TOPLEY’S TOP 10 January 15, 2025

1. 10-Year Treasury Yield & Fed Cutting Cycles: What to Expect

Gundlach spent much time discussing December’s big yield curve steepening — when rates on longer-term bonds rise more than shorter ones. Roiling stocks, the 10-year and 30-year Treasury notes have been flirting with 5% levels amid concerns over inflation, a strong economy and fewer rate cuts in 2025. He notes that during past Fed cutting cycles, the 10-year Treasury has never gone up, yet now it has by 100 basis points. “Something is different this time,” he adds.

CNBC


2. 30-Year Mortgage Rates Up 7%

This chart shows massive outperformance of Argentina ETF ARGT vs. Brazil EWZ.

Wealth of Common Sense


3. Higher Rates and Small Cap Stocks

Bespoke Investment Group on R2K vs. 200DMA. The Russell 2000 traded below its 200-day moving average (DMA) on an intraday basis Monday, ending what was the index’s sixth streak of a year or more without trading below that level. Following the end of each of the five prior streaks, the Russell 2000 was higher a year later with a median gain of 13.45%.

Bespoke Investment Group


4. Worst to First-Energy and Healthcare

That is particularly true for the S&P 500 energy sector. It is the top-performing sector-year to date, with the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ,an ETF that more or less tracks the S&P 500 energy sector, up 5.4% through Monday’s close, according to Healthcare stocks were in second, up 2.8% year-to-date, while the materials sector — last year’s worst performer — was up 1.2% through Monday. Both the healthcare Select Sector SPDR ETF and the Materials Select Sector SPDR ETF have seen similar performance.

MarketWatch


5. These Sectors Are Helping The Equal Weight S&P Hold 200-Day

Stockcharts


6. All Wall Street Strategists are Bullish

Business Insider


7. Goldman Good Number Today…Double in Stock from Late 2023

Stockcharts


8. Marc Andreessen on China Manufacturing

Autism Capital


9. Stats on American Couples & Marriage

John Burns Research


10. You Make the Job; It Doesn’t Make You

From the Daily Stoic Blog: There was once a promising young Greek politician named Epaminondas whose rise threatened some more established leaders (his full story in Right Thing, Right Now). As a way to blunt his potential, they ‘promoted’ him to a job overseeing the city’s sewers and water.

It was supposed to be a humiliation—or at the very least, a dead end job. Instead, he did such a good job, he endeared himself to the population. With discipline and earnestness, Plutarch wrote, “he proceeded to transform that insignificant office into a great and respected honor, even though previously it had involved nothing more than overseeing the clearing of dung and the diverting of water from the streets.”

Whatever we do, if we do it well, is noble. We told a related story in the Daily Dad email recently from Toni Morrison. She came home one day complaining about her job cleaning someone’s house to her father. She expected him to get angry on her behalf or to pity her. Instead, he said, “Listen. You don’t live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home.”

What he was teaching her, Morrison later wrote, became a set of principles she based her life around.

1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.

2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.

3. Your real life is with us, your family.

4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

What’s in our control is how we do the job. What’s in our control is who we are while we do the job. Whether it’s appreciated, whether it’s an impressive or a lowly job, whether a project succeeds or fails–that’s not up to us. What’s up to us is that we do our best, what’s up to us is that we are the best we’re capable of being.

The rest? The Stoics say is not worth worrying about.