📈   Chart of the Week 1/25/202 6 By Michael Allison, CFA A “Normal” Japan and the Unwinding of the Carry Trade This week’s Chart shows that following the global inflation scare of 2021-22, long term interest rates in Japan have continued to rise, but unlike in other countries, at an accelerating pace. Some say this is due to Japan’s reemergence as a “normal” economy which is being framed as a curiosity: an end to deflation, a long-overdue policy shift, a local story. That

📈   Chart of the Week 1/18/202 6 By Michael Allison, CFA Performance, Construction and Diversification You’ve probably seen headlines crowning NVIDIA as the unstoppable force powering the stock market in 2025. It was the largest contributor to the S&P 500 Index’s total return last year, a title it earned not by being the best performer, but by performing reasonably well and being the biggest company in the index . That’s the message of the first Chart this week. Here’s

📈   Chart of the Week 1/11/202 6 By Michael Allison, CFA Thoughts on Productivity-Led Economic Growth This week’s Chart shows a marked upturn in productivity in the first half of this decade as compared to the last. While still below the levels of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s during the height of the internet-driven “New Economy” , I believe that productivity is poised to go even higher from current levels, perhaps reaching or exceeding prior levels. Many would agree that we

🔮 Fearless Forecasts for 2026 By Michael Allison, CFA Once again, we lay out our outlook for the coming year as a collection of fearless forecasts. But first, in the spirit of “often wrong, but never in doubt” , let’s see how we did in 2025. 2025 Report Card ( link to 2025 Forecasts): U.S. Equity Returns Moderate: We see a moderation of U.S. equity market returns, in particular the S&P 500 compared to 2023 and 2024. Result: The S&P 500 did moderate over 2023 and 2024, but

📈   Chart of the Week 1/4/202 6 By Michael Allison, CFA Big Things Happen When a Word Changes Its Class Googol: the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. While doing a search for available domain names, the founders of Google originally misspelled the name of their new company. They found the incorrect spelling to be more visually appealing and the name Google stuck. What they built changed the internet and the advertising business forever… and changed the word “g

📈   Chart of the Week 12/28/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Valuation of Hyperscalers The Chart of the Week shows, at least according to Carlyle, that the big AI spenders have returned to a sustained level of relative overvaluation - meaning that their P/Es are well above those of the rest of the S&P 500. In my opinion, in the near to intermediate term, there’s more risk to their earnings multiples than their earnings. As these companies are transitioning from asset light to

📈   Chart of the Week 12/21/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Recession Fears in 2025: From Panic to Perspective If you wanted a real-time case study in how markets process uncertainty, overreact, recalibrate, and eventually move on, 2025 has certainly delivered. This week’s Chart tracks the implied probability of a U.S. recession during 2025, derived from prediction-market pricing. It’s an unfiltered window into investor psychology, one that tells us as much about narrative ri

📈   Chart of the Week 12/14/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Source: Tier1 Alpha A Few Thoughts on Volatility: Part 2 Last week , we focused the Chart of the Week discussion on volatility regimes and the potential benefit of paying attention to trends in volatility rather than on the level of volatility. Volatility Regimes With this week’s Chart, we also look at trends in volatility, only this time through the lens of a “risk on / risk off” investing environment. A “risk on”

📈   Chart of the Week 12/7/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA A Few Thoughts on Volatility The equity and bond markets have been eerily quiet of late, and it has gotten me thinking about volatility, or lack thereof, and what may lie ahead in 2026. Every market environment carries a rhythm. Sometimes it’s steady and predictable; other times it’s chaotic and dissonant. But if you step back far enough, volatility has a way of revealing what’s happening beneath the surface, not by i

📈   Chart of the Week 11/30/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Whither Bitcoin? This week’s Chart shows the price of Bitcoin, which has been quite weak of late. We often get questions from advisors about crypto and their appropriate role in client portfolios. A lot of the discussion tends to be framed as a risk and return question. While Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are indeed quite volatile, this recent move seems, at least to me, to be a bit more than just “risk off” . A

📈   Chart of the Week 11/23/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA You Are Here 🎯 This week’s Chart shows the Nasdaq 100 Index plotted against a number of historical bubbles. When investment bubbles are discussed, it’s common for folks to ask, “Where are we in the cycle?” I find historical comparisons interesting, but not necessarily helpful. I think that the end of an investment cycle approaches as financial stress begins to show in the results of the players in the ecosystem, and

📈   Chart of the Week 11/16/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA The Next Productivity Boom Is Upon Us We’re seeing quite a lot of hand-wringing lately by investors concerned about equity valuations and the pace and sustainability of capital spending by the AI Hyperscalers. However, this week’s Chart highlights the silver lining of the AI spending boom which will likely benefit the economy more broadly over the coming years, perhaps by quite a lot. I thought it was worth talking a

📈   Chart of the Week 11/2/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Source: Bespoke Investment Group Don’t Be Early One of the most important and timely questions that investors must ask themselves today is “Where are we?” in the current technological transformation we call Artificial Intelligence. Critically thinking about the answer and getting it right, or at least somewhat right, can create enormous wealth. Or...and this might be even more important these days, prevent its destruc

📈   Chart of the Week 10/26/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Seasonality…. Am I right? The Chart of the Week shows that 3rd quarter performance for the S&P 500 is historically by far the weakest quarter of the year. Q4 performance by contrast is historically the strongest period, and by a significant margin. After a solid year-to-date showing in the first half of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.2%, most experienced investors and prognosticators had what many could reasonably c

📈   Chart of the Week 10/19/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Following on last week’s Debasement Trade discussion, this week’s Chart shows the year-to-date performance of gold, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. It shows quite a divergence thus far in 2025. Gold’s relatively smooth and steady climb has stood in sharp contrast to the choppy and volatile trading patterns of the two leading cryptocurrencies. Many regard cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin in particular, as “digital gold”—a decentrali

📈   Chart of the Week 10/12/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Source: www.exponentialview.co/p/is-ai-a-bubble The Chart of the Week captures one of the defining investment narratives of the post-2020 era: the so-called “Debasement Trade.” In simple terms, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has steadily eroded while asset prices—stocks, homes, gold, and inflation-linked measures—have soared. Since January 2020, gold has risen roughly 148%, the S&P 500 is up over 106%, and

📈   Chart of the Week 10/5/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Source: www.exponentialview.co/p/is-ai-a-bubble The AI Investment Boom: Gauges...

📈   Chart of the Week 9/28/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA Calm Seas Make for Poor Sailors Since the 20% drawdown this past spring,...

📈   Chart of the Week 9/22/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA AI Adoption: Don't Panic Just Yet I found this week’s Chart especially...

📈   Chart of the Week 9/14/2025 By Michael Allison, CFA The Oracle of Austin This week’s Chart helps build on last week’s musings...