Temporary Jobs: A Good Leading Indicator Gone Bad?
When businesses have concerns about the economy, they often lay off or stop hiring temporary workers before firing full-time employees. For that reason, temporary staffing employment has been a reliable early warning signal of labor market weakness and recessions. As […]
Oil Rig Counts Don’t Tell The Whole Story
The graph below shows that the US oil rig count has been slightly declining despite much higher oil prices. While many investors may assume that no growth in the number of operating oil rigs implies limited oil production growth, that […]
Nicoletos: AI Makes A Case For Active Strategies
Michael Nicoletos wrote a thoughtful paper titled “The Index Trap,” making a compelling case that active investing, i.e., picking individual stocks versus buying baskets of stocks (ETFs), will outperform in the future. If correct, that would reverse the trend over […]
Does The Treasury Hold The Next Market Tailwind?
The Treasury General Account (TGA) is effectively the US Treasury’s checking account held at the Fed. The changing balance of the TGA affects the financial system’s liquidity, thereby influencing broader economic and market activity. For example, when the Treasury raises […]
NVDA To CPU Rotation: Durable Thesis Or Crowded Trade?
The semiconductor leaderboard has quietly flipped over the past month, and the NVDA to CPU rotation is worth pausing on. NVDA, the name that defined the AI trade for two-plus years, is up just 13.4% over the trailing month. The […]
AI Spending Receipts: Four Tech Giants, Four Different Verdicts
Wednesday’s mega-cap tech earnings produced one of the cleaner real-time experiments we’ve seen this cycle. Four hyperscalers reported. All four beat on revenue and earnings. All four committed to massive AI infrastructure spending. Yet the market reactions were wildly divergent: […]
Powells Coda: Dissension In The Ranks
Presuming Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Fed Chair is approved by the Senate, as is widely expected, yesterday’s FOMC meeting was Jerome Powell’s last as its Chair. However, he will stay on as a voting Governor. As he explains: Things that […]
The Microsoft OpenAI Marriage Is On Rocky Ground
The relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has been a defining partnership in the blooming AI technology. But the partnership terms are changing, and what was once a solid relationship may be fracturing. On Monday morning, Microsoft shares quickly fell 5% as […]
SOX Pulls The Market Higher
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) is on an incredible 18-day winning streak. Over this period, starting on March 31st, the SOX index has risen by 44%. This marks the longest winning streak in the index’s 32-year history. Moreover, it is […]