Category Archives: Daily Top Ten

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 November 14, 2025

1. Healthcare Stocks Rising…PPH Healthcare ETF Positive Yesterday vs. Nasdaq -2%

Bloomberg


2. The Counter Argument to My Negative Equity Risk Premium Charts from Yesterday

Equity risk premium. “These negative risk premium charts circulating again. Reminder: stocks are real assets: EPS, Divs demonstrated they [grow] with inflation over time. Earnings Yields vs TIPs are the right comp. Risks premiums roughly 1/2 last 20 yrs but stocks still better than bonds. Rule of 72 says time to double purchasing power: 39 years in TIPS, 17 years in S&P 500.”

Jeremy Schwartz


3. Bitcoin IBIT Below 50day and 200day

StockCharts


4. So I asked Perplexity About Past Historical Example of Bitcoin Below Moving Averages

Perplexity


5. One-Year After Bearish Closes ?

Perplexity


6. Ethereum Holding Above 200-Day

StockCharts


7. Bitcoin Treasury Firms -30-50%

Sherwood


8. Mag 7 vs. Country Market Caps…3 American Companies are Larger than Every Country Ex-Japan

Charlie Bilello


9. Streaming Inflation

Wolf Street Companies have spent billions of dollars buying sports programming, and they have shuffled programming around, and some have stripped some programming from basic streaming services. So prices alone may not reflect the whole picture.

Since 2019, subscriptions have soared, according to the WSJ:

  • Disney+ +172%
  • Apple TV +160%
  • Peacock +120%
  • Hulu +58%
  • Paramount+ +40%
  • Netflix +38%
  • HBO Max +23%

https://wolfstreet.com/2025/11/12/inflation-rages-in-streaming-services/


10. Listening to music most days could guard against dementia, study suggests

Story by Maggie Penman-Washington Post

Listening to music most days could guard against dementia, study suggests© Maansi Srivastava/For The Washington Post

Regularly listening to music is linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, according to a new study.

In the study, published in October, researchers looked at data spanning a decade and involving more than 10,000 relatively healthy people, aged 70 and older, in Australia. People who listened to music most days slashed their risk of developing dementia by 39 percent compared with those who did not regularly listen to music, the study found.

“I have started myself listening to music more than I was,” Ryan said. “I would encourage people to be listening to music, because if it’s something they take pleasure from and it’s also stimulating their brain, why not?”

What happens to the brain when we listen to music

At Princeton University’s Music Cognition Lab, researchers have conducted studies looking at what happens to people’s brains when they listen to music. They’ve found that various parts of the brain are activated, including motor areas, sensory areas, the regions that process emotions and those involved in imagining or daydreaming. This could be the key to what makes music powerful for boosting brain health.

“One of the things that seems to be really important is just getting all those areas to talk to each other in meaningful ways,” said Elizabeth Margulis, director of the lab and a trained pianist who wasn’t involved in this new study. “That’s something music is exceptionally good at doing.”

Margulis pointed out that the study’s finding applies to listening to music as well as playing it. There was slightly less benefit associated with regularly playing music, with a 35 percent reduction in the risk of dementia, though the researchers suspect that’s because it’s a smaller group of people than those who regularly listen to music.

A takeaway is you don’t need to learn an instrument to benefit from engaging with music, though research has shown that taking music lessons can increase gray matter in the brain, even for people who aren’t particularly skilled.

Music also has a transportive quality, Margulis said. If you listen to a song that you first heard during a certain time of life, you may find yourself transported back to that time, especially with the music you listened to in adolescence.

“That tends to be the music that people remember best and have the most memories associated with,” Margulis said. She added that adolescence often is the time when people are defining themselves, which gives that music added meaning.

This can even be seen in people who are experiencing cognitive decline or diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

“They may not even recognize themselves in a mirror, they don’t know where they are or how they got there, but you put on a song from when they were 14, and they reconnect with that self they had lost,” said neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin, who also wasn’t involved in the new research.

Anecdotally, Margulis said, the effect seems to remain for a while even after they listen to the music.

“They’re a little more present, a little more able to interact,” Margulis said.

Music as medicine

Levitin has written a new book, “I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine,” bringing together research about how music can be used as therapy for things including depression, pain and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s.

“Listening to music is neuroprotective,” said Levitin, explaining that it builds resiliency and protects the brain by wiring new neural pathways. “It’s a myth that you don’t grow new neurons, and throughout the lifespan, you’re growing new pathways.”

Levitin added that while listening to music from the past can bring back memories and provide comfort, there is also a benefit to listening to new music and challenging yourself. He also encourages people to play music.

“You can start playing an instrument at any age, and you don’t need to be Herbie Hancock,” Levitin said. He recalled giving his grandmother a keyboard for her 80th birthday and watching her practice almost every day until she died at 97. Levitin said for him, playing music brings an immersive joy.

“If I’m lucky, I disappear, and the music plays me,” he said.

But he emphasized that just being around music — whether that’s listening or playing it — shows benefits. And it’s something pretty much everyone has access to.

“That’s the lovely thing,” Margulis said, on how accessible music is to everyone.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/listening-to-music-is-linked-to-lower-dementia-risk-study-suggests/ar-AA1QnacJ

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 November 13, 2025

1. U.S. Equity Risk Premium Turns Negative

Barchart


2. History of Negative Equity Risk Premium

Perplexity


3. Inflation Ticking Up in 55% of CPI Items

Apollo


4. Semiconductor Stocks $1.3B Inflows Last Week…Retail Buying

The Kobeissi Letter


5. Gold Trading with High Correlation to S&P

Bloomberg


6. Big Tech CDS Spreads Widening

Big Tech CDS. “The Big Tech CDS has surged this year with Oracle CDS leading the rise. The big Tech CDS is now highest in over 2 years, rising from cycle-lows. While the standalone chart show concerns, when compared with the broader IG market, the spreads are still below the aggregate Investment Grade credit and that the IG CDS is still near cycle lows.”

Manish Kabra – SocGen


7. Historical Returns After 2% Dip-Marketwatch

Joseph Adinolfi


8. AAII Bears History


9. Subprime Auto Loan Delinquencies Break-Out Above 1990’s Record

Reuters


10. A good business vs. a useful idea

Ideas open doors, lead to connections and make things better.

But not all good ideas are good businesses.

Crop rotation is a good idea. So is sous vide cooking and the sport of juggling. But these aren’t good businesses.

A business thrives when it can charge a premium–selling something for more than it costs. That means that there has to be a competitive advantage, an asset that produces value. Easy substitutions are a challenge for businesses, but useful ideas are often based on how easy they are to share.

Create something of value. And then find a reason why people will eagerly choose your version and happily pay extra for it. https://seths.blog/

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 November 12, 2025

1. Artificial Intelligence Index

The Irrelevant Investor


2. Bitmine -75% from Highs…Goal was to Acquire 5% of Ethereum

StockCharts


3. XRT S&P Retail ETF Holds 200-Day

StockCharts


4. Aerospace and Defense Stocks Above 50-Day Moving Average for 3rd Longest Streak Ever

Bespoke Investment Group With the successful test of the 50-DMA, the Aerospace and Defense industry has closed above its 50-DMA for 139 trading days. That’s the longest streak since a record 151 trading days in 2017 and ranks as the third-longest in the last 30 years.

Bespoke 


5. It’s All About the Power….Data Centers Need Electricity

Semafor


6. LLY Break-Out New All Time Highs

StockCharts


7. Five Takeaways From Warren Buffett Thanksgiving Letter

Business Insider Here are five main takeaways from the letter, paired with key quotes:

1. He’s not planning to sell a bunch of stock right now

Buffett said he plans to keep a “significant” amount of his class-A shares. That is, until shareholders reach the same level of comfort with newly appointed Greg Abel as they had with Buffett and his long-time partner, Charlie Munger.

Key quote: “That level of confidence shouldn’t take long. My children are already 100% behind Greg as are the Berkshire directors.”

2. He’s accelerating donations

Buffett said he’ll donate more than $1.3 billion of Berkshire Hathaway shares to four family foundations: his late wife’s, and one for each of his three children.

Key quote: “The acceleration of my lifetime gifts to my children’s foundations in no way reflects any change in my views about Berkshire’s prospects.”

3. He wants Berkshire CEOs to be humble — and in it for the long haul

Buffett said he hopes that, “with a little luck,” Berkshire will only have five or six CEOs over the next century.

Key quote: “It should particularly avoid those whose goal is to retire at 65, to become look-at-me rich, or to initiate a dynasty.”

4. He thinks pay transparency efforts have backfired

Buffett said that reforms aimed at pay transparency actually sought to “embarrass” CEOs, but instead made them more competitive.

Key quote: “The new rules produced envy, not moderation.”

5. He says investors should expect big stock drawdowns — and be patient for rebounds

Buffett noted that Berkshire stock has fallen 50% or more on three separate occasions in its 60 years under his leadership — and has always come back eventually.

Key quote: “Don’t despair; America will come back and so will Berkshire shares.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-thanksgiving-letter-main-takeaways-greg-abel-2025-11


8. Top 1% of Earners Now Have More Wealth than Middle Class America Combined

Zach Goldberg Jefferies


9. 50-Year Mortgage Math

A 50 year mortgage will not work to durably create any sort of affordability.

first off, it changes the monthly payment very little.

on a $500k home with 20% down, you pay $2,199/month on a 50 vs $2,480 on a 30.

$281/month savings. that’s simply not going to move the needle on affordability and when you look at the overall interest costs over the life of the loan, they rise 87%.

great for banks, bad for borrowers. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/trumponomics-50-year-debt-and-a-worrying?publication_id=323914&post_id=178390014&isFreemail=true&r=8smvi&triedRedirect=true


10. Discover Yourself by Expanding Your Mental Map

Psychology Today Personal change is like expanding a map, except the territory is inside you- Nick Kabrel

Key points

  • We apply the neuroscience of cognitive mapping to explain how learning and personal change might work.
  • Getting stuck might mean repeatedly navigating within the confines of our narrow cognitive maps.
  • Learning and personal change require expanding the map by exploring uncharted territories within.

Imagine you live in Europe in 1490. The map you see below (Figure 1) is what you think the world looks like; it’s all there is. A few years later, explorers discover a whole new continent, expanding the map of known territory. This fundamentally changes your understanding of the planet beneath your feet.

A new theory of psychological change, published by my colleague Jaan Aru and me in Perspectives on Psychological Science, proposes that internal transformations mirror this expansion of geographical maps, only the territory we navigate and expand lies within ourselves (Kabrel & Aru, 2025).

The core idea: Your mind as a map

To model how people change, we used psychotherapy as a prime example of how humans explore and transform their inner world. But the same process can describe learning in general, whether through therapy, educationcoaching, consulting, or everyday life.

In short, the core idea is this: Your mind can be represented as a map or network of interconnected concepts, ideas, sensations, memories, beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Sometimes, this map may be too narrow, like Europeans’ conceptions of the world in 1490.

Most of the time, we think, feel, and act within familiar territories. Human development, whether it’s an emotional breakthrough in therapy, an insight in coaching, or a creative idea in business, requires us to go beyond the known map and expand it, thereby transforming what is known. Now, let me explain all this in detail.

Not just a metaphor

Back in the 1940s, researchers discovered that if you train a rat to run through a maze, its brain builds what they called a “cognitive map” of that space. In the hippocampus (the brain area crucial for memory and navigation), individual cells fire when the rat is in a specific place. As it moves, different cells fire in sequence. Together, these cells form a kind of internal map of the territory.

What’s remarkable is that the same neural system that allows a rat to navigate a maze, or you to find your way from home to work, also activates when we think about abstract concepts. When you move through a chain of thoughts, your hippocampal cells fire in similar sequential patterns. Thinking, in other words, is “mental navigation”: You’re traversing an internal territory of ideas, memories, and associations.

Modern network science allows us to make this more tangible. By analyzing large amounts of language use, scientists can visualize a prototype of someone’s “mental map” (Beaty & Kenett, 2023). For example, your family members are likely represented in your mind as conceptually closer to you than your colleagues, just as cities on a map cluster by region. (See below.)

Neuroscientists also discovered that if you engage in different cognitive tasks, like searching your memory, categorizing objects, or making decisions, your brain engages the hippocampal cognitive maps to guide you (Viganò et al., 2025). This means that the idea of the mind as a map is not merely a metaphor: Evidence increasingly suggests it reflects how information is actually stored, organized, and accessed in the brain.

Our cognitive maps are built on our experience. Most of the time, this is highly adaptive: It allows us to predict, learn, and respond effectively to familiar patterns in our environment. But sometimes, it can also backfire.

For instance, when facing a complex problem that demands creativity, we might get stuck in a loop, returning to the same familiar but ineffective solutions.

In therapy, a person who learned in childhood that “people are hostile” may continue to navigate within that same map, avoiding emotional openness long after the original context has changed.

In organizations, a leader might hold a rigid belief that “AI must be integrated immediately,” overlooking broader contextual or ethical challenges.

The key point is that we often become trapped within the borders of our existing cognitive maps. Metaphorically, it’s as if we keep walking the same corner of our internal landscape, never exploring the broader territory that lies beyond.

Here again, neuroscience helps explain why this happens. We can’t simply “decide” to think differently, because the neural pathways we use most often become the strongest. Every time a thought pattern activates, the same neurons fire together, and those connections strengthen. It’s like a beaten path through grass: the more often you walk it, the more defined it becomes, and the harder it is to take a new route.

Expanding the narrow cognitive map

Expanding your cognitive map is a challenging task, precisely because it requires you to step off those familiar mental trajectories. That’s why we often need other people—therapists, coaches, teachers, or consultants—to help us break through these limitations.

For example, in our paper, we conceptualize the therapist as a skilled navigator—someone who helps you leave the narrow confines of your existing map and chart new, previously unvisited territories within your own mind.

Think about it: The therapist asks questions. You follow your thoughts. You notice things you haven’t noticed before. The therapist points out patterns. You explore connections you’ve never explored. Gradually, you map new territory.

This isn’t just kitchen talk. It’s active navigation through your own neural space. Except, instead of following your habitual route A-B-C-D-E, the therapist helps redirect you to A-B-F-G-H – places you’ve never gone before. (See below.)

Explore

The world wasn’t smaller in 1490; people’s understanding of it was. The same holds for our minds. Our internal map has the potential to be broad, containing many possible neural states, yet in our lifetimes, we visit only a small fraction of them. Most of the time, we move along familiar paths, following patterns that feel safe and efficient.

As we tried to show with a new theory, expanding our cognitive maps requires curiosity, guidance, and the willingness to step off the beaten track, exploring routes the mind hasn’t traveled before.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-neuroscience-of-personal-growth/202510/discover-yourself-by-expanding-your-mental-map

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 November 10, 2025

1. Bitcoin Whale Sales


2. Correlation of Bitcoin to Gold Zero=0%

Chart 1 shows the correlations between Bitcoin and various asset classes using monthly returns over the past five years. The speculative nature of many markets over the past several years has caused asset correlations to rise, thus limiting the number of potentially diversifying asset classes.

However, the correlation to gold is 0%, which suggests there is virtually no relationship whatsoever between “digital gold” and actual gold. Uncorrelated assets, like gold is to Bitcoin, are typically good diversifying assets.

Advisor Perspectives


3. Bitcoin Decouples From Nasdaq

Risk Rattles: I keep coming back to this chart as barometer of speculative risk appetite and liquidity (+potential early-warning indicator). To that end, with bitcoin rolling over and tech topping out, it’s not a good sign.

Topdown Charts


4. S&P Breadth at Lows

Zerohedge


5. 72% of Server Farms in 1% of Counties

WSJ


6. Argentina ETF ARGT Hit All Time Highs


7. Today, Airbnb generates nearly as much revenue as the 3 largest US hotel chains (MarriottHilton, & Hyatt) combined!

Facial AI


8. Only Fans $7.2B in Revenue 46 Employees

Prof G Blog Loneliness is lucrative. Leonid Radvinsky, the secretive owner of OnlyFans, received a $700 million windfall last year, while the platform’s top tier of content creators — mostly women — earn millions annually. With $7.2 billion in annual gross revenue and just 46 employees, OnlyFans may be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. The site is viewed as a porn-centric hub where men pay women for sexual content. The company claims it’s giving creators and their 378 million fans (greater than the population of the U.S.) something mor: an opportunity to forge “authentic connections.”

Some crazy stats:

  • The top 0.1% of creators capture 76% of revenue and earn an average of $146,881 per month. The average creator earns just $150 to $180 per month.
  • Private messages drive about 70% of revenue vs. only 4% from actual subscriptions. Seventy-one percent of users are male, but 84% of creators are female. About 0.01% of subscribers are “whales,” who generate more than 20% of all revenue.
  • Eighty-five percent of users access the site via mobile.

https://www.profgalloway.com


9. From breadwinners to bystanders: The death spiral of the American working man

by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor – 09/30/25 7:30 AM ET

Something strange is happening in America’s job market. For the first time in living memory, young men with college degrees are struggling to find work, while women with the same qualifications are thriving. What once seemed fixed — the old order of men filling the top jobs and women fighting for entry — has been flipped. And the consequences could be severe.

The numbers paint a disturbing picture. Men with college degrees are now more likely to be out of work than women with the same education. To compound matters, men’s pay has barely budged since 1979, whereas women’s earnings keep climbing. More worrying still, a growing number of men are no longer looking for work at all. They have simply checked out.

This isn’t the ebb and flow of a normal cycle. In truth, it looks like a structural shift.

The industries that once absorbed educated men — technology, finance, law, consulting — are no longer safe havens. Tech firms are cutting staff. Startups are sputtering. Artificial intelligence is eliminating entry-level jobs faster than new ones appear. White-collar ladders that once led to stability are now missing rungs or disappearing altogether.

The opposite is happening in sectors long seen as female domains. Health care, education and social services are adding jobs at breakneck pace as the population ages. America needs more nurses, teachers, and caregivers every year. These are professions with real future demand. Yet men remain mostly absent. They linger at the margins, clinging to shrinking fields while growth passes them by.

This matters far beyond the job boards. When young men cannot find meaningful work, the effects ripple outward. Families weaken. Communities fracture. Depression, drug abuse and social withdrawal rise. Marriage rates drop because men cannot offer the stability once expected of them. Birth rates sink as couples delay children under financial strain — a slow suffocation of society itself.

The economy, too, suffers. If half the workforce fails to adapt to where jobs exist, the mismatch will create permanent dysfunction. Some industries will be desperate for workers, while others sit crowded with idle men. Growth will sputter. Productivity will sag. A two-speed society will emerge: women advancing into the expanding professions of care and communication, men languishing in declining sectors or falling out of the labor force altogether.

The road ahead looks grim unless something changes. The future will be built on jobs that demand patience, empathy and steady communication. Teaching, nursing, counseling and care work form the backbone of any strong society. They keep communities together, help the sick recover and guide children into adulthood. They carry respect, decent pay and growing demand. Yet men hold back.

Pride and habit stand in the way. Nursing carries a feminine label. I’ll admit it myself — when I hear the word “nurse,” my mind still drifts to a woman in scrubs. The teaching of small children is dismissed as women’s work.

That instinct feels natural, but it is a learned reflex. It blinds men to jobs that could offer real stability and meaning. And it can’t go on. The shortages grow deeper, the gaps wider and the cost heavier.

This requires a radical rethink. No lectures, no guilt trips — just a cultural reset. Men should feel pride in classrooms and hospital wards — the same pride they feel on construction sites or in boardrooms. These jobs build the future as surely as bridges or businesses. Without men stepping forward, the nation grows weaker, poorer and more unprepared.

The stakes are enormous. If men cannot find their footing in the economy of tomorrow, America will face not only labor shortages but a fracture along gender lines. The divide will not be between rich and poor alone, or Black and white, but between men and women. Women, by instinct and tradition, tend to marry up — to seek partners with stability and status. But what happens when millions of men cannot offer either?

The country is already seeing the rise of sexless young men, drifting without purpose, cut off from work, family and the prospect of building a future. Whole swaths of men risk becoming spectators to prosperity. And history leaves little comfort here: when large groups of disaffected men gather at the margins, frustration festers into something darker — resentment, rage and revolt.

America has a choice. It must recognize this great gender flip for what it is — a slow-motion crisis — and act while there is still time. That means breaking down the cultural barriers that keep men from entering growing fields. It means raising wages and status in the professions that need workers most. It means preparing boys from an early age for a world where communication and care matter as much as coding and capital. That does not mean treating boys like girls, but equipping them with the full range of skills needed to lead families and hold their own in tomorrow’s economy.

Or we could do nothing. We could pretend the market will sort itself out, that men will adapt on their own, that things will somehow balance. But inaction carries a heavy price. If men continue to fall behind, the consequences will reach every corner of society. The crisis will not stay confined to the job market. It will spread to the school, to the streets, to the very spirit of the nation.

John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life. https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5528062-gender-flip-job-crisis/


10. Interview with Steve Wozniak from FS Blog

The Knowledge Project

Steve Wozniak is the engineer who built Apple. 

He gave millions of his own money to early employees, stepped away from power, and refused to play by the rules everyone else was following. 

Woz’s philosophy of open architecture, the very one a young Steve Jobs fought against, is what saved Apple long enough for it to become Apple. 

This is the story of the reluctant co-founder who won by refusing to compromise, and a blueprint for success without selling your soul. 

Here are 10 of the maxims I took away from this episode and my research:

1. Committees kill revolutions.
2. Learning is the prize.
3. Hold your ideas with the right grip. Let go of incorrect ideas.
4. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth giving it 100%.
5. Obsession isn’t a problem. It’s an advantage.
6. Time will do the work for you if you align with how the world works.
7. Move with urgency. You can do it much faster than you think.
8. Obsess over customers.
9. You win in the dark, when everyone else is partying or sleeping.
10. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

https://fs.blog/about/

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 November 07, 2025

1. Earnings Guidance Spread Chart

Bespoke Investment Group As shown below, our guidance spread chart, which shows the percentage of companies raising minus lowering guidance on a rolling three-month basis, has spiked to a level we’ve only seen once before, which was the period coming out of the COVID Crash in 2020. These big spikes in guidance have historically happened in the early part of periods following max uncertainty.

Bespoke


2. Crypto Lending  Hit $74B in Q3

Crypto lending. The recent drop in crypto prices was preceded by a record-breaking $73.6 billion in crypto lending in Q3.

DAILY CHARTBOOK


3. Kalshi Now Sports Betting App…$800m a Week


4. AI Borrowing Getting Boost from Private Lending…Blue Owl Chart Pulls Back to Liberation Day Lows

StockCharts


5. I Agree…Good Chart to Watch

Mike Zaccardi


6. XLK Tech ETF Has Been Above 50-Day Since Liberation Day Lows…Pulled Back and Held Multiple Times

StockCharts


7. META Hard Close Below 200Day….Oversold Short-Term RSI 25

StockCharts


8. Job Postings at Covid Levels

The Kobeissi Letter


9. 2M Cars Repossessed in 2025

Liz Ann Sonders


10. Three Highlights from Scott Galloway New Book-“Notes on Being a Man”

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes:

Axios