Breadth Thrust: Yet as noted, we’ve seen a sharp surge in breadth — and if you look at the first chart you can see we had a few months of deteriorating breadth… this can sometimes act as a sort of stealth correction. Then add to that the point that there was probably a bit of offside money waiting for a pullback to buy.
But onto this chart, Subu has put together analysis tracking the activation of DeGraaf + Zweig Breadth Thrust signals. While no indicator is infallible, this is a pretty good track record, and seasonality tends to also be decent in December. So it’s certainly some bullish food for thought.
Subu Trade
4. Foreigners Buy $650B of U.S. Stocks in the Last 12 Months
US net capital inflows. “Foreign private purchases of US equities totaled a record $646.8 billion over the past 12 months. Over the past 12 months, foreign private purchases of US equities outpaced those of US Treasury notes and bonds.”
MSN
5. S&P 500 Effective Tax Rate Has Been Falling for 40 Years
Topdown Charts
6. Housing Market Slowing But Here are Top Cities Increases Since 2020-Bespoke
Bespoke
7. Motgage Rates are Normal…It’s Huge Increase in Prices and Lack of Supply
Wolf Street
8. Referral Traffic to Retail Sites from Generative AI +1200% in October…16% More Likely to Purchase-Barrons
WSJ
9. Philadelphia Apartment Searches Coming from NYC
The Philadelphia Inquirer
10. Lifestyle and Environmental Factors for Alzheimers
Lifestyle and Environmental Factors
Lifestyle habits and environmental exposures play an important role in brain health and may influence the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Social Isolation: Social isolation increases the risk of dementia by up to 60 percent.
Lack of Mental Stimulation: Low cognitive activity can accelerate mental decline, whereas mentally stimulating work is associated with a lower risk of developing dementia later in life.
Chronic Stress: Chronic stress leads to prolonged elevated cortisol levels. High cortisol can damage the hippocampus, impair neuronal plasticity, promote neuroinflammation, and accelerate amyloid beta and tau pathology.
Lack of Sleep: Poor or insufficient sleep may contribute to protein buildup. Most people benefit from six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.
Unhealthy Diet: Diets high in processed foods, sugar, and unhealthy fats may raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by contributing to cardiovascular problems, reduced blood flow to the brain, and neuroinflammation.
Lack of Exercise: Regular physical activity supports heart health, blood flow, and oxygen delivery to the brain, which helps maintain cognitive function.
Excess Belly Fat: Excess abdominal fat, particularly visceral fat, promotes chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, vascular dysfunction, hormonal imbalances, and oxidative stress—all of which contribute to brain atrophy and cognitive decline.
Nutritional Deficiencies: Lack of certain micronutrients—such as manganese, selenium, copper, and zinc, and vitamins A, B, C, D, and E—may increase Alzheimer’s risk. People with Alzheimer’s disease have also been found to have lower brain levels of lutein, zeaxanthin, and lycopene.
Exposure to Pollutants: Higher exposure to fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) is linked to more severe Alzheimer’s-related brain changes and greater dementia severity because these tiny particles can travel into the bloodstream and the brain, where they trigger chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.
Exposure to Environmental Toxins: A 2020 review found that infections caused by viruses, bacteria, or fungi can trigger inflammation, which may gradually shrink brain tissue and contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
Nighttime Light Exposure: Greater exposure to outdoor light at night is linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, especially in people under 65, because it disturbs the body’s natural circadian rhythm, increases inflammation, and weakens disease resistance.
Smoking: Smoking damages blood vessels and reduces blood flow to the brain, with studies suggesting a 30 percent to 50 percent increased risk of dementia. Quitting smoking, even later in life, can lower this risk.
Genetics
Both types of Alzheimer’s disease have significant genetic components, although they are driven by different underlying causes, ranging from direct gene mutations to a complex mix of genetic and environmental risk factors.
PSEN1 or PSEN2 Genes: Early-onset Alzheimer’s can sometimes be inherited, known as familial Alzheimer’s disease, caused by mutations in the APP, PSEN1, or PSEN2 genes. These mutations lead to the overproduction of amyloid beta, which accumulates into amyloid plaques in the brain.
APOE Gene: The APOE gene is a well-known risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s. A 2024 study found that people with two APOE4 genes almost always showed Alzheimer’s-related brain changes by age 55, and most developed abnormal amyloid levels by age 65.
The process happens in distinct phases, or “epochs,” according to new research, as the structure of our neural networks changes and our brains reconfigure how we think and process information.
For the first time, scientists say they’ve identified four distinct turning points between those phases in an average brain: at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83. During each epoch between those years, our brains show markedly different characteristics in brain architecture, they say.
The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that human cognition does not simply increase with age until a peak, then decline. In fact, the phase from ages 9 to 32 is the only time in life when our neural networks are becoming increasingly efficient, according to the research.
During the adulthood phase, from 32 to 66, the average person’s brain architecture essentially stabilizes without major changes, at a time when researchers think people are generally plateauing in intelligence and personality.
And in the years after the last turning point — 83 and beyond — the brain becomes increasingly reliant on individual regions as connections between them begin to wither away.
“It’s not a linear progression,” said Alexa Mousley, a postdoctoral researcher associate at the University of Cambridge, who is the study’s lead author. “This is the first step of understanding the way the brain’s changing fluctuates based on age.”
03:59
The findings could help identify why mental health and neurological conditions develop during particular phases of rewiring.
Rick Betzel, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the research, said the findings are intriguing, but more data is needed to support the conclusions. The theories may not hold up to scrutiny over time, he said.
“They did this really ambitious thing,” Betzel said of the study. “Let’s see where it stands in a few years.”
For their research, Mousley and her colleagues analyzed MRI diffusion scans — which are essentially images of how water molecules move within the brain — from about 3,800 people from newborns to age 90. The goal was to map the neural connections across the average person’s brain at different stages in life.
In the brain, the bundles of nerve fibers that transfer signals are encapsulated in fatty tissue called myelin. Think of it like wiring or plumbing. Water molecules diffused in the brain tend to move in the direction of these fibers, rather than across them, meaning researchers can infer where the neural pathways are located.
“We can’t crack open skulls … we rely on non-invasive approaches,” Betzel said of this type of neuroscience research. “What we’re trying to figure out is where these fiber bundles are at.”
Based on the MRI scans, the new study maps the neural network of an average person across a lifespan, determining where connections are strengthening or weakening. The five “epochs” it describes are based on the neural connections the researchers observed.
The first phase is up to age 9, they suggest. The brain rapidly increases in gray and white matter; it prunes extra synapses and restructures itself.
From ages 9 to 32, there is an extended period of rewiring. The brain is defined by rapid communication across the entire brain and efficient connections between different regions.
Most mental health disorders are diagnosed during this time period, Mousely said: “Is there something about this second era of life, as we find it, that could lead people to be more vulnerable to the onset of mental health disorders?”
From 32 to 66, the brain plateaus. It’s still rewiring itself, but less dramatically and more slowly.
Then, from 66 to age of 83, the brain tends toward “modularity,” where the neural network is divided into highly connected subnetworks with less central integration. At age 83, connectivity declines further.
Betzel said the theory described in the study likely jives with people’s lived experiences with aging and cognition.
“It’s intuitively something we gravitate towards. I have two kids and they’re really young. I think all of the time, ‘I’m getting out of my toddler era,’” Betzel said. “Maybe the science ends up being there. But are those the exact right ages? I don’t know.”
In the ideal version of a study like this, he added, the researchers would have MRI diffusion data for a large group of people, each of whom were scanned during every year of life from birth to death. But that wasn’t possible because the technology wasn’t available decades ago.
Instead, the researchers combined nine different data sets containing neuroimaging from previous studies and attempted to harmonize them.
Betzel said each of those data sets varies in quality and approach, and the effort to make them correspond with one another could wash away important variability, ultimately leading to bias in the results.
Nonetheless, he said the authors of the paper are “thoughtful” and skilled scientists who did their best to control for that possibility.
“Brain networks change over the lifespan — absolutely. Is it discrete such that there are five exact change points? I’d say stay tuned. It’s an interesting idea.”
Cognitive decline starts decades before dementia diagnosis, but higher cognitive reserve can delay symptoms.
Education, complex work, and active learning could reduce dementia risk.
Exercise, social ties, and new experiences help grow brain networks and boost cognitive reserve.
With dementia now estimated to impact 42 percent of people who make it past age 55, everyone should be taking steps to help decrease their risk for developing the condition. Yet while much of the conversation focuses on supplements, diet, and pharmaceuticals, one of the less publicized tools to mitigate risk could be one of the most important.
For background, it’s key to understand that, as it relates to dementia, brain changes can begin decades before a person experiences symptoms of cognitive decline. Yet not all people with dementia-related changes in their brains experience clinical dementia, and there are major differences in the severity of cognitive impairment, even in people with similar brain pathology (like amyloid buildup). But why?
A major breakthrough in unpacking this complexity came from a 1994 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In this publication, Yaakov Stern and his co-investigators looked at about 600 healthy adults aged 60 years or older and followed them for up to four years to look for the development of dementia. They discovered that people who had more formal education or more complex occupations had a significantly lower chance (less than half) of developing dementia. They proposed that “increased educational and occupational attainment may reduce the risk of incident [Alzheimer’s disease], either by decreasing ease of clinical detection of AD or by imparting a reserve that delays the onset of clinical manifestations.”
This early work has since been expanded, and the framework described by the early work is now classified as “cognitive reserve” (CR). There is now an increased understanding that multiple methods of expanding brain connectivity and even growth of new brain cells could help to delay or potentially even offset the risk of developing dementia. Many now recommend various steps to help raise CR, which, in addition to pursuing formal education and engaging in cognitively demanding tasks (e.g., a complex job), include certain leisure activities, exercise, and social engagement.
It is important to note that the brain protection associated with higher CR isn’t necessarily a prevention of dementia itself, but rather, may promote a delayed decline. Research recently published in the journal Neurology suggests that having higher CR leads to a slowing of progression in stages of brain decline that precede a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, potentially compressing the cognitive impairment into a shorter period of time after dementia is present. With all this in mind, what are practical strategies to help boost CR?
Lifelong Learning: Education is one of the strongest contributors to CR. Higher educational attainment is linked to a significantly lower dementia risk in many studies, including up to a 44 percent reduction in some data. Importantly, this isn’t just about early life schooling. Learning later in life is an excellent step to continue to promote CR.
Cognitive Training: In one of the largest trials of its type, researchers in the ACTIVE Cognitive Training Trial tested whether 10 sessions of cognitive training (plus boosters after 11 and 35 months) could lead to improvements in cognition in around 3,000 people. They found that reasoning and speed training led to improvements in brain function observable 10 years later.
Physical Activity: Regular physical activity may be the most important daily activity for promoting brain health, but, specific to cognitive reserve, aerobic and resistance exercises may be especially beneficial for growing brain cells and protecting against dementia. One of the most striking examples is a 2011 study showing that one year of exercise (specifically walking) appeared to grow the brain’s memory center (the hippocampus).
Social Engagement: Strong and positive social interactions have been consistently linked with better brain health, but how? In a 2021 publication, researchers compared people’s social networks to brain imaging (MRI) testing. They found that people with more ability to span social roles had better cognitive testing and that this was linked to slowing of atrophy in parts of the brain linked to social processing.
Novelty: Our brains are tasked with responding to an incredible diversity of environmental inputs. However, consistently challenging ourselves with new experiences may be a way to beneficially augment this process to boost CR. To this end, learning a new instrument or a new language, traveling, or picking up a new hobby are great ways to inject novelty into your life.
1. Mag 7 vs. Four Horseman of 1999—Nowhere Near Valuations Now
Mag 7 vs. Four Horseman. “The P/E ratios of the Mag 7 today are elevated nowhere near the Four Horseman of the ’90s (Cisco, Msft, Dell, Intel). Mag 7 is trading at 36.8x earnings, below the 47.3x in 2021 and well below the 80!) of the Four Horseman pre-dot com crash.”
Daily Chartbook
2. Yesterday’s Rally Followed Record Put Volume Trades
Barchart
3. Tech Capex Spending vs. GDP Right at 1999 Levels
Peter Berezin
4. Capex as a Share of Operating Cash Flow from AI Players-Prof G Markets
Prof G Markets
5. MSFT Did Not Make New Highs This Fall …Pulled Back to 200-Day Moving Average
StockCharts
6. RNMBY European Defense Company -30% from Highs…Closes Below 200-Day
StockCharts
7. European Financials were Sideways for a Decade…Big Breakout
StockCharts
8. Biotech Left for Dead…+27% 2025…Big Base
StockCharts
9. Bill Ackman Pershing Square Core Investment Principles
1. Dollar Bullish Chart Action ..Dollar Above 200-Day First Time Since April…50day thru 200day to Upside
StockCharts
2. Narrow rally. The number of SPX stocks outperforming the index is the third lowest since 1960. The share trailing by at least 10% is the fourth-most
Daily Chartbook
3. ORCL -40% from Highs. Close Below 200-Day
StockCharts
4. Ethereum Close Below 200day
StockCharts
5. Five-Percent Pullback in S&P But -20-40% in Momentum Favorites
Bespoke
6. KWEB Chinese Internet Stocks 16% Correction …Right on 200-Day
StockCharts
7. Weight Loss War…LLY vs. NVO …Lilly is Huge Outperformance Since Late 2024…This Chart Shows LLY vs. NVO
StockCharts
8. 70% Spread in Return Year to Date …LLY Over NVO (Novo Nordisk)
YCharts
9. CRCL IPO Retail Favorite Collapses Back to IPO Price….Stock Hit $260 on Highs
Barchart
10. Do Your Own Research but According to ChartR Harvard Grade Inflation Started with Avoiding the Vietnam Draft
