TOPLEY’S TOP 10 July 01 2024

1. Bitcoin ETF Sideways Channel

IBIT after big run-up, now in sideways pattern, see how it breaks.


2. Bitcoin Trades 24/7 But Since Launch of ETF….Weekend Trading Volume Sinks

(Bloomberg) – The proportion of Bitcoin traded over weekends has declined to an all-time low of 16% this year, according to cryptocurrency research firm Kaiko. The drop comes in the wake of the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded-funds, which appears to have shifted the periods when Bitcoin is traded to be more in line with the schedule of traditional equity exchanges and has lowered its price volatility.

One of crypto’s noteworthy traits is that, unlike stocks, it trades during all hours of the day and even on Saturdays and Sundays. In the past, Bitcoin trading gained notoriety for its “Wild Weekends,” where the digital currency would experience wide price fluctuations.

But that phenomenon seems to be cooling since Bitcoin’s weekend trading volume has continued to dwindle from its high of 28% in 2019. The launch of Bitcoin ETFs is likely a big reason why.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boring-bitcoin-sends-weekend-trading-143000465.html


3. China Giving Back May Run-Up

FXI Large Cap China…May 20th gave bullish upside 50day thru 200day..now pulling back


4. That Same Run-Up Started Catch Up vs. India


5. U.S and India Growing Percentage of World Market Cap

Bespoke Investment Group —We began the week with our Chart of the Day on Monday looking at Bloomberg’s % of World Market Cap indices.  As shown below, the US now makes up 48% of world stock market cap, which is a record high going back to late 2003.  Ten years ago in 2014, the US made up roughly 36% of world market cap, so it has risen 12 percentage points since then.  Note that while the US makes up nearly half of world stock market cap, it only makes up about 25% of global GDP.

While most countries have seen their share of world stock market cap fall as the US has risen, India is really the only major player on the world stage that has also seen its share increase consistently over time.  As shown below, India has seen its share of world market cap more than double since its COVID low in early 2020.

https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/this-weeks-cant-miss-analysis-6-28-24


6. Nike Breaks Hard Thru 2022 Bear Market Levels


7. Silver Outperforming S&P in First Half 2024


8. This is not Meant to be Political….Hydrocarbon 2004-2023

Authored by Robert Bryce via Substack
I’ve updated it with the latest figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Statistical Review.

From Zerohedge https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/numbers-dont-lie


9. 25% of Offices Will Be Empty By 2026 -Chartr.com

While employees initially had to create home office setups by necessity, factors like work-life balance, reduced time spent commuting, and generally becoming accustomed to the comforts of their own desks (and/or couches) left many with a taste for the hybrid 9-5 model that still lingers today… despite mounting pressure from businesses trying to clamp down on remote working.

Indeed, the desire to WFH remains strong: research cited by The Economist indicates that the typical worker worldwide wants 2 days at home — an entire day more than the actual average — and a LinkedIn survey in January found that now only 39% of US employees want a fully in-person job. 

With WFH looking increasingly established, one sector in particular is struggling to adjust to the new normal: commercial real estate. In fact, although US office vacancy rates are already at record highs, according to a report from Moody’s published yesterday, they are set to continue rising up to 24% by early 2026, driven by the expiration of leases and an influx of new office buildings onto the market.

As we noted earlier this week, the pressures on the commercial real estate sector are weighing heavily on REITs and other real estate-exposed stocks… but, while there might be short-term pain, the outlook is not entirely bleak. Moody’s foresees vacancy rates eventually stabilizing as redundant offices are either demolished or repurposed into warehouses and residential properties.


10. Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA Grew Up in Russia…Why He Doesn’t Invest in China?

Excerpt #3: Why I Don’t Invest in China

The easiest question to answer of all is why I don’t invest in China. If every question were this straightforward, life would be much simpler. 

So, why do I avoid investing in China? 

For the same reason I don’t invest in Russia or any country where I operate by this one simple rule: If I were to write a negative article about the country’s leader, would I feel comfortable traveling there afterward? 

If the answer is no, I probably shouldn’t invest in that country.

Let me share a true story. 

In 2008, I went to Russia for the first and only time since leaving in 1991. This was after the government had stolen a company from its shareholders. I was planning to write a negative article about the incident and actually did write it, but I never published it. 

The reason I didn’t publish was that I realized nobody in Russia would care about the content of my article, except if I got arrested for jaywalking. They would find out I was an American citizen, Google me, find the article, and then my fate might change.

For that reason, I’ve never invested in Russia; and for the same reason, I’ve never invested in China. 

The Chinese government decided that Jack Ma said something wrong. By the way, this is something I always had an issue with regarding Charlie Munger. Somehow, he looked at Singapore and Hong Kong and fantasized about China. I looked at China and just saw a bigger version of Russia, albeit maybe slightly more pragmatic. 

This is why we never really invested in China. I don’t want to wake up one morning and find out that a CEO said something the government didn’t like, and suddenly I don’t own the company anymore.
https://investor.fm/about/

But do you know what happened during this period? Where do we begin …
1.3 million Americans died while fighting nine major wars.
Roughly 99.9% of all companies that were created went out of business.
Four U.S. presidents were assassinated.

  • 675,000 Americans died in a single year from a flu pandemic.
  • 30 separate natural disasters killed at least 400 Americans each.
  • 33 recessions lasted a cumulative 48 years.
  • The number of forecasters who predicted any of those recessions rounds to zero.
  • The stock market fell more than 10% from a recent high at least 102 times.
  • Stocks lost a third of their value at least 12 times.
  • Annual inflation exceeded 7% in 20 separate years.
  • The words “economic pessimism” appeared in newspapers at least 29,000 times, according to Google.

Our standard of living increased 20-fold in these 170 years, but barely a day went by that lacked tangible reasons for pessimism.
Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy · Collab Fund

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 28 2024

1. Nasdaq 100 Short Interest Chart

Shorts are dead


2. Largest Weekly Inflow Ever to Tech Funds


3. July Seasonality for Nasdaq

Dave Lutz Jones Trading 
Nearly a quarter of all 1-month peaks in the Nasdaq 100 happened in July.  That’s twice as many as any other month.  Quite a few factors lining up for a short- to medium-term peak soon.


4. Top 10 Companies in U.S. Equals GDP of China


5. Home Construction ETF Flat for the Year

ITB -15% from highs…flat in 2024


6. Micron -15% from Highs

MU pulling back to 50-day moving average.


7. Gold was Rising with S&P Until May 2024

Gold vs. S&P rolled over in May/June


8. Waymo Full-Time in San Fran-Morningbrew

AUTO
Waymo’s California dream come true

People who are afraid of talkative Uber drivers, rejoice: Driverless taxi rides are one step closer to ubiquity. Waymo One, the ride-hailing service that employs self-driving white Jaguars, is now available to everyone in San Francisco.
San Francisco is the second city to go full Waymo, four years after the company opened operations to the general public in Phoenix, Arizona. Not to be confused with John Mulaney’s soda-delivering robot friend, Saymo, Waymo was started 15 years ago as a project within Google’s parent, Alphabet. Multiple tests and destroyed cars later, it stands out as a pioneer in the nascent robotaxi space.
And it could be coming to a city near you. Waymo currently offers limited service in Los Angeles and plans to start operating in the San Francisco of Texas—Austin—later this year.
Everyone’s cool with this?
Waymo’s success makes it almost easy to forget that it’s had plenty of hiccups:

  • As recently as last month, a probe by the US Highway Traffic Safety Administration discovered safety incidents relating to Waymo’s cars.
  • Waymo recalled software in all its cars earlier this month after one crashed into a telephone pole.
  • In February, a San Francisco crowd set a Waymo car on fire.

And yet, Waymo is still cruising. The company said 300,000 people were on its San Francisco waitlist before it opened to the public. Waymo claims that its cars have driven riders over 3.8 million miles across SF as of April.
Its next goal…make money. As the company vies for a piece of the market dominated by Uber and Lyft, it hopes to find a way to be profitable and make back some of the billions that Google has spent to develop it.
Zoom out: Waymo is the future of the US robotaxi industry. Its closest competitor, GM’s autonomous vehicle unit Cruise, had its licenses in California suspended in October after a series of collisions.—CC

9. Value of U.S. Homes by State


10. Wealth Building

By Morgan Housel @morganhousel
Here’s how the U.S. economy performed over the last 170 years:

But do you know what happened during this period? Where do we begin …
1.3 million Americans died while fighting nine major wars.
Roughly 99.9% of all companies that were created went out of business.
Four U.S. presidents were assassinated.

  • 675,000 Americans died in a single year from a flu pandemic.
  • 30 separate natural disasters killed at least 400 Americans each.
  • 33 recessions lasted a cumulative 48 years.
  • The number of forecasters who predicted any of those recessions rounds to zero.
  • The stock market fell more than 10% from a recent high at least 102 times.
  • Stocks lost a third of their value at least 12 times.
  • Annual inflation exceeded 7% in 20 separate years.
  • The words “economic pessimism” appeared in newspapers at least 29,000 times, according to Google.

Our standard of living increased 20-fold in these 170 years, but barely a day went by that lacked tangible reasons for pessimism.
Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy · Collab Fund

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 27 2024

1. Valuation of Largest Stocks vs. DotCom


2. Hedge Funds Holding Top 20 Largest Names in S&P

The Most Popular Stocks in Hedge Fund Portfolios  Visual Capitalist By Niccolo Conte

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-most-popular-stocks-in-hedge-fund-portfolios/


3. FedEx +15% Day…Breaks to New Highs

Fedex trades like tech stock yesterday.


4. Market Projections for Interest Rates

End of 2025 4% Fed Funds-Dorsey Wright

https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-dorsey-wright-investment-research-technical-analysis-platform


5-6. The Problem with Europe

From Irrelevant Investor Blog


7. Materials Sector ETF (VAW) Relative to S&P at Covid Lows

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VAW/holdings/


8. Follow-Up to Yesterday’s Streamer War Charts….Less Original Shows


9. TSA Checkpoints New All-Time Highs in Travel


10. Primal Blueprint Living Laws

The 10 Primal Blueprint Laws: Your Ultimate Guide to Healthy Living

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 26 2024

1. Tech Still Powering Rally


2. Streak Without 2% Correction

Jefferies Zach Goldberg
335 and Counting…Bespoke noted, while the current streak is only about a third as long as the longest on record, if we get to July 17th without a one-day drop of 2%+, this will be the longest streak without a 2%+ drop since 2007.


3. Semiconductor Seasonality—NVDA 20% of Index


4. Streaming Wars-PARA Lost $1.6B on Streaming Last Year


5. Comcast Lost $2.7B on Streaming Last Year


6. NFLX Vs. CMCSA Chart


7. “Everyone Else” Catching Tesla

By Tom Randall Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-26/tesla-poised-to-lose-its-six-year-ev-market-majority-in-the-us?srnd=homepage-americas&sref=GGda9y2L


8. Home Prices 47% Higher than Early 2020

CNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/housing-affordability-price-mortgage-rates.html

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS


9. McDonalds Margins vs. WEN/BK

Barrons


10. Google Studied Gen Z

Business Insider Adam Rogers

What they heard surprised them. Young folks basically say they see no difference between going online for news versus for social interaction. Gen Zers approach most of their digital experience in what the researchers call “timepass” mode, just looking to not be bored. If they want to answer a question or learn something new, they might turn to a search engine, but they’re acquiring new information mainly via their social feeds, which are algorithmically pruned to reflect what they care about and who they trust. In short, they’ve created their own filters to process an onslaught of digitized information. Only the important stuff shows up, and if something shows up, it must be important.

Gen Zers told researchers they spend most of their digital lives in “timepass” mode — engaging in light, obligation-free content. Jigsaw and Gemic

They don’t read long articles. And they don’t trust anything with ads, or paywalls, or pop-ups asking for donations or subscriptions. “If you’re making clickbait, you have zero faith in your content,” one subject told the researchers. “And news sources — even CNN and The New York Times — do clickbait. I throw those articles away immediately.”

For Gen Z, the online world resembles the stratified, cliquish lunchroom of a 1980s teen movie. Instead of listening to stuffy old teachers, like CNN and the Times, they take their cues from online influencers — the queen bees and quarterback bros at the top of the social hierarchy. The influencers’ personal experience makes them authentic, and they speak Gen Z’s language.

“Gen Zers will have a favorite influencer or set of influencers who they essentially outsource their trust to, and then they’re incredibly loyal to everything that influencer is saying,” says Beth Goldberg, Jigsaw’s head of research. “It becomes extremely costly to fall out of that influencer’s group, because they’re getting all their information from them.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-most-trusted-news-source-online-comment-sections-google-2024-6

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 25 2024

1-2. Start with a Couple Chats from Callum Thomas

No shock…global stocks and small value hit new lows in valuation vs. large growth

Defensive Sectors-Staples, Healthcare, Utilities New Lows in ETF market share

https://www.topdowncharts.com


3. Nvidia Daily Volume Dwarfs Mag 7

Rosenberg Research
Nvidia, a $126 stock, saw trading volume of around 520 million shares on Thursday and more than 600 million on Friday. The norm so far this year has been over 400 million shares traded daily (split-adjusted), which is beyond the pale. Most of the rest of the Magnificent 7 have seen daily trading volume of between 20 million and 70 million shares, a fraction of Nvidia’s activity. Back in the early 1980s, just before I started in this business, a big day for the overall market was 20 million shares. This is not only surreal, but also it is difficult to understand in terms of the implications of this extraordinary situation when the world’s largest company sees its shares trade hands a half-billion times in one day. Why it’s concerning is that it highlights the extent to which dramatic liquidity inflows are underpinning these mega-cap stocks.
https://www.rosenbergresearch.com


4. Market Leading Semiconductor Sub-Sector -7.2% Since From Highs


5. Bitcoin Technicals Update from Bespoke Investments

Bespoke Investment Group
-Like many stocks, Bitcoin has also found itself treading water for the last several months trying to hang on to the gains from the late 2023/early 2024 rally. This morning, prices are down another 4% near the $60,000 level. After peaking above $70,000 in March, prices have been drifting lower in a sideways range, and if the April lows in the $57,000 range don’t hold, it could be a long summer.

From a longer-term perspective, $65,000 seems to be a level that Bitcoin just can’t shake. In early 2021, it briefly flirted with that level and then quickly erased more than half of its value. Later that year, it got there again and managed to stay there for a few days before crashing over 75%. It took two years and a few months to get back there again, and this time Bitcoin managed to hang around $65,000 again and even take out $70,000, but that level has failed to hold again.

https://www.bespokepremium.com/interactive/posts/think-big-blog/bespokes-morning-lineup-6-24-24-bitcoin-tries-to-hold-the-sixties


6. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy weight-loss drug approved in China

Reuters-By Andrew Silver 
The number of overweight adults in China, the world’s second most populous country, is projected to reach 540 million by 2030, 2.8 times higher than 2000 levels, a Chinese public health study showed in 2020. Numbers who are obese are seen jumping 7.5 times to 150 million.  But Novo may have a much shorter time in the Chinese market to make the most of its early-mover advantage in weight-loss drugs.
Its patent on semaglutide, the key ingredient in Wegovy and its diabetes drug Ozempic, is set to expire in less than two years in China compared to in 2031 in Europe and Japan and in 2032 in the U.S, and local drugmakers are racing to develop generic or biosimilar versions.
Novo is also in the midst of a legal fight in China over the patent, an adverse ruling in which could make it lose its semaglutide exclusivity even sooner. That would make China the first major market where it is stripped of patent protection for the drugs.  At least two Chinese firms, Livzon Pharmaceutical Group (000513.SZ), opens new tab and Hangzhou Jiuyuan Gene Engineering, have already applied to begin commercial sales of Ozempic copies.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novo-nordisk-says-semaglutide-approved-long-term-weight-management-china-2024-06-25/


7. Fixed Income Yields Above U.S. Inflation

Advisors Perspective Blog

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/data/74/74c2cda3a8e554064e51f51b42246d4f.png


8. UBS Selling Midtown Office Via Online Auction


9. Rolex Prices -40%


10. High Stress Resiliency Linked To Specific Types Of Gut Microbes And Metabolites: Study

ZEROHEDGE BY TYLER DURDEN
Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A new study came out on Friday in Nature Mental Health reveals new evidence that the gut and brain work together to build resilience to stress, contributing to a growing body of research that suggests the gut is a possible pathway to help prevent or minimize stress-related psychiatric conditions.
Specifically, a high-resilience phenotype of the gut microbiome was identified based on a mix of microbes and metabolites that had anti-inflammatory and gut-barrier integrity features. This phenotype was associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression.
Besides looking at the traits of the microbiome, the study used clinical and psychological assessment tools and MRIs that examined structural and functional roles of the brain. The study included 116 healthy participants, 18 to 60 years old.
The main finding suggests that “the microbiome is critical in shaping resilience” and modifying the gut microbiome “can optimize mental health.”

Resiliency Equates to Health

The differences in microbes and metabolites between high-resilience and low-resilience individuals were distinct in the study. High resiliency was associated with biomarkers indicating better gut barrier integrity, lower depression and anxiety psychopathology, higher cognitive function, less gray matter volume in the brain, and increased functional circuitry in the brain.
Compromised or weakened gut barrier, sometimes called “leaky gut,” is being considered as a potential factor in a number of chronic diseases. Dysbiosis, or an imbalance of gut microbes, is associated with chronic diseases and inflammation.
Analysis of the gut microbiome in the high-resilience individuals noted increased levels of microbes and metabolites that are:

  • Better at environmental adaptation
  • Able to replicate and repair DNA
  • Better at carbohydrate and energy metabolism
  • Anti-inflammatory

Ms. Church said in terms of psychosocial traits, the high-resilient individuals were also more non-judgmental, easy-going, kind, extroverted, and mindful. They had lower levels of perceived stress and also low levels of neuroticism.
She described the relationship between the gut and brain like a car with working brakes.
“If you have great working brakes, you’re able to modulate or control the situation, have emotional regulation and cognitive response,” she said. “And they had gut bacteria and metabolites associated with reduced inflammation and better gut barrier integrity.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/high-stress-resiliency-linked-specific-types-gut-microbes-and-metabolites-study