1. The Tech Industry is Huge and Europe’s Share is Very Small—”pubs in London’s financial district are usually full at 2 p.m. on Thursdays.”

Odenwald had spent nearly three decades working in California but hoped he could help build a European tech giant to compete with the Americans. He was shocked by what he saw. Colleagues lacked engineering skills. None of his team had stock options, reducing their incentive to succeed. Everything moved slowly. After two months, Odenwald quit and returned to California.

WSJ

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2. S&P 500 +19% in 27 Trading Days …One of the Greatest Comebacks in Market History

In Rare Company”: The S&P 500 is up over 19% in the last 27 trading days, one of the greatest comebacks in stock market history.

Charlie Bilelo

What immediately jumps out when looking at that table of big short-term rallies?

With the exception of November-December 2008, all have occurred at the start of new bull markets, following historic bear market lows in…

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3. No Idea What Shakes Out Here…But Interesting Chart

Netscape vs. ChatGPT. “The Nasdaq after the releases of Netscape versus ChatGPT continues to track eerily closely. Bulls should hope the trend remains because we’re still in 1997 on this analogue…”

Bespoke

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4. Mega Cap AI Capital Spending Not Slowing Down

Bespoke

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5. However Venture Different Story…New report shows the staggering AI cash surge — and the rise of the ‘zombiecorn’

Key Points

• Silicon Valley Bank said in a report published on Tuesday that about 40% of the money raised by U.S. startups last year came from funds focused on AI.
• Capital-intensive companies like OpenAI and Anthropic require billions of dollars to fuel their growth, but investors aren’t getting returns yet, and the IPO market has remained quiet.
• Thus, there’s been an increase in the number of “zombiecorns,” or companies “with poor revenue growth and unit economics” that are struggling to raise money, the report said.

Via CNBC: Venture capital firms focused on artificial intelligence are driving much of the growth in the startup market, while companies in other areas are struggling to raise cash, according to a report from Silicon Valley Bank.

About 40% of the total amount raised by U.S. venture funds last year was from funds that “list AI as a focus,” SVB said in its “State of enterprise software” report published on Tuesday. That’s up from 10% in 2021. AI companies accounted for 45% of U.S. venture investment in enterprise software, jumping from 9% in 2022.

The dollars from AI megadeals — rounds of $100 million or greater — represented about half of all the money raised in the overall megadeal category. That’s a group that includes OpenAI and Anthropic.

“Exclude AI investment and the story changes,” the SVB report said. “There is no meaningful uptick for companies not leveraging AI, with investment from this group essentially flat for the last year.”

The challenge for the broader market is that exit activity remains tight, a theme that’s been in place since soaring inflation in late 2021 led to rising interest rates and a move out of risk.

Many investors were bullish that President Donald Trump’s return to the White House would reinvigorate the startup economy due to the prospect of lower taxes and less regulation, but the aggressive tariff policy announced in early April led several companies to delay planned IPOs.

The tech IPO market is showing signs of picking back up.

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6. QQQ Short-Term Oversold to Overbought in One Month on RSI (arrows)

StockCharts

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7. Analysts Stop Cutting Earnings Estimates

Sherwood

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8. Retail Investors Still Underperform Even After Buying the Dip

Bloomberg

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9. Walmart Sees 255 Million Customers Per Week

DemandSage

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10. Grade Inflation and Declining Test Scores.

1. Modern History of U.S. Credit Downgrade

Zach Goldberg Jeffries

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2. Can’t Believe It But SPACS are Back Already

SPACS R BACK – A new cast of boutique banks is fuelling a fresh fervour for blank-cheque companies — one of Wall Street’s hottest and most controversial products during the pandemic-era bull market. Special purpose acquisition vehicles, or Spacs, exploded in popularity during the Covid-19 crisis, with around 600 deals in the US raising a record $163bn in 2021 before the frenzy died down as global stocks tumbled the following year due to rising interest rates.

Dave Lutz at Jones Trading

But the market has revved up again since Donald Trump won his second term as president, despite volatility sparked by his tariffs delaying several traditional initial public offerings. There have been 44 Spac offerings this year raising $9bn, compared with 57 raising $9.6bn during the whole of 2024, Dealogic data shows.  Four years ago, Credit Suisse, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Jefferies were among the busiest Spac advisers. But a cluster of lesser-known firms including Cohen & Company Capital Markets, D Boral Capital (The old EF Hutton), Clear Street and come to dominate the sector.

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3. MegaCap Stocks Move Back into Lead…A Couple of Ticks from New Highs

StockCharts

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4. MegaCap Led By MAG 7 Solid Earnings

The Market Fear

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5. Since 1987 IPO FICO 3^rd Best Performing Stock Behind MSFT and UNH

StockCharts

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6. Mom and Pop Investors Reverse Yesterday’s 1% Pullback

Bloomberg

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7. What Do Governments Spend Money On?

Our World in Data

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8. Second Home Sales Slowdown Except for $10m Plus

John Burns

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9. Qatar Population 2.5m -Largest Foreign Donor to American Higher Education

Google

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10. It is What it Is: The Power of Withholding Judgement (Meaningful Money)

You may have heard the old story about the Chinese farmer.

One day, his horse runs away. His neighbors come by and say, “What bad luck!”

The farmer simply replies, “Maybe.”

The next day, the horse returns with some friends—three wild horses.

“This is amazing!” the neighbors say.

“Maybe,” the farmer replies.

The following day, the farmer’s son tries to ride one of the wild horses, gets thrown off, and breaks his leg.

“Oh no, how terrible,” the neighbors say.

“Maybe,” says the farmer.

Then the army comes to town, drafting all the able-bodied young men. But because of the broken leg, the farmer’s son is spared.

“Wow, what good fortune!” the neighbors say.

“Maybe,” the farmer replies.

And on it goes.

We tend to label our experiences—this is good, that’s bad, this is unfair, that’s amazing. But the story of the farmer reminds us: it’s not always so clear.

Something that feels awful today might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Something that seems great could lead to pain later on. Sometimes we just don’t know yet.

Even deeper than that, maybe the idea of “good” or “bad” is just something we’ve made up. We naturally reach for what feels pleasant and push away what feels unpleasant. But what if things just… are?

There’s a phrase I used to hear growing up: “It is what it is.”

I hated it. It felt like giving up. If I said, “This sucks,” and a friend replied, “It is what it is,” I felt dismissed.

But as I’ve grown, I’ve realized it might hold more wisdom than I gave it credit for.

Maybe “it is what it is” is simply an invitation to not rush to judgment.

OUR JUDGMENT GLASSES

Here’s a simple truth: we’re always the main character in our own story.

If you’re watching a nature documentary and it follows a hungry lion, you might cheer when it finally catches an antelope. But if the next episode follows a lost antelope trying to survive, you’ll mourn when it gets eaten by a lion.

Same event. Different perspective.

The story changes depending on who you’re rooting for. That’s how we work too. When I land a new job, I celebrate. But for the person who was hoping to be promoted into that role? It’s a disappointment.

We see life through the lens of our own experience. It’s like we’re all wearing a pair of invisible judgment glasses—glasses that filter everything into good or bad. And most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re wearing them.

We all see the world through our own lens—what I like to think of as judgment-filter glasses. Our experiences, beliefs, and values shape how we interpret the world. They color everything we see.

That filter can quietly shift how we feel. It turns “what I feel” into “what I should feel.” And when that happens, we lose connection with what’s really here.

1. Contra Indicator? Real Estate Funds Biggest Outflows Ever

Markets & Mayhem

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2. Contra Indicator? Small Caps Biggest Outflows Ever

Markets & Mayhem

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3. YouTube Add Division Almost Bigger than NFLX Entire Business

YouTube wants to monetize its growing TV dominance with AI-powered ad formats

It’s been a big week for TV, with the annual “upfront” period kicking off in New York, where television titans put on extravagant sales presentations to draw in advertising advances.

This year, though, was different. Not only did the uncertainty of looming tariffs tighten the purse strings of some of TV’s biggest spenders, but a growing force in the space threatened both traditional broadcast networks like NBCUniversal and Paramount and streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon.

Indeed, all eyes were on YouTube — the video sharing and social media platform that’s fast becoming the biggest thing on TV (some are even predicting that it will soon surpass Disney to become the biggest media company in the world). In fact, YouTube’s ad business alone is already bringing in close to the massive total revenues that behemoth Netflixhas been notching.

Sherwood

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4. S&P Back to Highs in Forward P/E

Equities: The S&P 500 forward P/E ratio is nearing 22x again.

Bloomberg Terminal

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5. Global Central Bank Gold Purchases

via MarketWatch

This chart from the fund management company Incrementum shows global central bank purchases over the last 75 years. “For three years in a row, central banks increased their gold reserves by more than 1,000 [metric tons] each year, achieving a special kind of hat-trick,” the firm says in its annual, “In Gold We Trust” report.

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6. Europe Embracing Nuclear

Berlin dropped its opposition to nuclear power, part of a rapprochement with Paris that also marked a potentially major change in European Union energy policy. France is strongly pro-nuclear, while Germany began phasing it out after the 2011 Fukushima incident. But new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been critical of that decision, and is keen to build bridges with France. He agreed to remove all “biases” against nuclear in EU legislation, leaving it on a par with renewable energy. Europe in general has seen a nuclear revival: A dozen EU members signed a letter backing the technology, the Netherlands and Belgium reversed decisions to shut down reactors, and Denmark may lift a 40-year nuclear moratorium.

Europe shifts on nuclear power

Semafor

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7. Percentage of American Adults with Chronic Health Conditions

WSJ

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8. Second Home Sales Slowdown Except for $10m Plus

WSJ

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9. Men vs. Women Repayment of Student Debt

Michael Arouet

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10. Mark Cuban’s Last ‘Shark Tank’ Episode Airs Today. Here Are 3 of His Best Investments

As the billionaire entrepreneur departs the hit show, we look back at Dude Wipes and other fruitful deals.

Via INC: It’s the end of an era for Shark Tank: On Friday, Mark Cuban’s final episode airs, and the long-standing celebrity investor will finally bid the hit show adieu.

The Cost Plus Drugs founder has said he’s leaving to spend more time with his family. But in his wake he leaves many years of investments in American small businesses, some of which have gone on to become big brands (and others of which have faded into obscurity). Cuban said in 2022 that he had not yet made a net profit on his Shark Tank investments, but at least a handful of the investor’s big deals have become, well, big deals.

Here are some of the most pivotal moves Cuban made during his tenure on the show.

Dude Wipes

A flushable wet wipe hardly sounds like an innovative new product—but in explicitly marketing the toiletry to men, Dude Wipes has carved out a nice niche for itself. Cuban acquired a 25 percent stake in the company for $300,000, with the brand now worth more than $300 million.

It’s an impressive growth story, and one that will be commemorated in Friday’s episode, as Dude Wipes co-founder Ryan Meegan is set to thank Cuban for his support, TV Insider reports. The Shark’s send-off will reportedly find Meegan saying that since his company pitched Cuban, it has “done over half a billion dollars in sales.”

Cuban has previously identified Dude Wipes as one of his favorite investments from Shark Tank, saying the brand is “killing it” and “taking over the toilet paper category.”

Mush

Mush, a brand of packaged overnight oats, has aimed to shake up the world of oatmeal—to sometimes dubious consumer response. Still, it found a fan in Cuban, who won a bidding war to take a 10 percent stake in the brand for $300,000 and an unlimited credit line.

The food startup has since “thrived under Cuban’s guidance,” Yahoo Finance reports, with a valuation of nearly $11 million late last year and an annual growth rate of about 10 percent in the wake of its Shark Tank debut.

What those numbers will look like in the wake of President Trump’s ongoing tariffs push—Mush says it has long sourced its oats from Canada—remains to be seen.

BeatBox Beverages

Even when Cuban was investing $1 million for a one-third stake of the boxed wine company BeatBox Beverages, he had his doubts, warning that the brand’s strategy was wrong. A year later he was appearing on spin-off show Beyond the Tank to advise the BeatBox team on how to best grow their brand.

But his tough love paid off, with the alcohol brand making the Inc. 5000 list in 2019 and now appearing on grocery store shelves nationwide. (It is no longer listed as part of his portfolio on his website, however.)

Last year, Forbes pegged the company at a more than $200 million valuation, with over $100 million in annual sales.

1. Credit Spreads Not Signaling Danger

During a huge risk-on advance, US High yield spreads have tightened 152 bps since April 7. With spreads now at 309 bps above Treasuries, credit market investors are back to pricing in a very optimistic outlook with no recession and few defaults.

Charlie Bilello

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2. AI Premium to Overall Market at 2017 Levels

The P/E premium vs the overall market for a basket of 48 AI-related stocks is back down at levels last seen in 2017.

Daily Chart Book

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3. Emerging Markets Ex-China Breakout

Topdown Charts

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4. PPI Number Good for Lower Inflation

Liz Ann Sonders

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5. Housing Market Needs Lower Rates

Inflation rose to levels not seen since the 1980s and high mortgage rates have largely frozen the US housing market, as housing affordability plunged to its lowest level in decades.

Cresset

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6. Defense Spending Not Slowing Down

Barron’s

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7. Aerospace/Defense ETF

CNN

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8. NATO Arms Supplies by Country of Origin

Semafor

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9. With US trade war, China now top buyer for Canadian crude on Trans Mountain Pipeline

Via Reuters: China has emerged as the top customer for Canadian oil shipped on the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline, ship tracking data showed, as a U.S. trade war has shifted crude flows in the year since the pipeline started operating.

China’s new interest in Canadian oil comes as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war has strained relations between longtime allies Washington and Ottawa. It also reflects the impact of U.S. sanctions on crude from countries like Russia and Venezuela.

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10. 49ers to Sell Nearly 6% Stake at Record Sports Team Valuation

Via Sportico: The owners of the San Francisco 49ers have reached an agreement to sell about 6% of the NFL franchise to a trio of Bay Area families at a valuation higher than $8.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the details, the highest valuation ever for a global sports team in a transaction.

The buyers are the Khosla family, the Griffith family and Deeter family, said the person, who was granted anonymity because the details are private. The Khosla family is buying the biggest stake, the source said, but it is unclear exactly how the 6% is being broken up between the three.

The NFL’s finance committee has reviewed the deals, though they still require more formal approval. A representative for the 49ers declined to comment. Attempts to reach the three families weren’t immediately successful.

The 49ers are owned by the York family. Sportico values the team at $6.86 billion.

The transaction continues a trend of recent minority stake sales in the world’s most valuable sports league. While the NFL opened its ownership ranks to private equity last year, some continue to prioritize individual investors. The Eagles recently sold two minority stakes to individuals at an $8.1 billion valuation. The New York Giants are in the market looking to sell about 10%, and the current owners’ preference is for high-net-worth individuals, not institutional funds, Sportico previously reported.

1. Interesting Comments on U.S. Dollar from Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank

In a big rebound for US risk assets of late, the USD bounce has been less impressive. In a short note overnight, FX strategist Tim Baker looks at whether DB’s medium term bearish forecasts on the Dollar that were published three weeks ago here remain intact. The short answer is yes.

The recent policy and market volatility have likely been sufficiently concerning to prompt enough of a re-think on investing in the US, especially relative to the very long consensus position at the start of 2025. This coincides with the backdrop of extremes in valuations and positioning (plus there’s the fiscal story in places like Germany and China).

On the most simple metric, the USD has been more than 20% expensive vs PPP for three years – an unprecedented run as we show in the CoTD. Coupled with very high equity valuations relative to its peers and a few other factors mentioned in Tim’s note we continue to think the start of a slow downtrend is in.

Deutsch Bank

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2. U.S. Dollar Rally Fails at 50-Day…50-Day Still Below 200-Day

StockCharts

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3. MAG 7 ETF +33% from Lows

StockCharts

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4. Update: Mag 7 vs. 493 Stocks

Jones Trading

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5. ChatGPT 780m Visits in April vs. Next Closest 34m

StockCharts

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6. More Stats on Record Stock Buybacks

The Kobeissi Letter

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7. One Month Ago “Extreme Fear”

CNN

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8. Mortgage Rates Normal vs. Inflation

Nick Gerli

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9. Total Mortgage Originations for Second Homes -66% from 2021 Record Level

Charlie Billelo

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10. Warren Buffett 10 Word Answer: When Did You Know You Were Rich?

Via Inc: Here’s what Buffett said in 2005 when asked, “When did you know you were rich?”

I bet we all in this room live about the same. We eat about the same and sleep about the same. We pretty much drive a car for 10 years. All this stuff doesn’t make it any different.

I will watch the Super Bowl on a big screen television just like you. We are living the same life.

I have two luxuries: I get to do what I want to do every day and I get to travel a lot faster than you. I travel distances better than you do. The plane is nicer. But that is about the only thing that I do a whole lot different.

You’re rich if you are working around people you like.

I really knew I was rich when I had $10,000. I knew a long time ago that I was going to be doing something I loved doing with people that I loved doing it with.