VIX. “$VIX has dropped below 15 for the first time in over 2 months, signaling a return to more normal volatility. Past cases saw $SPX higher 13 out of 14 times after 3 weeks & higher every time 1 year later.”
Subu Trade
4. Mag 7 Lagging S&P 2025
Phil Rosen
5. Retail Investors Selling Mega Cap Tech???
Retail flows. “Flows show retail investors rotating away from megacap tech toward ETFs.”
The Daily Shot
6. Nasdaq Has Doubled Since ChatGPT
7. Fermi Stock -70%
Google Finance
8. UBS Poll of Billionaire Investors Intentions for Next 12 Months
UBS
Business Insider
9. Here’s how much money Heisman Trophy finalists Made in NIL
1. Oil at Parity with Silver for the First Time Since 1980
Marketwatch This chart from Bank of America notes that oil is at parity with silver (actually, a little below) for the first time in 1980.
Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett, framed it as a reaction to global bond market turmoil — the Austrian 100-year bond has collapsed — while the Trump administration has made clear it doesn’t want Treasury yields to get too high. “Productivity jump = boom & lower yields, otherwise square circled by much weaker US dollar…why silver hit parity vs oil for 1st time since 1980,” he wrote.
Inflation swaps. “Market signals suggest that concern about rising inflation, and in particular the impact of tariffs, has almost evaporated … The market thinks the one-time price effect of the tariffs will be over a year from now. Market and Fed seem to agree that inflation has been tamed.”
Daily Chartbook
What are Inflation Swaps?
Perplexity
3. Mexico Approves Tariffs on Asian Imports
TARIFF LADY– Mexican lawmakers gave final approval for new tariffs on Asian imports, broadly aligning with US efforts to tighten trade barriers against China, as President Claudia Sheinbaum seeks to protect local industry. Mexico’s Senate on Wednesday voted in favor of the bill that imposes tariffs of between 5% and 50% on more than 1,400 products from Asian nations that don’t have a trade deal with Mexico. The bill passed with 76 votes in favor, five against and 35 abstentions.
The new levies will take effect starting next year and hit a wide range of products from clothing to metals and auto parts, with the massive output of Chinese factories emerging as the legislation’s focus. While Sheinbaum Dave Lutz Jones Trading
4. ORCL Free Cash Flow Chart-Irrelevant Investor
The Irrelevant Investor
5. ORCL Traded Right Back Down to Recent Lows
StockCharts
6. Cannabis stocks surge on reports Trump will reclassify marijuana; Tilray jumps 33%
CNBC
7. Disney Chose To Embrace AI …Stock Negative -35% 5-Year Chart
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora
Gaming The System: Huge Proportion Of ‘Elite’ University Students Claiming Disabilities
by Tyler Durden Just when you thought the ongoing cultivation of weakness in American youth couldn’t get much worse, huge proportions of the student bodies at US universities are enrolling with official disability designations that bestow various accommodations upon the students who claim them. As you may have expected, the alarming trend is most pronounced at what are supposed to be the most “elite” institutions.
We’re not talking about people in wheelchairs, but rather students snagging diagnoses for ADHD, anxiety and depression from indulgent doctors. “It’s rich kids getting extra time on tests,” an un-tenured professor at a selective university told The Atlantic‘s Rose Horowitch. Apparently fearing backlash, he requested anonymity.
The numbers are jarring. Harvard and Brown’s undergraduate student body is 20% “disabled.” Amherst has hit 34%, while Stanford’s disability rate is a head-shaking 38%. At one unidentified law school, 45% of students have been awarded academic accommodations. In stark contrast, only 3 to 4% of students at public two-year colleges get disability accommodations.
“Obviously, something is off here,” observes Emma Camp at Reason. “The idea that some of the most elite, selective universities in America—schools that require 99th percentile SATs and sterling essays—would be educating large numbers of genuinely learning disabled students is clearly bogus.”
Disabled students are often given time-and-a-half or double-time to finish a test, and the freedom to turn in papers well beyond the given due date. However, extra time isn’t the only benefit. At Carnegie-Mellon, a social-anxiety disorder can ensure a student isn’t called upon by a professor without advance notice.
Schools also let supposedly learning-disabled students take tests in “reduced distraction testing environments,” as being in a room with 80 other people is apparently just too taxing for them. However, a University of Chicago professor told the Atlantic that a deluge of students taking tests in the “reduced distraction testing environments” means those rooms are pretty much as “distracting” as a conventional classroom supposedly is.
In what may be the most darkly amusing accommodation, a public college in California allowed a student to bring her mother to class — which backfired when the mother went beyond whatever role she was expected to play and eagerly participated in the discussions, tuition-free.
Professor Paul Graham Fisher, who’d previously co-chaired Stanford’s disability task force, told the Atlantic:
“I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?”
Plenty of these students are likely motivated by a cut-throat desire to gain advantage. However, equally bad, it’s possible a majorityof these students sincerely consider themselves disabled. “Over the past few years, there’s been a rising push to see mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions as not just a medical fact, but an identity marker,” writes Reason’s Camp, who notes that social media and other factors foster a rush to attribute common human fallibilities as some kind of medical condition. “The result is a deeply distorted view of ‘normal,'” says Camp. “If ever struggling to focus or experiencing boredom is a sign you have ADHD, the implication is that a ‘normal,’ nondisabled person has essentially no problems.”
The disability rush isn’t limited to elite college campuses. High school students are using disability designations to score extra time on SAT and ACT tests. “We are also well aware of fliers in the district circulating among parents of doctors in the area who are known to hand out ADHD diagnoses,” a high school teacher at an affluent public school told We Are Teachers. “In some cases, I think what’s happening is a pay-to-play situation.”
1. Aggregate Net Asset Value of Bitcoin-Treasury Companies
Marketwatch The chart below shows that the aggregate market net asset value of bitcoin-treasury companies — or the aggregate market capitalization of such companies divided by the value of bitcoin they held — has fallen sharply from earlier this year.
MarketWatch
2. ORCL Capex Chart
ZeroHedge
3. Apple Capex vs. Big Tech Leaders-Barrons
Barron’s
4. MAG 7 Vs. NFLX Chart….NFLX -23% in 6 Months
StockCharts
5. You Tube vs. NFLX
A Wealth of Common Sense
6. ARKK Big Year…5 Years S&P +15.20% CAGR vs. ARKK -6.2%
Google Finance
7. Projections by the 19 FOMC members for the midpoint of the federal funds rate
Wolf Street Amid 3 dissenters in both directions, FOMC cuts by 25 basis points. “Dot Plot” sees 1 cut next year, 3 members see 1 hike. Reserve management purchases of T-bills begins.
The FOMC voted today to cut the Fed’s five policy rates by 25 basis points, as widely expected, the third cut in 2025, after cutting by 100 basis points in 2024.
There were 3 dissenters of the 12 voting FOMC members, the most dissenters since September 2019, under Powell. Two dissenters (Goolsbee and Schmid) wanted no cut. Miran wanted a 50-basis-point cut. Dissents are a breath of fresh air.
Projections by the 19 FOMC members for the midpoint of the federal funds rate by the end of 2026 (bold = median):
10. The New College Version of “The Dog Ate My Homework”
Psychology Today Personal Perspective: Students are using mental health excuses for academic shortcomings. Deborah J. Cohan Ph.D.
As a college professor for 30 years, I’m no stranger to the range of excuses that students provide for missed work or poor performances. But in the past year, a new phenomenon has emerged in relation to excuse-making.
First, students are relying on AI to craft emails to professors. In fact, one of my colleagues just shared with me that a student sent an email to him with the salutation, Dear Professor Last Name. I would have fantasies of writing back to that student, Dear Student First Name.
I’m left wondering if and how students are relying on faculty for good faith responses when they are querying with bad faith questions and excuses.
But the more pressing problem is when students use AI to craft these messages while also incorporating lengthy commentary about mental health, alluding to how, for example, their depression got in the way of their ability to do their work.
I get the importance of mental health. I’ve spent my career researching, writing, and teaching about mental health issues and have also worked as a counselor for years. I don’t take it lightly when students share difficult things. I’ve sat for hours with students in crisis, reeling from trauma, and struggling to heal.
These emails are not that.
Following the sentences about how they forgot about classwork, didn’t plan their time well, and generally forget their hybrid and online classes, students launch into the mental health issue and simultaneously ask if I might have it in my heart to change their grades. They tell me how much it would mean to them if I would just add a few more points or give them an extra assignment or extra credit days before the semester is ending. They add, “I know it never hurts to ask,” not understanding that it most certainly does. I feel like a film director, wanting to yell “Cut!” I experience these messages as desperately manipulative.
Students are active agents in the larger cultural discourse around mental health, and they have intuited that they can pull on the heartstrings of their teachers to get what they want. Moreover, this comes across as controlling because they also know that an educator will have a much harder time maintaining a penalty if there is a mental health issue, because what educator working with young people would be so mean? They’ve surmised that it’s insufficient to just say that they forgot or that they did not prioritize the classwork.
As I discuss in my book, The Complete U: Over 100 Lessons for Success in and out of the College Classroom, students don’t simply state that they are sad. They diagnose themselves as being depressed. They are not nervous about a test; they suffer from anxiety. And when they’re really nervous, they’re having a panic attack. Everything is at full throttle—except for any zest and curiosity about actual learning.
The trouble with these messages is how predictable and formulaic they are. Moreover, where are these students all semester long? The emails I receive from students are no longer about concepts they don’t thoroughly understand or about something they read or learned in another class that connects with what we’re talking about in our class, or a movie they saw that reminds them of a theory I had been teaching, and they want me to know about it. Those came in the days when students connected with me and other faculty in a human-to-human relationship and made critical and analytical connections. Now the emails are about wanting a few more points for something, or having an issue with technology, or saying that they’re confused even though they later admit to having never read whatever they said they were confused about.
Two things happened in higher education around the same time, both of which have been fairly detrimental to the whole experience: One is the openness of the online gradebook; the other is email. Of course, many things have contaminated higher education both from the outside and from the inside, but two things are for sure: The instantly transparent grade book gives students the chance to immediately react to a grade, and they can then email a professor with their dissatisfaction.
This is one of those moments where I can really say I did walk a mile and trudge uphill in the snow to find out about a grade. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and when professors posted grades, it was on a sheet outside their office door, and since we didn’t have email, we just relied on when they said they might be posting the grades. It was common to arrive at the door and find that nothing was posted yet. We did not bang on the door, asking why it had taken a little longer. We didn’t march to the provost’s or president’s office and demand to talk to someone about our complaints. Instead, we walked back downhill, picked up a coffee, and headed home. A day or two later, we would try again. And if we had questions about those grades, we checked the syllabus for when the office hours were and planned to see the professor then.
Students aren’t discerning what is an emergency, or when it is appropriate to contact someone, or why it’s inappropriate to ask for special favors like redos, extra assignments, or extra credit. Do they really think I’m going to do it for them and no one else? And if they think their begging and quibbling will get me to offer an opportunity to the whole class, they’re not thinking about the massive undertaking it is to add additional grading assignments to a syllabus.
It’s the world larger than themselves that I’m forever trying to get them to see.
XLK is up 11 straight days. This is the 3rd longest streak in history! Dave Lutz Jones Trading
2. AI Mentioned in 306 Earnings Calls Q3 by S&P Companies
FactSet
3. Utilities that Power AI Pulling Back…XLU Utility ETF
StockCharts
4. Next Bid AI Event….ORCL Earnings Wednesday …Stock 1/3 Off Highs
Barrons
StockCharts
5. Leveraged ETFs Hit $239B AUM
Barchart
6. Recovery from Covid ….Restaurants and Hotels Lead
The Irrelevant Investor
7. India IPO Boom
Semafor
8. 10-Year Treasury Going the Wrong Way
9. Small Cap Stocks Need Lower Rates (IWM) ..Ticks from New Highs
StockCharts
10. Rich People, Poor Morals: Wealthy Are The Most Likely To Rip Off Self-Checkout Machines
by Tyler Durden Rich people, poorer morals? A new LendingTree report claims the shoppers most likely to rip off the self-checkout machine aren’t the desperate — they’re the well-off, according to the NY Post.
Americans making over $100,000 a year are twice as likely to steal at self-checkout compared to low-income shoppers. A hefty 40% of six-figure earners admitted they’ve deliberately skipped scanning an item, while just 17% of those making under $30,000 confessed to the same.
The Post writes that middle-income households didn’t look much better: 27% of people earning between $50K and $99K say they’ve helped themselves without paying. And men are the biggest culprits overall, with 38% admitting to theft versus only 16% of women.
Even with AI scanners and weight sensors trying to outsmart sticky fingers, self-checkout theft is still rising.
A chunk of shoppers don’t feel bad about it either. Nearly one-third say big retailers make plenty of money, so swiping something “doesn’t hurt.” Another 35% defend the habit by claiming they’re basically unpaid store workers and grabbing an item or two is “compensation.”
Still, most blame inflation rather than guilt-free shoplifting. Forty-seven percent say rising prices are forcing people to cheat at the register — meaning even wealthy shoppers might be feeling the squeeze, just not enough to pay for everything in their cart.
UBS shows, “The longest human task (by duration) that an LLM can complete with at least 50% success rate is doubling every 7 months.”
Zach Goldberg Jefferies
2. Semiconductor ETF SMH…A Couple Ticks from New Highs
StockCharts
3. Schwab vs. Robinhood
Michael Batnick
4. Market Tops Usually Preceded by IPO Boom….IPO ETF Not Booming….+1% Last 12 Months
StockCharts
5. IPO Drought ….Companies Staying Private Longer
Blackrock Institute
6. Waymo Vehicles Far Less Crashes
chartr
7. Nancy Pelosi $130M in Stock Trade Profits
Peter Mallouk
8. Pentagon Deploys Kamikaze Drones $35k
WSJ The drone is fully autonomous, meaning it can operate with little or no human interaction, relying on sensors and artificial intelligence to navigate to its target. It can fly for about six hours, according to SpektreWorks.
Each FLM 136, also known as Lucas, costs $35,000, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command. The MQ-9 Reaper drones cost an estimated $16 million, according to a spokesman for General Atomics, its manufacturer. In many cases, kamikaze drones cost far less than the interceptors used to shoot them down.
