Category Archives: Daily Top Ten

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 06, 2025

Daily Top Ten No Comments

1. Not the Sign of a Top…AAII Bull/Bear Sentiment Survey Just Had 15 Straight Weeks of Negative Readings…5th Longest Streak Ever.  Historically Bullish

What is AAII Sentiment Survey?

Dorsey Wright Nasdaq

2. Not the Sign of a Top…Margin Debt Skyrockets Near Tops in Markets…Going Down in 2025

YCharts

3. Not the Sign of a Top…Investors Bought the Dip Now Selling Rally

Macro Charts

4. MAG 7 Spending Huge of AI Capex Sending Free Cash Flow (FCF) Down

Equities: Excluding NVIDIA, the Magnificent 7’s year-over-year free cash flow growth has turned negative. The sharp rebound in 2023 was driven by cost-cutting and headcount reductions following the “metaverse” bloat, but that tailwind has faded as AI-driven CapEx ramps up, pressuring cash flows once more.

Source: @KevRGordon, @StrategasRP Daily Shot Brief

5. Dollar Chart Turning Back Down…Chart to Watch 2025

StocKCharts

6. Weak U.S. Dollar Key to International Equities Reversion to Mean Trade

Capital Group

7. June Bearish Month

Bespoke

8. The Democratic Republic of Congo Produces 76% of World Cobalt

Markets & Mayhem

Perplexity

9. Mexico and Canada 40% of US Steel Imports Last Year

Reuters

10. Ten Science-Based Tools for a More Peaceful Mind

Learn about a few simple strategies for cultivating a peaceful mind.

Key points

  • The body’s stress response includes sympathetic nervous system activation and the release of stress hormones.
  • A relatively simple way to start calming the mind is by using visualization.
  • Research shows spending time in the wilderness, a park, or even your front yard may benefit your well-being.

Via Psychology Today: A peaceful mind may be defined as a state of calmness or tranquility that is free from worry, ruminative thoughts, or other types of busy, frenetic thoughts. Oftentimes, we spend too much time thinking—thinking about what’s to come in the future, what’s happened in the past, or even what’s going on right now. When we do this, we make it difficult for our minds to calm in ways that are good for our well-being (learn more about your well-being with this well-being quiz).

There is much research on how we can decrease our distressing thoughts and calm the body. For example, we know that the body’s stress response includes sympathetic nervous system activation and the release of hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and epinephrine (Charmandari, Tsigos, & Chrousos, 2005). All of these make us feel wired, and this makes it difficult to have a peaceful mind. That’s why some of the techniques we’ll discuss below target the body directly. Once we help the body calm down, the mind can more easily follow.

  1. Visualization: A relatively simple way to start calming the mind is by using visualization. To try it, simply imagine yourself in a peaceful place. While visualizing yourself in this place, try to look at the world around you. What do you see, hear, and smell? If you can get your mind to imagine you’re in a place that makes you feel peaceful, your brain and body actually react as if you are in that place (Quoidbach, Wood, & Hansenne, 2009).
  2. Doing things you enjoy: Sometimes we get stuck in a clouded mind when our lives are dull, stagnant, or uninspiring. That’s why doing things you enjoy may help put your mind at ease. Doing fun things can help stimulate your mind so that when you are relaxing, your mind can fully rest.
  3. Going for a swim: Another way to calm the body is to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, immersing the body in cold water helps activate this system (Mourot et al., 2008). So if you’re feeling your mind racing, go for a swim in cold water or even take a cold shower.
  4. Getting outside: Perhaps one of the best ways to put your mind at peace is to get outside. Research shows that spending time in the wilderness, a park, or even your front yard may be beneficial for your well-being (Ulrich & Parsons, 1992). The outdoors offers so many different things that can help soothe the mind—fresh air, sunlight, and breathing in the scent of trees are all good for our health. Try to spend at least 15 minutes outside each day.
  5. Meditation: Meditation is a commonly used strategy when we want a more peaceful mind. The goal with meditation is to clear the mind of thoughts and just be present, often focusing on the breath.
  6. Listening to music: One study showed that listening to peaceful, relaxing music can reduce cortisol, a key stress hormone (Khalfa et al., 2003). In particular, binaural beats (i.e., when two tones with slightly different frequencies are played to each ear) seem to be beneficial and can even help improve performance (Garcia-Argibay, Santed, & Reales, 2019). Given the research, listening to soothing music may be another simple way to put the mind at peace.
  7. Practicing yoga: Yoga can actually reduce cortisol, a key stress hormone (Thirthalli et al., 2013). It’s not entirely clear why, but it might be because yoga involves deep breathing and concentration that prevents us from ruminating on our worries. Doing yoga regularly can be a great way to create a more peaceful mind and a healthier body.
  8. Using mantras: Using mantras may be another way to create a more peaceful mind. Mantras are types of chanting that are often used as part of Eastern meditation techniques. Early research suggested that mantras may be beneficial for well-being. Studies show that mantras can result in short-term decreases in stress and depression (Wolf & Abell, 2003).
  9. Using massage: Massage is another technique that may be helpful. One study showed that 10, 30-minute massages over five weeks led to a lower cortisol response (Field, 2005). Soothing physical touch does indeed seem to relax us. Whether it’s human-to-human interaction or getting aches and pains out of our bodies, massage can be a useful trick for calming the mind and body.
  10. Deep breathing: Deep, controlled breathing has been shown to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is key in helping us de-stress, and it is the counterbalance to the sympathetic nervous system—our fight or flight system. Deep breathing also can quickly reduce anxiety and promote a greater sense of calm (Zope & Zope, 2013). By taking a few deep breaths, we begin to tell our body that things are safe, and the systems that are overactive can begin to mellow.

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 04, 2025

Daily Top Ten No Comments

1. Semiconductor ETF Closing in on Highs

StockCharts

2. Momentum ETF Makes New Highs as Tech Takes Lead Again

StockCharts

3. 2023-2024 20% Returns Narrowest Market Leadership in 25 Years

VettaFi

4. Aerospace/Defense ETF Spikes to New Highs

StockCharts

5. Uranium Spot Price Has Not Spiked with Stocks

WSJ

Trading Economics

6. Junior Gold Miners +50% Year to Date But Still Down for 15 Years…Look at Highs in 2010

Google

7. Asian Retail Buyers Driving Gold Buys…American Retail Buying Technology Stocks

Current retail demand is mainly driven by Asian investors, while U.S. and European investors are nowhere to be seen.

MarketWatch

8. Silver One-Tick from New Highs

StockCharts

9. Retail Investors Did Not Panic in 2025 Sell Off…..401(k) savers stayed on course through market volatility, Fidelity found

Via Yahoo!Finance: Retirement savers reached an average savings rate of 14.3% in the first quarter, a new record. Kerry Hannon · Senior Columnist

Retirement savers weathered a chaotic stretch of market gyrations in the first three months of the year, consistently adding to their savings, according to Fidelity Investments’ quarterly analysis.

While they experienced a drop in average 401(k), 403(b), and IRA balances, mostly due to market swings, savings rates remained consistent, with the average 401(k) savings rate increasing to a record 14.3%.

“We saw a lot of positive savings behaviors among employees,” Mike Shamrell, vice president of workplace thought leadership at Fidelity Investments, told Yahoo Finance.

“It was really encouraging to see that despite a lot of things going on, and economic ups and downs, people continued to save and didn’t pull back, or make a lot of changes to their asset allocation,” he said. “As a result, we saw the individual 401(k) savings rate increase to the highest level that we’ve seen.”

To break it down, the average employee contribution rate was 9.5%, and the employer contribution rate was 4.8%. This combined savings rate of 14.3%, up from 13.5% in 2020, is the closest it’s ever been to Fidelity’s suggested savings rate of 15%.

10. Send to Your Kids

Ben Meer

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 03, 2025

Daily Top Ten No Comments

1. Hated Stock Rally…Highest Short Interest Since 2018

The Market Ear

2. U.S. 5x Number of AI Funded Companies vs. China

Semafor

3. ChatGPT Traffic Passes Wikipedia

Sherwood

4. Stock by Stock Mag 7 Rally

Cresset Capital

5. Silver Clear Breakout

StockCharts

6. Tesla -10% Correction this Week

Google

7. REITS Most Hated Sector…Contra Play?

@Callum Thomas (Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm)

8. Buffett Stock Approaching 200-Day

StockCharts

9. BRICS Summit in Brazil this Summer

Not A Motley Crew-Zerohedge: While the Leaders’ Summit is an annual event, it does not occur at the same time each year. The exact date depends on the schedules of the leaders themselves as well as seasonal conditions in the host country. The overall leadership of BRICS+ is a rotating presidency among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Last year, the summit was held in Russia in October with President Putin as host.

This year Brazil has the rotating presidency and the summit will be in Rio de Janeiro on July 6 – 7, 2025. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is host. All of the founding BRICS leaders are expected to attend including Lula da Silva (Brazil), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa), along with many others.

A brief comparison of the combined resources of the first five BRICS members with the resources of the G7 (U.S., UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan and Canada) is instructive.

In terms of population, the BRICS have 3.3 billion people compared to 0.8 billion in the G7. The total land area is 39.7 km2 for BRICS versus 21.7kn2 for the G7.

Real annual growth in GDP is about 5% for the BRICS versus 2% in the G7. Nominal GDP for the G7 leads the BRICS by $45.3 trillion (43.7% of global output) compared to $26.7 trillion (28.7% of global output). But when purchasing power parity accounting is used, the BRICS lead G7 $51.6 trillion to $48 trillion.

The point is not that the BRICS are overtaking the G7 across the board – they’re not. The point is that the BRICS are a powerful group demographically and economically and not a motley collection of what were once called third-world countries.

10. Mark Cuban Following Henry Hazlitt on Basic Economics….New Technology Creates More Jobs Long-Term Always.  Every Tech Revolution Sees Predictions of 20% Unemployment

Mark Cuban

Perplexity

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 02, 2025

Daily Top Ten No Comments

1. S&P Best May in 35 Years

Earnings for companies that have already reported are up 13% year over year, according to Jeff Buchbinder, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial. An impressive 78% of companies have beaten earnings expectations, he notes, and most companies have been expanding their margins despite anxiety that tariffs and consumer weakness would weigh on them. The biggest tech stocks have cributed about half of that earnings growth, which is a big reason why the Nasdaq is outpacing the other indexes.

Barron’s

2. MAG 7 Back to Leading Gains…+26% from Lows

The Market Ear

3. Big Rally Off Bottom is Historically Bullish

I didn’t quite realize that the S&P 500 has been up over 18% in the past 7 weeks. That’s occurred in only 35 trading days! That tells me that the market has been white hot! Does that mean we should expect some red now in the short to medium term? Not quite the case. A lot more green has followed.

Subu Trade

4. NVDA Vs. AAPL Chart…Breakout for NVDA

Nvidia stock is now up nearly 40% from the trade war lows in April. It’s up 4% on the year. Even after the latest rally, the stock isn’t expensive, trading at 29 times forward earnings estimates, while analysts expect 45% sales growth over the next 12 mhs. Compare those numbers to Apple, which trades at 28 times with 4% sales growth. Nvidia is far more attractive on a valuation-to-growth basis.

StockCharts

5. Tesla Fundamentals Keep Getting Worse But Options Bets Keep Getting More Bullish

Sherwood

6. Personal Savings Rate Increases in 2025

FRED

7. Massive Jump in U.S. Customs Revenues from Tariffs

As President Trump and his team cinue to search for plan B, and maybe plan C, to enact their trade agenda, data from the Treasury Department reveals that the US has brought in ~$40 billion worth of customs duties since the start of April, with a record-breaking $22.3 billion already collected in May (as of May 22). That’s a massive jump from $9 billion back in January, and is likely even lower than the actual total, given the customs-only figure excludes excise taxes on specific imported goods like fuel, alcohol, and tobacco. 

Sherwood

Of course, the ruling this week means that the US government might have to give that revenue back.

But for now, tariffs remain a go, with a federal appeals court granting a temporary reinstatement of the levies, including the 10% baseline tariff applicable to nearly all imports.

Should Trump’s legal challenges, which might include going to the Supreme Court, fail, the White House has other levers and trade lawsat its disposal. Per Goldman Sachs analysts writing on Wednesday evening, the ruling might not change the final outcome for a lot of America’s major trading partners anyway.

8. Top 10 Largest Stablecoins

Perplexity

9. Ukraine Drone Strikes in 3 Russian Time Zones

Bloomberg

10. Softness is Creeping into Housing Market

VettaFi

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 May 30, 2025

Daily Top Ten No Comments

1. U.S. 33.9 vs. Developed 18.7 Markets Cape Ration Comparison

US vs. DM. “Developed ex-U.S. large caps have a CAPE ratio of 18.7 compared to 33.9 for U.S. large caps … U.S. large caps hover in the 96th percentile while developed ex-U.S. equities quietly sit in the 40th percentile, modestly cheaper than their long-term median.”

Daily ChartBook

2. Foreign Ownership of U.S. Assets

JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou broke down US stock & bond ownership by country and then set it against the total household financial assets of that country to determine “which countries are the most vulnerable or exposed…While these portfolio investments are often made via institutions such as insurance companies and pension funds, the ultimate owners are typically households via their financial claims on these institutions,” Panigirtzoglou said to explain using that metric. The takeaway is that aside from Norway and Switzerland where the figures are boosted by sovereign wealth funds that have huge stakes in US assets, “[d]espite the rather large figures often mentioned in dollar terms for the stock of US assets held by the rest of the world, relative to the total financial assets of households, the allocations typically stand at around 10-20%” (excluding Norway and Switzerland), which Panigirtzoglou called “rather low compared to the share of the US in global equity and bond indices,” suggesting that foreign investors don’t necessarily hold “too much” in the way of US assets.

Zachary Goldberg Jefferies

3. Canada Making New Highs Despite Tariffs/51st State

StockCharts

4. NVDA Net Sales 2022-2025

Fundstrat

5. Average Price of a Tesla

Charlie Bilelo

6. Japanese Public Companies Accelerate Buybacks

Capital Group

7. Imports Fell by a Record in April

Cresset Capital

8. India Overtakes Japan 4th Largest Economy in World

WSJ

9. Housing Market Changing to Buyers Market??

Home sellers vs. buyers. “There are 34% more sellers in the market than buyers. At no other point in records dating back to 2013 have sellers outnumbered buyers this much. In other words, it’s a buyer’s market.”

Redfin

10. Summer rentals in the Hamptons are down 30%

Via CNBC: Summer rentals in the Hamptons are down 30% from the same period in previous years, according to Judi Desiderio of William Raveis Real Estate.

  • Brokers who focus on ultra-high-end rentals are seeing an even bigger drop and say their rental business is down between 50% and 75%.
  • Some renters may be holding out for better deals or waiting to book, but brokers privately say there are other factors at play.

Summer rentals in the Hamptons are off to a chilly start to the season, as unrented homes start to pile up and sales slow, according to brokers.

Hamptons rentals are down 30% from the same period in previous years, according to Judi Desiderio of William Raveis Real Estate. Brokers who focus on ultra-high-end rentals say their rental business is down between 50% and 75%.

“People are holding on to their money,” said Enzo Morabito, head of the Hamptons-based Enzo Morabito Team at Douglas Elliman. “They don’t like uncertainty.”

Of course, Hamptons renters often wait until the last minute to book July and August rentals. Brokers say this year may be starting even later due to cold, rainy weather in May. Some renters may also be holding out for better deals in a Hamptons market that has become far more expensive after Covid.

Yet brokers and renters say privately that the volatility in the stock market and economic uncertainty sparked by the ever-changing tariff landscape has made some affluent renters and even some buyers hold off on a pricey Hamptons vacation this summer.

After the post-election euphoria in markets at the end of last year, brokers saw a surge in interest from potential renters in January and February. But as spring arrived, along with the April tariff announcements, the early interest didn’t translate into rentals.

Morabito said he represents several homeowners with large waterfront and luxury properties that typically would have been rented by March or April. Today, they’re still available. He said some homeowners who rent out three or four homes in the Hamptons during the summer may start to question their investments after this summer if renters don’t start emerging.

On the plus side, the rise in unrented inventory means potential bargains and choice for renters. Brokers say some listings have started lowering their prices by 10% to 20% in hopes of saving the summer. Some homeowners are adding more flexibility, allowing for shorter one- or two weeks stays in hopes of getting renters.

Gary DePersia of My Hampton Homes said the best houses in the Hamptons typically get rented early in the year. “But this year I have great rentals available in every town, from Southampton to Montauk.”

While tariffs and economic uncertainty may play a role in the slump, he said renters seem to have been waiting longer and longer every year, perhaps holding out for better deals. Eventually, he said, they end up renting.

“I think a number of people have deferred decisions, or they weren’t sure what [they were] going to do, go to Europe or the West Coast,” he said. “They will realize they want to be in the Hamptons; they have lot of friends and colleagues here and then they start scurrying around for rentals.”

Desiderio said the combination of weather and grim economic headlines made for a slow start that will quickly reverse.

“I believe this year there was so much ‘dark noise’ out there financially, and geopolitically, and the weather was not conducive to thinking of summertime,” she said. “There’s no doubt that by the time July 1 is upon us, all of the rentals will be taken this year.”

When it comes to home sales, the Hamptons real estate market remains fairly strong, despite relatively low inventory. Sales in the first quarter were down 12% from a year ago, although the median sales price jumped 13% to a record $2 million.

Brokers say when a quality home in the Hamptons is priced right, it sells immediately. They add that the surge in high-end sales in Manhattan over the past two months could also lift the Hamptons market.

“I just had two Canadians put a bid on an $18 million house, sight unseen” Morabito said. “When Manhattan comes alive, we always follow.”