1. Higher Earnings Equals Higher Stock Market
S&P 500 TTM operating EPS are on pace to hit another record high (75% of companies have reported Q4 earnings), up 9.5% over the past year.
Biello
2. Largest 50 Stock XLG Sideways Channel…Which Way Will It Break?
StockCharts
3. BuyBack Window is Wide Open
GS noted, “We now estimate ~80% of the S&P 500 are in open window with ~85% in open window by the end of the week. We are expecting open window to run for another month.”
4. From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading
39% of February FMS investors say a recessionary trade war is the biggest ‘tail risk’, overtaking inflation causing Fed to hike (31%), and followed by AI bubble (13%).” – BofA Fund Manager Survey.
BofA
5. Natural Gas +23% Year to Date -UNG
StockCharts
6. MSCI Europe Up 2x U.S. 2025
Nasdaq
7. Chinese Internet Stocks Stop Right at October Highs…
StockCharts
8. Housing Market—Toll Bros -33% from Highs…Earnings Yesterday
StockCharts
9. Lowest Rents for Singles
NYT
10. Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban Agree: This Is the Best Investment You Will Ever Make
Buffett and Cuban certainly value investing in and owning businesses, but both agree this investment makes an even bigger difference.
Via INC: Plenty of people ask Warren Buffett for investment advice. No surprise, since over his lifetime—and as a result, at least in part due to what he calls the Methuselah effect—Buffett has turned a $10 million net worth at age 30 into an estimated $147 billion.
Plenty of people also ask Mark Cuban for investing advice. Not necessarily for the stock market, but as a longtime panelist on Shark Tank, for investing in startups and small businesses.
Those are clearly different forms of investing, but what does each say when asked to name the best investments they’ve ever made?
Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
Buffett doesn’t feel investing in stocks, or even businesses, is the best investment you can make.
As Buffett says:
Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen.
But if you’ve got talent yourself, and you’ve maximized your talent, you’ve got a tremendous asset that can return 10-fold.
Improving your skills, gaining experience, broadening your perspective, expanding your network—unlike many other investments, those things don’t depreciate in value. Inflation doesn’t lessen their value.
Once you gain a skill, it can never be taken away from you—and on the flip side, can be leveraged for the rest of your life.
Mark Cuban’s Best Investment
Here’s what Cuban said when asked by Men’s Health to name some of the best investments he’s ever made:
Some of the best investments I’ve ever made were investing in myself, first and foremost. When you’re first starting, you may or may not have a job. You don’t have any money. You’re at a complete uncertainty about your career.
What I learned early on is that if I put in the effort, I can learn almost anything. It may take me a long time, but by putting in the effort I taught myself technology, I taught myself to program … it was time-consuming, painfully so, but that investment in myself has paid dividends for the rest of my life.
I learned that learning truly is a skill … and that by continuing to learn to this day, I can compete and get ahead of most people, because the reality is most people don’t put in the time to learn.
And that’s always given me a competitive advantage.
Knowledge, once gained, can never be taken away—and can be applied to the rest of your life, for the rest of your life. Investing in yourself will produce better long-term results than any other investment you can make, if only because investing in yourself is one of the few investment outcomes you can almost totally control.
Learn to sell—a skill Cuban feels is crucial to business success—and you can forever generate revenue. Learn to understand the basics of accounting and finance—a skill Buffett feels is crucial to business success—and you can forever analyze and improve your business.
Put in effort. Get a return. Guaranteed ROI. No wonder investing in yourself—your knowledge, your skills, your experience—is the best investment you can make.