Sunday, February 8, 2026
Recently, a piece of global debt data stood out to me. Not because it signals an immediate market event, but because it helps explain the kind of market environment investors are navigating. According to the International Monetary Fund, six of the seven largest developed economies now carry government debt equal to or greater than their […]
Markets have been processing a wide range of policy and international developments at the same time. Bond yields have adjusted, commodities have been active, and risk has been repriced unevenly across asset classes. These conditions often feel difficult to interpret because signals are mixed and narratives shift quickly. But they do not prevent opportunity from […]
The current financial news cycle is dense, with a range of policy and international developments unfolding simultaneously. These moments naturally attract attention. Even for those trained to analyze information rather than react to it, the volume of competing narratives can be difficult to ignore. That tendency is not a flaw. It reflects how humans process […]
Seasonal patterns are useful only when they provide context. Once the window closes, the focus shifts away from the narrative and toward what the market actually delivered. That is where clarity begins. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Santa Claus Rally and its place in market history. Now that the seasonal window […]
One of the most persistent questions facing investors today is whether the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence resembles the technology bubble of the late 1990s. The comparison is understandable. A transformative technology is reshaping business models, capital has concentrated in a relatively small group of companies, and market leadership has narrowed in ways that feel familiar […]
Christmas carols like “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” are still in the air—and hanging over Wall Street. This is the time of year for the widely anticipated Santa Claus rally. One popular explanation for this market phenomenon is captured in the saying, “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad […]
Clarity is the most sought-after commodity in the market, and also the rarest. Traders spend extraordinary amounts of time trying to predict what comes next—what the Federal Reserve will say, which sector will rotate, which headline will matter. Yet after fifteen years of analyzing volatility and even more time spent studying uncertainty in intelligence work, […]
Out of the couple of hundred publicly traded high-yield, option-strategy exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF (ULTY) is the one about which I get the most questions. And ULTY is not a recommended ETF in any of my newsletter portfolios. ULTY aims to achieve a high distribution yield (currently 83.56%, as […]
I was recently asked a thoughtful question about whether a stock that is strongly tied to a commodity or sector can still be traded safely when using a volatility-based system. The question stuck with me because it gets to the heart of why our approach works in the first place. The concern was simple: If […]
As of November 21, the S&P 500 was down 5.8% from the record high set on October 29. The financial news media were full of opinions that the AI bubble had burst and that stocks were entering a new bear market. A 34% drop in Bitcoin helped fuel investor fears. How far stocks will end […]
