Click For an Audio Summary On a personal note, I saw a mainstream business outlet offer, “People are chasing gold,” as they offered it, it was a sign that people are operating on the old “FOMO” approach, which stands for “Fear of Missing Out.” In the most literal sense, are there people out there in the investment landscape that are “chasing gold” to use the phrase? Absolutely. They see something trending upward when priced in U.S. dollars, and when it occurs long enough, the

Click For an Audio Summary In a recent edition we looked at the potential for near-term recession through the lens of two segments within the bond market. Per participants’ messaging through the bond market segments shared, there was little concern of a near-term recession being displayed by participants’ pricing behavior of those bonds. For our part, we have great respect for collective market participants’ messaging throughout the entire landscape of the credit market. With

Fitting with the summer season and how many share pictures of a summer getaway, we thought we would take a similar approach toward reviewing the employment landscape for this edition. With this, below we offer several pictures of the employment backdrop to share perspective of this strange employment market. First is what we have often labeled as a tip of the spear for gauging the health of the employment landscape. To be fair, this is a bit of an exaggeration but used as suc

In our previous edition we focused on the 10-year benchmark treasury note and how bond market participants have pushed up its interest rate in recent months, as well as recent years, to the 4 ½ percent area. We are calling that too close for comfort relative to the psychologically important 5% level – a level that would be a new 20-year high if attained. The 10-year treasury note is viewed as part of the long-end of the maturity spectrum for treasuries. We looked at the long

Click For an Audio Summary Have you seen what the stock market has done lately? On a personal note, the above is a question I hear consistently. My knee-jerk response is, “Which stock market?” Over recent years (post-2022 in particular), we have shared more editions than I can remember on the observation of how the stock market is narrow in its participation. What this means is of all the companies that comprise the broad stock market, a remarkably low number of them are prov

Click For an Audio Summary Since the launch of Operation Epic Fury back on February 28th, we have shared fewer editions than what had been customary up to that point in time. Through all the noise in the geopolitical landscape since late February, coupled with a high noise level in the socioeconomic backdrop domestically, we have chosen to share less in an attempt to step back a bit and share observations that cut through some of the noise rather than tossing more of it into

Click For an Audio Summary If you are a consistent reader of our editions, perhaps you noticed the absence of our emails hitting your inbox of late. To be precise, February 26th was our last edition. This turned out to be just two days prior to the launch of Operation Epic Fury. From that launch date, visibility for collective market participants, across the board, went very murky. Said visibility also went murky for those who offer economic prognostications. Regardless of th

Click For an Audio Summary Within a late summer edition of 2025 followed by an edition in the fall of 2025, we shared how collective stock market participants were displaying concerns for the employment market via the payroll processors. The payroll processors are quite sensitive to the health of the general employment market in light of their core business function being at the epicenter of servicing employed personnel. In light of market participants’ obsession with pricing

Click For an Audio Summary In today’s edition we will continue to look within the stock market landscape, continuing the general theme of recent editions. We have been sharing the ongoing stock market leadership transition that kicked off in earnest back in November. Post-2022 in particular, technology as a sector dominated the stock market backdrop in performance. The broader stock market, comparatively speaking, was largely ignored by collective market participants post-202

Click For an Audio Summary The bulk of our 2026 editions have addressed the structural shift within the stock market that began in mid-November of 2025 and then picked up in earnest as we crossed into 2026. By the close of last week we had another indicator chime in on the developing shift to a broadening theme within the stock market. The indicator is the long-standing stock market tool known as the Dow Theory. Dow Theory offers that the stock market is offering a healthy ge

Click For an Audio Summary In our first edition for 2026, we addressed the stock market generally while specifically focusing on the broadening out of the market landscape. Within that edition, as well as strewn throughout many editions in recent years, we addressed how the stock market, if it were an 8-cylinder engine, could be described as operating on 3 cylinders. Simply, it was functioning (think bull market), but it could hardly be described as a rock-solid bull market w

Click For an Audio Summary The cost of capital, i.e., the price of money, is the most important price of all within an economic system. Where that price is currently (think interest rates), or in recent time, offers relatively little information and impact compared to a broader view of such price. The big trend - or what we have labeled “The Megatrend” in past editions - embeds key and important information. If interest rates are generally double digits in an economic system,

Click For an Audio Summary In our previous edition we shared how collective stock market participants were improving the structural health of the market by broadening out its participation. This process began after the quick but short-lived drop in the stock market back in mid-November. Since then, the broadening trade has been in place and increased its momentum in early 2026. Part of this broadening storyline has been small size companies (a.k.a. small caps) as they have be

Click For an Audio Summary Collective stock market participants are putting a different market landscape together in recent weeks relative to what we had grown accustomed to in recent years. To be fair, this developing change can disappear quickly, which has also occurred in recent years. We have dedicated many editions over the last few years to our observation of the structural weakness within the stock market. If the stock market were an eight-cylinder engine, we would des

Click For an Audio Summary Let’s make this edition a bit more personal than what is customary. Throughout editions, at times, I offer a personal note as a sliver of an add-on within X piece in order to share additional perspective. Today, I will offer more personal experience coupled with data that supports various observations of recent years relative to housing. To begin, in order to give some personal perspective relative to the topic of housing, for various reasons I have

Click For an Audio Summary Housing affordability, or the lack thereof, seemingly is a constant topic for discussion throughout society. Whether explicitly stated and discussed or simply inferred within an unrelated topic, the lack of affordable housing for the general citizenry is a topic that is often front and center. Upon hearing this topic addressed, at times, I will simultaneously hear an impromptu dialogue within myself that offers, “If you think housing is expensive, y

The significance of the above is that narrow market backdrops lead to problematic price trends, given time. The problem is this narrow storyline has continued for quite a long while now with no change in sight.

Click For an Audio Summary Within a late summer edition, we shared how collective stock market participants were displaying concerns for the employment market via the payroll processors. The payroll processors are quite sensitive to the health of the general employment market in light of their core business function being at the epicenter of servicing employed personnel. In light of market participants’ obsession with pricing markets today, in light of what they see downstrea

Click For an Audio Summary Here in 2025 we have dedicated several editions to the topic of market valuations. We always like to say that price informs you of very little, but valuation tells all. Taking a market’s price and placing it into context, via a valuation process, offers an invaluable perspective for the price of the market in question. If you are informed of the price of nearly anything, an immediate process begins of placing that price into a valuation context. Two

Click For an Audio Summary We have dedicated more editions to the structural integrity of the stock market in 2025 than we have in recent years combined. We have done this because the structural health of the stock market has been sorely missing in this bull market run. What is amazing, when viewed through a historical lens, is how the lack of structural health continues to unfold to the current day. For our part, within these editions when addressing this topic, we have offe