September 2025
As Insights readers will know, we are big believers in the productivity benefits of artificial intelligence (AI)—with the rather large caveat that there are many applications where the technology isn’t quite ready yet.
August 2025
Historically, market trends could take decades to resurface following the realization that they were driven by excessive risk taking, but the world now behaves like a podcast set to 3x speed. Retail activity hasn’t quite returned to where it was in 2021 prior to the collapse in 2022, suggesting there may be some room left to run here.
July 2025
The curve above is rising fast, but we think it could be underestimating the true impact artificial intelligence (AI) is having on productivity. As a reminder, the current AI models are absolutely the worst they will ever be…and they are very good.
June 2025
Managing expectations In recent months, we have talked about the implications of highly uncertain trade policy more than we’d like. The graph above illustrates the impact of recent trends on earnings expectations. While the direction of the trend is probably not surprising, we would emphasize that the magnitude of potential earnings remains highly speculative. If […]
May 2025
Confidence Game Markets have rebounded strongly off the tariff-induced lows of April. That said, business confidence and investment intentions remain depressed. We believe that volatility will remain high, both to the downside and the upside. It may not be relaxing, but these types of markets tend to breed excellent long-term opportunities. New Hires We are […]
April 2025
A New Day The only sure thing as we pen this month’s Insights is that our comments are likely to be stale by the time they’re published. The unsettling part is that gap is only a few hours! In times like these, when uncertainty is high, it is possible to have conviction in a few […]
March 2025
While we’re sure everyone is sick of talking about tariffs, the magnitude of the event compels us to include this chart. Tariffs have been nowhere near the current levels since war times, and the sheer scope of the economic impact, assuming they stay in place for a reasonable period of time, will have generational impacts.
February 2025
Trending The long-term trend of more and more assets flooding into passive Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF) from active mutual funds continues to kick off 2025. This structural shift in markets falls into the category of things that can generally be ignored as they develop, but at some point, a tipping point is triggered and the world […]
January 2025
Source Charts can be adjusted to fulfill any narrative, so we are always cognizant of the level of inference we take from any one visualization. That said, with a changing of the guard in the White House leading to policies that are almost certain to be inflationary, we are keeping a very close eye on […]
December 2024
Holiday Cheer 2024 has proven to be a year that gave investors reason to celebrate. There remains a certain sense of unease with overall valuations, no doubt a common Insights topic in the year to come, but there is little to complain about as we bring 2024 to a close. More importantly, we hope this […]