I should be honest about my bias here. On a spectrum between those who see AI as a technology that overpromises and will eventually underdeliver, and those—like Marc Andreessen and DHH—who see it as a transformative technology with enormous promise, I am firmly in the latter camp. All that really means, however, is that I am choosing to lean into the technology for two reasons. First, because I genuinely think it is cool. Second, because whether I like it or not, it will transform the industry in which I work. I can’t afford not to understand and use it.
Read MoreThese chartbooks capture market themes which presently exist in a vacuum from which the oxygen has been sucked out by fears over the sell-off in bonds, its drivers and implications for monetary policy, and the AI story, which continues to capture the attention of bulls and bears alike. These two themes will continue to dominate the main market narrative as speculation intensifies over whether the data are pulling the Fed towards tightening, perhaps as early as this month, or whether it will ride out the storm with no change in rates. In the AI story, meanwhile, the next big test of the bull market’s strength and resilience will be the much-awaited IPOs of the frontier labs—OpenAI and Anthropic—which require significant and ongoing injections of capital to stay alive, even as they remain the principal conduits through which AI is transmitted to the real economy.
Read MoreThe September 2025 edition of the S&P 500 equity sector rotation chartbook can be found here. You can read more about the methodology and underlying assets here. This chartbook has been prepared with 1y total return, which is a departure from the first version with six-month returns. I honestly didn’t think about this when I pulled the data from Investing.com, as I normally work with 1y total return data for portfolio construction and the like. This shouldn’t make a huge difference to the main conclusions, though in some cases it might obviously shift the sectors around in the key diagram, compared to a six-month return framework. If you have a preference for future versions of this chartbook, let me know.
Read MoreI have been inspired, by listening to recent conversations on the Glenn Show, to delve into the writings of Thomas Sowell. This is a daunting task since the man has written a huge number of books, articles and essays. The Thomas Sowell Reader, however, seems to be a representative collection and a decent place to start. I am enjoying the reading experience so far. TS writes from a conservative, and fiercely pro-free market, perspective, at least in this the volume mentioned above. This invariably will put some readers off. But you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of punchy, yet eloquent, non-technical exposition of economics, social and political issues. The essay on the economics of discrimination and the small tract on “unfunded mandates” are particularly feisty and enjoyable.
Read More