From a valuation perspective this market is divided into the Bigs (top 100) and the Big-Nots (everyone else). If you’re big you attract all the flows, have a much lower cost of capital (aka very high valuations), you suck up a lot of small companies through M&A, and to be fair if you got big in the first place you probably have pretty decent earnings and growth. If you’re small you’re off the radar, under-covered, under-valued, under-performing and probably underestimated. And even if you’re large —but not the largest, you still trade at a discount to the largest companies. As alluded, this is partly selection effects (successful companies get big), but also reinforced by the relentless rise of passive/index investing. But where things are sitting now is what you would call extreme. An

This week’s chart pretty much speaks for itself (+has just made a new all-time high). To clarify, what we are looking at here is the estimated annualized compound growth rate expected by sell-side analysts over a three to five-year horizon aggregated for the S&P500 $S&P 500(.SPX)$ . i.e. consensus earnings growth expectations. Or as I like to call it: Wall Street analyst sentiment. And like all good sentiment indicators there are elements of truth and elements of emotion all mixed up in it. In boom times euphoria takes hold and analysts raise their estimates as stock prices punch higher, new paradigm narratives take hold, and ultimately expectations end up overestimating even the best fundamentals. In doom times pessimism reigns, and analy

Today’s chart is one for tomorrow’s history books. It shows US households running the highest allocation to equities on record (and [as a result] the stockmarket trading at record high valuations). This is the type of shift you see only once in a generation, and it means a fundamental change in market structure with significant implications for the economy, politics, and the forward looking risk vs return outlook. But to be fair, with the S&P500 gaining more than 10x off the March 2009 lows — it’s an entirely understandable development! And even though it got this way for very logical reasons (strong earnings growth, waves of tech disruption, low interest rates, passive flows), it’s important to acknowledge that this is not normal and we live in highly unusual times. Investor confidenc

Here's the topics & takeaways from the latest Weekly Macro Themes report: 1. Inflation & Policy: inflation is rising and at risk of heading higher yet, thus central bankers are already pivoting to rate hikes; at the margin policy is becoming less supportive for risk assets. 2. Treasuries: wary of increasing headwinds and downside risks for bonds, but lack of a clear breakdown (yet) + cheap valuations and consensus bearishness means its still a (low-conviction) bullish bias. 3. Korea: Korean equities are at-risk following a near-vertical run (extreme expensive valuations and crowded positioning), particularly as policy is about to pivot to rate hikes. 4. China: remain bullish Chinese stocks given cheap relative value, lingering investor skepticism, and mixed but still bullish techni

For most investors the KOSPI is not the first index they check when they get to the desk — they probably don’t even think about Korea… But you should. In today’s note I wanted to highlight a topic from my latest Weekly Macro Themes report from Topdown Charts Professional. Basically, Korean equities have gone parabolic. (and yes, it’s AI again!) And if you thought the US market was getting top-heavy and concentrated you haven’t seen Korea. The top stock, $SK Hynix, Inc.(HXSCL)$ , is tracking near-30% of the MSCI South Korea index. Close in second is $Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.(SSNLF)$ at about 25% of the index. Add in $SK SQUARE CO LTD.(SKSQF)$ and a few oth

While space sector stocks will almost certainly go through cycles of major boom and bust along the path (just look at the drawdowns in the chart above), I think that path is headed much higher in the longer arc of history. There’s a few reasons for that. While major progress has been made in the commercial space sector, it’s still early days. Only a handful of companies have a proven track record for launch services so far — and outside of launch, most companies are either focused on manufacturing and/or operating satellites (with much of the current use case being earth observation and telecommunications). In the longer run it’s natural to expect this to expand to an array of orbital activities such as zero-gravity manufacturing, orbital space habitats for a variety of use cases (from tou

Chart of the Week - Space Stocks While most people are focused on AI stocks and Big Tech, this equal-weighted basket of space stocks* is up 17x off the low point in late-2022. This reflects some major strides that several of these companies are making as the commercial space sector goes from dream to reality, but a key part of the more recent run-up is also down to anticipation of the SpaceX IPO. My personal view is the commercial space sector and space economy will one day be much larger than even some of today’s biggest themes and sectors, and has a lot of growth ahead. So I reckon this is something to pay more attention to if it’s not yet on your radar, and it’s probably still early days in this story… $Rocket Lab USA, Inc.(RKLB)$

Weekly S&P500 ChartStorm - 10 May 2026This week: technical check, equal-weighted S&P500, blow-off tops, asset allocations, passive investing, listed companies, sector skews, space stocks, Bitcoin...Welcome to the latest Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm!Learnings and conclusions from this week’s charts: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ $E-mini S&P 500 - main 2606(ESmain)$ $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ $NASDAQ 100(NDX)$ $iShares Russell 2000 ETF(IWM)$The equal-weighted S&P500 has stalled at resistance.(and the cap-w

Here's the topics & takeaways from my latest Weekly Macro Themes report: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ $NASDAQ 100(NDX)$ $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ 1. Emerging Markets: remain bullish EM equities given improved technicals, reasonable valuations, favorable macro/fundamentals, and very light positioning despite positive sentiment. 2. US Tech Stocks: remain wary on tech stocks given elevated valuations and stretched positioning, but lift risk-watch given strong macro/fundamental momentum and bullish technicals. 3. Gold: gold faces significant down

Capital Expenditure (aka capex) by tech and tech related companies now accounts for half of all S&P500 $S&P 500(.SPX)$ corporate capex. Depending on your perspective, this is either the most bullish or bearish chart you’ve seen today! The bulls will say this is a virtuous cycle of tech acceleration where more investment enables more breakthroughs, rapid rollout and scaling, which leads more revenues and favorable funding, which enables further investment (and so-on) The bears will say this decadal-doubling is unsustainable and a classic bubble sign + late-cycle signal (there appear to be trends and cycles in this chart). Meanwhile, economists might quip that it amounts to crowding out of investment that might have gone into industry, healt

Here's the topics & takeaways from my latest Weekly Macro Themes report: 1. Global Growth: the weight of evidence points to ongoing global growth reacceleration in 2026 (this is supportive for risk assets, and tilts to a bullish bias for stocks). 2. Inflation Risk: expect higher inflation globally given starting point of higher than average inflation, stronger global growth, elevated inflation expectations, tight capacity, and rising commodity prices. 3. Treasuries: retain a bullish bias given cheap valuations, very light positioning/allocations, consensus bearish sentiment, but still waiting for macro/technical confirmation (not yet; mostly downside risk for bonds). 4. EM Bonds: remain bullish given cheap valuations, favorable technicals and sentiment, bullish EMFX outlook, but wary o

This week’s chart shows the market cap weighting of US semiconductor stocks (making record highs). It’s a remarkable chart because at ~14% it’s basically double the level it peaked at during the height of the dot-com bubble. It also comes at an interesting juncture as the $Philadelphia Semiconductor Index(SOX)$ (Semiconductors Index) just chalked-up a record 17-days in a row of gains. This is a dangerous market. It’s dangerous for bulls because these are the types of conditions where you often encounter sharp corrections and crashes (even if it is the way of the future). But it’s also dangerous for bears because this is basically the bubble-phase of the bull market — attempts at shorting could end up generating large losses in small time as a combi

This chart tracks what have been two of the biggest weak spots in markets. (and is interesting for 2 key reasons) First: both Bitcoin and Software stocks have stopped going down (and actually are starting to look very promising from a technical standpoint) — i.e. the weak spots are no longer getting weaker. That’s important because in markets weakness has a habit of spreading. But also, further upside in these two (which is looking likely) will help rebuild sentiment and reinforce the bullish outlook for stocks in general. Which brings me to the second point… Second: both boast a bullish tactical outlook (as I just outlined in my latest Weekly Macro Themes report) Basically, we’ve seen a major reset in price (software down more than -35%, bitcoin off almost -50%) and a big washout in senti