This promises to be a nerve-racking week of developments in the Middle East. In the nine days since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran, the conflict has embroiled various neighboring countries. Tehran’s moves to effectively shut the

This evening, the prices of a barrel of Brent and WTI crude oil are up about $15 to $107. The price of gold is falling because the dollar’s foreign exchange value is rising. The 10-year bond yield is up

On Tuesday, we warned: “We’ve been expecting a pullback due to excessive bullish sentiment, but now we expect a 10% correction from the high. It’s hard to imagine that the IRGC won’t use drones and speed boats to maintain

Oil prices stabilized today, so stock prices rose. We expected a pullback in the S&P 500 in early 2026. The S&P 500 fell 2.3% from its record high of 6987.60 on January 27 through Wednesday’s close. It was up

Our initial reaction to the latest war in the Middle East was that it isn’t likely to last long. However, wars are hard to predict. The fog of war can be very disorienting. The US and Israel killed the

I. Hot war with Iran and cold war with China We remain in the short-war camp on the outlook for the current conflict in the Middle East. The stock market seems to agree, since it barely budged today, though defense stocks

Nothing upends the economic game board like a sudden war few had in their bingo cards a week ago. Granted, the coordinated US-Israel attack on Iran over the weekend wasn’t a complete surprise. But the scale of the bombardment

We started writing our Market Call on Friday. Saturday morning, we woke up to the news of the joint military campaign by the US and Israel against Iran’s evil Mullah regime. It appears that the two allies have complete

The US has assembled its largest military presence in the Middle East since 2003, including two aircraft carriers and F-22 stealth fighters. Indirect talks in Geneva between US envoys (Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner) and Iranian officials ended Thursday

If AI continues to disrupt, if not destroy, more and more business models, won’t that cause a recession? It might if it triggers lots of white-collar layoffs, which in turn lead to blue-collar job losses (chart). Alternatively, it might

Last year’s impressive stock market rally, which began on April 9 (when POTUS postponed his Liberation Day tariffs), was fueled by AI Optimism. It turned into AI Fatigue late last year and, in recent weeks, into AI Fear. Now it’s

Foreign stocks have been outperforming US stocks since early last year. Contributing to this outperformance has been the weakening dollar over this period (chart). That’s fueled lots of chatter about the so-called “Sell America Trade” and dedollarization. That’s a

The people who’ve created large language models (LLMs) to power artificial intelligence (AI) are now using them to code better LLMs. If LLMs are now so good at coding that they can create their own better versions, who needs coders anymore? Are

Now that the gavel has fallen on Donald Trump’s tariffs, the question is how the US president will try to save face. President Trump’s move on Saturday to slap 15% universal levies on the globe—up from an initial 10%

The equal-weight S&P 500 has been rising to record highs since the beginning of the year, while the market-weight S&P 500 has been literally loopy just below 7000 over the same period (chart). This has been mostly attributable to

Happy Lunar New Year! Last year was the Year of the Wood Snake, according to the Chinese Zodiac. In Chinese culture, the Snake is often seen as a symbol of wisdom, intuition, and transformation. The Horse is one of

The Fed achieved its congressional dual mandate in January. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, and the CPI inflation rate was down to 2.4% y/y. Those round down to what we call “Nirvana” readings, i.e., the low unemployment level of 4.0% and the Fed’s inflation

For most of the time since the pandemic, large-cap stocks have outperformed their smaller counterparts in the US stock market. That is, the LargeCap S&P 500 index has outperformed the MidCap S&P 400 and SmallCap S&P 600, collectively the “SMidCaps.” That started to change

This holiday-shortened week could be a pivotal one for investors trying to gauge the outlook for Fed policymaking. Highlights include a first estimate of Q4-2025 real GDP (Fri), December PCED inflation (Fri), February consumer sentiment (Fri), and the minutes

I. Overview On long car rides, the kids in the backseat often ask their parents, “Are we there yet?” That’s the question investors are asking about inflation: “Are we at the Fed’s 2.0% inflation target yet?” Our answer: “Not quite,

Technological innovations tend to be disruptive and dynamic. That’s especially true with AI, which has the potential to disrupt itself, as evidenced by its ability to write software code, including AI code. So it can feed on itself, with

I. From Digital Back To Analog The “AI Immunity Trade” has caused more casualties in the stock market. It started with selloffs in software and private credit stocks at the beginning of the year. Since then, it has hit wealth managers,

I. AI Immunity Is The New AI Trade After ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, investors scrambled to overweight the AI trade, mostly by overweighting the Magnificent-7 (chart). That worked out great until the DeepSeek surprise on January

AI is an extremely disruptive technology. It has already turned on its masters: The software stocks have been pounded by fears that AI will make coders redundant (chart). Now it is turning on the financial industry. The most direct

The US MSCI continues to underperform in the global stock market derby as it did last year (chart). Does this mean that American exceptionalism, which was touted as recently as 2024, is kaput? Is this another sign of de-dollarization?

As the polar vortex generates arctic blasts around the US, things are about to heat up on the economic data front. The week ahead includes arguably the two most consequential releases with respect to the outlook for Federal Reserve

“Through the roof.” That’s how Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang described AI infrastructure spending in his excellent interview with Scott Wapner on CNBC this past Friday, February 6. Huang described the current landscape as a “once-in-a-generation infrastructure buildout,” specifically highlighting

Is the sharp selloff in technology stocks this week the beginning of a Tech Wreck comparable to what happened from 2000 through 2002, when the tech bubble of the late 1990s burst and caused a recession (chart)? We doubt it because this

Our December 11, 2025, QT was titled “AI CALL: The TIME Curse & The Game of Thrones.” The TIME Cover Curse hit AI in mid-December when the magazine featured “The Architects of AI” as the 2025 TIME Person of the Year. We wrote:

Last Thursday, we noted that the Investors Intelligence Bull/Bear Ratio of 3.99 suggested the market was vulnerable to a selloff. So far, so bad. What’s worse is that the BBR rose to 4.13 this week (chart).There are still too