TOPLEY’S TOP 10 October 08, 2025

1. Crypto $6B Week of Inflows

Crypto asset flows. “Digital asset investment products attracted [a record] US$5.95bn last week … Bitcoin saw a record US$3.55bn in inflows, Ethereum US$1.48bn, while Solana (US$706.5m) and XRP (US$219.4m) also set notable records.”

James Butterfill – CoinShares


2. History of 30% Six-Month Gains

Below are the twelve days since 1953 where the S&P gained more than 30% in the prior six months (for the first time in at least a year). In terms of forward market performance following these days, the S&P has definitely shown some weakness in the very near term, but going out three months to one year, returns are slightly better than normal.

Bespoke Investment Group


3. Fear and Greed Index

CNN


4. Nasdaq Has Become the Market of Choice for Dubious Penny-Stock IPOs

Jonathan Weil – WSJ


5. European Large Cap Stocks 25-Year Breakout

@Callum Thomas (Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm)


6. Tech 2025 vs. 1999

Mike Xaccardi


7. China Youth Unemployment Chart New Highs

Semafor


8. Nationally-There are 35% More Home Sellers Than Buyers

@CharlieBilello


9. Driverless Taxi Usage Update in California

Derek Thompson – Substack


10. The Daily Stoic -Everything we need to do draws on the same ability

Every problem we face, every decision we make, every risk we take, every belief we choose to accept or question—it all requires the skill of discernment. Life, business, ethics, success, it comes down to being able to see what’s what in a given situation.

…what to do

…when to do it

…and how to do it.

And no skill was more cultivated by the Stoics than this. Epictetus talked of money changers who could tell, just by banging a coin on the table, whether it was counterfeit or not. This, he said, was what a philosopher had to be able to do—to know a good impression from a bad one, a good response from a bad one, a virtue from a vice. This is what Seneca was doing in his evening reviews. It was what Marcus Aurelius was trained in by Rusticus and Fronto and Antoninus.

To be able to see what’s in front of you with clarity. To know what’s important and what isn’t, how things work. That’s what wisdom is. It’s not an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and figures but something both profound and applied—for it was not Gandhi’s sharp legal mind that made him the mahatma.

No one is born with this critical and all too rare ability. It is not something, Seneca reminds us, that can be delegated to someone else. There is no technology that can do it for you. There is no app. No teacher who can simply download everything into your brain. No guru who can lead you to enlightenment or shaman who can give it to you in a dose.

No, I say (it’s Ryan here), wisdom takes work (that’s the title of the new book, by the way, and you can preorder signed, numbered first-editions here!). Lots of work. Lots of reading. Lots of teachers. Lots of experience. Lots of reflecting. It took lots of work in the ancient world and it takes lots of work today. But where would we be without it? Who would we be without it?

The reason we need discernment is that life is constantly putting us in difficult situations, asking us difficult questions, putting us in ethical dilemmas. Especially in a world of social media and algorithms—where we are bombarded with information, with noise, with temptations, with endless distractions. How can we navigate this? How can we make sense of it?

Without wisdom, we cannot. We will be carried away. We will be misled. We will do the wrong thing.

https://dailystoic.com

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 October 07, 2025

1. Large Cap vs. Small Cap History of Wide Performance Spreads

Jeff Weniger


2. AMD Massive Move Short-Term Overbought

Bespoke Investment Group-With today’s gain, shares of AMD will also be trading at “extremely extreme” overbought levels. Over the last 45 years, there have only been a handful of other days when the stock traded four or more standard deviations above its 50-DMA, and if the stock holds onto these gains throughout the trading session, today would be another one.

Bespoke


3. Clean Energy Not Dead Yet….PBW ETF +30% One Month

Google Finance


4. American Energy Production Straight Up from 2010

chartr


5. Inflation  60% Items in CPI Basket Growing Faster than 3%-Torsten Slok Apollo

Apollo Academy


6. CMBS Office Delinquency Rates Pass 2008

Barchart


7. Bitcoin IBIT Clear Break-Out of Previously Mentioned Sideways Pattern

StockCharts


8. Small Percentage of Social Media Creators Receive All the Eye Balls-Prof G

Prof G Blog The bigger issue isn’t whether the AI-generated art is “good” or “bad.” It’s that most consumers don’t actually want to create it in the first place. Media consumption has long followed the “1% rule”: Only a small fraction of people create content, while the vast majority consume it.

  • 4% of YouTube videos account for 94% of views on the platform.
  • 5% of videos on TikTok generate 89% of the views.
  • On Instagram, 3% of videos earned 84% of all views.
  • The top 25 podcasts reach nearly half of U.S. weekly listeners.

https://www.profgmarkets.com/subscribe


9. Countries with the Most Airports—Brazil #2

Voronoi


10. Great Majority of Wealthy Parents Giving to Adult Children

Barrons The great majority of wealthy parents are giving their adult children financial support, according to a new survey by Ameriprise. Three-quarters of the survey’s 554 respondents are footing the bill for their adult children’s big-ticket items, like down payments on homes or tuition for graduate degrees. Nearly two-thirds are also covering ongoing costs like phone bills.

Barron’s

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 October 06, 2025

1. One of the Best Q3 Returns Ever

Just about everything seemed to be in the green in Q3. It should’t be a shock that it was one of the best quarters in the past decade.

Ryan Detrick – Spilled Coffee Blog


2. Nasdaq Up 7 Months in a Row

Take a look at the Nasdaq over the last 7 months. It’s a thing of beauty. It has been up 7 months in a row. The best streak since 2016-2017.

Barchart


3. AI Related Spending =75% of S&P 500 Returns

Market Ear


4. Dow Jones Transports Still Below 2024 Highs

Stock Charts


5. Charts I Watch—Stock Spin-Off ETF New Highs

Stock Charts


6. Stock Buyback ETF Has Held Long-Term 200 Week Average for Years…New Highs

Stock Charts


7. 19k Private Equity Funds vs. 14k McDonalds……Chart Below Compares KKR to MCD Last 18 Months

Bloomberg “There are 19,000 private equity funds in the US. There are 14,000 McDonald’s in the US. How are there more private equity funds than McDonald’s? That’s actually crazy, right?” KKR & Co. partner Alisa Wood said Wednesday at Bloomberg’s Women, Money and Power event in London. “Capital coming back is really important. The mark-to-market paper gains only take you so far.”

Bloomberg


8. Gen Z Revolts Update

IN scenes resembling a dystopian blockbuster, furious so-called Gen Z protesters have left a trail of carnage in nations from Asia to Africa as they oust leaders and set cities on fire. Now, it’s feared discontent could spread to the UK – with “powerful” younger generations being rallied by fast-spreading messages on social media.

The Sun


9. America’s Trust in Mass Media

Gallup


10. Americans Move Towards Negative View on Sports Betting

Pew Research

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 October 03, 2025

1. The Updated JP Morgan Valuation Chart

https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets


2. But Profit Margins at All-Time Highs

https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets


3. Debt to Equity Ratio of AI Stocks

From Irrelevant Investor Blog

https://www.theirrelevantinvestor.com/p/animal-spirits-why-retail-is-outperforming


4. S&P All-Time Highs Q3 Ties Record Going Back to 1998

Q3 ATHs. “On virtually no one’s bingo card, the S&P 500 made 23 new all-time highs in the third quarter, tying the most for any quarter since 1998.”

Ryan Detrick – Carson Group


5. Exposure to AI vs. Labor Costs

https://x.com/GoldmanSachs


6. NVDA Added $2.5 Trillion in Market Cap Since April 2025

https://x.com/KobeissiLetter


7. Call Volume Last 20 Sessions…40 Million Contracts

https://x.com/LanceRoberts


8. Oil is the Cheapest it has been in the Last 70 Years when Denominated in Gold, with the Exception of Covid 2020

Oil is the cheapest it has been in the last 70 years when denominated in gold, with the exception of the Covid lockdown in 2020

https://themarketear.com/the-newsletter


9. China vs. World EV Production

http://www.semafor.com/


10. One Sentence on Business

https://x.com/elonmusk

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 October 02, 2025

1. Since August Speculative Equity Dominated…Quantum, Crypto and Non-Profit Tech


2. Small Cap Non-Profit Stocks Outperforming Quality by 1999 Levels

Zach Goldberg Jefferies


3. AI vs. The World Venture Investing

Wolf Street Blog

Wolf Street


4. Another Look at the Silver Breakout

@Charlie Bilello


5. MSTR vs. S&P November 2024-Now

Abnormal Returns


6. IPO Market Still Running at Half the Amount Raised in 2021

Barron’s


7. Dollar Rolling Back Over

Barchart


8. Luxury Home Market Slows

WSJ The number of luxury-home sales nationwide dropped 0.7% during the three months ended Aug. 31, compared with the same period last year, according to data from real-estate brokerage Redfin, which said luxury sales nationwide dropped to the lowest level for that period since it began tracking the market in 2013.

Price growth also slowed. During the three months ended Aug. 31, the median sale price for luxury properties—defined as the top 5% of the market—increased 3.9% year over year to $1.25 million, according to Redfin. But that is down from a 6.1% year-over-year price jump for the three months ended Aug. 31, 2024.

WSJ


9. How Religious is Your State? Pew Research

Pew Research Center


10. How to Become a Super Learner

Psychology Today Science-based techniques can help you learn more effectively. George S. Everly, Jr. PhD,

Key points

  • Science has revealed how to accelerate the learning process, with exercise, multimedia learning, and more.
  • Super learning techniques may even help overcome learning challenges.
  • Super learning techniques may enhance the brain’s learning capacity through increased neuroplasticity.

In my first year of high school, my father was summoned to my counselor’s office. He was advised to remove me from high school as I would likely not graduate. And if I did graduate, I would certainly never be accepted into college. It seems I was simultaneously burdened with two debilitating syndromes — dyslexia and ADHD. So, while my academic performance was short of outright failure, my prognosis did not seem very positive to my teachers at the time. Against my counselor’s advice, my father insisted I continue in high school.

My father delayed telling me about his encounter with my counselor until my graduation, but it wasn’t my high school graduation. My father decided to reveal his encounter with my counselor only when I reached the age of 27 and had just completed my first doctoral training program. What happened? Now, many years later, having been a professor at two of the leading universities in the world and the author of over 20 books I look back and try to answer the question “What happened?”

Jim McCann (author of the book Lodestar: Tapping into the Ten Timeless Pillars of Success) hosts a popular podcast, “Celebrations Chatter.” He recently interviewed Dr. Barbara Oakley. Oakley’s book, Learning How to Learn, is a national best-seller and her MOOC of the same name has been accessed by over 4 million learners. In her interview, her book, and her MOOC, Oakley describes how she went from an 18-year-old military recruit who hated math to a professor of engineering. What happened? She unravels the mysteries of learning. She describes how to harness an understanding of how the brain works so as to help you become a super learner. Most importantly, however, her message is a message of hope for all of us, especially those of us challenged by formal education or just learning in general.

The Secrets of Super Learning

Interestingly, my own personal journey with learning seems like a confirming case study of many of the techniques advocated by Oakley. Here are several techniques that appear to accelerate learning and creativity that almost anyone can utilize.

  1. Moderate physical exercise before studying appears to facilitate learning.
  2. Moderate physical exercise prior to taking a test appears to enhance test performance.
  3. Try the Pomodoro Technique, wherein you engage in highly focused study, but only for 25 minutes. Then relax for 10-15 minutes. Then repeat.
  4. Try “pre-sleep learning” (hypnogogic learning). This technique involves studying a problem as you literally fall asleep. The technique is purported to enhance retention and creativity. It was used by Thomas Edison and by Friedrich Kekulé, the chemist who famously envisioned a snake biting its own tail as an analogue for the structure of benzene. And it helped write a textbook that has been in print 45 years (Everly & Lating, 2019).
  5. Multimedia learning involves taking the material to be learned and converting it into multiple media, such as a) text material, b) listening to an audio presentation of the same text, c) converting the text into a rhythmic poetic cadence, d) combining the text with music, and e) even converting key concepts into representative pictures.
  6. Use a four-step active learning process: a) study the material for 25 minutes, b) reduce the material to an outline of only the key points, c) close your eyes and relax for 10 minutes, and finally d) have someone quiz you on the material just learned.
  7. Lastly, harness the Pygmalion Effect. Find a friend or mentor who believes in you and who will support you in difficult times but most importantly be a relentless advocate and source of encouragement.

These techniques may be useful because they harness several mechanisms known to facilitate learning, especially overcoming barriers to the learning process (Oakley et al., 2018; Everly & Lating, 2019).

  1. They seem to facilitate neuroplasticity, wherein the brain reorganizes itself in order to understand and retain new material. Physical exercise, pre-sleep learning (hypnogogic learning), and repetition are all associated with enhanced learning, likely predicated upon increases in brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). Finding ways of enhancing the release of BDNF may be a key to becoming a super learner.
  2. Multi-media learning is associated with the recruitment of varied and diverse brain regions serving to complement and enhance the learning process.
  3. Interpersonal support is the single best predictor of human resilience. The belief and expectations that a teacher, coach, mentor, or parent have for their students can significantly impact who those students become.

While we have yet to discover a practical variant of a “limitless” pill as depicted in the 2011 movie, there is hope. Regardless of what kind of learner you were born, you can be better at it because whatever brain you have, you can make it better – my own journey would seem to support such a conclusion.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-disaster-strikes-inside-disaster-psychology/202509/how-to-become-a-super-learner