1. Divergence in AI Related Stocks….Google Exposed vs. Open AI Exposed

Michael Batnick

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2. Bitcoin Whales Back to Buying…Most Purchases in 13 Years

BTC whales. Over the last 30 days, Bitcoin whales have accumulated 269,822 BTC worth $23.3bn, the most in 13 years.

Daily Chartbook

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3. LULU Stock 5-Year Negative Return Before Elliot Investment Today

Google Finance

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4. MSOS Largest Weed ETF…+65% YTD….Still -80% Since Initial Legalization

Google Finance

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5. MSOS Not Even Back to 2024 Highs Yet

StockCharts

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6. Curaleaf is Largest Market Cap U.S. Weed Stock….Just Hitting 2024 Levels

StockCharts

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7. States Are Raking In Billions From Slot Machines on Your Phone-NYT

NYtimes

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8. Robinhood Rolls Out the Prop Bets

CNBC

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9. Small Fraction Behind Most Online Hate

Semafor

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10. Having more muscle and less hidden abdominal fat gives you a younger brain. Here’s how to get strong healthily

Story by Rachel Boswell

As if the benefits of strength training weren’t extensive enough, we have another perk to add to the pile: a younger brain.

That’s right – according to brand-new research that will be presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting later this month, having more muscle mass can protect against brain ageing. Meanwhile, having more visceral fat – that is, the hidden fat that sits deeper within your body, which lines your abdominal walls and surrounds many of your vital organs – accelerates brain ageing.

Here’s what the study discovered and what you can do to strengthen your body and think sharp for the long haul.

Strong muscles, strong mind

Thanks to several studies, we already know the importance of building and maintaining muscle mass for the sake of better physical health. Strong, well-functioning muscles not only help you to run more powerfully, become less prone to injury, develop a nice aesthetic and reduce your risk of various diseases and chronic conditions, but also play a big role in combatting age-related problems like sarcopenia.

So carrying more muscle can help you to live in a more youthful body, for longer. But what does it do for the brain?

That’s what the latest science set out to determine. For the new study in question, researchers tested 1,164 healthy adults – 52% women, with an average age of 55 – by putting them each through a full-body MRI scan. MRI scans provide a distinct view of a person’s fat, muscle and brain tissue and can reveal the biological age of the brain based on its structure.

Following the participants’ full-body MRI scans, the researchers used an AI algorithm to precisely measure their total normalised muscle volume, their visceral fat and their subcutaneous fat, which is the fat that you can pinch just under the skin. They also used this AI algorithm to predict each participant’s brain age.

The results showed that subcutaneous fat had no significant impact on predicted brain age. However, the participants who demonstrated a higher visceral fat to muscle ratio had a higher predicted brain age, while those who carried more muscle had younger-looking brains.

‘Healthier bodies with more muscle mass and less hidden belly fat are more likely to have healthier, youthful brains,’ concludes Dr Cyrus Raji, the study’s senior author and associate professor of radiology and neurology at Washington University School of Medicine, who adds that better brain health lowers the risk of diseases like Alzheimer’s.

‘While it is commonly known that chronological aging translates to loss of muscle mass and increased hidden belly fat, this work shows that these health measures relate to brain ageing itself,’ he adds.

How to build muscle mass

You don’t have to be a fat-free, Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque bodybuilder to develop a more youthful brain. Instead, to maintain a healthy fat-muscle ratio, complete at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week, like walking or cycling, or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week, like our favourite, running. It’s also important to do two or more weekly strength sessions, which target all the major muscles groups in the body.

While a recent study has found that doing just one strength workout a week is enough to generate improvements, two or more is optimal when it comes to enhancing your overall running performance, resilience and longevity – not to mention, as we now know, your brain function. If you’re unsure how or where to start with strength training, our expert-led guide for beginners will show you how to build a decent strength base in just four weeks.

To maintain a robust body, you should also remember to hydrate well, follow a regular sleep schedule – involving around seven to nine hours of shut-eye per night – and stick to a balanced, nutritious diet that contains a sufficient amount of protein. The recommended daily target for protein is 0.8g per kilogram of body weight, spread out evenly across mealtimes, although active people – especially runners – may need more than this to support muscle recovery and brain-friendly muscle growth. 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/having-more-muscle-and-less-hidden-abdominal-fat-gives-you-a-younger-brain-heres-how-to-get-strong-healthily/ar-AA1ShJsm

1. Gold Price Today vs. 1970’s

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2. Crude Oil 52-Week Lows

Bespoke Investments As mentioned above, crude oil prices are down over 1% this morning, and while not quite at 52-week lows on an intraday basis, if these losses hold, it will mark a new 52-week closing low. After briefly trading over $80 per barrel in January, prices have been in a steady decline almost all year. The only exception was back in June when prices briefly spiked after Israel launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even though crude oil is sinking towards new 52-week lows, the S&P 500 Energy sector has been holding up relatively well. While it’s underperforming the S&P 500 on a YTD basis, it’s still much closer to 52-week highs than 52-week lows. That may be partly due to the strength of natural gas, although even that commodity has weakened in the last few days, falling from $5.25 MMBtu on 12/5, down to $3.94 this morning…

Bespoke

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3. Big American Auto Non-Player in EV

WSJ-American automakers want to boost their profits by selling high-margin gas guzzlers today, all while not falling behind on electric-vehicle technology. It will be difficult to do both.

Look at the list of regulatory changes this year, and it is all but impossible for U.S. automakers to not lean into selling big SUVs and trucks. Car manufacturers no longer face penalties for failing to meet federal fuel-economy standards, which are themselves also being revised to become less stringent. The $7,500 tax credit for buying EVs expired. California no longer has the ability to set its own tailpipe-emissions standards, which were a big driver of EV investment. BloombergNEF estimates that 24% fewer EVs will be sold in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with a year earlier.

It isn’t just the U.S. The European Union, U.K. and Canada are all pulling back or rethinking their ambitious EV mandates.

WSJ

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4. CoreWeave -55% in 6 Months

Google Finance

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5. Invitation Homes Started Buying Houses in 2012…Back to 2023 Lows…50day thru 200day to Downside

StockCharts

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6. COIN Stock Negative For 2025….Sideways 2 Years.

Stockcharts

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7. Lithium Stocks Up this Morning….LIT ETF Doubled Off Bottom Back to 2023 Levels.

CNBC Lithium stocks — Lithium prices soared in China after the government announced plans to revoke mining, sending miners stocks higher. Atlas Lithium jumped nearly 9%, while Albemarle and Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile each rose about 4%. Lithium Argentina gained 5% and Lithium Americas added nearly 2%.https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/17/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-premarket-.html

Stockcharts

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8. Who Imports Venezuelan Oil?

Statista

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9. Largest Asset Managers….Vanguard Behind Blackrock.

Inves7

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10. How High Net Worth Advisors Rate Professional Traders.

Chris Bendtsen

1. History of All-Time Highs

Chart of the Day

Why you shouldn’t fear all-time highs.

Charlie Bilello

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2. History of Rate Cuts Near All-time Highs

Subu Trade

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3. History of Volatility Index Dropping Below 15

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

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4. Mag 7 Lagging S&P 2025

Phil Rosen

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5. Retail Investors Selling Mega Cap Tech???

Retail flows. “Flows show retail investors rotating away from megacap tech toward ETFs.”

The Daily Shot

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6. Nasdaq Has Doubled Since ChatGPT

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7. Fermi Stock -70%

Google Finance

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8. UBS Poll of Billionaire Investors Intentions for Next 12 Months

UBS

Business Insider

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9. Here’s how much money Heisman Trophy finalists Made in NIL

Fernando Mendoza, QB, $2.6 million

Diego Pavia, QB, $2.5 million

Julian Sayin, QB, $2.5 million

Jeremiyah Love, RB, $1.6 million

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-money-heisman-trophy-finalists-mendoza-pavia-and-love-made-from-nil-deals-this-season-9c527fbc?mod=home_lead

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10. Actions and beliefs-Seth’s Blog

It’s tempting to believe that our actions follow our beliefs. That’s what we do, it seems, and so others must as well.

In fact, just about always, our beliefs arise as a result of our actions.

If you want to change what people believe, change how they act. 

https://seths.blog/page/2/

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.

Steve Goldstein

MarketWatch

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2. Inflation Swaps Not Worried About Tariffs

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

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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

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4. ORCL Free Cash Flow Chart-Irrelevant Investor

The Irrelevant Investor

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5. ORCL Traded Right Back Down to Recent Lows

StockCharts

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6. Cannabis stocks surge on reports Trump will reclassify marijuana; Tilray jumps 33%

CNBC

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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

https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement

Google Finance

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8. Savings Rate by Income

MarketWatch

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9. Do Your Own Research to Check these Stats

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 majority of 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.”

And the decline of the West proceeds apace…

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gaming-system-huge-proportion-elite-university-students-claiming-disabilities

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10. The 9 Habits of Self-Improvement

Hagen Growth

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

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2. ORCL Capex Chart

ZeroHedge

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3. Apple Capex vs. Big Tech Leaders-Barrons

Barron’s

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4. MAG 7 Vs. NFLX Chart….NFLX -23% in 6 Months

StockCharts

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5. You Tube vs. NFLX

 A Wealth of Common Sense

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6. ARKK Big Year…5 Years S&P +15.20% CAGR vs. ARKK -6.2%

Google Finance

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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):

• 1 sees 6 cuts
• 1 sees 4 cuts
• 2 sees 3 cuts
• 4 see 2 cuts
• 4 see 1 cut
• 4 see no change
• 3 see 1 rate hike.

Wolf Street https://wolfstreet.com/2025/12/10/this-fed-meeting-must-have-been-an-epic-circus/

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8. Global Long-Term Bond Yields Hit 16-Year Highs

Yahoo Finance

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9. Getting Less Than 7 Hours Of Sleep Linked To Shorter Life Expectancy Across America

Reviewed by John Anderer

Study Finds

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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. 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-lights/202512/the-new-college-version-of-the-dog-ate-my-homework