A Fragile Bull

While I am intermediate-term bullish on stocks, I am also increasingly concerned about the narrowness of market leadership. Market leadership continues to be concentrated in the Magnificent Seven, as the equal-weighted S&P 500, which represents the average stock, lags the index.     Here is what this means from top-down macro and a chartist’s viewpoints....

Are the Bulls Back in Town?

Mid-week market update: The stock market has seen a remarkable recovery. After a -2.7% wipeout on Friday, the S&P 500, the equal-weighted S&P 500, and the Russell 2000 all recovered back above their rising trend lines.     Are the bulls back in town?     The Bull Case Here is the bull case for a...

The Return of Tariff Man

Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.   The Trend...

The AI Bubble Debate

Are we in an artificial intelligence investment bubble? That’s becoming the narrative in the financial media. A search on Bloomberg for “AI bubble” showed elevated number of stories, with a peak in January 2025 after the news of the DeepSeek breakthrough.     In practice, what does that mean for equities, and the economy?  ...

It’s a little too quiet out there

Mid-week market update: As the stock market grinds upward, I am seeing different variations of "it's a little too quiet out there" warnings from market analysts. One example is the growing gap between the implied volatility (IV) of the S&P 500 and the historical realized volatility (HV).     Eventually, something has to give. It usually...