What if technology companies ultimately aren’t the biggest beneficiaries of AI? Money has rotated out of the market leaders over the past month. The first post-shutdown inflation report was incomplete at best, yet encouraging nonetheless. Many economists are skeptical of the reported downshift in housing inflation, but it may not be far from reality. We’ve never seen a labor market quite like this one. Have international stocks finally turned the corner? Auto loan delinquencies.
1. Consumer technology produced a lot of consumer surplus, perhaps AI will do the same but for businesses:
Source: Goldman Sachs, @wallstjesus via the Daily Chartbook on 12/12/2025
2. Heretofore, the market has rewarded the largest companies disproportionately:
Source: @lhamtil
3. Money is rotating into “Risk-on” and “Eco sensitive” areas of the market:
Source: Alexandra Semenova, Bloomberg via the Daily Chartbook on 12/15/2025
4. To quote Renaissance Macro, “Food away from home (FAFH) inflation is moderating quite a bit. This is a good measure of underlying inflation pressure since restaurants bundle food, labor and rents into their menu prices:”
Source: @RenMacLLC
5. It seems unlikely that housing inflation, as the BLS measures it, slowed this quickly:
Source: Bloomberg Markets Daily
6. That being said, rental vacancies have been on the rise so it’s unlikely there’s much price pressure:
Source: @LoganMohtashami
7. Conventional wisdom says that once the unemployment rate starts moving higher it tends to accelerate but, so far, that hasn’t happened:
Source: @michaelkantro, h/t @financeowl1 via the Daily Chartbook on 12/19/2025
8. More evidence of a no hiring, no firing labor market:
Source: @economy_steve via the Daily Chartbook on 12/16/2025
9. 2026 was the best year for international stocks, relative to U.S. ones, in over a decade:
Source: Bloomberg Markets Daily
10. For the strong performance to continue, international companies will likely have to follow through on projected earnings growth:
Source: Bloomberg Markets Daily
11. An interesting observation from Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots is that unexpected increases in insurance costs may be a key factor behind rising auto loan delinquencies:
Source: Cox Automotive via Bloomberg Odd Lots
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