Posts in AI
Market Chartbooks, September 2026 - Equities absorb the rates shock, while commodities broaden beyond oil

September delivered a unusually severe test of the market’s internal structure. The ten-year US Treasury yield rose by 53 basis points, its largest monthly increase since September 2022; the Federal Reserve tightened for the first time since 2023; Brent gained almost 14%; and both the S&P 500 and European equities fell. Yet global equity indices ended the quarter only around 2% below record highs and remained more than 12% higher year-to-date.

The chartbooks largely confirm this resilience, but with an important qualification. The equity regime has not broken; rather, leadership has rotated towards assets capable of tolerating higher nominal growth, higher inflation and scarcer energy. Technology remains a structural leader, but energy, healthcare, materials and selected non-US markets are increasingly important. The weakest signals are concentrated in the rate-sensitive domestic sectors and in countries exposed to deteriorating terms of trade.

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Markets and Trading, AIclaus vistesenchartbooks, equities, commodities, inflation, markets
Where are we on AI and sell-side research?

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.

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AI, Economics, Business, and Finance , Web 2.0 and Blogging, Writing, Web, gaming, and digital stuff claus vistesenAI, market research
Market Chartbooks, Sep 5 2026 - The barbell blocks out the noise

These 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.

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Markets and Trading, AIclaus vistesenchartbooks, equities, commodities, inflation, markets
Equity Sector Rotation Chartbook, September 2025 - Running hot, and narrow

The 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.

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AI, Markets and Trading, Corporate Financeclaus vistesenequities, equity rotation, chartbooks