Volatility Pulse - Stocks Down...Index up?
Everyone's Down But the Index
Micron is off 25% from its high, Microsoft 27%, SanDisk 31%, SpaceX 33%, Netflix 45%, Oracle a brutal 60% — and yet the S&P 500 sits basically at an all-time high. The index is hiding a bear market underneath it.
Everyone But Apple Is Bleeding
Every member of the Magnificent 7 except Apple is in a double-digit drawdown — Microsoft -29%, Meta -20%, Tesla -17%, Nvidia -14%. The 'unstoppable' megacaps are quietly falling apart, one at a time.
The Selloffs Got Picky
On the S&P's last 20 down days, an average of 239 stocks still finished green — the highest on record, triple the 2022 bear. When the market falls now, most stocks quietly don't.
Yet the big boys still drive the bus
The ten biggest US stocks now make up a record ~43% of the entire S&P 500, up from about 19% in 2019. Own the index, and you mostly own ten names.
Nobody's Pricing a Recession
A record 54% of fund managers now expect 'no landing' for the economy — and just 2% see a hard one. The last time everyone agreed this hard, it usually paid to worry.
IBM's Billion-Dollar Bad Day
IBM fell 28% in a single day and shed billions in market cap — this is a century-old blue chip, not a meme stock. Jim Cramer had told a caller to buy it at $293 just three days earlier; it's now $217.
PayPal Sold at the Bottom
PayPal is letting Stripe scoop up Venmo and Braintree at an all-time-low valuation — roughly 10x forward earnings. A fintech icon selling its crown jewels at the cheapest it's ever been.
Trade of the Week
Trade of the Week: right before news broke that Stripe had made an offer for PayPal, someone dropped six figures into PayPal call options expiring in weeks. Surely just good luck.
China Built a Continent of Rail
China opened its first bullet-train line in 2008. Less than two decades later its high-speed network, laid over a map of North America, blankets the entire continent. Built in the time it takes the US to permit one line.
BlackRock Added a Japan
BlackRock has piled on nearly $5 trillion in assets in two years, to $15.3 trillion. It added more money-under-management than the entire Japanese stock market is worth — in 24 months.
Wall Street's Rosy Math
KKR now assumes private equity will return 11.6% a year over the next decade — nearly double the 6.1% it pencils in for public stocks. The whole PE pitch rests on a number that's never guaranteed.
The New Corporate Bloat
Silicon Valley's fresh worry isn't headcount — it's 'wasted tokens.' The idle AI compute companies pay for is becoming the new middle-management fat. The bloat went digital.
Just Because
Russia is so wide it spans 11 time zones — when its western edge sits down to breakfast, the Pacific side is already having dinner. One country, eleven different clocks, all at the same instant.