🇺🇸 SPX Seasonal Composite 4-Year Election Cycle

The seasonality of the S&P 500's performance in the presidential cycle is facing its worst year ahead with a decline penned in for most of the second & third quarters.

We're not even most of the way through the chop yet.

The index has followed this path awfully closely, with the only disruption being the fallout from the Liberation Day tariff announcement. Yet now it's back on track...

5️⃣ I N T E L R U N N E R 5️⃣

🇺🇸 The Stock Market Last Week

You can see the expansion in breadth as well as the pullback in tech and mega-caps...

Related: Russell 2K's Best Start to a Year Versus the NASDAQ Since 1992

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🇺🇸 The sustained decline in manufacturing employment since Liberation Day is not the only problem in producer land.

Business is contracting and input prices are rising. In fact, this in large part explains the decline in relevant employment...

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🇺🇸 Market concentration has been worse than the peak of Dotcom since 2019.

As of November 11th, we were plumbing the lows. Effectively 44 companies drive the performance of the entire S&P 500.

Note: When you place $10,000 into $SPX, $4,000 goes to the top 10 companies. The remaining $6,000 is split among the bottom 490 companies.

The effective number of securities is calculated using the inverse of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

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🇺🇸 Household liquidity remains high—a tailwind for the economy.

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🌍 The Global Returns Leaderboard for the week ending in January 16th:

🥉 Japanese Equities 🇯🇵 (+4.2%)

🥈 Bitcoin 🪙 (+5.5%)

🥇 Ethereum ⚪️ (+6.8%)

🔽 Magnificent 7 📹 (-1.6%), NASDAQ 100 1️⃣ (-0.7%), German Equities 🇩🇪, American Equities 🇺🇸, the Euro 🔣 (-0.4%)

🔼 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔽

💰 Bitcoin is lagging many other similarly performing assets or asset classes.

In the end, it will likely have caught up.

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💰 Bitcoin's Sunday action is slow n' sideways.

💰 I N T E L R U N N E R 💰

🇵🇹 The Winner of the Opening Round of Portugal's Presidential Election [99.4% Reporting]

Seguro clearly cannibalized some of Cotrim's support in the first round of the Portuguese presidential. These should be the final results, give or take a tenth here and there:

Seguro (PS-S&D): 31.1%
Ventura (CH-PfE): 23.4%
Cotrim (IL-RE): 16.0%
Gouveia e Melo (*): 12.3%
M. Mendes (*-EPP): 11.4%
Martins (BE-LEFT): 2.1%
Filipe (PCP-LEFT): 1.6%
M.J. Vieira (*): 1.1%
Pinto (L-Greens/EFA): 0.7%
Pestana (*): 0.2%
Correia (*): 0.1%

So the run-off will be Seguro defeating Ventura, more than likely. Ventura's percentage will be a testimony to how much of Portugal is awake...

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🌎 The 50 Most Populous Cities in Africa

😀Cairo is Africa's largest city with 25.5 million people.

😀Lagos in Nigeria is a distant second at 12.8 million.

😀9 of the 50 are located in Nigeria.

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🇺🇸 U.S. women ages 18 to 44, by marital status

Wow, what an accomplishment.

But at least you're working an admin job, paying taxes, and sticking it to the man.

Related: 1 in 3 American Women Over the Age of 60 is on Psychiatric Drugs

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🥇 Gold Prices Hit a Record $4,673 per Ounce

That's an 8.3% gain year-to-date.

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🌍 Wikipedia English-language articles with the most visits* in 2025 (in millions)

*The most visited through December 2nd

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🌍 1 Year Change in American Treasury Holdings

The BRICS are unloading their U.S. Treasury exposure.

Everyone else is adding to it...

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🇺🇸 Lower-income households face higher inflation...

Inflation continues to hit the lowest incomes hardest as essentials & necessities see the biggest price increases.

That means an already regressive tax has been even more regressive in practice for the bottom 40% of earners.

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🌍 The G20 Growth Outlook for 2026 – Projected Annual Real GDP Growth Rate

Exceeding the world average of 3.1% will be India (+6.2%), Indonesia (+4.9%), China (+4.2%), Argentina (+4%), and Saudi Arabia (+4%).

The United States of America (+2.1%), Australia (2.1%), Brazil (+1.9%), and South Korea (+1.8%) will lead the developed world.

📊 I N T E L R U N N E R 📊

🇺🇸 The 16-Week Stress Window

These are the key dates where bank reserve stress could materialize, starting with the 29th since we seem to have made it through quarterly taxes:

🛑 January 29th - FOMC Meeting
The core risk here would be Powell changing the Fed's guidance to a more hawkish disposition, though the risk level is relatively low all the same.

🛑 February 15th - Refunding Announcement
This is the quarterly announcement of the sizes & types of bonds that will be issued by the Feds. The risk is that it could surprise the market and thereby produce a supply shock. A high volume announcement is likely to push yields upward.

🛑 March 15th - Debt Ceiling Deadline
This is the most risky period in Q1. Knowing Congress, it's unlikely they won't just expand the limit when push comes to shove, but we saw last autumn how far desperate parties are willing to push it with this political football. I, for one, think this government could use a good default.

🛑 March 31st - The End of Q1
The Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) is a rule that requires large banks to hold a certain amount of capital against their total assets. At the end of a quarter, banks are often incentivized to bullshit their balance sheets for regulatory reporting. This means they can sometimes back out of short-term lending markets to appear less leveraged, and that can cause borrowing costs to spike around this date.

🛑 April 15th - Tax Day
This is the day when the Treasury General Account (TGA) sucks trillions of dollars out of the private economy (bank accounts) and into its stash. This too can stress short-term funding markets. This is almost certainly the riskiest period in the stress window.

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🇺🇸 Will there be a recession in America by the end of 2026? [Polymarket]

The prediction market chances of a recession for the USA in 2026 have dropped to 22%.

They were at 46% on Halloween.

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🇬🇧 Prime Minister Approval Ratings By Days in Office

Net approval ratings for May, Johnson, Sunak and Starmer.

It's actually remarkable how quickly Starmer has matched Macron's 11% approval from last autumn.

You get a uniquely evil government in London because the political system is so boxed in by the shadow government. It will be quite a surprise if Reform pursues any sort of real change.

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