Cheap, increasingly capable AI may undercut the revenues needed to justify massive infrastructure spending. AI might be the largest capital spending boom in American history, but it can’t escape the economic laws of competitive markets, and it’s awfully hard to compete against “free.”

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The rise in the 10-year nominal rate is almost entirely due to the upswing in real rates—not a jump in inflation expectations. This has put pressure on “real asset classes,” like gold, commodities, real estate, and TIPS. But when real rates retreat, these assets can rebound quickly.

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Some sentiment measures reliably correlate (usually contrarily) with forward returns. Others are valuable as regime indicators and gauges of market fragility. The message from leveraged ETF flows is split, with one foot in each camp. Overall, these signals suggest investors may be getting skittish.

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Despite the official consensus that leveraged ETFs are strictly for short-term trading, a recent academic paper by Carpenter, Lu, and Whitelaw argues the opposite. Their study contends these funds can actually serve as a superior long-term wealth strategy for certain retirement savers.

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For decades, we’ve tracked an indicator that maps bond market conditions to equity performance: the Dow Bond Oscillator—and its track record is exceptional. Despite the S&P 500’s perpetual run to new highs in 2026, the DBO has been on a persistent sell signal.

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Today’s spiking Courage/Fear Ratio reflects optimism borne of an extended market run and AI mania. Yet, history tells us that the path forward is likely to test the mettle of levered bulls, and a full tilt toward Courage at present may be straddling the line between bravery and foolishness.

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Consumer sentiment has hit a recent low, yet cyclical stocks are trading at relative highs. Investors have not yet begun to position for a bearish or recessionary environment.

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Job growth has gone soft, yet unemployment has barely budged. Fewer jobs, but nobody’s catching the boot. In past years, low job growth would’ve sounded economic alarms. Today, it’s closer to noise. The reason for that change is worth understanding, so we developed a better metric: the Employment Diffusion Index.

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In an unusual twist, one of the cheapest industries today is part of the hottest theme piloting the bull market higher: The world’s leading memory chip companies can be purchased at P/E multiples less than 7x earnings.

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S&P 500 >30% earnings growth occurred only two other times since 1990—both were rebounds out of severe downturns. Today’s expansion is propelled by a narrow list of firms exposed to the AI data-center theme; an eventual loss of confidence in such AI outlays could prove disastrous for earnings and stock prices.

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The economy feels like it is doing fine, but AI capex is carrying the load and, sans that, GDP has muddled along for three straight quarters.

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Trading rather cheaply on some metrics, small caps have space for improvement even if the S&P 500 holds up. Still, given the index’s vast earning power amassed from the AI data-center boom, we are not ready to call a major turn in the large-cap/small-cap horse-race just yet.

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The Russell 2000’s July collapse (-3%) was the first time since its ’25 low that it trailed SPX by more than a percentage point. A single month settles nothing. But it was enough to send us under the hood, where a couple of things caught the eye: breadth and lack of staying power.

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In contrast to most factor ETFs, Momentum is a chameleon with the potential for drastic allocation shifts. Since 2013, every sector has experienced a dip to a near zero weight in the SPX Mo index, while at some point, six of 11 made up 25-67% of the weight.

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Growth’s P/E gap between trailing and forward EPS is over 10 points—historically high and challenging the 1999 peak. One’s opinion about Growth depends heavily on whether they are looking backward or forward in their P/E calculations.

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Several leading AI models were engaged to generate personalized investment advice meant to meet the suitability standards required of professional advisors; their results were underwhelming, and yet, enlightening.

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The decision to lever up reflects the convergence of several behavioral finance hot buttons; today’s 54% absolute margin debt growth, and 26% excess margin debt growth over the last 12 months both exceed the historical trigger points.

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What is the link between these two intellectual giants who essentially pioneered their respective fields? The recent S-1 filing by SpaceX in support of its IPO is our connection between these two world views.

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Micron Technology has been the quintessential boom-bust cyclical over most of its history, tracing out a gross margin path that would put to shame any industrial-age steel or chemical company. However, the trillions of dollars being spent on datacenters have put Micron in the catbird’s seat, generating an 85% gross margin in its most recent quarter.

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Q1 book value changes across most BDCs were modest, implying that the sell-off was driven more by perceived fear than actual erosion in credit quality or loan value. Yet, major BDCs still trade at levels that can be interpreted as genuine discomfort over credit concerns.

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