Category Archives: Daily Top Ten

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 17, 2025

1. Watch for Short-Term Bounce in Dollar…Too Many Bears

A Wealth of Common Sense


2. Consensus Weak Dollar and Majority Think International Stocks Outperform?

Bloomberg


3. S&P Sectors % Above 50day and P/E Valuation vs. 10-Year Average

Bespoke Investment Group Looking at sectors, Energy now has the highest percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving averages at 91.3%, and the Energy sector’s valuation relative to the last ten years is on the low side compared to the rest of the market.  Financials and Technology currently have the highest valuations relative to readings over the last ten years.

Bespoke


4. Weekly Crypto Asset Flows

Crypto asset flows. “Digital asset investment products saw US$1.9bn in inflows last week, marking the 9th consecutive week and a record YTD total of US$13.2bn. Bitcoin rebounded with US$1.3bn in inflows, while Ethereum saw US$583m inflows, its strongest since February.”

Paychart Books


5. Tether Reserves Breakdown

FinChart


6. JPMorgan moves further into crypto with stablecoin-like token JPMD

Key Points

  • U.S. banking giant JPMorgan is launching its alternative to a stablecoin called JPMD.
  • The new product is a so-called deposit token that’s designed to serve as a digital representation of commercial bank money.
  • JPMorgan said the benefit of launching a deposit token over a stablecoin is the close connection with traditional banking systems.

Via CNBC: JPMorgan Chase is taking a step further into the cryptocurrency space with its own stablecoin-like token, called JPMD.

The U.S. banking giant told CNBC on Tuesday that it’s planning to launch a so-called deposit token on Coinbase’s public blockchain Base, which is built on top of the Ethereum network. Each deposit token is meant to serve as a digital representation of a commercial bank deposit.

JPMD will offer clients round-the-clock settlement as well as the ability to pay interest to holders. It is a so-called “permissioned token,” meaning it is only available to JPMorgan’s institutional clients — unlike many stablecoins, which are publicly available.

“We see institutions using JPMD for onchain digital asset settlement solutions as well as for making cross-border business-to-business transactions,” Naveen Mallela, global co-head of Kinexys, J.P. Morgan’s blockchain unit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“Given the fact that deposit tokens would eventually be interest bearing as well, this would provide better fungibility with existing deposit products that institutions currently use,” he added.


7. High Yield Bond ETF New Highs

StockCharts


8. Home Inventory Increasing and Number of Owners Planning to Sell in Next 6 Months

Joe notes that we haven’t seen inventory build up anything like this since the GFC. And outside that, nothing else in the last 40 years.

Dave Lutz Jones Trading

The JPM survey sees a jump in homeowners planning to sell in the next ~6 months.


9. Metros with Home Prices Going Negative

The growing list of year-over-year price declines-Wolf Street.

In May, the list of year-over-year decliners got a new member, Seattle. In total, of the 33 MSAs here, 18 show year-over-year declines, up from 6 at the end of 2024. In all of those 18 metros, the year-over-year declines worsened.

Year-over-year declines in May:

  1. Austin: -5.5%
  2. Tampa: -5.5%
  3. Dallas: -3.4%
  4. Phoenix: -3.4%
  5. San Antonio: -3.3%
  6. Orlando: -3.2%
  7. Miami: -3.2%
  8. Atlanta: -2.7%
  9. San Francisco: -2.5%
  10. Denver: -2.4%
  11. San Diego: -1.9%
  12. Raleigh: -1.8%
  13. Honolulu: -1.7%
  14. Houston: -1.5%
  15. Sacramento: -1.4%
  16. Charlotte: -0.9%
  17. Portland: -0.5%
  18. Seattle: -0.1% (newest addition)

10. Your Morning Coffee Can Help You Live Longer — As Long As It’s This Type Of Brew

Coffee carries life-lengthening health benefits, but not if you’re adding flavors and creams to it.

In a nutshell:

  • Coffee drinkers who consumed 1-3 cups daily had a 15-17% lower risk of dying early compared to non-coffee drinkers
  • Health benefits only applied to black coffee or coffee with minimal added sugar (less than half a teaspoon per cup) and saturated fat
  • Coffee drinks high in sugar and saturated fat showed no protective effects, potentially eliminating coffee’s health benefits entirely

Via Study Finds: Americans love their coffee, with about half of us reaching for a cup every single day. And here’s some news that might make your morning brew taste even better: that daily coffee habit could be cutting your risk of dying early by up to 17% — but there’s a catch that could cancel out the benefits.

A study tracking nearly 50,000 American adults for more than a decade found that coffee drinkers lived longer than those who skipped their daily caffeine fix. The twist? The life-extending benefits were only seen in people who drank black coffee or coffee with very little added sugar and saturated fat. Those sugary, creamy coffee shop drinks? They offered no measurable health advantage.

According to the study, coffee with higher levels of added sugar and saturated fat was not associated with lower death rates. Moreover, the benefits were not seen in people who preferred a decaf brew. The research took a detailed look at what Americans are actually putting in their coffee, and the findings raise red flags about our sweetened coffee culture.

Nearly 50,000 Americans Tracked for Over a Decade

Researchers from Tufts University analyzed coffee drinking habits and health outcomes in 46,322 adults aged 20 and older who participated in U.S. government health surveys between 1999 and 2018. Participants were followed for roughly 9 to 11 years, with actual mortality outcomes tracked using National Death Index records.

During that time, 7,074 participants died — 1,176 from cancer and 1,089 from cardiovascular disease. Compared to non-coffee drinkers, those who drank coffee had significantly lower mortality rates. The greatest benefit appeared in people drinking 2 to 3 cups a day, who had a 17% lower risk of dying during the follow-up period. Even those who drank less than a cup a day saw an 11% lower risk.

Why Sweetened Coffee May Cancel the Health Benefits

The researchers also examined what went into those cups of coffee. Each beverage was classified based on how much added sugar and saturated fat it contained per 8-ounce serving.

Drinking black coffee was associated with a 14% lower risk of all-cause mortality. Coffee with small amounts of added sugar (under 2.5 grams per cup) and saturated fat (under 1 gram per cup) also showed the same 14% reduction.

But for people drinking coffee with higher amounts of sugar and saturated fat, there was no statistically significant reduction in risk of death. For context, the average U.S. coffee drink contains 3.24 grams of added sugar and 0.52 grams of saturated fat per 8-ounce cup, suggesting that many Americans are overshooting the threshold where coffee may offer health benefits.

Caffeine Key to Longevity

The study, published in The Journal of Nutrition, also found that caffeinated coffee — not decaf — was driving most of the observed health benefits. While decaffeinated coffee showed no clear association with longevity, caffeinated coffee was linked to reduced risk of death from both all causes and cardiovascular disease.

That’s in line with previous research suggesting that caffeine may play a protective role by boosting metabolism, reducing inflammation, and improving insulin sensitivity. Coffee also contains other bioactive compounds like chlorogenic acid and polyphenols that are thought to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

Interestingly, the protective effects of coffee were only observed among people who did not drink tea. Among tea drinkers, the association between coffee and longevity disappeared, though the study doesn’t explain why.

It’s Best To Be Basic

For the estimated 150 million Americans who drink coffee daily, this study delivers both a bit of good news and a wake-up call. The good news: your coffee habit could be helping you live longer. The reality check: if your go-to drink includes lots of sugar, cream, or flavored syrups, those potential benefits may be lost.

Researchers adjusted for a wide range of lifestyle and health variables, including age, sex, race, income, smoking, alcohol use, exercise, diet quality, and preexisting conditions. Even then, the association between simple coffee and lower mortality still held up.

The takeaway? A basic cup of coffee, especially when consumed black or lightly sweetened, may be one of the healthiest parts of your day. But when that cup starts to resemble dessert and doesn’t have caffeine, the health perks may disappear.

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 16, 2025

1. Investors All-Time High Allocation to Stocks

The Market Ear


2. Short-Term Traders Have High Short Interest

Short interest still sits a multi-year highs while the S&P 500 sits only about 2% from new all-time highs.

Short interest represents future buying power, with squeeze situations increasing during rallies.

Source: Seth Golden @Callum Thomas (Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm)


3. Highly Valued Stocks Based on Price to Sales

Sherwood News


4. Energy Sector ETF Still Below 2024 Highs

StockCharts


5. Post India Plane Crash….Boeing +16% Year to Date and Well Above 200-Day

StockCharts


6. Quora and Reddit Most-Cited Sources in Google AI Reviews

Via Business Insider: Reddit is the 2nd most-cited source in Google AI Overviews, but that might not mean much for its bottom line.

  • Analytics firm Semrush studied how AI is affecting Google Search traffic.
  • It found that Reddit is the second most-cited website by Google AI Overviews.
  • Quora was the most cited source.

Reddit’s relationship with Google is complicated.

The social media forum, which went public last yearand is under pressure like never before to attract advertisers and turn a profit, has recently enjoyed priority status on Google Search.

And now that Google has launched its AI Overview, a natural language synopsis of search results at the top of the page, it seems its preference for citing Reddit remains.

Analytics firm Semrush shared data this month on how AI-powered search is affecting traffic. It found that Reddit is the second most-cited website in Google AI Overviews, following Quora.

“Quora and Reddit users often ask and answer niche questions that aren’t addressed elsewhere. Making them rich information sources for highly specific AI prompts,” the study’s authors wrote. “Reddit may also perform well because Google has a partnership with Reddit and uses Reddit data to train its systems.”

Reddit and Google entered a partnership, worth a reported $60 million, in 2024 that allowed Google to train its AI models on Reddit’s content. Google said the deal would “facilitate more content-forward displays of Reddit information.”


7. Death Rates from Cancer Declining

Vox


8. Americans Traveling Abroad this Summer

Bloomberg


9. Share of National U.S. Sports TV Rights-Prof G

Professor Galloway


10. Morning and Nights

Via the FS Blog:The entire self-help industry in one sentence: Do what makes mornings exciting and nights peaceful.

Will this make me excited to wake up? Will this let me sleep in peace?

Everything that fails both tests is noise.

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 13, 2025

1. International Equities Outperforming for 3 Years

Ben Carlson Blog–We’re now looking at nearly three years of outperformance for international equities.  It feels like this is a recent phenomenon but Jeffrey Kleintop has a chart that shows foreign stocks have been outperforming for longer than you think. This chart shows European stocks versus U.S. stocks going back to the bottom of the 2022 bear market:

A Wealth of Common Sense


2. Oil Traders More Cautious than Previous Attacks

Bloomberg


3. Summary of Fast Track Nuclear

Image Source: Duke Energy; Leadlag Report


4. Massive Capital Spending on Commodities by Tech Companies

Callum Thomas


5. Visa, Mastercard and AMEX Process $28 Trillion Each Year

FinChart


6. Intel 25-Year Returns

Barchart


7. Uranium ETF Clean Breakout

StockCharts


8. Mayo Clinic Hiring More Radiologist Post AI

Your A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon

Experts predicted that artificial intelligence would steal radiology jobs. But at the Mayo Clinic, the technology has been more friend than foe.

Via the NYT: Dr. Theodora Potretzke, a radiologist at the Mayo Clinic, helped develop an A.I. tool that saves her 15 to 30 minutes each time she examines a kidney image.

Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Nine years ago, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence scientists singled out an endangered occupational species.

“People should stop training radiologists now,” Geoffrey Hinton said, adding that it was “just completely obvious” that within five years A.I. would outperform humans in that field.

Today, radiologists — the physician specialists in medical imaging who look inside the body to diagnose and treat disease — are still in high demand. A recent study from the American College of Radiology projected a steadily growing work force through 2055.

Dr. Hinton, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics last year for pioneering research in A.I., was broadly correct that the technology would have a significant impact — just not as a job killer.

That’s true for radiologists at the Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s premier medical systems, whose main campus is in Rochester, Minn. There, in recent years, they have begun using A.I. to sharpen images, automate routine tasks, identify medical abnormalities and predict disease. A.I. can also serve as “a second set of eyes.”

“But would it replace radiologists? We didn’t think so,” said Dr. Matthew Callstrom, the Mayo Clinic’s chair of radiology, recalling the 2016 prediction. “We knew how hard it is and all that is involved.”

Computer scientists, labor experts and policymakers have long debated how A.I. will ultimately play out in the work force. Will it be a clever helper, enhancing human performance, or a robotic surrogate, displacing millions of workers?

The debate has intensified as the leading-edge technology behind chatbots appears to be improving faster than anticipated. Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies in Silicon Valley now predict that A.I. will eclipse humans in most cognitive tasks within a few years. But many researchers foresee a more gradual transformation in line with seismic inventions of the past, like electricity or the internet.

The predicted extinction of radiologists provides a telling case study. So far, A.I. is proving to be a powerful medical tool to increase efficiency and magnify human abilities, rather than take anyone’s job.


9. U.S. Housing Affordability by State

Visual Capitalist


10. Charlie Munger Notes

Notes from a Charlie Munger interview.

David Senra• 1st Founder at Founders Podcast

1. I can’t think of a single example where keeping it simple has worked against us.

2. When people use the word common sense what they mean is uncommon sense. The standard human condition is ignorance and stupidity.

3. Q: Why is it that people can’t think clearly about investing or other decisions in their life?

A: They don’t think very well about sex or gambling either. The standard human condition is a lot of miscognition. You can improve your life by eliminating your miscognitions.

4. The economy sometimes booms and sometimes it doesn’t. You have to live through both episodes. Our attitude is we just keep swimming.

5. If you live long enough a lot of good things happen and a lot of bad things happen.

6. I would say that the chief advantage Berkshire has had in accumulating a good record is that we have avoided pompous, bureaucratic systems. We give power to very talented people and let them make very quick decisions.

7. In big bureaucracies they think the work is done when you get the work out of your inbox and into someone else’s. That is not getting it done. If everybody is in a big committee meeting all the time you are worn out at the end for the day and you haven’t done anything.

8. If we find things that are intelligent to do we do it. If we can’t find anything we let the cash build up. What the hell is wrong with that?

9. I’m ashamed of missing Google. We could have seen it if we looked at our own companies. Their [Google’s] advertising was working way better than other advertising. We weren’t paying enough attention.

10. I’m a huge admirer of Jeff Bezos. He is a perfectly amazing human leader.

11. Q: What do you think of those tech unicorns going public and not having any profitability?

A: There are a whole lot of things I don’t think about. And one of them is companies that are losing billions of dollars a year and going public. It is not my scene.

12. I think the shareholder meetings work best because they are spontaneous. If we were scripting things I don’t think people would like it.

13. I think my way of thinking will work for anyone. I’m trying to be very rational and disciplined. I’m always being visited by young men who say things like I’m practicing law and I don’t like it. I’d rather be a billionaire, how do I do it? I tell them a story about Mozart. One man came to Mozart and asked him how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You are too young to write a symphony.” The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years of age, and I am 21.” Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn’t run around asking people how to do it.”

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 12, 2025

1. ORCL Capital Expenditures (AI) +225% Year over Year

Bespoke


2. EFA Developed International Stocks Hits All-Time Highs…Just Got Above 2008 Levels

Google


3. U.S. Tech Weight vs. International …U.S. Tech 33% of Stock Market vs. International 9.6%

BlackRock


4. Summer vs. Rest of Year Stock Market Returns

Dorsey Wright Nasdaq


5. Equity Flows to Europe

Paychart Book


6. Countries Export to Russia’s Neighbors to Get Around Bans

The Brookings Institution’s Robin Brooks has been chronicling how countries have been exporting to Russia’s neighbors to get around bans. Now he’s finding China shipping to other countries in what he says is “obviously” transshipments to avoid tariffs. “Thailand and Vietnam look bonkers,” says Brooks.

MarketWatch


7. American Upswing in Energy Production Across the Board

ZeroHedge


8. Disappearances Surging in Mexico

Semafor


9. What Does Your Mortgage Really Costs?

Eric Soda Spilled Coffee You can see the actual cost of the mortgage isn’t what you started it at. The interest really changes that. The true cost to own a home is much costlier than you think.

Spilled Coffee


10. World fertility rates in ‘unprecedented decline’, UN says

Via the BBC: In a survey of 14,000 people, one in five respondents said they haven’t had or expect they won’t have the number of children they want

Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.

But it always comes back to one question: ‘Can we afford it?’

She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming – school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.

It was different when Namrata was growing up. “We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do.”

According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata’s situation is becoming a global norm.

The agency has taken its strongest line yet on fertility decline, warning that hundreds of millions of people are not able to have the number of children they want, citing the prohibitive cost of parenthood and the lack of a suitable partner as some of the reasons.

UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people in 14 countries about their fertility intentions. One in five said they haven’t had or expect they won’t have their desired number of children.

The countries surveyed – South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, US, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria – account for a third of the global population.

They are a mix of low, middle and high-income countries and those with low and high fertility. UNFPA surveyed young adults and those past their reproductive years.

“The world has begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates,” says Dr Natalia Kanem, head of UNFPA.

“Most people surveyed want two or more children. Fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis,” she says.

“Calling this a crisis, saying it’s real. That’s a shift I think,” says demographer Anna Rotkirch, who has researched fertility intentions in Europe and advises the Finnish government on population policy.

“Overall, there’s more undershooting than overshooting of fertility ideals,” she says. She has studied this at length in Europe and is interested to see it reflected at a global level.

She was also surprised by how many respondents over 50 (31%) said they had fewer children than they wanted.

The survey, which is a pilot for research in 50 countries later this year, is limited in its scope. When it comes to age groups within countries for example, the sample sizes are too small to make conclusions.

But some findings are clear.

In all countries, 39% of people said financial limitations prevented them from having a child.

The highest response was in Korea (58%), the lowest in Sweden (19%).

In total, only 12% of people cited infertility – or difficulty conceiving – as a reason for not having the number of children they wanted to. But that figure was higher in countries including Thailand (19%), the US (16%), South Africa (15%), Nigeria (14%) and India (13%).

“This is the first time that [the UN] have really gone all-out on low fertility issues,” says Prof Stuart Gietel-Basten, demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Until recently the agency focused heavily on women who have more children than they wanted and the “unmet need” for contraception.

Still, the UNFPA is urging caution in response to low fertility.

“Right now, what we’re seeing is a lot of rhetoric of catastrophe, either overpopulation or shrinking population, which leads to this kind of exaggerated response, and sometimes a manipulative response,” says Dr Kanem.

“In terms of trying to get women to have more children, or fewer.”

She points out that 40 years ago China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Turkey were all worried their populations were too high. By 2015 they wanted to boost fertility.

“We want to try as far as possible to avoid those countries enacting any kind of panicky policies,” says Prof Gietel-Basten.

“We are seeing low fertility, population ageing, population stagnation used as an excuse to implement nationalist, anti-migrant policies and gender conservative policies,” he says.

UNFPA found an even bigger barrier to children than finances was a lack of time. For Namrata in Mumbai that rings true.

She spends at least three hours a day commuting to her office and back. When she gets home she is exhausted but wants to spend time with her daughter. Her family doesn’t get much sleep.

“After a working day, obviously you have that guilt, being a mom, that you’re not spending enough time with your kid,” she says.

“So, we’re just going to focus on one.”

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 11, 2025

1. American House of Reps Families Trade Like Hedge Funds During Liberation Day Volatility

DAY TRADERS– As markets tanked in the wake of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in early April, members of Congress and their families made hundreds of stock trades, shining a spotlight on a controversial practice that some lawmakers have pushed to ban.  From April 2, when Trump launched sweeping tariffs to April 8, the day before he paused many of them, more than a dozen House lawmakers and their family members made more than 700 stock trades, according to a WSJ analysis.  The trading took place during one of the wildest stretches for global financial markets of the past decade. The S&P 500 tanked more than 4.5% for two consecutive sessions shortly after Liberation Day and recorded the biggest fall since the March 2020 market crash. More than $6 trillion in market value vanished.

Dave Lutz Jones Trading


2. Earnings Estimates Moving Higher

SPX NTM EPS. “S&P 500 forward EPS estimate hits a fresh all-time high. $280.”

Edward Jones via @mikezaccardi


3. IWM Small Cap ETF Right Below 200-Day

StockCharts


4. IWC Micro-Cap ETF Closes Above 200-Day

StockCharts


5. Apple Still -20% Off Highs

StockCharts


6. Bonds Market Value vs. Stocks Lowest Since 1960s

Barchart


7. Gold Chopping Sideways Since April

ZeroHedge


8. Public Companies Holding Bitcoin

Perplexity


9. 75% of Companies Have Already Raised Prices in Response to Tariffs, Fed Survey Finds

Via Barron’s: Early signs indicate that many businesses are quickly raising prices for shoppers to cover most of the higher costs from sweeping U.S. tariffs on imported goods.

Among businesses that are facing higher operational costs due to President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff policies, roughly 75% are imparting at least some of the their cost increases on consumers, according to an analysis released Wednesday of the New York Fed’s Regional Business Survey of firms in the New York and Northern New Jersey region.

Almost a third of manufacturers and about 45% of service firms report they have fully passed along all their cost increases due to higher tariff rates, the survey said. Meanwhile, another 45% of manufacturers and a third of service firms said they shifted some—but not all—of the cost increases to consumers.

It’s worth noting, however, that the NY Fed conducted the survey between May 2 and May 9. That was before the Trump administration reduced the tariff rate on goods from China to 30% from 145%—and before the recent court rulings around tariffs at the end of May.

The latest survey results found that firms implemented these price increases fairly rapidly.

“Over half of both manufacturers and service firms said they raised prices within a month of experiencing tariff-related cost increases—many within a day or week,” NY researchers found.

Tariffs have a broad impact, with about 90% of manufacturers and 75% of service firms surveyed reporting that they utilize some form of imported goods.

Manufacturers reported that the average tariff rate they paid as of early May was about 35%. Service firms reported an estimated average tariff rate of 26%. That marks a significant increase for both types of businesses from the rates they reported six months ago.

“Firms’ costs of tariffed goods may not have increased by as much as the tariffs, in part, because importers may have switched towards suppliers in other countries or in the United States; foreign suppliers may also have lowered their prices to help offset the tariffs,” NY Fed researchers noted.


10. Behind the Curtain-The Scariest AI Reality

Axios