We are now deeply into the buyback blackout period with just around a third of discretionary buybacks by index weight for S&P 500 companies active this week (discretionary buybacks represent ~30% of all buybacks), and it won’t get back above that until we get into November.
Zach Goldberg Jefferies
3. Private Equity Stocks Roll Back Over as Rates Rise and IPOs Get Cancelled…..S&P vs. Apollo, KKR, and Blackstone
Ycharts
4. AI Related Stocks 53% of S&P
A Wealth of Common Sense
5. ARTY AI ETF Makes New Highs….After -25% Correction this Summer
Stockcharts
6. AI Based American Wealth Another Level
Bloomberg By Kristine Owram The boom in AI valuations has created unprecedented wealth for founders, early-stage investors and employees lucky enough to get stock options. Even among the very richest people in the world, the divergence between the AI haves and the everyone-else-have-nots is stark. Tech billionaires account for all of the $845 billion in wealth gains on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index so far this year, while those who made their fortunes outside technology lost a combined $62 billion.
Bloomberg
7. Real Estate ETF IYR at Lowest Level Ever vs. S&P
Charlie Bilello
8. Political Double Haters on the Rise Going into Mid-Terms
WSJ
9. Reality of 6-Figure Blue Collar Jobs
Washington Post By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel The findings counter an emerging narrative about the prevalence of six-figure jobs in the skilled trades that don’t require higher education. Politicians and business leaders have touted careers in electrical work, HVAC and plumbing earning more than $100,000, arguing that a four-year degree is unnecessary for financial security. While those jobs offer healthy salaries, research shows their median earnings are more modest than salaries for less common occupations that don’t require a bachelor’s degree.
Token volumes vs. token spend. “AI Spend FALLS in the latest Ramp AI Index. Price cuts at the frontier, in addition to cheaper and more efficient models at standard and lite levels, are pushing down the cost of using AI. Open source models remain <5% of business spend. This decline in spend is driven almost exclusively by competition between OpenAI + Anthropic.”
Ara Kharazian
2. Why Did META Add $450Billion to Market Cap in September?
3. Tech is Now 55% of All U.S. Capital Spending
The Irrelevant Investor
4. Small Cap Stock Short Interest is Sitting 99th Percentile—This is Not Bubble Stock Market Action
R2K short interest. Short interest (as % of shares outstanding) in the Russell 2000 has risen to the 99.8th percentile.
RSP streak. The equal-weight S&P 500 is on track for its 7th consecutive weekly decline. The only other time that’s happened was in the middle of the 2022 bear market.
DAILY CHARTBOOK
3. Forward Returns S&P Better After New Highs
@Charlie Bilello
4. 10 Drivers of Higher Interest Rates-Barry Ritholtz
9. 20% of Home Listings in U.S. Cut Prices in August
Bloomberg
10. A doctor shares his 5-step routine for preventing cancer
Business Insider Dr. Kumar works with patients who have many types of cancer, and said he’s built a well-rounded health routine to lower his risk. Courtesy of Dr. Avishek Kumar
An oncologist said simple habits help him reduce the risk of developing cancer long-term.
He focuses on diet, exercise, and health screenings while reducing stress and exposure to toxins.
His best advice is to start small with consistent habits and build your healthy routine over time.
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How does fiber reduce cancer risk?
Every day, you’re making hundreds of small decisions that might be exposing you to a higher risk of cancer.
A few simple tweaks to your routine can help give you the best chance of preventing cancer, according to Dr. Avishek Kumar, a board-certified community oncologist in Edison, New Jersey.
“You can’t fully eliminate the risk of having any sort of cancer,” he told Business Insider. “But the key is reducing the odds, partaking in certain habits over the course of a lifetime, which can cut down the odds.”
Small day-to-day decisions can add up to significant protection against deadly cancers like colon cancer and lung cancer.
He shared his own routine as an example, with five key components to reduce major cancer risks.
“Simple substitutions done over weeks and months and years can really pay off vast dividends in cancer prevention as time goes on,” Kumar said. “Every given moment, we have the opportunity to take the stairs or substitute something healthy.”
He eats more fiber and fewer processed foods
When it comes to nutrition, Kumar said his approach is to imagine a farmer from a century ago, prioritizing foods they would have eaten that can be harvested, foraged, or prepared at home.
“They probably wouldn’t be eating Cheetos,” he said.
Think berries, whole grains, lean meats, eggs, and dairy. The most nutrient-dense picks are often fresh foods you’d find on the periphery of the grocery store, rather than the shelf-stable, ultra-processed food in the center aisles.
That said, it’s not realistic to completely cut out processed food, and Kumar loves a convenient trip to McDonald’s (for a Filet O’ Fish) as much as the rest of us.
For a balanced diet, he makes sure that at least one meal a day is as little-processed as possible, so he doesn’t have to stress about enjoying a brownie at work or a fast-food lunch.
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“Really, it’s a long-term effect that matters. It’s those cumulative habits substituting a healthy, unprocessed plate of berries or vegetables for one meal a day,” Kumar said.
He gets steps in early
Exercise is one of the most effective ways to prevent cancer, and it doesn’t have to take much time or cost much money. Everyday movement, like walking, running, or taking the stairs, is enough to provide a protective benefit.
Kumar said he jogs nearly every morning to get his steps in early and start the day with more energy and less stress
If you’re not a jogger or gym rat, he recommends adding a 20-minute walk to your day. Make it a habit, and build on it over time.
He protects his home from toxins
Kumar said environmental factors can play a big role in cancer risk, including items in your own kitchen or living space.
For instance, microplastics may be linked to an increased risk of cancer. The tiny particles can enter the human body through household items such as plastic food packaging or the nonstick coating on your cookware or utensils. To prevent exposure, throw out and replace old or degrading items.
“Sometimes you’ve got a pot that you really like, or a pan you’ve been using for years, and it’s kind of peeling off, but you don’t want to throw it out,” Kumar said. “Really, all those different exposures can potentially increase the risk of cancer down the line.”
Another potential carcinogen in your home is invisible, odorless, and tasteless: radon gas. Radon exposure is the second largest cause of lung cancer mortality after smoking, and it can seep into your home from the surrounding environment, Kumar said.
He recommends getting a low-cost testing kit or a device to check the radon levels in your home. If it’s high, you can install vents or other airflow systems to lower your risk.
He stays on track with screening — even if he’s super busy
With a full schedule of patients, Kumar said it’s sometimes a challenge to fit in time for his own medical appointments. Routine screenings are often the first thing to get postponed when life gets busy.
But staying up to date is crucial, since most cancers are highly treatable when caught early.
Screening recommendations from the American Cancer Society include:
From age 45: A colonoscopy to check for colorectal cancer, and repeated every 10 years
From age 40: Annual mammograms for women to screen for breast cancer. (Start younger if you have a family history of cancer.)
From age 50: Prostate cancer screening for men. (Start younger if you have a family history.)
“If you’re due for a mammogram, if you’re due for a colonoscopy, if it’s age-appropriate, it is a really good idea to do that because to help others, you have first to help yourself,” he said.
He unplugs to manage stress
As a doctor, Kumar said he makes a conscious effort not to spend all his time thinking about cancer. Too much stress can be a health risk in itself.
“Especially with social media, the tendency is just to scroll and, oh, that’s an interesting article, scroll some more,” he said.
His solution is “unplugging completely and sitting down in a quiet place, ideally outside, and reading a book.”
Kumar also makes a point of spending time with his wife and son on fun outings, such as a recent trip to a train museum.
Regardless of how you choose to unwind, deliberately managing stress makes it easier to stick to a healthy routine in the long term.
“Cancer prevention isn’t about perfection, it’s just about doing simple things consistently,” Kumar said.
This article is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your qualified physician or healthcare provider.
2. Yesterday We Showed NVDA Less Expensive than Half the S&P 500……..Semiconductor Sector Cheapest in 4 Years vs. S&P
Semis valuation. “Semis are back to trading at a 13% discount to the S&P 500. That’s below the longer-run pre-AI average and marks the cheapest relative valuation in more than four years.”
3. MUSE Roll Out by META…..One More Good Day from New Highs
StockCharts
4. Tech Sector vs. Defensive Sector Update….Highest in 20 Years But Not Near 1999
Topdown Charts
5. S&P +88% vs. TSLA +51% 5 Year Returns
Ycharts
6. China Bots Fueling American Data Center Rage?
Axios
7. Regional Bank Index -6% this Month
CNBC
8. Crypto Infrastructure Increasingly Being Pursued Inside Traditional Banking Framework
Perplexity
9. Global View on AI Job Impact
Pew Research Center
10. Stats on Celebrity Endorsed Crypto
Cryptocurrency is almost five times as likely to be a scam
Marketwatch The ‘attention economy’ is really the sucker economy By Brett Arends
About 10% of all crypto coins launched turned out to be outright scams, but for those endorsed by so-called celebrities, that figure was 45% to 48%.Photo: MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto
New cryptocurrencies publicly endorsed by celebrities — often on social-media platforms such as Twitter — were almost five times as likely as those that weren’t endorsed to turn out to be scams and to see their value collapse to zero.
Yet those cryptocurrencies also raised about five times as much money, on average, as the ones without a celebrity endorsement, meaning that the famous face was worth an extra $80 million or more to the promoters.
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White and Wilkoff trawled through about 1,500 new cryptocurrencies launched during the mania of 2017-18. They identified the ones that had been “endorsed” during the initial coin offering — the fundraising, or launch — by a famous person, typically a cultural celebrity. Then they tracked what happened next.
‘Celebrity endorsements sell investments for the same reason they sell shoes: People confuse familiarity with trust.’
— Financial planner Aaron Gaines
Even to a cynic like me, the results were worse than expected.
While about 10% of all the coins launched turned out to be outright scams, the figure for those endorsed by so-called celebrities was a staggering 45% to 48%.
“Celebrity-endorsed [initial coin offerings] are 35 to 38 percentage points more likely to be classified as scams,” Wilkoff confirmed to me by email. “The sample average for scams is [around] 10%.” That, he noted, means the estimated rate for endorsed initial coin offerings is 45% to 48%, or roughly 4.5 to 5 times more likely to be a scam. “This is an increase of about 350% to 380%,” he added.
But for all that, the celebrity endorsements worked … at least for the currency promoters, and in many cases for the celebrities.
“Celebrity endorsements are associated with raising about five times as much capital as non-endorsed offerings,” White and Wilkoff report in their paper. “Relative to the sample mean of $17.5 million, this corresponds to an incremental increase of approximately $83 million to $104 million in funds raised.”
