🇺🇸 S&P 500 Super Sectors: Earnings Share

Tech's earnings share has more than doubled from around 22% in the 00s to 45% today. The post-2010 acceleration reflects the years spent wandering the ZIRP desert, and the acceleration post-2020 is the semiconductor boom.

Traditional Cyclicals peaked at 55% in 2006-7's much more industrial-financial economy. It crashed during the GFC, slightly recovered, and then declined to 35%.

Defensives have had a steady down trend, falling from 25% to 22% over the period. There are brief spikes during crises when earnings resilience matters. Their earnings are multi-decade lows, reflecting ZIRP's effect on utilities/staples/real estate.

We are now in a rising interest rate cycle and monetary policy is constrained like never before in American history. AI has produced a bifurcation between tech that can and can't survive the new reality, but AI itself is failing to deliver revenues that even remotely correspond to the capital invested.

I will be shocked if this hasn't changed in five years.

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🇺🇸 Where American States Rank in the Global Economy

Little baby countries.

It just goes to show the original confederation would've worked just fine in the end if we didn't have so many natural enemies of liberty and sovereignty abroad...

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🇬🇧 Latest polling out of Great Britain, albeit a little old because I forgot to post this. That said, it's probably representative of a week ago. Restore Britain is born.

I'm guessing things have accelerated since Farage's betrayal, but the UK's population moves slower than I anticipate sometimes. I think some of them may get it right, and in any event, all of this open opposition should be making their current position clear to native British.

Only 5 of Restore Britain's 10% share a week ago was harvested from defection from the Reform Party. The other 5% comes from people who had stopped voting, which is interesting. One wonders what the size of that demographic may be...

Of course the lunatic Greens are ascendant on the left. Conservatives are in shambles—that could be even worse now. Labour was on the ropes before again being tied to Epstein.

It's genuinely difficult to envisage what sort of government would form. It is highly dependent on the voting—more so than usual.

🗳 I N T E L R U N N E R 🗳

🇺🇸 American Stocks Are the 6th Worst Performer Among 45 Major Countries

Definitely one of the worst opening years for America (relative to the world) as well...

We got into the likelihood of this becoming a full-blown mean reversion last Monday.

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🇺🇸 Teacher Salaries vs. Home Prices, by State

This is cute, isn't it?

Why would American teachers deserve houses?

I wouldn't give them a cardboard box for their performance since 2019.

And I'd only give them the box for prior to it.

Maybe when the kids can read and add again, we can talk about housing you.

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🌎 Jmail is working with the Economist to produce these neat little Epstein Files graphics.

Hilarious.

Not sure I would've went with the publication with a 26.7% Rothschild family ownership stake, even if it is on sale since late last year.

You know, since they're so well-represented in the breaking Epstein and Wexner stories...

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🇲🇽 Where Violence Has Flared In Mexico

These are the states where road blocks were reported on Sunday.

Largely not happening in Sinaloa territory. The early hypothesis would be a leadership struggle among CJNG (after the assassination of their leader by the fédérales), but maybe it's become something more...

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🌍 Primary language of instruction in medical education...

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🇺🇸 S&P 500 Stock Short Interest as a Percent of Market Cap

Both metrics have increased sharply since the 2021-2022 lows (when massive effusions of new money rendered shorting perilous). The 90th percentile stock is up to 11%, while the median stock is only 2.7%.

The spread between heavily shorted & median stocks having compressed, we can interpret this as likely portfolio hedging amid concerns over AI's eradication of per-seat software revenue, AI's failure to produce much of its own revenue, and the broader trend against technology and financials.

It's calculated risk reduction as we head toward a decisive summer (Q2 earnings, late cycle signals, additional seasonal rate uncertainty, and historical volatility).

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🪙 Bitcoin is up 7.37% today with 3.5 hours remaining in the trading day.

The down trend relents for a moment. We've broken through the first resistance, the down trend line, and the VWAP off the low from the first week of February.

What you want to watch now is what it does between $70.5-$71.5K.

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😀 The 2026 Global Al Brain Race Report – Ranking The Top 30+ Countries Shaping The Next Generation of Al Leaders

🟡The U.S.A. ranks #1 with a final score of 82 cut of 100, leading in R&D, economic integration, and infrastructure, and supported by 26 top Al universities with a strong global average score.

🟡China has over 4x as many top Al universities as the United States. While the U.S. ranks #1 overall, China has 107 top Al universities compared to 26 in the U.S.

🟡The UK ranks 5th with a final score of 33, less than half of the U.S. (82) and far behind China (59), highlighting the clear dominance of the two global Al superpowers.

🟡Only one EU country ranks in the top 10. Germany places #10 with a final score of 28, well behind the U.S. (82) and China (59), highlighting Europe's widening Al competitiveness gap.

America rules AI development (and continues to subsidize energy for it), if not adoption. China is the only near competitor: their relevant education is widespread and their models are strong. This is all consistent, but against prior rankings, India has dropped 3 places to #6 (decent talent, weak infrastructure/governance).

Singapore & South Korea fill out the leaders in the world—half of the top tier is Asian. Switzerland is the standout in Europe (notably not in the EU)...but the question remains: is all of this worth it?

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