And the S&P 500 is sitting near record highs.

Here’s the gap in one picture. Strip out Amazon and the typical consumer discretionary stock is down about 10% this year. The S&P 500 is up about 13%. That’s a 20-point spread.

On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve had more than a few readers ask me some version of the same question lately. How does the market keep climbing when so much of the economy looks stuck?

It’s a fair question. But it’s the wrong comparison.

The Market Isn’t Looking at Today

Most economic data tells you what already happened, and a lot of it gets revised later. The jobs report is last month. GDP is last quarter. Existing home sales are closings on contracts signed weeks earlier.

The stock market prices what comes next. As a rule of thumb, roughly 6 to 12 months out. Every share price is a bet on future earnings, discounted back to today.

That’s why stock prices are one of the Conference Board’s official leading economic indicators. The unemployment rate is a lagging one.

So when the market and the economy disagree, you’re not comparing two opinions about the same thing. You’re comparing a forecast to a rearview mirror.

Of course they look different.

The better question isn’t whether the market makes sense today. It’s whether it tends to make sense later. And on that, history has a lot to say.

It Looked Crazy at the Time

Every one of these looked wrong in the moment.

1982. The S&P 500 bottomed in August. Unemployment was still climbing and peaked at 10.8% that November, the highest since 1941. Anyone waiting for the jobs picture to improve missed the launch of one of the great bull runs of the century.

2009. The market bottomed on March 9. The economy was still in free fall. The February jobs report showed 651,000 jobs lost. Unemployment kept rising for seven more months, peaking at 10% in October. By then, the S&P was already 52% off its low. The bottom was in before most people believed the recession was even half over.

2020. The S&P bottomed on March 23. By August 18 it was at a new all-time high, up 51% in five months. Unemployment was still 10.2%. Plenty of smart people called it a disconnect. Twelve months later, with vaccines rolling out and earnings at records, the market had simply seen it first.

2023. Heading into the year, 40 of 44 economists in a Bloomberg survey expected a recession. Wall Street strategists, on average, forecast the S&P would finish 2023 around 4,078. It closed at 4,770, up 24%. The recession never showed up.

The pattern is clear. The market often turns before the economic data confirms a recovery. By the time it does, much of the rally is already gone.

And this isn’t cherry-picking. Writing in March 2009, Fisher Investments ran the same test with data back to the 1920s and found the market turned up before unemployment peaked every time. Their sample is longer than mine, so their average lead runs a bit longer, about nine months. They also found the market gained close to 40% on average between the bottom and the unemployment peak.

If you waited for the jobs report to tell you it was safe, you missed most of it.

Here’s what that looks like across every recession of the last 55 years.

Eight recessions. Eight times the market turned first. The 1990s recovery stands out, with stocks bottoming 20 months before unemployment finally peaked. The 2020 lead was just one month because the whole cycle happened at warp speed.

One thing this chart doesn’t tell you. Every example here is a market recovering from a big selloff. Today’s market is near record highs. The lesson still applies, but this isn’t March 2009. The point isn’t that every disconnect ends in a rally. It’s that today’s data is a poor way to judge a forward-looking price.

When the Market Got It Wrong

But let’s not oversell it. The market is a forecaster, and forecasters miss.

Economist Paul Samuelson famously joked in 1966 that the stock market had predicted nine of the last five recessions. He wasn’t wrong.

1987. The S&P fell more than 20% in a single day on Black Monday. But no recession followed. Stocks collapsed. The economy didn’t follow them down.

2022. The S&P dropped about 25% from January to October on surging rates and widespread recession fears. The recession never came. The market spent 2023 un-pricing it.

2000. This is the one that matters most right now. The market was right about the internet. Completely right. It changed everything. But the Nasdaq still fell 78% from peak to trough, and Amazon dropped more than 90% before it became Amazon.

And here’s the part most people miss. Stocks didn’t wait for the spending to roll over. The Nasdaq 100 peaked about nine months before tech investment did. Companies were still pouring money into the buildout while the market was already heading for the exits.

The market didn’t need the capex data to tell it the party was ending. It saw it first. Same lesson, pointed the other way.

Notice the pattern in the misses. The market can identify the right future and still get the price wrong. It sees a transformation coming and assumes the payoff will be faster or bigger than it turns out to be.

Being right about the story isn’t the same as being right about the price.

So What Is It Seeing Now?

Read more

It was a busy week in the markets, and there’s a lot to hit on. Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• Year Five Starts Now

• Inflation Is Back

• It’s All About AI

• Under the Hood: Banks, Small Caps, and the Canary

• I Said I’d Worry. I’m Worried.

• Where My Portfolio Stands

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

A tough week for the bulls.

The S&P 500 fell 2.0% and the Nasdaq dropped 4.5%, snapping a 4-week winning streak. Tech took the biggest hit, and Friday was the worst of it.

Small caps didn’t get a break either. The Russell 2000 fell 3.1% and is now down 6 weeks in a row.

But not everything was red. The Dow finished up 0.7%. Money didn’t leave the market. It just moved out of tech and into the steadier, more defensive names. That’s the rotation story you’ll hear about throughout this issue.

The biggest move of the week was oil. Up 7.8% to $99, and now up 71% on the year. That’s a big reason inflation is running hot.

Interestingly, the 10-year Treasury yield actually eased this week, down to 5.10%. Still high, but moving in the right direction for now.

Gold and Bitcoin were both slightly lower.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

Bears regained control of sentiment this week for the 12th time in the past 16 weeks.

Year Five Starts Now

This bull market turned 4 years old on Monday.

Since the October 12, 2022 low, the S&P 500 is up about 118%. That’s not a bounce. That’s one of the best runs in modern market history, and it’s tracking right alongside some of the great bull markets of the past.

So what happens in year five? History says it’s usually a good one.

Since 1950, seven bull markets have made it to their fifth year. All seven were higher in year five. The average gain was 18.9%. The median was 18.5%.

Seven isn’t a huge sample size. But it’s encouraging. Bull markets that make it this far have historically had a way of continuing.

Now, the last two weeks I’ve been writing about how bad breadth was getting under the surface. Fewer and fewer stocks were participating. That was a real concern.

That’s changing.

The percentage of S&P 500 stocks above their 20, 50, and 200-day moving averages all stopped falling and turned higher. Stocks above their 20-day went from under 20% at the end of September to over 66% this week. That’s a big swing in just a couple of weeks.

And here’s what matters most. While breadth was falling apart, the index didn’t get dragged down with it. It held. Then breadth bounced.

That’s resilience. That’s what strong markets do.

The S&P 500 just refuses to break this trendline. Every time it’s been tested since July, buyers have stepped in. It’s sitting just over 2% from all-time highs.

From here, it comes down to earnings. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll hear from the biggest companies in the market. If Q3 earnings stay strong and keep showing growth, this bull market isn’t stopping.

Inflation Is Back

Another week, another hot inflation report. Actually, two of them.

Start with consumer prices. CPI rose to 3.7% in September, above the 3.6% expected and the highest reading since May. Prices rose 0.6% in just one month, also the biggest jump since May.

Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, climbed to 2.6%. That was above the 2.5% expected and up from 2.4% in August.

So where is it coming from? Mostly energy. Fuel oil is up 74% over the past year. Gasoline is up 34%. Airfares are up 22%.

If you’ve filled up your tank or booked a flight lately, none of this is news to you.

But the bigger surprise came from business inflation.

PPI, which measures what businesses pay, jumped to 6.3% in September, up from 5.4% in August. The expectation was 5.3%. That’s not a small miss. Core PPI, which excludes food and energy, came in at 5.0% versus 4.4% expected.

On a monthly basis, PPI rose 1.3%. That’s more than double the 0.6% expected and one of the biggest monthly jumps in four years.

And this wasn’t just energy. Even after stripping out food and energy, business prices are running hot.

Here’s why that matters. Businesses are facing rising costs while consumers are already dealing with elevated prices. Companies can absorb some of that pressure, but they can’t do it forever. Eventually it shows up in their profit margins, in the prices you pay, or both.

For anyone keeping score, consumer inflation is now nearly double the Fed’s 2% target. Business inflation is more than triple it.

The market noticed. The odds of a rate hike are rising fast.

There’s one more chart worth watching. Commodities relative to long-term Treasury bonds just hit their highest level since 2008.

The last time this ratio got this high was right before the financial crisis. When commodities are beating bonds like this, the market is signaling it expects inflation pressure to stick around. And rising yields have a way of breaking things.

This fight against inflation is likely to take longer than anyone wants.

But here’s the strange part. The market barely flinched. And the reason has nothing to do with inflation.

It’s All About AI

So why didn’t the market care about two hot inflation reports?

Read more

One newspaper report. One revenue number that came in $20 billion lighter than people thought. And the Nasdaq had its worst day since mid-August. Nvidia down 2.9%. Broadcom down 4.6%. Micron down 4.8%. Oracle down 5.8%.

OpenAI doesn’t even trade. Doesn’t matter. The market sold everything connected to it.

That’s the story I want to talk about today. Not because I’ve turned bearish. I haven’t. But because for the first time in this bull market, I can point to the exact thing that could break it. And it’s not rates. It’s not the wars. It’s two private companies.

Let’s start with the mood.

The Teflon Market

Here’s what this market has shrugged off in 2026.

Multiple wars. Oil spikes. The 10-year Treasury at its highest level since 2002. That’s 24 years. Mortgage rates near 7.5%. Fed hike talk back on the table.

And the VIX hasn’t touched 20 in 52 straight trading days through Monday. It’s stayed between 14 and 20 the entire time. The last time this market was this calm for this long was 2012.

The S&P 500 is just as calm. It hasn’t had a 1% down day in 52 sessions, tied for the longest stretch since July 2024. One more and it’s the longest since January 2020.

Even Thursday couldn’t break it. The Nasdaq dropped 1.25%. The S&P only fell 0.5%.

That’s not a scared market. That’s a Teflon market.

Now ask people how they feel. A month ago, 53.3% of AAII members were bearish. The highest reading of the past year. Bears are still at 39%, well above the 31.5% long-term average.

People say they’re worried.

Now look at what they’re doing. Show me, don’t tell me.

Retail allocation to stocks hit 71.8% in September. The highest since December 2017 and the second highest reading since 2000. Cash fell to 13.3%, also the lowest since 2017.

Nervous in the survey. All in with the money.

That’s the gap. Doubt, but no fear.

So what turns doubt into fear? It’s not rates. It’s two private companies. Here’s what I’m watching, why the numbers matter more than the IPO price, and exactly what I’m doing with my portfolio.

What’s the Breaking Point?

Read more

Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• The Great Un-Broadening

• Everyone’s on the Same Side of the Boat

• Insiders Know Something

• Moves I’ve Made

• What I’m Watching

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

Market Recap

Another record for the S&P 500.

It hit a new all-time high on Wednesday and finished the week up 1.2%, at 7,812. That’s up 14.1% on the year.

The Dow rose 0.9%. The Nasdaq gained 0.6%. That’s 21 positive weeks out of the last 28 for the Nasdaq.

Small caps went the other way again. The Russell 2000 fell 0.9%. That’s five straight losing weeks.

The 10-year ticked down slightly to 5.24%. Don’t let one quiet week fool you. Yields are up 26% this year.

Oil keeps climbing. Up again this week to $91.66, and up 58% on the year. The war in the Middle East is still the wild card.

Gold rose 1.4% but is still down for the year, a long way from its February high.

Bitcoin had a rough week. Down 3.7%, and now down 5.6% on the year.

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

The bulls are back in control. Bulls outnumber bears for the first time since early September.

Best Performing S&P 500 Stocks YTD

Worst Performing S&P 500 Stocks YTD

The Great Un-Broadening

Back to that record high on Wednesday.

You’d think that means most stocks are doing great. They’re not.

Read more

How much more money can I make?

I loved investing. I still do. I loved watching money compound and knowing a dollar invested today could become several dollars down the road.

Every dollar had a name. I was so tight with money that I squeaked. If I had extra money, I invested it. If I was deciding whether to spend or save, saving won almost every time.

The math was easy. More money invested. More compounding. More wealth.

It was simple.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking a different question.

How much is enough?

The Lake House vs. The S&P 500

Let’s say you’re considering a $500,000 place. (Round number, just for the example. Whether you pay cash or finance it, the math points in the same direction.)

You have two choices. Buy a cottage on the water here in Wisconsin. Or put that same money in the S&P 500 and rent a really nice place for a couple of weeks every summer.

Let’s do the math.

The cottage doesn’t just cost $500,000. There are property taxes. Insurance. Utilities. Maintenance. Furniture. The dock. A new roof someday. A furnace. Something that breaks five minutes after you pull in for the weekend. Over 20 years, that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Let’s be generous and say the place appreciates 4% a year. In 20 years, it’s worth about $1.1 million.

Now put that same $500,000 in the S&P 500 at a hypothetical 8% a year. In 10 years, it’s about $1.1 million. In 20 years, it’s more than $2.3 million.

And you still get the lake. Rent a beautiful place every summer. No mowing. No repairs. No property tax bill. And you’d probably still come out way ahead.

Run it any way you want. The S&P 500 wins by a mile.

If I had to grade the cottage as an investment, it would fail.

We bought one anyway.

What Is the Money Actually For?

This was never really a question about real estate. It was a question about money.

Let me be clear. I’m glad I spent so much of my life saving and investing. It gave me options. It gave my family security. It still does.

But at some point you have to ask what all that accumulation is for.

When I hit my first million, I expected something to feel different. It didn't. Food tasted the same. My pants still went on one leg at a time. Later, when the number got bigger, same thing. More zeros. Same me.

And there will always be another number waiting. $2 million. $5 million. $10 million. At every level, there’s someone ahead of you.

Here’s the trap. If you never decide what enough is, every purchase has to compete with an imaginary future number. And the future number wins every single time, because it’s always bigger.

That’s how people end up at 80 with a big account balance and a long list of things they were going to do someday.

Security and Freedom

I used to think the goal was to accumulate as much as possible.

Now I think the goal is to accumulate enough to give yourself the freedom to decide what matters.

Enough isn’t the same number for everyone. For one person, it’s being debt free with six months of expenses in the bank. For someone else, it’s $5 million. The important part is deciding what yours is.

Because once you do, your money gets two different jobs.

Think of enough as a line.

The money below that line is security. Its job is to protect you, and the spreadsheet is the boss.

The money above that line is freedom. Its job is to give you choices. The spreadsheet still gets a vote. It just doesn’t get the only vote.

Below the line, you ask, What’s the best return?

Above it, you ask, What’s the best use?

So before any big decision, ask yourself.

Which side of the line is this money coming from?

If it’s below the line, protect it.

If it’s above the line, use it for the life you want.

The Cost of Waiting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how we have the wealth curve backwards. We spend our best years saving for a future that isn’t guaranteed.

The cottage is that idea put into practice.

We spend our investing lives asking what our money could become if we wait. We almost never ask what waiting costs.

My kids aren’t always going to be 10 and 8. They won’t always want to spend a weekend at the cottage with Mom and Dad.

We looked for over two years. We bought the cottage because right now, everyone still wants to go.

Could we have invested the money instead? Absolutely. Would the S&P 500 have produced a better return? Probably.

Do I regret it? Not for a second.

My wife and kids were ecstatic when we got the place. It’s all we talk about. The summers. The weekends. The meals, the lake, the walks, the friends who will come visit.

Once you have enough, maximizing the number isn’t the same as maximizing your life.

So, How Much Is Enough?

I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out. Maybe that’s the point.

I spent the first half of my investing life asking how much more I could accumulate. Now I’m asking what I want that money to actually do.

None of this means I’ve stopped caring about money. I still love the stock market. I’ll probably obsess over stocks for the rest of my life.

A lake house probably isn’t a better investment.

But I don’t want every dollar working for some distant version of me.

Some of it can work for us now.

Maybe the spreadsheet says we should have bought the S&P 500 instead.

I just don’t think the spreadsheet knows what it’s investing for.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed Spilled Coffee, please subscribe.

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I just sold my position in a long-time holding today.

I don’t sell often. So when I make a move like this, it means something.

Read more

We have a lot to discuss. Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• September Stumbled. Q4 Usually Doesn’t.

• The Index Is Lying to You

• Look at What’s Actually Breaking

• Are Small Caps Getting Left Behind?

• Bonds Are Getting Interesting

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

A mixed week to start Q4. The S&P slipped 0.3%. The Dow had the worst week of the big indexes, down 1.3%. The Nasdaq was the only major index higher, up 0.5%, as the megacaps did the heavy lifting again.

Small caps finished down just 0.2% after it finally snapped its 16-day losing streak on Thursday.

The 10-year keeps climbing. It closed at 5.28%, near its highest level since 2001, even with a weak jobs report on Friday.

Oil eased 1.2% on the week but is still up 57.5% this year. Gold dropped 3.5% and is now negative YTD. Bitcoin was up 1.3% but remains down 3.4% on the year.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

Still many more bears than bulls.

September Stumbled. Q4 Usually Doesn’t.

The S&P 500 finished September down 0.45%. Not a disaster. But it was the third losing month in the last four.

And the headline number hides how rough it really was. Tech carried the index while almost everything else got hit.

Only two sectors finished higher. Tech gained 5.5% and communication services added 0.7%. Five sectors fell more than 6%. Real estate, financials, materials, utilities, and consumer discretionary all took a beating. The equal-weight S&P fell 4.5%.

That’s how you end up with this. 75% of S&P 500 stocks were down in September. Three out of every four.

Then came Friday’s jobs report. Ho-hum. Payrolls came in at +29K vs. +90K expected. Unemployment ticked up to 4.2%. And August got revised down to +133K from +162K.

Not great. Not terrible either. I don’t think it changes the Fed’s path.

Now the good part. Q4.

The S&P put up a nearly 15% gain in Q2 and followed it with a positive Q3. That has happened six other times since 1935. Q4 was higher every single time, with an average gain of more than 9%.

Zoom in on the last 13 years and it’s the same story. Q4 was higher 12 times. The only miss was 2018. The median gain was 6.5%.

I’ve had 7,900 as my year-end target since January. I’m not changing it. From Friday’s close, that’s another 2.3%. Less than an average Q4. I still expect some chop first, especially with the 10-year pushing toward 6%. Then a Santa Claus rally gets us there.

But first, let’s look under the hood. Because the index isn’t telling you the whole story.

The Index Is Lying to You

Read more

It’s a fair question. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about holding stocks through pullbacks, scary headlines, recessions, and the endless stream of reasons someone thinks the market is about to fall. I don’t trade very often, and I certainly don’t believe a stock becomes a bad investment simply because it falls 10% or 15%.

But I’m not a hold forever no matter what investor. There are absolutely reasons I will sell. The trick is knowing what those reasons are before the stock falls 20%, not after.

Every stock I own has a thesis behind it. Most investors spend hours deciding when to buy a stock and almost no time deciding what would make them sell it. I want to know both before I ever hit the buy button.

Let’s start with the easy part.

What Doesn’t Make Me Sell

This list might be even more important than the one that follows, because it’s where most investors make their mistakes.

A stock falling 10% doesn’t make me sell. A stock falling 20% doesn’t automatically make me sell either, and neither does the overall market falling 10%. The Fed changing its outlook doesn’t do it. A scary headline doesn’t do it. Someone on CNBC declaring the stock is finished certainly doesn’t do it.

A competitor launching something new doesn’t automatically make me sell. One bad quarter doesn’t, and a stock underperforming for three months doesn’t. A stock getting expensive while its earnings keep compounding doesn’t make me sell. And social media deciding the AI trade is over? That definitely doesn’t make me sell.

The common thread is simple. Every one of those is about the price or the mood, not the business. If a stock is down because the business is deteriorating, I have a problem. If it’s down because investors are nervous about something that doesn’t change my thesis, I may have an opportunity.

So what does make me sell?

Read more

Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• Q4 Outlook

• Under the Hood

• Clear Bull Market Behavior

• Main Street Sells, Wall Street Buys

• My Meta Home Run

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

A green week for the big three. The Nasdaq led again, up 2.1% for back to back positive weeks. Tech is still doing the heavy lifting.

The S&P 500 added 1.2%, its first positive week in the past three. It closed at 7,743.

The Dow finally snapped a three week losing streak. Only up 0.3%.

Small caps were left out. The Russell 2000 slipped 0.8% on the week.

The number I keep staring at is the 10-year. It closed at 5.18%, back to 2007 levels, and it’s up 24.5% this year. Stocks keep shrugging it off. For now.

Oil fell 7.8% on the week but is still up almost 60% on the year. Gold gave back 2.4% and is barely positive for 2026. Bitcoin bounced 3.6% but is still in the red year to date.

Here’s how it all shook out.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

October Is Here

The calendar flips to October next week. Historically, that’s a good thing.

September has earned its bad reputation. Since 1950, it’s been the worst month of the year for the S&P 500, averaging a 0.7% loss. Then the final quarter shows up and things get a lot better. October, November, and December are all solidly positive on average.

It gets even better in a midterm year. Which is this year.

October is the best month of the midterm year for the S&P 500. It’s averaged a 3.0% gain and finished higher about 74% of the time. November is right behind it, averaging 2.7% and finishing higher almost 79% of the time.

And it’s not just the S&P. Since 1950, the Dow has averaged a 3.2% gain in midterm Octobers. The Nasdaq has averaged 3.2% too.

The best two month stretch of the midterm year starts next week.

Q4 Outlook

2026 has been a good year. For the market, and for my calls.

The S&P 500 closed the week at 7,743. Back in January, I set a year-end price target of 7,900 in Investing Update: 2025 Recap & 2026 Outlook. I haven’t touched it since. Not once. We’re now about 2% away with a full quarter to go.

That follows last year’s call. In Investing Update: 2024 Recap & 2025 Outlook, I called for the S&P 500 to finish 2025 at 6,900. It finished at 6,846. Less than 1% off.

Let’s see if I can get even closer this year.

My Portfolio vs the S&P 500

Here’s where my actively managed portfolio sits heading into Q4.

• My Portfolio (Actively Managed) +21.2%

• S&P 500 +13.1%

That's an 8.1 percentage point lead with three months to go. If it holds, it would mark the 4th straight year I've outperformed the S&P 500, and the 8th time in the past 10 years.

My 3 Stocks for 2026

In January, I picked 3 Stocks For 2026. All three are beating the S&P 500.

• Meta +15.5%

• Apple +25.8%

• CrowdStrike +122.3%

So where does that leave me for the rest of the year? What do I see happening in Q4?

Let’s take a look.

Read more

That’s not usually what the end of a bull market looks like.

Valuations are coming down because earnings are catching up with prices, and companies are crushing numbers while estimates for next year may still be too low.

And yet the conversation around AI is getting increasingly bearish.

AI needs to slow down.

The spending is getting out of control.

The trade is too crowded.

Maybe.

But when I look at what companies are actually doing, I see something very different.

I don’t buy the slowdown story. Not for a second.

Here’s why.

Words Are Cheap. Actions Aren’t.

On September 12, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, published an essay warning about AI risk and urging the industry to slow down. The reaction was instant. AI was supposedly in trouble. The trade was done. Time to rotate out.

Two days later, Barron’s put this on the cover.

A magazine hedging both directions on the same cover tells me the debate has become the story. I’ve learned to treat that as noise, not as a forecast.

A week later, to the day, the Nasdaq set a new all-time high.

Meanwhile, Meta shipped Muse. Zuckerberg’s stance hasn’t wavered. His answer to risk from new technology is to build faster and safer, not to stop building. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang apologized this week too, not for moving too fast on AI, but for not looping in local communities on data center buildout soon enough. Read that again. The apology was about communication, not about slowing down.

Here’s the part that gets buried under all the safety talk. If OpenAI and Anthropic actually pump the brakes, the gap between them and everyone else narrows. Meta speeds up. The open source labs speed up. China has no obvious incentive to slow down. So even the labs that talk publicly about caution have every incentive, economic and competitive, to keep their foot on the gas. Slowing down isn’t a free option. It’s a way to lose ground you don’t get back.

Watch the Money, Not the Headlines

I wrote this in my Saturday update and it’s worth repeating here. Money talks. Data centers are shouting.

Private construction spending tells the whole story in one chart. Almost every other category is rolling over. Data centers are the one line still going up and to the right.

Data centers now eat up nearly 7% of total US power demand. A decade ago that number barely moved. Now it’s a hockey stick, and it’s still bending upward.

That is not what a slowdown looks like. You don’t commit this kind of capital to a technology you expect to pull back on.

Read more

Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• The Sector Quietly Running This Market

• Not Worried Until This Changes

• Not All Rate Hikes Are Created Equal

• The Consumer Isn’t Slowing Down

• Money Talks. Data Centers Are Shouting.

• The Mag 7 Are Waking Up

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

A rough week for most of the market. The Dow had its worst week since March, and it's now down three straight weeks. The S&P 500 was negative for the second week in a row.

The Nasdaq was the lone bright spot among the major indexes, closing the week higher while everything else slipped. Small caps took it on the chin, with the Russell 2000 down 1.5%.

The bigger story might be rates. The 10-year crossed 5% this week. That’s the level that tends to get everyone’s attention, and it’s worth watching closely heading into next week.

Oil dropped nearly 5% on the week but is still up a massive 64.8% year to date. Bitcoin bounced 3.8% but remains negative for the year.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

This is the most bears we’ve seen in more than a year. The fewest bulls in a year. The bulls are at a 52-week low.

Bears are at their highest level since May 2025.

Where the Market Stands Right Now

Let’s build on that. Here’s what I’m actually seeing under the hood.

None of this is a full-blown warning sign. But there are some things I’m watching closely.

Start with seasonality. Jeff Hirsch has pointed out that September tends to get worse as the month goes on, and midterm years have historically been the roughest stretch.

The historical message is clear: September weakness tends to build as the month progresses, and midterm years have often delivered an especially difficult finish.

The chart lines up with the calendar. The S&P 500 has been stuck in a downtrend channel since its August all-time high. Lower highs, lower lows.

Then Wednesday happened. The Fed hiked rates for the first time in three years, a quarter point move to 3.75 to 4%. That’s the highest rate since late 2025. The vote was unanimous, 12 to 0.

The bigger news might be what comes next. Officials signaled at least one more hike before year end. 16 of 18 participants penciled in another increase in 2026. Beyond that, the dot plot gets murky. Nobody has much conviction on 2027 yet.

One of my favorite charts for understanding what’s really happening under the surface comes from my friend Grant Hawkridge. Right now, 38.5% of S&P 500 stocks are below both their 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Only 32.3% are above both. That means more stocks are sitting in weak trends than strong ones.

I’m watching the 200-day closely here. The long term trend is still intact. The short term picture is getting messy.

I flagged this exact issue last week in A Lot of Bad Breadth. Now the number is even more stark. Half the S&P 500 has lost its 200 day moving average. The index itself is still above its own 200 day, but the stocks underneath it are quietly breaking down. Breadth hasn’t improved. It’s gotten worse.

Put it together. Seasonality is working against us. The index is stuck in a downtrend channel. The Fed just hiked into a market with deteriorating breadth. None of this changes my long-term thesis. But the short-term picture needs to prove itself here.

The Sector Quietly Running This Market

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It changes when my thinking changes.

My thinking has changed.

If you missed the original Double Shot, you can read it here. The idea is simple. It’s my curated list of highest-conviction long-term ideas, the stocks I believe in enough to put my name on. The ones I personally own are marked with a ☕. The rest are on the bench, waiting for the right conditions.

I keep getting asked the same question since I launched it.

What else are you watching?

That question is exactly why the Double Shot exists.

And it’s exactly why I’m making this update today.

Two names have lost their spots. Three names have earned theirs.

21 names now. 3 in. 2 out. Here’s where it stands today.

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Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• Inflation Still Has the Fed Cornered

• A Lot of Bad Breadth

• The Most Important Line in the Market

• Something New in the Bond Market

• A Notable Insider Buy

• Founder-Led Stocks List

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

Just the second negative week in the past seven for stocks. The S&P 500 fell 1.2%. The Nasdaq held up a little better, down 0.9%. The Dow led the losses, off 2.1%. Small caps got hit hardest, with the Russell 2000 down 2.2%.

Bonds moved too. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed 4.5% on the week as tensions between the US and Iran flared up again in the Persian Gulf.

Oil was the big story, up 9.5% and back above $99 a barrel. Gold didn’t act like a safe haven, falling 2.3%. Bitcoin fell right alongside it, also down 2.3%.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

Bears continue to outnumber the bulls. The AAII bull/bear spread has now been bearish 24 out of 37 weeks in 2026. 65% of the year.

A Dow Update

Inflation Still Has the Fed Cornered

Friday’s inflation report didn’t bring any surprises. Headline CPI came in at 3.4% year over year, exactly as expected. Core CPI eased slightly to 2.4%. Both numbers matched estimates.

But dig into the categories and it gets uglier. Fuel oil is up 52% year over year. Gasoline is up 27%. Airline fares are up 23%. Energy is doing a lot of the damage, and with oil back above $99 a barrel, don’t expect relief anytime soon.

This was the last major data point before the Fed meets on September 16th, and the full picture isn’t pretty. PPI is running at 5.4%. The economy added 162,000 jobs in August, blowing past expectations. Oil is at $100. Diesel is at record highs. And the 10-year is flirting with 5%, a level we haven’t seen since 2003.

Markets are now pricing in almost a 90% chance of a rate hike next week. I still don’t think they pull the trigger on Wednesday. If they pass this time, October is unlikely too, since that meeting lands right before the election and the Fed tends to avoid moves that close to one. That would push the next real window out to December.

Whatever they decide, don’t expect much guidance either way.

Employment is fine. Inflation is the problem.

And I’m still not convinced raising interest rates does much to fix inflation driven by oil, energy, and supply issues at this point.

That’s what has the Fed cornered.

Grab your popcorn. This one’s going to be worth watching.

A Lot of Bad Breadth

Price has been holding up fine. Under the hood, it’s a different story, and this week gave us one of the clearest warning signs I’ve seen in months.

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“It’s just like 1999.”

“AI is the new internet.”

“This will end like the dot-com crash.”

“At some point, this bubble will burst.”

Maybe.

But what if it doesn’t?

Or maybe a better question is this. What if the market doesn’t have to crash from here?

That doesn’t mean stocks can’t go down. They can. It doesn’t mean there aren’t speculative areas of the market. There are. And it definitely doesn’t mean every company connected to AI is worth buying at any price.

But somewhere along the way, “this looks like 1999” became “we know exactly what happens next.”

I’m not so sure. There are certainly similarities between today and the late 1990s. But there are also significant differences. And those differences matter more than people think.

The comparison everyone is making

The AI boom is naturally being compared to the internet boom. Honestly, that comparison makes sense. The internet was a transformational technology. It changed how we communicate, shop, work, and live. AI could do the same thing.

But here’s where the comparison usually takes a turn. People start by saying AI is like the internet. Then somehow that becomes, the internet ended in the dot-com crash.

Except that’s not really what happened.

The bubble ended. The internet didn’t.

Amazon survived. Google was born shortly before the peak and went public after the crash. E-commerce kept growing. Cloud computing came later. Social media came later. Smartphones came later. The technology behind the boom ultimately became even bigger than investors imagined.

The problem wasn’t believing the internet would change the world. The problem was what investors were willing to pay for some of the companies supposedly leading the change.

That’s an important distinction. Because today we’re looking at a similar question. Is AI transformational? I think most people would say yes. The bigger question is whether investors have gotten so far ahead of reality that the market has to come crashing back down.

Let’s look a little closer.

Start with the simplest measure

The P/E ratio. Price divided by earnings. Now vs then.

During the dot-com peak, investors were willing to pay dramatically higher multiples for stocks than they are today.

Look at what’s happening in each of these two windows. Into the March 2000 top, the S&P’s price and its forward P/E were rising together. Investors were paying more and more for the same dollar of expected earnings. That’s what a multiple expanding into a blow-off looks like.

Into today, the S&P’s price is up sharply too. But the forward P/E has actually come down over the same stretch. Investors are paying less for next year’s earnings, not more. Same direction on price. Opposite direction on what people are willing to pay for it.

As Matt Cerminaro put it:

“Investors were paying more for the earnings that were expected in 2000. Today they’re paying less.”

Same setup. Opposite behavior.

That distinction has been buried under a mountain of “it’s just like 1999” takes, and I think it deserves more attention than it’s getting.

I wrote about this exact question back in June, in Why This Isn’t Like The Dotcom Bubble. The numbers have moved since then. The conclusion hasn’t.

Zoom out to a full 30-year view and the same story holds. Tech’s forward P/E is essentially in line with the S&P 500’s today. In 2000, tech traded at roughly double the market’s multiple.

That gap at the 2000 peak, tech near 48x against the broader market near 24x, is a big part of what defined the bubble. There’s no gap like that today.

Look at what’s leading the market

This might be the biggest difference of all.

Think about the companies leading the market today. Nvidia. Microsoft. Alphabet. Amazon. Meta. Broadcom.

These aren’t companies promising that someday they might figure out how to make money. They’re already making enormous amounts of it. Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Enormous profits. Massive free cash flow.

That’s very different from much of what investors were chasing at the peak of the dot-com boom. Even among the legitimate technology leaders of that era, valuations were in another universe.

Look at the gap between Cisco’s price and its earnings at the 1999 peak. That’s a bubble. Price completely detached from what the business was actually producing.

Now look at Nvidia. Price and earnings have moved together almost the entire way. Earnings are now running slightly ahead of price. That’s a company whose stock has been playing catch-up to its own numbers.

A company can trade at a premium valuation because investors expect strong growth. That doesn’t automatically mean investors are irrational. The question is whether the growth actually shows up. So far, for many of the companies leading the AI buildout, it has.

Nvidia is the cleanest example of this, because it’s the company everyone wants to call the new Cisco.

Nvidia’s forward P/E sits at 17.1x. That’s below its own five-year average. The largest company in the world is growing so fast that its valuation is actually getting cheaper, not more expensive. That’s not what happened with Cisco.

Yes, the market is concentrated

Now let’s be fair. There are real similarities to the dot-com era, and market concentration is one of them. A small number of enormous companies account for a huge percentage of the S&P 500. That’s true.

But concentration alone doesn’t tell you whether something is a bubble. The better question is how much of the profits those companies are generating. There’s a big difference between a company representing 10% of the market while generating 2% of the profits, and a company representing 10% of the market while generating 10% of the profits. Those are two completely different situations.

Look at the gap between the two lines at the 2000 peak. Tech’s share of the market’s value ran far ahead of tech’s share of the market’s earnings. All that white space between the lines was investors paying for a promise.

Today those two lines are nearly on top of each other. Tech’s share of market cap, 37.1%, is almost identical to tech’s share of forward earnings, 35.5%. Today’s largest companies are incredibly valuable. They’re also incredibly profitable. The market’s weighting is following the earnings rather than running ahead of them.

What if we’re still early?

What inning are we in? Second? Third? Nobody knows, and anyone who tells you they do is guessing.

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud all grew faster in their most recent quarter than the one before it, 37%, 43%, and 82% respectively. That’s hardly what you’d expect to see from a technology trend already running out of steam.

But look at what’s happening right now. We’re still building the infrastructure. Data centers. Chips. Networking. Power. Cloud capacity. Billions and billions of dollars are being spent building the foundation for AI.

The internet didn’t stop at infrastructure. The first chapter was building the foundation. The next chapters were the applications built on top of it, search, e-commerce, social media, mobile, cloud computing, entire industries created years after the original dot-com bubble burst.

So what happens if AI follows a similar path? Software. Robotics. Healthcare. Autonomous systems. Scientific discovery.

And businesses that probably haven’t even been created yet.

Maybe we’re in the third inning. Maybe the seventh. I have no idea. But the fact that everyone can see the potential for a bubble doesn’t mean one has to burst tomorrow.

What if the scary charts are right?

Here’s the thing. Some of the charts are scary. You can overlay parts of today’s market with the late 1990s and make them look remarkably similar.

At the same number of days after launch, the Nasdaq’s ChatGPT-era gain of 141% is actually running slightly ahead of its Netscape-era gain of 128%. If you wanted a chart that supports the bears, this is it.

But look at what the Netscape line does after this point. It still had roughly two more years of parabolic rise left before it finally topped in March 2000. So even if you believe this chart, you still have to explain why this rally would need to top now, rather than one year or two years from here. “It looks similar so far” is not the same argument as “it has to end here.”

Maybe this ends badly. It certainly could. But there’s another possibility. What if the chart is right about the technology but wrong about the timing? The dot-com bubble is often used as evidence that transformational technology eventually ends in disaster. But that’s not really what happened. The bubble burst. The technology kept going. And eventually the companies built on top of that technology became some of the largest and most valuable businesses in history.

Maybe that’s the better lesson. It was never about whether to believe in the technology. It was about what you paid for it.

So, what if this isn’t a bubble?

I’m not writing this to tell you the market can’t fall. It can. I’m not writing this to tell you valuations don’t matter. They do. And I’m definitely not telling you to ignore the risks around AI spending, concentration, or expectations. Those risks are real.

Maybe this is a bubble. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe the market corrects tomorrow. Maybe some of the enormous bets being made on AI turn out to be spectacular mistakes. That’s possible.

But so is the alternative. What if earnings keep growing? What if the companies building this infrastructure today turn out to be laying the foundation for the next decade of economic growth? What if we’re still much earlier in this story than most people think?

The market doesn’t have to crash simply because everyone expects it to. And a chart that looks like 1999 doesn’t mean the calendar has to say March 2000 next.

Maybe this is a bubble. Or maybe we’re still watching the beginning of something much bigger. And maybe the better question isn’t whether this looks like 1999.

Maybe the better question is, what if it doesn’t?

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed Spilled Coffee, please subscribe.

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Here’s what I’m looking at today.

• The Market Looks Fine. Underneath, It Doesn’t.

• What to Own If Rates Keep Climbing

• Commodities Are Sending a Signal

• The Most Bullish Chart on Software

• A Mag 7 Shift?

• The Most Shorted Stocks in the Market

• Moves I’ve Made

Thanks for reading Spilled Coffee. Let’s get into it.

Eric

It was another solid week for stocks. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched their 5th positive week out of the last 6. But underneath the headline numbers, there’s quite a bit more going on.

The S&P 500 closed at 7,719, up a modest 0.1% on the week and still sitting on a 12.8% YTD gain. Nasdaq led again, up 0.4% and now up 14.1% for the year. The Dow lagged, down 0.3% on the week but still up 11.1% YTD. Small caps keep quietly outperforming. The Russell 2000 is up 19.0% YTD.

The bigger story might be commodities. Crude oil ripped 9.4% higher this week, its best week since July, and is now up a wild 57.4% YTD. The 10-year Treasury yield moved up 1.4% on the week, now at 4.78% and up 14.9% YTD. Gold barely budged, down 0.2% on the week, up 2.5% YTD. Bitcoin bounced 2.7% this week but is still down 8.8% YTD.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

The bulls are finally making a comeback. It’s the most bullish since July 15th.

The Jobs Report Was a Surprise

The economy added 162,000 jobs in August. The estimate was 53,000. That’s almost triple what economists expected, and it’s the kind of number that resets the whole conversation about where the labor market actually stands.

But the headline number isn’t even the most interesting part. Look at where those jobs came from. Leisure and hospitality alone added 62,000 jobs, the most since February 2023.

That is a pretty remarkable reversal. After months of weakness, one of the most consumer-facing parts of the economy suddenly added jobs at a pace we haven't seen in more than three years.

On the surface, this should increase the odds of an interest rate hike at the Fed’s September 16 meeting. And it has. Markets are now putting roughly a 60% probability on a hike, up from around 50% before the report.

You’ll hear plenty of talking heads over the next week say the Fed has to raise rates.

I won’t be paying much attention to that.

I think they should raise rates. I just don’t think they will.

The data is giving the Fed a pretty good reason to hike. The economy just added nearly three times as many jobs as expected, unemployment remains at 4.1%, and the labor market doesn’t look like it needs an emergency dose of lower rates.

But the Fed still has one more important piece of information to digest before September 16.

Inflation.

CPI comes out Friday.

And that’s the number I’m watching.

The Market Looks Fine. Underneath, It Doesn’t.

The index itself still looks calm. Grind higher, new highs, nothing to see. But look at what’s happening underneath that headline number and the picture gets more interesting.

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Maybe it’s because the start of another school year makes it impossible to ignore. Another summer is over. Another year has passed. My kids just started 3rd and 5th grade.

I swear they were just starting kindergarten. Now we’re talking about middle school.

They’ve also reached the age where sports take up a huge part of our lives. My daughter plays soccer. My son plays basketball and football. So we spend a lot of time in gyms, on soccer field and standing on the sidelines. Hours every week.

And I love it.

But I also know we won’t get those hours back.

We’re also in the process of buying a cottage. That has me thinking about all the things I want to do with my family while we’re still at a point where everyone wants to do them together.

I’ve also started noticing more gray in my hair.

None of this slows down.

In fact, it seems to speed up.

We’d all love to make time stand still, but we can’t.

And that’s what got me thinking about money.

Because I think we have the wealth curve backwards.

We spend much of our lives trying to accumulate money so that someday we’ll have the freedom to enjoy it.

We save. We invest. We work. We defer.

We’ll take that trip later. Spend more time with the kids later. Slow down later. Enjoy ourselves later.

Later, when we have more money.

Later, when we retire.

Later, when the mortgage is paid off.

Later, when work isn’t so demanding.

There is nothing wrong with saving. Quite the opposite. Saving and investing are among the best things you can do for your future self.

But somewhere along the way, future becomes the destination.

And I’m not sure it should be.

Think about the curve.

When you’re young, you generally have the most time and energy but the least money. Later you have more money and hopefully plenty of time and energy. Eventually you may have more money than ever but less time than you once did.

And you may not have the same energy or physical ability either.

So we spend decades sacrificing years when have the most time and energy. Assuming we’ll make up for it later.

But later isn’t guaranteed.

That’s the part that we don’t like to talk about.

We know it intellectually, but most of us don’t live as though we believe it.

We keep moving the finish line.

When I have $1 million.

When I have $2 millon.

When I retire.

When the kids are out of the house.

When the business is running itself.

When I finally have enough.

But what is enough?

And what exactly are you saving all that money for?

That’s the question I think we should ask more often.

Because there are things money buys that get better with time.

A bigger portfolio. More financial security. More choices. More flexibility.

But there are also things money can’t buy back.

Your kids being 8.

Or 10.

Or 12.

Your parents being healthy enough to travel.

Your knees working the way they used to.

Taking a trip with your family when everyone still wants to go.

Those things have an expiration date.

You don’t get to put them on hold and pick them back up at 70.

This doesn’t mean you should stop saving for retirement. It doesn’t mean you should spend recklessly. And it certainly doesn’t mean tomorrow doesn’t matter.

Tomorrow matters enormously.

That’s why we invest.

But today matters too.

There has to be a balance between building wealth for the future and actually using some of what you’ve built along the way.

I’ve thought about this more as I’ve gotten older.

Maybe it’s the kids getting older. Maybe it’s the gray hair. Maybe it’s buying a cottage and thinking about all the memories I hope we’ll make there.

Or maybe it’s simply realizing that time feels different now than it did 20 years ago.

When you’re 20, a year feels like forever.

When you’re 40, you blink and another year is gone.

And somehow, it feels like it’s getting faster.

That’s why I don’t think the goal should be to accumulate as much money as possible and then finally start living.

The goal should be to use money to make your life better along the way.

Take the trip. Go to dinner. Leave work early. Take the kids to the playground. Buy the nicer bottle of wine. Visit the people you love. Use the vacation days.

Whatever it is for you.

I’m not suggesting any of those things are financially optimal.

That’s kind of the point.

Life isn’t a spreadsheet.

There is a return on experiences that doesn’t show up in your brokerage account.

And there is an opportunity cost to waiting forever.

We talk constantly about the power of compounding when it comes to money.

Invest $10,000 today and let it compound for 30 years.

Of course.

But life compounds too.

The memories you make become part of your family’s story. The meals become stories. The trips become stories. The random Tuesday night at the cottage becomes a story you’ll remember years from now.

Money compounds. So do memories. But only one of them has a deadline.

So save for tomorrow. Invest for the future. Build wealth. Absolutely.

But don’t spend so much of your life preparing for a future that you miss the life happening in front of you.

Because someday, you may have more money than you know what to do with.

You may have the house paid off. You may have the retirement account you always wanted. You may finally have the time.

But your kids won’t be 8 anymore.

They won’t need you standing on the sideline.

They won’t ask you to come watch them play.

And you won’t be able to go back and buy those hours, no matter how much money you have.

There is a point when another $100,000 won’t change your life nearly as much as another year would.

Maybe the real goal isn’t to maximize the amount of money you have at the end.

Maybe it’s to build enough financial freedom that you can actually enjoy the middle.

The sidelines. The 3rd grader and the 5th grader. The cottage. The gray hair creeping in.

That’s the middle. That’s happening right now.

This window doesn’t stay open.

Walk through it.

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I made a move in my portfolio today, and I’m taking an updated look at how it’s doing.

It’s been a strong year so far. The portfolio is up 17.51% YTD vs 12.07% for the S&P 500. I’m on pace to beat the index for the 8th time in 10 years.

First, here’s the name I added to today.

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Outside of stocks, the story was more interesting. Oil dropped 4.2% on the week. Gold fell 2.6%. Bitcoin slipped 1.5%. The 10-year ticked down slightly to 4.72%. Risk-off in commodities, risk-on in large-cap equities. Not the pairing you’d expect.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map of Stocks

Sentiment Check

The bears have now outnumbered bulls for six straight weeks. This is the highest level in 11 weeks. That’s despite the S&P 500 continuing to make new all-time highs during that period.

Global Equity ETFs

Looking to September

Bad news for the bears. We’re set to close out August with a double-digit YTD gain. That’s only happened 20 times since 1950. And history says it’s not the setup people think it is.

In every one of those 20 years, only one time did the S&P see a double-digit drawdown the rest of the year. One time out of twenty.

Now let’s talk about September specifically, because I know that’s the month everyone loves to be scared of.

Turns out the worst Septembers on record almost always had a tell. Nine of the ten worst Septembers ever came into the month with the S&P already negative YTD. We’re not negative. We’re up double digits.

Flip it around and the pattern holds. The best Septembers tend to walk in with strength already behind them, not weakness. And five of the best Septembers on record happened during midterm years. Which is exactly where we are right now.

None of this means smooth sailing though. Seasonally, volatility tends to pick up right about now, and this year hasn't given us much of it yet. The setup for a flare-up is there. Fed decisions, Jackson Hole, bond yields, geopolitics, midterms, or something nobody's even talking about yet. The good news buried in that seasonal script is simple. Even when the fall gets bumpy, seasonality typically turns positive again heading into year-end.

And if we do get some chop, there's a decent argument it won't be as bad as past pullbacks. Since the tariff crash in early 2025, every dip along the way has been shallower than the one before it, almost cutting the prior drawdown roughly in half each time. We're sitting less than 1% off new all-time highs right now, so even a correction from here starts from a position of strength.

Put it together and September looks less scary than the calendar makes it feel. Strong YTD gains, a midterm year, and a market that's been healing its own drawdowns faster each time it dips.

My Best Investing Day in Years

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But I ended on a question.

What actually stops one?

Here are all the wrong answers. The ones you hear all the time.

Old age.

A magazine cover.

A round number on the S&P 500.

Rising interest rates.

Oil Spiking.

A hedge fund blowing up.

A scary headline out of Washington or overseas.

None of those, by themselves, kill a bull market. They rattle it for a week, sometimes a month, and then it keeps going. If you sold on any of those in the last three years, you sold too early.

Here’s what actually does.

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Small caps got hit hardest, with the Russell 2000 down 1.7% on the week, though it’s still up over 20% year to date. Bonds moved too, with the 10-year Treasury yield climbing to 4.74%.

Outside of equities, oil jumped 5.2% this week and is now up nearly 50% year to date. Gold notched its third straight week of gains, closing at $4,662. Bitcoin was the standout, up over 20% on the week, though it’s still negative for the year.

Market Recap

Weekly Heat Map Of Stocks

Dow Performance

Sentiment Check

This now makes it 5 weeks in a row of more bears than bulls.

Sector Breadth

% of stocks in each sector at their 4-week and 52-week highs.

Where The Market Stands

The percentage of S&P 500 stocks trading at least 10% below their 52-week highs has fallen to 49.5%. That’s the lowest reading since March. That’s a healthy signal for a market sitting just 2% off its all-time high.

Here's the seasonal wrinkle though. In midterm years going back to 1990, the S&P 500 equal weight has historically peaked around August 18th. That’s followed by a roughly 8% average pullback into October.

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