🇺🇸 S&P 500 Growth & Value Relative to S&P 500 (Percent Performance)

Value ($IVE) has gotten crushed and growth ($IVW) has ripped in this new easy money era…

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🌐 The Global Oil Trade, in thousand barrels of crude oil per day…

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🌐 $250,000,000,000 flowed into crypto yesterday…

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💰 Ethereum has hit a new all-time high!

💲4️⃣🔣9️⃣3️⃣7️⃣

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🌐 The World’s Least Affordable Housing Markets

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🌎 Returns Leaderboard for the week ending on August 22nd (in USD)…

🥇 🇺🇸 U.S. Small Caps
🥇 🛢 WTI Crude Oil
🥇 🇺🇸 U.S. REITs

⬇️ Bitcoin, Magnificent 7, Japanese Equities

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🇺🇸 The S&P 500 Volatility Index is at its lowest price year-to-date.

The last time the $VIX was at this level was December 16th, 2024.

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🌎 Global drought risk by country in 2025 according to the INFORM Risk Index (0 = lowest risk, 10= highest risk)…

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🇺🇸 U.S. Exports of Dollar Banknotes (Cumulative & Annual, in Billions US$)

By Q1 2025, U.S. currency held abroad reached $1.05 trillion, representing 45% of all U.S. currency in circulation. From 1970 to 2025, foreign-held U.S. banknotes grew at a 10.1% annual rate, rising from just $5.4 billion to more than a trillion, compared with 7.2% annual growth for total U.S. currency in circulation.

The sharpest surge occurred between 2008 and 2021, when overseas holdings jumped by $700 billion. The historical peak came during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with an unprecedented $121 billion (15%) increase in a single year. Since 2022, however, foreign demand for U.S. banknotes has plateaued, showing little change through 2025—a shift partly reflecting the rise of digital payment systems and cryptocurrencies.

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🇺🇸 The Oil Barrel-to-Big Mac Ratio.

An oil barrel just doesn’t buy as much as it used to…

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🇺🇸 Probably due to the big move on Friday, hedging is back in fashion.

Investors prefer puts on $SPX to calls on $VIX these days.

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🇺🇸 Al Adoption Rate*, by Firm Size.

* six survey moving average, biweekly surveys

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🇺🇸 The Russell 2K ($IWM) vs. the S&P 500 ($SPY)

Small caps are back.

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🌎 Bitcoin: Price Performance Since Cycle Low

🔹: 2015-2018 Cycle
🔹: 2018-2022 Cycle
🔹: 2022-now Cycle

We are 2-3 months from the part in the timeline where the last two cycles hit all-time highs, but we still haven’t seen the big pop from this level like the other 2. However, the price action suggests something is likely coming soon…

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🌎 Cocoa futures ($CC1!) are looking appetizing…

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🌎 Ethereum’s market cap hit a record $583 billion in August.

It’s given some of that back since, but $ETH is still sitting #22 on the asset market cap ranking just about $50B under the SPDR S&P 500 ETF ($SPY), which is the highest ETF.

Bitcoin ($BTC) is #7 with $2.2T, silver is #8 with $2.1T, and gold remains #1 at $22.9T. The Mag 7 fill in spots #2-6, #9, and #13.

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🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Average Daily Advance of the Russian Armed Forces

The latest update covers 8/18–8/21. The Russian Armed Forces covered 62.1 km² over this period. This is an average of +15.3 km²/day (166% of the Russian offensive’s average).

The past year of Russian advances has been substantially faster than the prior period, with many months exceeding the average rate now.

The last 3 months of last year & May of this year were particularly devastating for Ukrainian defenders in terms of territorial losses.

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🇮🇳 🇨🇳 India's Growing Trade Deficit With China (annual, in billions USD)

"This is a wake-up call for India, as the rising imports reflect deeper structural dependencies of the Indian economy," said Ajay Srivastava, founder of Global Trade Initiative, a Delhi-based trade policy think tank.

Many of the electronics, engineering products, and drugs produced in & exported from India have Chinese components, making the problem a bit trickier.

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🌎 Conflict events (battles, explosions, riots, violence against civilians) per one million people.

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🇺🇸 The U.S. Treasury 2Y/30Y yield curve has steepened further…

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🇺🇸 Cattle futures ($LE1!) just keep climbing, and there could be a couple more years of declining head count in this cycle.

You would think we had already run far enough by 2023 to encourage herd expansion. We’re up 90% so far this decade…

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