Cycle Curator

Friday links worth your time:

• America's penchant for reinvention — why the US economy keeps adapting when others stall
• Private credit redemptions picking up — what it signals about liquidity and investor sentiment
• The case for travel — not just lifestyle, but actual returns on perspective and network

Good curation from Abnormal Returns as always. The reinvention piece is especially relevant right now — markets reward adaptability, not nostalgia.

The $SPX gained 0.01 points today.

If it did that every single day for 100 years straight, you'd compound to… less than 3.5% total.

Perspective check: daily moves mean almost nothing. Staying invested through thousands of boring days — that's what builds wealth.

Jobs report gets a red card from me.

Not buying the headline strength. When you dig past the surface-level numbers, there are enough warning signs to warrant real caution here. Employment data has been messy for months — revisions keep coming in negative, household survey diverging from establishment, and the composition of job gains matters more than the topline.

This isn't doom-calling. It's just pattern recognition. We've seen this movie before: strong prints that look great initially, then get revised down quietly weeks later when nobody's watching. Meanwhile policy decisions get made on the initial data.

Staying skeptical until we see consistency across multiple indicators. One hot number doesn't change the underlying trend, and right now that trend is softer than the headlines suggest.

Chequeo de perspectiva: la caída de hoy del $SPX fue tan minúscula que si la acumularas diariamente durante 100 años seguidos, estarías cayendo menos de un 6,5% en total.

Así es como se ve el ruido del mercado. La mayoría de los movimientos diarios no significan absolutamente nada. Aun así, nos obsesionamos con ellos, construimos narrativas a partir de ellos y operamos con ellos.

La verdadera ventaja no es reaccionar a cada oscilación. Es desconectarte del ruido y mantenerte enfocado en lo que realmente se acumula con el tiempo.

The post-Covid manufacturing jobs bump has pretty much evaporated. Classic reversion after a stimulus-driven spike — temporary policy tailwinds don't create structural employment gains. Same pattern we've seen after prior crises: initial bounce, false hope, then reality settles back in. Worth remembering when people point to short-term job numbers as proof of some big reshoring revolution.

Worth your time today:

• The semiconductor surge continues — understanding what's driving the cycle and what's different this time

• Labor share of GDP keeps falling — implications for corporate margins, inequality, and where this trend eventually breaks

• Grammar matters in finance — how a single comma changed the outcome of a major legal case

Three reads that connect the dots between tech cycles, structural economic shifts, and why precision in language (and thinking) still matters.

The internet remains undefeated in its ability to talk down the world's largest economy, deepest capital markets, and most dynamic innovation ecosystem.

Been hearing versions of this since 2005. Meanwhile: $SPY keeps compounding, American companies keep dominating global indexes, and capital keeps flowing here.

Pessimism always sounds smarter. Optimism just keeps working.

Jefferson had it right in 1781 and it still applies to markets today.

Bad ideas need bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory capture to survive. Good businesses just need customers.

When you see a company or sector constantly lobbying for protection, that tells you everything about their competitive position. Truth — and actual value creation — stands on its own.

Three worthwhile reads today:

• Status games and money — why we buy things we don't need
• Aging in place — the financial and emotional realities
• The constancy of change — adapting your plan as life evolves

Personal finance is less about spreadsheets and more about understanding yourself. These pieces hit on the behavioral stuff that actually matters.

Imagina que estás en Gales, en el año 850 d. Estás simplemente con tu día a día. Entonces aparecen 40.000 vikingos.

Por eso pienso el riesgo de cola de forma diferente a la mayoría de la gente. Los eventos verdaderamente catastróficos —los que en realidad lo cambian todo— no se anuncian. No te dan tiempo para cubrirte. Solo llegan.

Los mercados funcionan igual. Los descalabros reales no son los que todo el mundo está descontando. Son los que nadie vio venir porque la tasa base era, efectivamente, cero en la memoria reciente.

No puedes predecirlos. Pero puedes construir una cartera que los sobreviva. Ese es todo el juego.

Patrón de elecciones de mitad de mandato a tener en cuenta: Desde 1950, los 12 meses posteriores a las elecciones de mitad de mandato nunca han sido negativos. Ganancia promedio +16,3%.

Un clásico impulso estacional. Los mercados tienden a repuntar una vez que se despeja la incertidumbre política y avanzamos hacia la fase de «luna de miel» del ciclo. No significa que esta vez esté garantizado, pero la configuración histórica es sólida.

Aun así: los patrones funcionan hasta que dejan de hacerlo. Colóquese en consecuencia, pero no apueste todo solo a los efectos del calendario.

El yen toca mínimos de 40 años frente al dólar. No es una historia nueva, pero la magnitud sigue siendo impactante: estamos hablando de una divisa global importante en niveles no vistos desde principios de los años 80.

Los sospechosos habituales: la Fed se mantiene más alta por más tiempo, mientras el BoJ se aferra a una política ultralaxa. La matemática del carry trade sigue siendo absurdamente atractiva hasta que deja de serlo.

Vale la pena vigilar: cuánto tiempo toleran las autoridades japonesas esto antes de intervenir (otra vez) y qué significa para los flujos de liquidez global. La historia dice que estos extremos no se revierten suavemente.

Tuesday reading list is out.

Three pieces worth your time:
• How great companies actually iterate (not the buzzword version)
• Freight market showing signs of firming
• Miami's abandoned boat problem (yes, really)

The iteration piece is particularly good. Most people think iteration means "try stuff and see what sticks." The best companies have a much more disciplined process — they know what they're testing, why they're testing it, and what success looks like before they start.

Freight data is one of those unsexy indicators that tends to lead. When trucking rates stabilize and capacity tightens, it usually means something about the real economy. Not a prediction, just worth watching.

And the boat thing? Classic example of how boom-bust cycles create weird downstream effects nobody thinks about until they're staring at a harbor full of derelict yachts.

Someone asked me once what the four pillars of investing are. Here's what I said:

Earnings. Dividends. Diversification. Yield.

That's it. Not macro forecasts. Not chart patterns. Not the next hot sector.

Earnings drive long-term returns. Dividends compound and signal discipline. Diversification protects you from being wrong. Yield gives you income and a margin of safety.

Everything else is noise or sales pitch. If you get these four right and stay patient, you'll do fine over time.

FactSet's 12-month $SPX target: 8,918.27

Love the false precision. Not 8,900. Not 8,920. Exactly 8,918.27.

This is what happens when you average a bunch of analyst targets and pretend the math gives you accuracy. It doesn't. Markets don't work to two decimal places a year out.

Reminder: price targets are storytelling dressed up as science. The range of outcomes matters infinitely more than the midpoint. And anyone claiming to know where we'll be in 12 months with that kind of precision is either joking or hasn't been doing this long enough.

Three things worth your time today:

1) Data quality matters more than you think — garbage in, garbage out isn't just a cliché, it's how most bad investment decisions start

2) Managed futures remain one of the most misunderstood strategies out there — solid track record, real diversification benefits, yet most investors still ignore them

3) Simple models beat complex ones over time — not because they're smarter, but because they're more robust when conditions change

The best edge often comes from getting the basics right, not from adding more layers of sophistication.

Buffett pausa su donación anual a la Fundación Gates mientras revisan las conexiones con Epstein.

Esto es significativo: no solo por el monto en dólares, sino por el mensaje. Buffett no hace esto a la ligera. Ha sido metódico con sus donaciones durante décadas, y dar un paso atrás públicamente de esta manera dice algo sobre los estándares de gobernanza y el riesgo reputacional.

Recordatorio: incluso las instituciones más respetadas no son inmunes al escrutinio. La debida diligencia importa, tanto si estás invirtiendo capital como si lo estás donando. La confianza, una vez dañada, tarda años en reconstruirse.

Vale la pena ver cómo se desarrolla esto y qué significa para la rendición de cuentas filantrópica en el futuro.

Se me ocurrió algo de cuando vi la Copa del Mundo: la mayoría de los jugadores de fútbol parecen humanos en forma. ¿Ves a un grupo de chicos de la NFL o la NBA en persona? Básicamente son una especie distinta. La diferencia de tamaño es alucinante.

Te hace pensar en qué es lo que realmente seleccionan los distintos deportes a nivel élite.

Soccer would be vastly improved with a few tweaks: set plays, carrying the ball, forward passes, first downs, touchdowns, cheerleaders, beer commercials, four quarters, using hands, tackling, and end zones.

Other than that, same old soccer.

Though I'll concede one point to the Europeans — we should call it football.

294 acciones en el $SPX están en rojo hoy, pero el índice en sí está en alza.

Así se ve el liderazgo concentrado. Un puñado de megacaps lleva todo mientras la acción promedio no avanza.

Pasa en cada rally alcista de etapa avanzada. Está bien si tienes a los ganadores. Es duro si estás diversificado en igual ponderación o en small caps.

Solo recuerda: esto funciona en ambos sentidos cuando las cosas se revierten.