying to rotate away from the immediate blast radius of speculative junk, peripheral AI food-chain plays and crypto, with cyclical groups catching a bid after dipping into the red on a one-year basis. Still plenty to prove as the macro/Fed interplay shifts around, but worth watching...

Stock indexes at their lows for the day. Maybe things will settle down after the Bitcoin close....

A peppy, broad bounce at the open. 85% upside volume. Nvidia restores confidence in the AI-infrastructure food chain for now, though shares only back to a 10-day high. Watching for potential friction overhead: A purely mechanical oversold index bounce often stalls near the 20-day moving average...

We're well beyond the "everybody wins" phase of rewarding all AI spenders and vendors alike. Stock-price correlation of "hyperscalers" MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, META, ORCL collapsing as the market sorts winners vs. losers. In particular, it seems investors are handing GOOGL the belt over MSFT (for now).

Handicapping the reaction to Nvidia results across the market is both inevitable and futile. What would've been a smart way to set up for its last report in August? Typical beat-and-raise released Aug. 27 with the stock hovering just below a record high....

When stocks go down in price they go back in time. Nasdaq 100 returning to Sept. 18 levels, right after the Fed resumed rate cuts. Starting to become a proper reset. Today's flush is a stampede out of AI/Mag7, breadth not bad, defensive sectors trying to hold, equal-weight S&P 500 barely down.

Not to downplay the less-generous welcome today's new grads are getting from employers. But I'm adding a second chart as "When I was your age" ammo for fellow GenXers who have a kid graduating college in '26. The original "jobless recovery" that got Clinton elected with "It's the economy, stupid."

The bull market probably didn’t die last week. But the recent ructions offer a glimpse of its eventual demise - symptoms of underlying imbalances emerging, pre-chronic conditions threatining to go acute. Still just a routine-looking choppy phase in an uptrend? New column, free with email signup.

The bull market probably didn’t die last week. But the recent ructions offer a glimpse of its eventual demise - symptoms of underlying imbalances emerging, pre-chronic conditions threatining to go acute. Still just a routine-looking choppy phase in an uptrend? New column, free with email signup.

Given the season, maybe not surprising to see some selling pressure pick up this week to raise shopping money. One of these will now cost you five shares of IBIT...

Tech stocks trying to hold this crazy-steep outperformance trend line relative to the S&P 500....

The "rebasement" trade...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, rooted in the 19th-century manufacturing economy and using 1890s tabulation methods, has overtaken the Nasdaq 100 this quarter thanks largely to the Dow's 10%+ weight in Goldman Sachs, which refuses to split its stock and accounts for half of today's 300-point gain.

"Michael Burry looks sideways at GPU accounting" and "Masa Son sells Softbank's Nvidia stake" are legitimate coin tosses as Buy/Sell signals, meaning no signal at all. Softbank sold 32m NVDA shares worth $5.8B, you say? The stock trades 180m shares a day and yesterday added $264B in value.

My (almost) daily market observations at the close for CNBC Pro...

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.