@Callum Thomas (Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm)Seasonal Buybacks: Interesting snippet on seasonality — the next couple of months have historically been a seasonal dry patch for buybacks. And indeed, it’s Sep/Oct which have historically tended to see the worst seasonal stockmarket performance.
4. Reallocation Away from U.S. Stocks Already Reversing?
Barron’s
5. Global Investors Bought $163 Billion of U.S. Stocks in June
chartr
6. China Trade Surplus was $1 Trillion in 2024
Paul Krugman
7. Draftkings and Fanduel Performance “in football season” vs. “offseason”
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright
Nasdaq
8. Private Equity Exits Running at Half of Last Years Count
WSJ-Following a binge of acquiring companies during the post-Covid deal frenzy, it is generally proving harder to now sell those companies on. There have been some notable initial public offerings this year of private-equity-backed companies, such as the roughly $1.4 billion IPO for cybersecurity company SailPoint. But the overall number of exits in the second quarter—which also includes sales to other financial sponsors or to corporations—slowed to about 10% below the typical prepandemic quarterly average, according to PitchBook.
Investment Manager Sentiment: Similar thing in the Investment Manager survey; risk appetite and near-term market outlook have dropped back to quite pessimistic levels. The key causes for concern are valuations, politics, and macro. The only bright spot in the survey is earnings (which I also highlighted last week that indeed earnings look unequivocally good for now).
S&P Global
4. Chinese Small Cap Stocks ECNS +51% 2025
Yahoo! Finance
5. U.S. Small Cap IWM Outperforming S&P One Month…Needs $240 Handle to Break Above 2022 Levels
Yahoo! Finance
6. Home Depot Earnings …. Stock Trading Below 2024 Highs
StockCharts
7. Home Price Drops from 2022 Covid Highs
The 19 metros whose prices are down from their 2022 highs.
Led by these metros with percentage declines from their highs in 2022:
1. It’s All About Earnings—Revision Momentum Highest Since 2011
Bloomberg
2. It’s All About Earnings—Beats Going Up and Misses Going Down
Irrelevant Investor
3. AI and Crypto = Energy Usage
Utilities has been doing anything but lagging the broader market these days. As noted in last night’s Sector Snapshots report, the sector closed at overbought levels for the 27th day in a row yesterday.
Bespoke Investments
4. Allocation to Cryptocurrencies
Implied crypto allocations. “A mass adoption/speculation phase appears to be taking place as more and more investors make allocations into Bitcoin/crypto.”
Callum Thomas – Top Down Charts
5. JNJ Breaks Out of 5-Year Sideways Channel
Macrotrends
6. Will Business Eating Tariffs Change to Consumers?
Ryan Detrick
7. Container Ship Departures from China to U.S. are Collapsing
Container ship departures from China to the US are collapsing, see the first chart.
When consumers cannot get the products that they want from abroad, and the products that are imported are more expensive because of tariffs, the outcome is a slowdown in US consumer spending, see the second chart.
The bottom line is that US consumer spending is facing headwinds from tariffs, relatively high interest rates, student loan payments restarting and deportations lowering the number of consumers.
Torken Slok Appolo
8. U.S. Trade Deficit by Country
Capital Group
9. The Best Colleges for High Paying Finance Jobs
Visual Capitalist
10. Americans Moving Less
Semafor
Americans are moving between cities at historically low rates, with drastic consequences for the country’s economy and politics. Experts worry the lack of internal migration may put the country’s historic dynamism at risk: More people are keeping their homes, and their jobs, resulting in fewer opportunities for younger ones. Some smaller cities are trying to address the issue by offering bonuses to lure remote workers, hoping to help reverse a longrunning brain drain. The US was characterized by moves toward opportunity, but a recent book by the historian Yoni Appelbaum argues that “a country that once made it possible for its people to move freely and chase a better life has steadily strangled that mobility over time.”
A new Gallup report reveals that only 54% of American adults reporting drinking alcohol in 2025.
The percentage of Americans who report drinking alcohol has hit a nearly 90-year low, according to a recent Gallup poll.
The results of Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits survey, released Wednesday, revealed that only 54% of U.S. adults reported drinking alcohol in 2025. This figure represents a three-year decline from 67% in 2022, and falls below the previous record low of 55% in 1958.
Another record low from the 2025 poll: Only 24% of drinkers said they had a drink in the past 24 hours, down from 32% two years ago.
Gallup’s survey of roughly 1,000 U.S. residents, which the company has conducted since 1939, was consistent with other reports on declining alcohol consumption and sales. While there are many contributing factors to the slump — cause for deep concern within California’s $55 billion wine industry — Gallup’s data largely points to the shift in how Americans view alcohol’s effects on health. For the first time since 2001, a majority of Americans surveyed — 53%, up from 45% in 2024 — said they believe drinking in moderation, defined as one or two drinks a day, is bad for their health. In 2018, just 28% of Americans surveyed believed alcohol had negative health impacts.
Perception has changed drastically since the 1990s, when a “60 Minutes” episode about the French Paradox — the belief that a stereotypical French diet heavy on butter, cheese and wine lowers the risk of heart disease — launched a decades-long wine boom. Gallup added questions about beliefs on alcohol’s impact on health in 2001: Through 2011, the percentage of people who believed alcohol was bad for them “hovered near 25%,” states the Gallup report, “roughly equal to those who considered drinking beneficial.”
Yet since then, “the medical research has turned,” said Gallup expert Lydia Saad, who authored the report. Today, only 6% of respondents said they believe alcohol is good for one’s health, another survey low. The shift has occurred as new studies have called the French Paradox hypothesis into question, offering evidence that alcohol has negative impacts on health and can even increase the risk of several types of cancer. In 2023, the World Health Organization declared that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health, and earlier this year, the U.S. surgeon generalissued an advisory that stated alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in America. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines could follow suit this year with a potential change to its recommendation on alcohol consumption. The Gallup report likens alcohol’s decline to tobacco’s in the 1960s after the U.S. surgeon general’s warnings, which “marked the start of a long-term decline in smoking.”
“We’re seeing how quickly Americans have absorbed the information that drinking is likely bad for your health,” said Saad. “The more these findings are reinforced by health authorities, doctors, the federal government, the more likely it is that people who have resisted thus far in believing alcohol is bad for their health may change their minds.”
Moreover, Saad said that while “people who say drinking is bad for your health are still drinking,” the data reveals that many are cutting back. The average number of drinks consumed over the past seven days is 2.8, down from 3.8 drinks a year ago and the lowest figure since 1996. Forty percent of drinkers said it had been a week since they last consumed alcohol — a 25-year high. Those concerned about alcohol’s health effects are having fewer drinks on average than those who aren’t, the data shows.
Read on for other key takeaways from Gallup’s report on alcohol consumption.
It’s so easy to idealize the past. As if people haven’t always been deranged. As if things haven’t always been falling apart. As if fate hasn’t always been indifferent to everyone and everything.
Socrates lived through a 27-year long war—a great power conflict between Athens and Sparta…and then in a country ruled by what was known as the 30 Tyrants. Zeno lived in a world torn apart by the wars of Alexander the Great’s successors (and his own personal shipwreck). Cato saw the Republic fall. Seneca lived through Nero and watched Rome literally burn. So unstable were things that, shortly after his death, people enjoyed the spectacle of the “year of the four emperors” Epictetus spent three decades in slavery. Marcus Aurelius, as we’ve detailed, saw flood and famines and wars. Indeed, this whole period is known as the beginning of the decline and fall.
One could go on and on and on. The point is: It’s always been rough. The point is: It always will be rough. The Stoics were tough—they had to be, to get through what they lived through. You will need to be tough if you’re going to make it through what the present and the future holds.
None of us control when we were born, only how we live. None of us control what our leaders do—not really anyway—only how we live, how we act, how we lead in our own lives. We don’t control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. We don’t control the awfulness of our times, only whether we rise above them, only whether we do good for and inside them. https://dailystoic.com/
