3. Tight Spreads Have Been Followed by Below Average Equity Returns
@Charlie Bilello Is this a good thing to see? Not exactly. In the past, very tight spreads have been followed by below-average equity and credit market returns over the next five years.
7. Yale Endowment Models Falters as VC Distributions Slow
Pitchbook Jessica Hamlin Yale University‘s endowment reported one of the weakest annual investment performances in the Ivy League. The endowment saw a 5.7% investment return for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, as a lack of exits in its private market investments continues to batter the portfolio’s one-year returns. Yale’s FY return places it second from the bottom of performance at the Ivy League institutions that have reported so far this year, landing just above Princeton’s 3.9% gain. After riding the highs of private market dealmaking and valuations and returning a record 40.2% on its investments in 2021, the endowment has since—along with its peers—endured nearly three years of minimal distributions from its private market managers. In the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the now $47 billion endowment returned 1.8% and 0.8%, respectively. The endowment’s one-year return placed it behind peers like Columbia and Harvard Universities, which saw 11.5% and 9.6% gains for FY 2024, respectively. In VC, initial public offerings and large M&A transactions have been scarce during this period. In Q3 2024, VC fund distributions to LPs hit a rate nearly as low as the state of returns during the global financial crisis, according to the
8. Cash Out Re-Fi’s Go Negative…Pent Up Demand When Rates Move Lower
WSJ By Ryan Dezember More homeowners are borrowing against the rising value of their properties, suggesting that the worst of the remodeling slump has passed. Analysts and building-products executives are forecasting lower interest rates will fuel a rebound next year in spending on new kitchens, bathrooms and decks, reviving a reliable source of economic activity and stock-market gains.
1. 2022 Once a Generation Experience? Stock and Bonds Both Down Teens
2. Seasonality Favorable
3. S&P Has Not Had Two Down Days in a Row for 30 Sessions
The chart -Marketwatch Investor buy-the-dip mentality has been on show of late. The chart from Jason Goepfert at Sentimentrader shows how the S&P 500 has not had two down days in a row for 30 sessions. When the stock benchmark has the temerity to register a negative day investors push it up the next. “This is one of the longest streaks in its history, with the Nasdaq not far behind,” says Goepfert. Similar streaks of buy-the-dip activity preceded gains over the next 6-12 months almost without fail, he notes.
9. Poor sleep in early midlife years could mean higher dementia risk: Study
by Anna Kutz
Study compared baseline sleep data with MRI scans taken years later
Having more ‘poor sleep characteristics’ linked to dementia development
Daytime sleepiness, early morning wakeups are two characteristics
(NewsNation) — Those tossing and turning throughout their early midlife years may be more susceptible to dementia as they age, researchers found. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, analyzed 589 people’s brain scans for a connection between sleep quality in people in their 40s and their brain age later in life. Researchers found a “dose-response relationship” between the two factors, with those who reported more poor sleep characteristics at 40 showing an advanced brain age in MRIs obtained 15 years later. Poor sleep characteristics include:
Bad sleep quality
Difficulty initiating sleep
Difficulty maintaining sleep
Early morning awakening
Daytime sleepiness
Patients who reported two or three characteristics had a brain age that was 1.6 years older than people who only reported one characteristic, which made up roughly 70% of the pool. However, those with more than three characteristics — around 8% — showed a brain age 2.6 years older than their counterparts. When will the next COVID, flu surge start? Experts weigh in “Sleep problems have been linked in previous research to poor thinking and memory skills later in life, putting people at higher risk for dementia,” study author Dr. Clémence Cavaillès told MedPage Today. “Our study which used brain scans to determine participants’ brain age, suggests that poor sleep is linked to nearly three years of additional brain aging as early as middle age.” “Advanced brain aging is associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s-related atrophy patterns,” Cavaillès added. “Therefore, poor sleep may be an important target for early interventions aimed at preventing neurocognitive decline, even before amyloid and tau accumulation begins.” The researchers used CARDIA, a long-term federal study of cardiovascular disease, to obtain baseline data. As the characteristics were self-reported, study leads acknowledged that some people’s sleep data could have been misreported.
In the crypto space, Bitcoin and Ethereum are considered two of the most credible with market caps of $1.3 trillion and $300 billion, respectively. While there is a tendency for many investors/speculators to lump the two together as highly correlated to each other, that has been far from the case over the last several months. Until mid-summer, Bitcoin and Ethereum followed similar paths, but since then, the paths of the two have diverged. The chart below shows the YTD performance of both cryptos and as recently as July 15th, both were up an identical 50% YTD. Since then, though, Ethereum has given up most of its YTD gains while Bitcoin has added modestly to its rally
Given the divergence between the two, the ratio of bitcoin to Ethereum has widened to just under 27 which is a level not seen in more than three years. As shown in the chart below, this is still half of where the ratio was in early 2021 (it was even higher than that in 2000), but in the short term, Bitcoin has become the “Mag 1” of the crypto space.
8. Why countries are seeking to build “sovereign AI”-Sherwood
Nvidia’s CEO says nations can’t afford to miss out on this technology, but an AI created and controlled by the government could be dangerous.Jon Keegan The King of Denmark just “plugged in” his country’s very own supercomputer, with NvidiaNVDA $141.06 (0.75%) CEO Jensen Huang by his side. The country’s new AI system is named “Gefion,” after a goddess from Danish mythology, and it’s powered by 1,528 of Nvidia’s popular H100 GPUs. Denmark’s new supercomputer is an example of what Nvidia calls “sovereign AI,” which the company defines as “a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks.” But for countries seeking to rewrite history and control the information its citizens access, the movement toward sovereign AI comes with serious concerns. Huang said at the announcement: “What country can afford not to have this infrastructure, just as every country realizes you have communications, transportation, healthcare, fundamental infrastructures — the fundamental infrastructure of any country surely must be the manufacturer of intelligence.” Selling its powerful AI GPUs and computing infrastructure to governments is a lucrative new business for the company. Nvidia and its partners have already sold AI systems to India, Japan, France, Italy, New Zealand, and Switzerland, as well as countries with histories of human rights abuses like Singapore and UAE. In Nvidia’s Q2 2025 earnings press release, Huang cited sovereign AI as one of multiple future “multibillion-dollar vertical markets.” Nvidia’s pitch to governments argues that building their own AI systems is a strategic move, helping secure their own supply of advanced-computing resources for its scientists, researchers, and domestic industries.
10. A 3-Step Process to Break a Cycle of Frustration, Stress, and Fighting at Work-HBR
by Annie McKee
Summary. When we have a conflict at work, most of us blame the other person — an incompetent boss, a passive aggressive colleague, or the resource-hoarding peer in another department. But having fewer disagreements at work starts with working on yourself…more
Bring to mind a conflict at work, and you’ll probably have the perpetrator in mind: your incompetent boss, that passive-aggressive colleague, or the resource-hoarding peer in another department. We spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about these people, avoiding them, and fighting with them. But if you want to manage conflict in the workplace, you can’t start with someone else. Usually there isn’t just one culprit, and if you want less fighting and a more enjoyable, productive workplace, you have to understand your own role in it and what you can do to break a vicious cycle that starts with frustration and stress and ends with workplace wars.
Constant challenges breed frustration. A healthy dose of frustration can be good, leading to determination and creativity. Unfortunately, instead of the occasional obstacle at work, we are often buried in an avalanche of problems. We don’t have the resources we need to do our job, and the goalposts keep moving. We blame the relentless, do-more-with-less nature of our shortsighted, quarterly-results-driven business climate for our frustration, or we pin responsibility on unending change or corporate culture. Whatever the reason, many of us are chronically frustrated at work.
Toxic emotions are stressful. Chronic frustration often morphs into fear and anger — “destructive emotions” that serve as an early warning system that we’re in danger. When the alarm rings, our bodies go into high alert, adrenaline and hormones course through our veins, muscles tighten so that we can move quickly, hands sweat, and breathing and heart rates speed up. This would all be well and good if it happened infrequently and saved us from actual danger. Unfortunately, frustration, low-grade fear, irritation, and even rage are familiar companions at work. Many of us are hyperalert all the time. We don’t thrive physically, we are disengaged and unhappy at work, and our brains don’t work properly.
Stress feeds conflict — and conflict breeds anger, resentment, and unhappiness. It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that stress isn’t all bad. In fact, when we’re under pressure, we may perform well on routine, well-rehearsed tasks. But when we’re under chronic stress, our complex thinking, reasoning, and social skills all suffer. Our ability to process and use information is compromised, as is our judgment. We have more difficulty with being flexible or open to new ideas, and we start seeing things in simplistic ways. We overreact to minor irritants, and everything and everyone starts looking like a threat. In this state, we are more likely to cause problems than solve them — especially in relationships. This is when the vicious cycle becomes an endless loop. We don’t think straight. We pick fights. People aren’t pleased, and they let us know. Stress escalates, and our reasoning and behavior suffer even more. We lash out, hide out, or opt out.
A Three-Step Process to Interrupt the Vicious Cycle If you want to break this cycle and have fewer destructive conflicts at work, the first step is to become more aware of your feelings and reactions to pressure and stress. The second step is to consciously manage your emotions, and the third is to start seeing people as people, not as threats.
Step 1: Develop self-awareness. To interrupt the frustration-stress-conflict cycle, you need to begin by recognizing what causes you to feel thwarted, scared, or threatened and what drives you to the battleground. This sounds easy, but even well-intentioned people typically put self-reflection last on the list — there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Telling yourself you don’t have time or are not inclined to “work on yourself” will keep you stuck in a bunker mentality at work. Instead, make time and tap into curiosity and courage to try to figure out what kinds of situations (and people) send you into the stratosphere. The more you know about your triggers, the better you can control your emotions.
Step 2: Employ emotional self-control. Once you’re aware of the emotions that are driving your behavior, you can employ another important emotional intelligence competency: emotional self-control. This is what enables us to check and channel our emotions so that we don’t get stuck in a permanent amygdala hijack. We can manage negative feelings, see reality through a clear lens, and stop lashing out when we feel threatened.
Step 3: Build friendships at work. To minimize stress and conflict at work, we need to replace “I, me, mine” with “We, us, ours.” We need to stop seeing each other in terms of what we can get, and replace it with what we can give. This shift would result in less stress and fewer negative emotions. It would also lead to warmer, friendlier relationships — something most people need and want at work. Developing self-awareness, increasing your emotional self-control, and recharging relationships at work takes commitment, but you don’t have to remake yourself to improve how you deal with strife. Here are a few practical tips to help you with the above steps:
Build mindfulness practices into your daily life. Mindfulness practices like yoga, meditation, deep breathing, and taking a solitary walk are invaluable when it comes to developing self-awareness, learning to manage our emotions, and short-circuiting the stress response. The research is mounting by the day: Even a few minutes of slow, deep breathing several times a day helps us to clear our minds, calm down, and choose our actions more consciously.
Schedule time for self-reflection. Like mindfulness practices, self-reflection helps tremendously with self-awareness and self-control. It’s hard to find time to think about our viewpoints and actions in our always-on world, however. So start small. You might, for example, reserve 20 minutes at the end of each week to reflect on what went well and what didn’t. But remember: Don’t fall prey to the “beat myself up” trap and spend this time lamenting what you didn’t get done or what you should’ve done differently. All that does is engender more stress.
Lean in to your natural empathy and compassion. Concern for others, empathy, and compassion help us to survive and thrive. Like self-reflection, this muscle may not be one you use often at work. But you can get better pretty quickly if you make a point to ask yourself questions that help you understand others’ points of view. Try these:
What is he thinking and feeling about the situation?
How is she different from me? How are we the same?
What can I do to make him feel better about this situation and about me?
As you ask yourself these questions, remember that we all have a story — loves, sorrows, and joys in life and at work. And chances are that while another person’s story might seem different from yours, our human experiences are remarkably similar. As tempting as it is to blame others for our strife-ridden companies, the best way to make work a more enjoyable, productive experience is to lean in to our natural empathy, learn to care for ourselves and others, and take responsibility for our feelings and actions.
@Charlie Bilello Within the US the market, we’ve seen a factor rotation since July 10 with Small Caps ($VBR) outperforming Large Caps ($SPY) and Value ($IWD) outperforming Growth ($IWF).
This is a reversal from the prior secular trend which saw Large Cap outperformance hit its highest level since October 1999 and Growth stock outperformance hit its highest level since March 2000.
2. Sector Performance Post Rate Cuts
Advisor Perspectives -by Tony DeSpirito of BlackRock
5. Southern state could become ‘white gold’ boom town after $150 billion lithium reserve discovery
By NIKKI MAIN SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Arkansas is sitting on a $150 billion ‘hidden treasure’ trove of lithium that could meet the global demand for EV batteries by 2030. The US Geological Survey (USGS) found between five and 19 million tons of lithium in the Smackover Formation, which is nine times the amount needed to meet the ongoing electric vehicle demand in the US by the end of the decade. The metal is a necessary component for batteries used in EVs and can be extracted from the brine wastewater from the same mines that produce oil and gas. Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience,’ USGS Director David Applegate said. ‘This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues.’ Several companies, including Exxon Mobil, have already begun drilling exploratory wells to extract the lithium from 4,000 feet below ground. The global demand for lithium has drastically increased in recent years as countries move to transition from using fossil fuels in gas-powered cars to electric and hybrid vehicles.
7. Why are We Leading Our Peers? Morningbrew We Work Harder
Why the US economy is leading its peers Anna Kim While Italians scoff at Americano slop and Japanese people cringe at stateside 7-Eleven hot dogs, Americans are having the last laugh when it comes to economic prosperity. The US economy is doing better than that of any other member of the rich countries club (aka the Group of Seven), the International Monetary Fund said yesterday. The global economy watcher upgraded its prediction for US GDP growth to 2.8% this year, compared to the 0.9% average for all G7 countries. Economists attribute the strength of the US economy to rising inflation-adjusted wages and strong consumer spending, all fueled by longtime investment. Experts say it boils down to Americans being more efficient workers.
Americans get more done
US workers are more productive than their counterparts in Europe and Japan, but probably not because they take shorter vacations or drink less wine at lunch. US companies have more money to invest in innovation due to lower energy prices and strong government support. Workers benefit from updated machinery and software to operate more efficiently. According to The Economist:
The average US worker will churn out $171,000 of goods and services this year, compared to $120,000 for a European employee and $96,000 for one in Japan.
Americans’ hourly productivity has risen 70% since 1990, compared to just 29% in Europe and 25% in Japan, according to Conference Board data analyzed by The Economist.
The US owes its economic powerhouse status to a robust business environment, in which workers switch jobs often and new companies pop up, according to The Economist. These conditions give rise to its dominant tech sector and other lucrative industries that create economic value. But…productivity growth is declining worldwide, including in the US, which is bad news for global economic growth. AI might reverse this trend. Some economists are optimistic that it will boost productivity and turbocharge economies, but the IMF cites experts who say that governments need to do more to promote a competitive environment and support smaller businesses.—SK
10. ‘Silent Phase’ Of Alzheimer’s Begins Decades Before Symptoms, NIH Study Suggests
BY TYLER DURDEN ZEROHEDGE
Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Recent advancements in Alzheimer’s disease research show a promising shift in the understanding of the memory-robbing disorder, suggesting that crucial brain changes can occur decades before symptoms manifest. A recent study has identified a two-phase progression of Alzheimer’s, highlighting a silent phase marked by subtle brain changes long before cognitive decline becomes apparent. Alzheimer’s disease has a long pre-symptomatic period, with related changes taking place in the brain “10, 15, even 20 years before the onset of memory and thinking symptoms,” Igor Camargo Fontana, Alzheimer’s Association director of scientific conference programming, told The Epoch Times. This research could also open new avenues for earlier detection and targeted treatments. “One of the challenges to diagnosing and treating Alzheimer’s is that much of the damage to the brain happens well before symptoms occur,” Dr. Richard J. Hodes, director of the NIH National Institute on Aging, said in a statement. “The ability to detect these early changes means that, for the first time, we can see what is happening to a person’s brain during the earliest periods of the disease.”
The Early Phase: Silent and Gradual Damage
A recent National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study provided new insights into the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, potentially paving the way for earlier detection and treatment options. The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, say that Alzheimer’s affects the brain in two distinct phases: an early, silent phase characterized by subtle changes, and a later, symptomatic phase marked by widespread damage and the accumulation of amyloid plaques, long associated with the disorder. Researchers have found that the initial phase of Alzheimer’s is insidious, unfolding slowly over time and occurring well before noticeable memory problems arise. During this phase, a gradual buildup of beta-amyloid plaques and tangles—hallmarks of Alzheimer’s—can be observed. This early “quiet” phase is marked by subtle changes in brain cells, particularly inhibitory neurons, which may be among the first to become vulnerable, disrupting communication between brain cells, according to Fontana. These cells are mostly located in a brain region that is associated with memory, vision, and language. The research specifically identified the death of somatostatin inhibitory neurons, a group previously underestimated in their role within Alzheimer’s pathology. This finding challenges the prevailing notion that the disease primarily harms excitatory neurons responsible for facilitating brain cell communication.
8. What’s at Stake in a Strained Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership- DEALBOOK NEWSLETTER
Andrew Sorkin But tension is building in what Altman once called “the best bromance in tech.” Microsoft began to get worried after last year’s upheaval at OpenAI and moved to hedge its A.I. bets. That included spending at least $650 million to hire most employees from Inflection, an OpenAI rival led by the former Google executive Mustafa Suleyman. At Microsoft, Suleyman’s role includes building tech that could supplant OpenAI’s products, which has riled some of the ChatGPT parent’s executives. From The Times:
Some OpenAI staff recently complained that Mr. Suleyman yelled at an OpenAI employee during a recent video call because he thought the start-up was not delivering new technology to Microsoft as quickly as it should, according to two people familiar with the call. Others took umbrage after Microsoft’s engineers downloaded important OpenAI software without following the protocols the two companies had agreed on, the people said.
OpenAI executives are also complaining that Microsoft isn’t providing enough computing power. The start-up has already negotiated their to let it sign a $10 billion contract with Oracle for additional compute, and secured reductions in how much Microsoft charges for its cloud resources.
Both sides are working with investment banks — Goldman Sachs for OpenAI and Morgan Stanley for Microsoft — over how much of a stake the tech giant should have when the A.I. start-up becomes a for-profit entity, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Rob Fraser discusses the mindset required to excel in elite sports and business.
“Sometimes you don’t push as hard because there’s no personal mission there. There’s no reason to push. You don’t necessarily take that mindset into everything you do, but it’s really helpful for those larger goals. And it’s similar with business; I think success in any large goal comes down to your ability to endure over the long term. Perseverance. Resilience. People always talk about hacks and quick wins and “How can you shorten the timeline?” And ultimately I think that leads to maybe a quick win here and there, but not longevity. In business and in sport, careers are built on longevity, and that really comes down to a mindset because along that path on anything worth doing, there are just so many ups and downs and sideways and there’s just so much going on.”
