The semiconductors ETF $SMH is up roughly +153% over the past year, the strongest 1-year performance on record going back to 2001 and roughly 4 standard deviations above the long-run average.
As DataTrek notes, staying bullish from here increasingly requires confidence that the semiconductor cycle and AI-driven backlog can remain durable for much longer. Source: The Market Ear
World Cup in one chart
Source: Zerohedge, BofA
The S&P500 has rallied 16% since the March 30 lows.
10 stocks have been responsible for almost 70% of this rally, with Alphabet $GOOG and Nvidia $NVDA alone accounting for 25% of the whole index’s returns. Source: Negligible Capital
The Chinese central bank remains the most unwavering “buy-the-dip” force in gold.
Source: Shanghai Macro Strategist
$GOOGL trades at 133x free cash flow.
For context: its pre-COVID multiple was ~20x. And free cash flow hasn't grown since 2021. GQG Partners — one of the world's top institutional investors — just published a full research note titled: "Not Much Alpha Left in This Bet." Their three concerns: 1. AI is cannibalizing Google's core search revenue. Over 50% of searches may now end without a single click. No click = no ad impression. 2. CapEx is exploding. Google Cloud's capital spending now exceeds the revenue it generates. $175–185B in CapEx planned for 2026. Google Cloud generated $ 59B in revenue in 2025. 3. Advertising is cyclical. When the economy slows, ad budgets are the first to be cut. The last time this happened — 2022 — the stock fell 40%. Is Alphabet priced for perfection ? Source: Thierry from arvy @ThierryBorgeat
US job growth continued to strengthen in April, Goldilocks is back but read the fine print.
Today's US jobs report delivered exactly what risk assets wanted to see: a labor market strong enough to dispel recession fears, soft enough to keep the Fed in play. The headline numbers: ▪️ NFP: +115K — nearly double the consensus, despite Middle East war headwinds ▪️ Unemployment: 4.3% — steady, still well below the 4.5% line in the sand ▪️ Average hourly earnings: +0.2% MoM — below 0.3% consensus ▪️ Weekly hours worked: higher — demand-side resilience ▪️ Participation: 61.8% — softer than the 62.0% expected ▪️ Net revisions: -16K — March revised up, February down Why this matters for portfolios: The wage print is the story. Combined with this week's ULC and ECI data, the message is unambiguous: the labor market is less an inflation engine. That's a rather good news for the Fed (but don't expect them to cut in June) — and for duration, equities, and risk assets broadly. But here's the uncomfortable second-order read: What's "good news" for markets, muted wage growth, contained earnings — is the same data point feeding a deeper structural story: labor's declining share of GDP. Resilient demand. Constrained supply (retirements, fewer immigrants). And compensation that no longer keeps pace with productivity or capital returns. Markets celebrate. The Fed's job looks slightly easier. But the economic, social and political implications of this divergence are only beginning to surface. Source chart: Yahoo Finance
This is such an important chart.
Where the cost of labor is cheaper, it doesn't make much sense yet to use AI. AI can probably augment some of the work, but replacing the human is just not cost effective. But this will probably not be the case forever. The simpler tasks will become cost effective from an AI perspective at some point, as AI models become more efficient. Source: Ayesha Tariq, CFA
The Fed is steadily loading up on U.S. Treasuries at a pace not seen since 2008
$237 billion in purchases since December 2025. Total holdings now sit at $4.4 trillion, the highest since July 2024. More striking: Treasuries now make up 65.9% of the Fed's total assets, the highest share since March 2008. That's a central bank stepping in to hold up a bond market under pressure from record fiscal spending. The question is how long it can keep doing it before the balance sheet becomes the story. Source: Bloomberg, Arbor Data Science
