Market Indicators

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

In the first quarter of this year, as the Strait of Hormuz closed and oil prices exploded, Berkshire Hathaway made a couple of moves that might have flown under people’s radars.It cut its stake in Chevron by roughly a third. Then it bought an airline.

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Second-quarter earnings were strong, particularly in technology, but crowded ownership often determined whether good news was rewarded. The selloff in semiconductors arguably reflected crowded positioning and concerns surrounding the sustainability of the earnings boom. The net result: multiples compressed while earnings revisions held up.

In September 2024 and June 2025, I wrote memos that were critical of governments’ attempts to override the laws of economics, based on my conviction that trying to do so is likely to prove ineffective and potentially harmful.

This week, there are a few things that we need to pay attention to: the large move in interest rates and what it means (and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean!); and the constant barrage of doom and gloom on energy and AI. Let’s jump in.

Last week we looked at the Federal Reserve’s inflation problem. This week, let’s look at the other half of its mandate: maximum employment.

Since ChatGPT was first released in 2022, the artificial intelligence (AI) trade has dominated US equity markets. Gains have been driven by three interrelated forces: enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, growing concentration in the largest technology companies and strong price momentum.

This year has presented no shortage of challenges for investors. Geopolitical conflict, trade tensions, rising energy prices, shifting interest rate expectations and an increasingly active political backdrop have each taken turns dominating the headlines. Yet despite these obstacles, the economy has continued to expand, corporate profits have marched higher and markets have climbed one wall of worry after another.

The U.S. economy has traveled farther than most forecasters expected. Strong household spending, healthy labor markets and continued business investment have kept the expansion on course.

Investment bubbles are inherently dangerous beasts. Like a natural Ponzi scheme, an investment bubble needs to draw in ever larger amounts of capital to keep it going. Nothing attracts capital like apparent success, so an inflating bubble that is creating fortunes for those who got in early will inevitably draw in capital. Unfortunately, this means the amount of money lost when the bubble bursts can outstrip the gains created on its way up.

Looking ahead, markets are priced for additional hikes. And our base case is that the FOMC will likely deliver one or two more 25-bp rate hikes through this year and into early next. However, looking further out, anticipating appropriate Fed policy through a financial-conditions-targeting framework has its own limitations. Hence, a neutral rate anchor is still useful.

Global growth remains resilient but uneven. In the United States, expansion is supported by private demand, a stable labor market and AI investment, while Europe and Japan continue to show surprising strength despite ongoing risks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are developing faster than investors anticipated just a few years ago, fueling a popular narrative that AI will trigger widespread job cuts. Yet there’s little evidence to back this view. Instead, we find that AI is changing hiring patterns, altering skill requirements and shifting the mix of work performed within firms.

The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is more than a regional milestone — it is a shift in competition among U.S. capital markets. After months of anticipation, the TXSE reached a major landmark last week as Texas Capital’s TXS and OILT ETFs became its first primary listings, followed a day later by PWRX as the first new ETF to launch on the exchange.

Markets have dealt with serious whiplash from the Federal Reserve’s dramatic policy pivot this year. In just six months, the Fed funds futures market went from pricing in two rate cuts totaling 50 basis points to now pricing in two rate hikes in 2026.

It wasn’t that long ago that Kevin Warsh’s leading critics were saying his biggest problem was that he wasn’t “independent” from President Trump, that if Trump told him to “jump” he’d ask “how high?” Or, in this particular situation, “how low should interest rates go?”

The Federal Reserve delivered the 25-basis-point increase the markets had largely anticipated, but the overall message was somewhat more hawkish than expected. The decision was unanimous, and the new dot plot points to another rate increase this year. Four participants apparently see the possibility of raising rates at each remaining meeting, so there is clearly a meaningful hawkish contingent on the FOMC.

The week began with calls for a potential slowdown in AI spending amid growing safety concerns and included a midweek Fed rate hike for the first time since 2023. The S&P 500 finished slightly lower for the second week in a row despite continuing signs that economic growth is strong. Shorter-term bond yields pushed higher as investors priced in the potential for additional rate hikes, both in the U.S. and abroad.

This has been an incredible year in that Wall Street has spent all of it raising its earnings estimates, and the second-quarter season only accelerated the trend. Analysts began the year expecting S&P 500 earnings to grow about 15%.

Early this week, I was in Los Angeles at the All-In Summit along with about 4,000 others, including tech investors, money managers and entrepreneurs. The ticket wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it.

Chris Galipeau and Taylor Topousis discuss high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

As summer officially gives way to fall on September 22, it's not just the weather that's changing. The global monetary policy landscape is shifting as well. After spending much of the past two years focused on supporting growth, central banks have increasingly turned their attention back to inflation, especially with oil prices climbing back above $100 per barrel.

The K-shaped economy is real, and it is old. What changed isn’t the shape of the economy; it’s just that the media found a narrative that gets lots of clicks and views, and we let headlines do our thinking for us.

We are never going to get rid of the FOMC for political and practical reasons. For those of us who would like to see the market set rates without an FOMC intervening, this is as good as it’s going to get.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) made something clear this week that markets had been reluctant to accept. Apparently, the easing cycle isn't paused, it's over for now.

The U.S. Federal Reserve delivered on consensus expectations by raising its policy rate by 25 basis points (bps) at its September meeting.

Stocks have recently hit new highs, supported by strong earnings growth, but the bond market is sending a more cautious signal.

Fed policymakers unanimously voted to raise rates 25 basis points, the first hike since 2023, and vowed to fight inflation. Another hike is seen this year, but 2027 is in question.

Last December we published Riding the Wave: The Anatomy of Booms & Bubbles. In it, we argued that the AI spending boom would continue through 2026 without tipping into ‘bubble’ mania, and that the right posture was to stay overweight stocks while favoring US assets. Nine months on, we think that call has aged well.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August was generally in line with expectations. However, a slightly hotter-than-expected core CPI reading buoyed expectations of a rate hike at the Federal Reserve meeting in September.

The August employment report was much stronger than expected and reinforces my view that the U.S. economy remains remarkably resilient. Payrolls increased by 162,000, above every estimate, while revisions added another 55,000 jobs to the previous two months.

A rate hike on Wednesday is now very likely but would also be unusual, and perhaps dangerous, at least as far as the past generation of monetary policy goes.

A week of rising oil prices and higher interest rates sent stocks lower across the board as investors increasingly priced in the likelihood that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will begin a rate-hiking cycle at its September 16 meeting. Following the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, futures markets implied an 88 percent probability that the Fed will, or at least should, raise rates at next week's meeting.

Chris Galipeau discusses high-conviction insights that go beyond media headlines.

Most coverage of Trump Accounts treats them as a parenting question, or a discussion comparing them to 529s. For founders and business owners the analysis of them is slightly more nuanced.

Demand for fixed income ETFs hit a historic high-water mark in September. Investors and advisors turned to fixed income ETFs at a record-breaking pace, driving 2026 net inflows of $446 billion past all-time levels with months to spare. The massive tide of capital arrives at a critical juncture.

In our final chapter for this series, we will dig into that exact question. Unfortunately, there is good and bad news, and it can be summed up in a single sentence.

Last week, the refining margin on European gasoil, the benchmark that sets the price of diesel and heating oil across much of the world, closed at roughly $94 a barrel over Brent crude, according to Bloomberg data. That figure is normally somewhere between $12 and $18.

Every few months, a new essay declares that the US debt trap has finally sprung. The latest one making the rounds from The Economist is well written and genuinely unsettling. It argues that Washington has borrowed so recklessly that the Federal Reserve no longer dares to raise interest rates. Doing so, the piece warns, would detonate the whole structure and send financing costs spiraling out of control.

Equity markets generally moved lower as rising yields and energy prices created a more challenging backdrop. Higher yields can be particularly difficult for long-duration equities, where a greater share of expected cash flows sits further into the future.

Some investors are questioning how much further this year’s rally can run with the S&P 500 Index up 12.3% through the first eight months of the year. Encouragingly, history suggests that strong starts tend to persist; when the S&P 500 has gained more than 10% through August it has advanced from September through December in 25 of 28 instances, an 89% positive hit rate.

Occasionally, we are confronted with decisions where there are no easy options. The prevailing circumstances bound our choices, and we may face criticism no matter what we do. Collectively, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) finds itself in just such a situation as it prepares for its upcoming meeting.

The recent employment report provided reassurance that the US labor market remains resilient. The economy added 162,000 jobs in August; the previous two months’ gains were revised higher by a combined 55,000, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%.

There is so much going on, it is hard to know where to begin. The data is all over the place. I had a long and epic dinner in New York with David Bahnsen, Rene Aninao, and Brian Syztel which has my mind buzzing with ideas and new concepts.

U.S. equities were little changed on the week – the S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent, the NASDAQ gained 0.4 per cent, and the Russell 2000 added 0.12 per cent – but those modest moves masked a far more turbulent week in the global rates markets.