1. Non AI Stocks Outperforming
2. Number of Leveraged ETFs
ChartStorm via @BarChart
3. Sector Level Earnings Surprises
The Daily Chartbook
4. Bank Loans to Non-Depository Institutions (private lenders)
Irrelevant Investor Blog
5. Small Cap Stocks are Underperforming QQQ by Record Margin
@BarChart
6. Concentration of Returns is Not Abnormal
@MikeZaccardi
7. America is Running Away with Data Center Build Out Race
5,426 Data Centers in the US
There are about 5,500 data centers in the US, and in Germany there are 529, see chart below. The bottom line is that the rest of the world is far behind the US when it comes to AI.
Apollo Academy
Note: Data as of March 2025. Sources: Statista, Cloudscene, Apollo Chief Economist
8. U.S. One of 10 Countries Working More Hours than OECD Average….Mexico and Costa Rica Off the Charts
Sherwood
Sherwood News-With summer now well and truly over for most, some of us might be starting to feel like it’s been ages since we were on vacation.
For a considerable share of Americans, though, it really has been a while.
The grind bind
A new survey from FlexJobs asked over 3,000 US workers about their paid time off, and found that, while most employees (82%) are offered vacation leave — a luxury not guaranteed in the only advanced economy without a minimum PTO mandate — almost a quarter (23%) said they hadn’t taken a single vacation day over the past year.
According to the study, a major concern for employees was falling behind on their workload — with 43% saying they simply had too much to do. But is America really on the grind much more than other countries?
Zooming out to a global scale, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that US employees dowork relatively hard compared with other member nations of the economic group, notching 1,796 hours worked per person last year — about 59 hours longer than average calculated across 36 OECD members. However, no country racked up as many hours worked as America’s southern neighbor, Mexico.
Though the US was one of only 10 nations that worked more than the OECD average, Mexico and Costa Rica racked up over 2,000 hours worked per person in 2024, equating to roughly 42 additional days of work per year above the mean, assuming a 10-hour workday.
At the other end of the spectrum were the usual suspects in these global labor force studies: workers in Germany did ~405 hours less work than the OECD average, closely followed by Scandi nations Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.
So, why do Americans refuse to take vacation days? Maybe, as Gallup has mentioned, AI-enhanced work practices are allowing employees to get in a few holiday-mode hours while they’re still on the clock. But the larger factor is probably just good old-fashioned “vacation guilt.
9. Americans Worry About Inflation and Crime
Statista
10. Interview with Jim Clayton of Clayton Homes -Shane Parish
Here are 10 of the highlights I took away from this episode and my research:
- “If you have to swallow a frog, don’t look at him too long. If you have to swallow two frogs, swallow the big scudder first.”
- All complaining comes at the expense of improving.
- “Positive action produces positive attitudes, which produce a positive atmosphere.”
- Make your plan conform to the territory, not the other way around. Either work with the world the way you find it, or it will teach you a lesson.
- The best legal department is happy customers.
- “There are 3 kinds of people: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and occasionally, someone who doesn’t know what happened.”
- Sometimes you don’t need to be great, you just need to be better than the competition.
- Bad loans are a virus.
- “The strong feed during depressions.”
- “In business as in flying, your instruments beat your instincts.”