Category: Market Insights
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A Different Setup for Earnings Season
To view as a PDF, click here. Q1 earnings begin next week with valuations less extended, breadth improving, and inflation back in the frame. A Better Starting Point For the last several quarters, earnings season has often felt like a referendum on a narrow group of AI-driven mega-cap leaders. This time, the starting point is…
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When the Usual Diversifiers Stop Diversifying
To view as a PDF, click here. Markets have a way of reminding investors that “defense” is not a single trade. In a typical growth scare, the playbook is familiar: equities weaken, Treasury yields fall, long bonds rally, and gold benefits from the move toward safety. That has not been the pattern in late March.…
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Is Your Asset Allocation Working? Volatility is Rewriting the Correlation Playbook
To view as a PDF, click here. In higher-volatility regimes, diversification is not assumed, it is validated. This week’s volatility spike has an obvious catalyst: rising geopolitical tension in the Middle East and the renewed uncertainty that comes with it. However, the more important development has been happening in the background. The Cboe Volatility Index…
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Broadening Leadership Can Be Healthy, But the Transition Is Often Choppy
To view as a PDF, click here. For much of the past cycle, market performance has been driven by a very narrow group of mega-cap stocks. That dynamic can persist longer than expected, but when leadership begins to broaden, the transition is rarely smooth. This week’s charts highlight why. When a handful of stocks represent…
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Moving Beyond the Style Boxes
To view as a PDF, click here. For much of the past cycle, market performance has been driven by a very narrow group of mega-cap stocks. That dynamic can persist longer than expected, but when leadership begins to broaden, the transition is rarely smooth. This week’s charts highlight why. When a handful of stocks represent…
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Quiet Index, Busy Under the Surface
To view as a PDF, click here. Publication note: Charts and index levels in this piece are shown through January 16, 2026. Volatility repriced higher in January 20 trading, with the VIX moving above 20 amid renewed policy and geopolitical headlines. Headline equity indexes continue to trade in a relatively orderly range, but the options…
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Broadening Leadership Can Be Healthy, But the Transition Is Often Choppy
To view as a PDF, click here. Investors have heard two familiar storylines repeatedly over the last year: Both points contain a kernel of truth, but they miss what has actually been happening under the surface. The S&P 500 finished 2025 up 17.88%, marking the third consecutive year of gains. The more important takeaway for…
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Diverging Signals Are Driving Markets Into Year-End
As we close out 2025, the investment landscape is defined by a widening disconnect between policy rhetoric and market pricing, alongside specific pockets of inflation driven by secular trends like AI. This week’s Market Insights focuses on these divergences, from the Fed’s “hawkish cut” to the valuation gap between large and small caps, to help…
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Mapping the Maturity Wall
For the better part of 2025, the credit market has been defined by a suspicious calm. High yield spreads have remained historically tight, and corporate defaults have been benign. However, this tranquility masks a simple mechanical reality: corporations have largely been surviving on pandemic-era pricing, debt issued in the ultra-low rate environment of 2020 and…
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When Expectations Get Crowded: The AI Trade at a Crossroads
The AI boom has been the dominant market story of the past few years, and 2025 has only intensified that narrative. Nvidia recently became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization, with its share price up roughly twelvefold since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 (10/29/2025). A small group…