5 + 1 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’! Executed in a succinct manner with the aim of a high density of ideas, because the best writing respects the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: Amazon VS Walmart, Retail Sales & Banks

📊 Bonus: Investment Themes by Decades

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: Amazon VS Walmart, Retail Sales & Banks

1. Valuation in Retail Sales diverging — Walmart (WMT) bricks & mortar with 82% in-store sales & 18% online VS Amazon (AMZN) with 95% online & 5% in-store):

👉 Walmart with a bonkers 45.8x forward P/E as it hit $1 trillion market capitalisation — also now trading at 3x its average (pre-2024) EV/EBIT multiple and 65x P/FCF for a business that grew revenues less than 4% CAGR for the last decade

👉 Amazon with a colling 27.4x forward P/E

Quite a divergence, isn’t it? The big question: will these lines cross again? Yes …

2. Let’s check Revenues, quarterly since 1996 for a 30-years span :

👉 25 years ago: Walmart revenue 47x larger than Amazon

👉 20 years ago: Walmart revenue 25x larger than Amazon

👉 15 years ago: Walmart revenue 8x larger than Amazon

👉 10 years ago: Walmart revenue 3x larger than Amazon

These days, specifically since Q3 2025: Amazon revenue > Walmart revenue, Amazon with materially bigger revenues: $213 vs $179 billion!

Amazon was and is not just scaling, but mostly building optionality, and that compounds beautifully across time, hence nowadays more Revenue sources!

👉 Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a monster way beyond their retail sales: around 69% of profits coming from it

👉 $129 billion revenue over the last 12 months was higher than the revenue of 469 companies in the S&P 500 … let that one sink in!

👉 simply put, AWS went from side project to the core profit engine

👉 then there is advertising, subscriptions, 3P Seller Services, all high margin!

3. Retail Sales — Online vs In-Store sales as overall sector dynamics:

👉 E-Commerce Retail Sales as a % of Total Sales is quite on a trend since 1999

👉 currently at just 15.8%, way more room to capture more sales via the online selling

4. Wondering how are Retail Sales overall doing, aka the Consumer, aka ‘MainStreet’?

👉 up & up with the occasional bigger or smaller recession dips: +0.6% from the previous month for a $635.65 billion total

👉 never bet against for too long against the U.S. Consumer spending and overall entrepreneurship spirit and risk taking

5. From ‘Main Street’ to ‘Wall-Street’, meaning from Retail Sales to mighty Banks:

👉 valuations on the rise via the Price/Tangible Book Value (TBV)

• Morgan Stanley (MS) = 3.7x

• JP Morgan (JPM) = 3.0x

• Goldman Sachs (GS) = 2.7x

• Bank of America (BAC) = 2.0x

• Citi (C) = 1.3x

👉 MS at 3.7x & JPM at 3.0x are quite some …

👉 some people hate banks (partly deserved, especially for some aspects/culture), yet one does NOT want weak banks in any economy … just a casual reminder, a lot of the economy / assets sits on the balance sheet of banks

Overall, good signs also from the banking sector!

Among others, working these days also on a JP Morgan mini deep dive into their Corporate Finance actions: buybacks, dividends, lending, valuation — stay tuned!

✍️ J.P. Morgan (JPM): Buybacks, Price/Book, Dividends, ALM = Maverick Special #10

You can read all the previous Maverick Special reports here.

📊 Bonus: Investment Themes by Decades 📊

6. Investment Themes by Decades & their Returns!

👉 Nifty 50 until 1970 = 645%

👉 EM & Commodities until 1980 = 1,259%

👉 Japanese Stocks until 1990 = 527%

👉 U.S. Tech until 2000 = 795%

👉 EM & Commodities 2.0 until 2010 = 381%

👉 U.S. Tech 2.0 until 2020 = 737%

👉 current U.S. American Tech 3.0 with AI = 2,868%

Food for thought … thoughts?

One of my next Maverick Special research reports covers the big AI question:

✍️ Is AI in Bubbly Territory? Maverick Special #10

As well, on the AI CAPEX big cycle we are having currently I am working on 2 Maverick proprietary indicators/indices that would capture the 2 key aspects:

✍️ AI ROI on CAPEX (a quantitative objective gauge)

✍️ AI Sentiment (a qualitative, mood gauge)

Sentiment is very high and investments have gone parabolic in the AI space, hence:

• a rigorous oversight of capital conversion efficiency is necessary to gauge the AI ecosystem’s capacity for sustained growth and ability to translate all that into corporate financial returns

• similarly, for the overall economy, it’s growth and potential going forward

Both the qualitative and quantitative gauges are essential to map the current trend and cycle position, allowing us to forecast the eventual stabilization, subsequent market correction (shakeout), and the identification of long-term sustainable winners.

Maverick Charts 56th edition done, 5 key charts with many insights + 1 Bonus!

You can check all the previous 55 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this finding it interesting, saving you time and with valuable insights?

If yes, you can support Independent Investment and Economic Research with a Realist-Optimist mindset via the following 3 options:

1. ‘Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data’ which are the tools through which the research is done and delivered straight to your inbox!

Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data

2. PayPal, the classic donation/tip option:

PayPal

3. Pledge for a future Premium Research subscription, to be specific introducing “I-RAAS” = Independent Research As A Service

• you will be informed in advance both when the Premium Offering will go live, and what it will consists of along its cadence & structure + you can cancel anytime

• best part = you will get the best introductory pricing, it will never be cheaper

Subscribe now

That’ll definitely support bringing both the current + future ‘Maverick-esque’ research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, big positive externalities become the name of the game, and we all benefit!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

P.S. sharing around with like-minded people + hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons = great!

10 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’! Executed in a succinct manner with the aim of a high density of ideas, because the best writing respects the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: U.S. Real GDP growth, Economic Policy Uncertainty & Spreads

📊 Bonus: Tracking AI’s Contribution to GDP Growth

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: U.S. Real GDP growth, Economic Policy Uncertainty & Spreads

1-3) U.S. Real GDP growth via Atlanta FED + New York FED latest nowcast models:

👉 +4.2% in Q4 2025 via the Atlanta FED (chart 1), way above the 0.9% consensus

👉 +2.74% in Q4 2025 via the New York FED model (chart 2)

👉 +2.73% in Q1 2026 via the New York FED model (chart 3)

Overall, very good readings in my opinion.

Key note — New York FED nowcast model is superior to the Atlanta FED one:

• NY FED measures the broad strength of the economy, it smoothest noise for trend insights, hence suiting macro strength assessment

• Altanta FED is more accounting based, and reacts more sharply to individual releases, hence suiting more precise mechanics

4. Economic Policy Uncertainty = Improving (EPU vs Spreads)

Chart = U.S. Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU, blue) & U.S. Investment Grade (IG) Corporate Bonds Spread (green), Recessions (grey) = highlights a historical correlation between economic policy uncertainty and bond spreads, with synchronized peaks during financial crises and volatile periods

👉 they are disconnected, and as I was mentioning often last year, in particular in April 2025 during the Trade War 2.0:

• things are still good, definitely no need to panic, geopolitical risk premium is actually to be harvested also this time around, and so it happened

• as long as ‘the green line’ (aka spreads) do not move wildly, things are fine

👉 from a peak of 568, EPU is way cooler now at 339 — spreads at a ultra 74 b.p. low

👉 Policy Uncertainty ≠ Policy Outcome (more likely = quite a circus or silly show)

In case you missed that key research at that key time, one that was inviting for calm and coolness, instead of chaos driven by spooky headlines, there you go:

✍️ Disconnected - Economic Policy Uncertainty & Corporate Bonds Spread (IG & HY)

5. Complementary, the same chart but with the more sensitive and responsive to all economic conditions, the U.S. High Yield (HY) Corporate Bonds Spread:

👉 at 285 b.p., naturally a bigger spread, but the same behaviour and message

Way more via my U.S. economy deep dive for both Top-down & Bottom-up approaches, essentially connecting the Macro-Finance bridge also:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

The report breaks down the U.S. economy and ultimately aims to answer two of the biggest questions in Finance and Economics:

“What is the State of the U.S. Economy?“

“What is the Probability of a Recession?”

📊 Bonus: Tracking AI’s Contribution to GDP Growth 📊

AI is the new kind in town, yet how about checking its contribution to GDP growth?

1-4. Four key Charts via St. Louis FED showing how the major AI-related investment categories have contributed to real GDP growth over time:

1) Investments in Information Processing Equipment (chart 1) +

2) Investments in Software (chart 2) +

3) Investments in R&D (chart 3) +

4) Investments in Data Centers (chart 4)

= combined AI categories contributed 0.97% to real GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2025 = these categories made up 39% of total GDP growth (vs 28% in 2000)

👉 has surpassed the contribution of IT components made during the dot-com boom, both in levels and as a share of GDP

👉 firms continue integrating AI into their operations and building the infrastructure required to support it, these categories are likely to remain significant drivers of investment well into 2026 and beyond

5. Complementary, what about AI & Productivity?

Connecting the AI thematic with the Real Economy via a historical chart from 1894 on the U.S. business sector labor productivity:

👉 early industry gains drove the largest productivity booms ...

👉 current productivity (the base) is still pretty low ... way more to come …

👉 hence, is AI the next productivity train everybody embarks on? Food for thought …

👉 will there be job displacements? yes, just like before — will it be more and pose big societal social issues? That is to be covered in the future via Special reports!

One of my next Maverick Special research reports covers the big AI question:

✍️ Is AI in Bubbly Territory? Maverick Special #10

As well, on the AI CAPEX big cycle we are having currently I am working on 2 Maverick proprietary indicators/indices that would capture the 2 key aspects:

✍️ AI ROI on CAPEX (a quantitative objective gauge)

✍️ AI Sentiment (a qualitative, mood gauge)

Sentiment is very high and investments have gone parabolic in the AI space, hence:

• a rigorous oversight of capital conversion efficiency is necessary to gauge the AI ecosystem’s capacity for sustained growth and ability to translate all that into corporate financial returns

• similarly, for the overall economy, it’s growth and potential going forward

Both the qualitative and quantitative gauges are essential to map the current trend and cycle position, allowing us to forecast the eventual stabilization, subsequent market correction (shakeout), and the identification of long-term sustainable winners.

Maverick Charts 55th edition done, 5 key charts with many insights + 5 Bonus!

You can check all the previous 54 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this finding it interesting, saving you time and with valuable insights?

If yes, you can support Independent Investment and Economic Research with a Realist-Optimist mindset via the following 3 options:

1. ‘Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data’ which are the tools through which the research is done and delivered straight to your inbox!

Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data

2. PayPal, the classic donation/tip option:

PayPal

3. Pledge for a future Premium Research subscription, to be specific introducing “I-RAAS” = Independent Research As A Service

• you will be informed in advance both when the Premium Offering will go live, and what it will consists of along its cadence & structure + you can cancel anytime

• best part = you will get the best introductory pricing, it will never be cheaper

Subscribe now

That’ll definitely support bringing both the current + future ‘Maverick-esque’ research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, big positive externalities become the name of the game, and we all benefit!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

P.S. sharing around with like-minded people + hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons = great!

15 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’! Executed in a succinct manner with the aim of a high density of ideas, because the best writing respects the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: World Stocks Valuations, S&P 500 Valuation & Profitability

📊 Bonus: Palantir (PLTR)

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: World Stocks Valuations, S&P 500 Valuation & Profitability

In a Top-Down fashion, starting with World Stocks by countries and sectors, then the major U.S. Indices, followed by more nuances on the mighty S&P 500 index and its sectors — then connecting it with the fundamentals: profitability and earnings!

1. World Stocks Valuations by countries & sectors, forward P/E, chart=10,000 words!

👉 U.S. with Growth, IT & Industrials = the ‘pricey’ chaps

👉 U.K. with Value, Energy and Financials = the ‘cheap’ chaps

2. U.S. Valuations by indices via forward P/E relative to 20-year distributions:

👉 S&P 500 = 22x and top of the 20-year range, and Nasdaq = 27x and close to the range 20-year range = ‘pricey’

👉 S&P 500 equal-weight = 17x, and Midcap = 16x = more ‘decent’

3. S&P 500 Forward P/E complementary note:

👉 we are now very close to the +2 Standard Deviations (red) which equates to 23.7x

4. S&P 500 11 Sectors Valuations via forward P/E relative to historical 10 & 30-years:

👉 from 16x for Financials to 29x for Consumer Discretionary

👉 relative to history it is a very mixed bag: note Industrials on the ‘high’ end, while Real Estate on the ‘low’ end

5. S&P 500 Free Cash Flow (FCF) yield wise:

👉 2.57% now, very close to the -2 Standard Deviations (red) which equates to 2.42%

6. Shiller CAPE at 40 = not far from a historical all-time high!

👉 Valuation regimes wise, statistical evidence points to a regime shift toward higher valuations = U.S. stocks have been in a ‘high’ valuation regime since January 1992 (sole interruption during the 2007-2009 GFC)

7. Valuations shifted structurally higher over recent decades / since WW2

👉 CAPE tells us that we are way above both post-2002 (26) and pre-1992 median (14)

8. S&P 500: Valuation vs Profitability, the both surprising head scratcher one, and the key food for thought chart going forward — by periods/regimes, trend line and statistical bands +/- 1 SD via forward P/E ratio and forward Net Margin:

👉 2025-present (orange) with a very high profitability environment ...

👉 22x forward P/E multiple ‘justified’ at least partly or majority one can say = the index is more concentrated in the mega tech names, but overall a higher quality index than 10-20 years ago ...

9. In terms of the actual/realised current Net Profit Margins (NPM):

👉 at 13.2% it will likely mark the highest NPM reported since 2009

👉 current record (going back to 2009) = 13.1%, which occurred in the previous quarter

10. Q4 Earnings & Revenue scorecard (fresh as of Jan 30th) with 166 companies in:

👉 75% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 65% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive revenue surprise

👉 Earnings growth +13.4% = solid! And if it stays above 10% (very likely), it will mark the 5th consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth

👉 Revenue growth +7.6% (solid also ...)

👉 Guidance for Q1 2026: 7 S&P 500 companies have issued negative EPS guidance and 17 issued positive EPS guidance

N.B. way more via my quarterly recurrent two distinct S&P 500 reports & materially improved in all areas: structure, flow, insights and special metrics you rarely see!

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

The reports aim to break down the key question:

“Where are we, what are the key drivers, what are the technicals saying, how is the Sentiment?

“Is the stock market = highly undervalued (very cheap), undervalued (cheap), fairly valued, overvalued (expensive), or highly overvalued (very expensive)?”

📊 Bonus: Palantir (PLTR) 📊

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) reported yesterday great Q4 results:

Growth rates:

• Government Revenue: +66%

• Commercial Revenue: +137%

• Customer Count: +34%

• Adjusted EPS: +243%

• Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO): +143%

• Net Dollar Retention Rate: 139%

Stock reacted +7.2% after hours yesterday, and +5.77% today heading into the closing.

Let’s get visual now with selected fundamentals:

1. Revenue:

👉 $1.4 billion for the quarter = super solid!

👉 Business is scaling very well, especially in the last 3 years ramping up!

2. Operating Income:

👉 $575 million for the quarter = super solid also, confirming the scaling!

3. Adjusted Operating Margin & Revenue Growth:

👉 Palantir a huge outlier with a 127% & the only one inside the ‘Rule of 120 Frontier’

4. Stock-Based Compensation (SBC):

👉 $196 million, it’s not high not low given that the business is scaling nicely

5. The big big question is VALUATION as during waves, the stock is not the business & the business is not the stock!

S&P 500 top 5 by Price/Sales multiple - guess #1? Palantir = drum rollllls ... 82.7x !!!

👉 = 2.75x greater than the 2nd highest P/S ratio in the S&P 500 which belongs to Texas Pacific Land (TPL) at 30.1x

👉 = 3.3x greater than the 3rd highest P/S ratio in the S&P 500 which belongs to AppLovin (APP) at 25.2x

👉 = 3.50x greater than the 4th highest P/S ratio in the S&P 500 which belongs to Broadcom (AVGO) at 23.6x

👉 = 3.53x greater than the 5th highest P/S ratio in the S&P 500 which belongs to Nvidia (NVDA) at 23.6x

Let that one sink in & bring the sink if you wish 😉!

Overall, I think Palantir is a great business, will do well, but the valuation is way too high now for me. I still believe it is very dependent on the market (beta).

👉 when the market will correct 20%, Palantir stock likely dropping 40-50%

👉 when the market will correct 30%, Palantir stock likely dropping 60-70%

Maverick idea: 2027-2028 Long Puts (to hedge or speculate) are now a good idea!

Maverick Charts 54th edition done, 10 key charts with many insights + 5 Bonus!

You can check all the previous 53 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this finding it interesting, saving you time and with valuable insights?

If yes, you can support Independent Investment and Economic Research with a Realist-Optimist mindset via the following 3 options:

1. ‘Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data’ which are the tools through which the research is done and delivered straight to your inbox!

Buy me a Book, Coffee or Data

2. PayPal, the classic donation/tip option:

PayPal

3. Pledge for a future Premium Research subscription, to be specific introducing “I-RAAS” = Independent Research As A Service

• you will be informed in advance both when the Premium Offering will go live, and what it will consists of along its cadence & structure + you can cancel anytime

• best part = you will get the best introductory pricing, it will never be cheaper

Subscribe now

That’ll definitely support bringing both the current + future ‘Maverick-esque’ research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, big positive externalities become the name of the game, and we all benefit!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

P.S. sharing around with like-minded people + hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons = great!

first and foremost, Happy Thanksgiving to the U.S. folks! Hope you had a good one!

10 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’! Executed in a succinct manner with the aim of a high density of ideas, because the best writing respects the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Wall Street & Fund Managers 2026 Forecast & Risks, AI Gold Rush

📊 Bonus: Google gang vs OpenAI gang

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Wall Street & Fund Managers 2026 Forecast & Risks, AI Gold Rush

1. S&P 500 forecasts via Wall Street strategists:

👉 outlook for 2026 as another good year: 7,300 target (currently at 6,800)

2. Fund managers survey via BofA similar vibes:

👉 57% of them target for 2026 an S&P 500 above 7,000 also

3. Risks ranking for another 2026 good year:

👉 Higher inflation / higher interest rates = 45%

👉 AI CAPEX slowing down = 26%

👉 Labor market: unemployment > 5% = 17%

👉 US-China trade = 9%

👉 POTUS loses midterms = 2%

P.S. on the AI CAPEX big cycle we are having currently I am working for 2026 on 2 Maverick proprietary indicators/indices that would capture the 2 key variables:

✍️ AI Sentiment (a qualitative, mood gauge)

✍️ AI ROI on CAPEX (a quantitative objective gauge)

Sentiment is very high now and investments have gone parabolic in the AI space. Therefore, a rigorous oversight of capital conversion efficiency is necessary to gauge the AI ecosystem’s capacity for sustained growth and ability to translate all that into corporate financial returns!

Both the qualitative and quantitative gauges are essential to map the current trend and cycle position, allowing us to forecast the eventual stabilization, subsequent market correction (shakeout), and the identification of long-term sustainable winners.

Subscribe now

4. S&P 500 structural composition by % of market cap by sector:

👉 1980: 14% asset-light (tech) vs 66% manufacturing

👉 2025: 49% asset light (tech) vs 17% manufacturing

Therefore, we can say S&P 500 overall is a higher quality index via the way higher margins (typical to very scalable and capital-light sectors), hence a higher P/E!

5. Nonetheless, after historical excursions, we always need to get forward looking! Hence, a gauge for underlying current dynamics are the changes in the S&P 500 industry group via Capex/Sales ratio — Technology, Media, & Telecom (TMT):

👉 from ‘capital light’, the TMT sector it is getting way more asset-intensive

👉 which means the pressure on profit margins shall rise, at least on the short term

6. The AI gold rush is on!

👉 Tech CAPEX spending as % of the aggregate S&P 500 CAPEX spending at 47%, way higher than the last 37% from back in the 2000s Dot-com bubble

👉 naturally, technology is now highly profitable and integral to the economy, but these high valuations should trigger our spider sense regarding the crucial balance between Return on Investment (ROI) and Capital Expenditures (CAPEX)

👉 Tech will need real and solid growth with also positive free cash flows in order to justify the current big AI spending

7. S&P 500 overall:

👉 the big positive is that it carries a way lower financial leverage than 1990-2000s

P.S. way more via my quarterly two distinct S&P 500 reports & materially improved in all areas: structure, flow, insights and special metrics you rarely see:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

For Top-down & Bottom-up approaches, connecting the Macro-Finance bridge also:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

The reports aim to break down the key aspects of the stock market and the economy. Ultimately, they aim to answer the 2 biggest question in Finance and Economics:

1. “Is the stock market = highly undervalued (very cheap), undervalued (cheap), fairly valued, overvalued (expensive), or highly overvalued (very expensive)?”

2. “What is the state of the U.S. economy, and what is the current probability of a recession?”

📊 Bonus: Google gang vs OpenAI gang 📊

8. The 1-year performance = a chart for 10,000 words!

👉 highly correlated ... until lately …

👉 Google with another gear up, yet OpenAI cooling off quite some

9 & 10. OpenAI estimated financials via HSBC:

👉 new equity funding (red dots) has to keep coming: at least $207bn until 2030, a time when also free cash flow (blue dots) might be close to be positive

👉 revenue (blue) around $220 billion in 2030

👉 $500 bn operating losses from start of year 2025 until 2030

👉 also in 2030, $76.5 billions

Maverick food for thoughts:

👉 how will competition do relative top OpenAI? Revenue, margin squeeze?

👉 tricky to scale AI products/companies which need to make a very good balancing act between: growing, infrastructure expense and results for shareholders

👉 will OpenAI go IPO before 2030? There is a chance - yet a higher one after 2030

Maverick Charts 53rd edition done, 10 key charts with many insights + Bonus!

You can check all the previous 52 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

10 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Valuation and Fundamentals + Global Stocks Valuation

📊 Bonus: S&P 500 and Inflation Symbiosis

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Valuation and Fundamentals + Global Stocks Valuation

1. S&P 500 Valuation via the forward P/E ratio — path in 2025:

👉 = 22.6x now, and we begun 2025 with 22.6x also — with a 14.5% return!

👉 ‘What happened Mav’? It has gone nowhere in 2025! ‘Why? What’s going on?’

👉 14.5% solid rally in 2025 can be attributed to Earnings growth (the ‘E’ denominator in the P/E ratio), hence not a price/multiple expansion this time (the ‘P’ numerator in the P/E ratio) = a very good development!

N.B. note the April Tariff War 2.0 / Liberation day saw a 18.8x P/E bottom as the market was tanking like there is no tomorrow = yet that was actually an opportunity!

Hence, I will make 2 Maverick Special reports on that which shall be ‘evergreen’, and serve via being recalled anytime it is needed in the years and decades ahead:

✍️ Big Volatility & Drawdowns = Juicy Returns

✍️ Harvesting Geopolitical Risk Premium Through the Financial Markets and Economic Storms

Complementary, I’m also working also on a live proprietary index covering the often Geopolitical risk premium which should actually be seen as an opportunity.

✍️ Maverick Geopolitical Risk Harvesting Index (MGRH-I)

One to improve materially the medium-long term returns, hence make that compounding machine and effect kick in faster — at the end of the day, as investors we are rewarded to stomach and digest drawdowns and volatility!

2. So, how good do those Earnings look like? Q3 Earnings & Revenue scorecard (freshly updated November 21st) with 472 companies in:

👉 earnings growth = +14.7% (solid ... )

👉 revenue growth = +8.3% (very solid also ...)

👉 4th straight quarter with double-digit earnings growth — last time was Q1 2021 through Q4 2021

👉 at the sector level: 4 sectors are reporting double-digit earnings growth for the quarter: Information Technology, Utilities, Financials, and Materials

3. Revenues/Top-line wise, Highest Revenue Growth in 3 Years:

👉 8.3% = it will mark the highest revenue growth rate since Q3 2022 — 11.0% then

4. At the sectors level:

👉 all 11 sectors with Year-over-Year revenue growth

👉 3 sectors with double-digit revenue growth: Information Technology, Health Care, and Communication Services

5. S&P 500 Net Profit Margin (NPM) = 13% = near the all-time highs also!

6. Key question - what variables drove the Net Profit Margins in the last 35 years? Which ones are the tailwinds that drove the NPM from 5% in 1990 to 13% in 2025?

👉 5.7% as the big chunk via lower COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), hence way higher gross margins: partially a consequence of the integration of global supply chains + type of businesses, meaning sector composition: more tech (carrying more intangible assets, very scalable, ‘light’ type of businesses)

👉 2.9% via lower interest rates & corporate tax rates — note, going forward these two neither appear likely to decline as much during the next decade: tax rates fell big time and while interest rates rose recently, overall it was a big trend down since 1990

👉 this also explains why we have enjoyed lately (especially in the last 15 years) way higher returns than the 10% historical average

Hence, on the NPM: let that one sink in … and … bring the sink if you wish like! 😉

7. U.S. Stocks Valuation overview via forward P/E - last 20 years distributions:

👉 Nasdaq 100: from a mega 30x, cooled off a bit at 27x, up high in the 95th-5th percentile range

👉 S&P 500: at 22x and up there very high in the 95th-5th percentile range

👉 S&P 500 equal-weight: at 16x cooler than the weighted S&P 500, touching also the 75th-25th percentile range

8. 11 Sectors Valuations shaping the S&P 500 via forward P/E relative to history (absolute to sector itself and relative to the S&P 500 index) — a great overview:

👉 Technology = 27x, high relative to history

👉 Utilities = 19x, quite high relative to history

👉 Financials = 15x, very low relative to the S&P 500

👉 Energy = 15x also

9. Zooming out: US & Global Stocks Valuations overview via forward P/E:

👉 US = 22x = pricey, quite pricey: way outside the interquartile range, and also outside the 10th-90th percentile

👉 US excluding Big Tech = 19x = less pricey, but still pricey: outside the interquartile range, and also outside the 10th-90th percentile

👉 Japan, Europe = more decent despite the recent very solid performances

P.S. way more via my quarterly two distinct S&P 500 reports & materially improved in all areas: structure, flow, insights and special metrics you rarely see:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

For Top-down & Bottom-up approaches, connecting the Macro-Finance bridge also:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

The reports aim to break down the key aspects of the stock market and the economy. Ultimately, they aim to answer the 2 biggest question in Finance and Economics:

1. “Is the stock market = highly undervalued (very cheap), undervalued (cheap), fairly valued, overvalued (expensive), or highly overvalued (very expensive)?”

2. “What is the state of the U.S. economy, and what is the current probability of a recession?”

📊 Bonus: S&P 500 and Inflation Symbiosis 📊

10. S&P 500 Performance & Inflation Rates — almost 100 years of it since 1928:

👉 low single digits 1-3% inflation = the best for the S&P 500: 11-13% average and median returns

👉 even 3-5% inflation is not bad at all: 8% average and median returns

👉 deflation when <0% inflation sucks: -2 to -5% average and median returns

Complementary, incoming 2 Maverick Special reports on Inflation overall:

✍️ Inflation - Nuts & Bolts, Ins & Outs

✍️ Inflation - Pricing, Expectations & Leading Indicators

Maverick Charts 52nd edition done, 10 key charts with many insights + Bonus!

You can check all the previous 51 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

5 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: Buffet’s stock buybacks, S&P 500, Bitcoin & MicroStrategy

📊 Bonus: Never Send These 4 Emails at Work (Employment Lawyer’s Warning)

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: Buffet’s stock buybacks, S&P 500, Bitcoin & MicroStrategy 📊

1. Buffett’s Berkshire (BRK) & buying back their own stock:

👉 no stock buybacks since Q2 2024

👉 the higher the price, the less doing buybacks

And that’s the way to do it ... while on the other side Corporate America is buying back stock massively — above $1 trillion this year & around $1.2 by year-end.

“The math isn’t complicated: when the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up.” … “... IF repurchases are made at VALUE-ACCRETIVE prices.” Buffett

✍️ Warren Buffett’s Cash Pile ... & More! Maverick Special #4 was released in February this year - I will update it all next week with more charts, context and nuances!

2. S&P 500 Net Profit Margin (NPM):

👉 = 13.1% = 7th consecutive quarter increase

👉 above the previous quarter’s NPM, a year-ago, and above the 5-year average

👉 in fact, this quarter marks the highest NPM in 15 years (FactSet’s historical data)

👉 previous high was 13.0% in Q2 2021

3. S&P 500 chatter box:

👉 AI AI AI ... 62% of the companies mentioned ‘AI’ during the Q3 earnings calls ...

4. Indicators of U.S. Corporate AI adoption:

👉 according to the Census Bureau survey of large firms = 13%

👉 Goldman Sachs own survey of companies = 37%,

👉 along with those claiming on earnings calls to be using it = 47%

P.S. way more via my future two distinct S&P 500 reports & materially improved in all areas: structure, flow, insights and special metrics you rarely see:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

For Top-down & Bottom-up approaches, connecting the Macro-Finance bridge also:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

5. Updating the ‘Bitcoin & MicroStrategy symbiosis’ chart:

👉 Bitcoin -28.5% drawdown

👉 MicroStrategy -60.6% drawdown

👉 complementary, since July: Bitcoin down -25%, Strategy down -56%

👉 MicroStrategy filed to change its name yet again, new name = Strategy. I wonder why? I mean when one has a great strategy, why change the name so often? 😉

All that ‘intelligent leverage’, high yield, perpetuals and ‘variable monthly dividend designed to maintain a stable price’ ... are not working anymore? 😇🙃😃

N.B. MicroStrategy-Bitcoin case will very likely get historical & textbook use case. Hence, I might do a Maverick Special report on it! Stay tuned!

✍️ Bitcoin and MicroStrategy Symbiosis

Bonus: one MEME to say it all in this different fashion! 😉

📊 Bonus: Never Send These 4 Emails at Work (Employment Lawyer’s Warning) 📊

I am in general the optimist-realist bringing the good vibes. Nonetheless, in order to be and do that, when it comes to one’s job and career, one should also approach that via the investing mantra: ‘Watch the Downside, the Upside Will Take Care of Itself!’ 😉

👉 I have seen many great good hearted folks lose their jobs and derail their career via one of the mine fields we all have in our jobs: the work email = a legal record!

👉 the most important, how to protect yourself? Via a Washington employment lawyer: 4 specific emails you should never ever send from your work email account!

👉 naturally, it is not Legal advice + check the comments in the video from the IT guys especially + note things vary across countries (in Europe a bit different but still)

P.S. I am not affiliated or paid to promote this video, just sharing a great resource according to a friend of mine that is also a lawyer (based in Vienna, Austria)

Maverick Charts 51th edition done, 5 key charts with many insights + Bonus!

You can check all the previous 50 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

5 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: Elon Musk Dancing With Robots and the $1 Trillion Pay, Palantir vs Berkshire, S&P 500 and POTUS approval rating

📊 Bonus: Imposter Syndrome, Lean Into It Though Don’t Give In to It!

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: Elon Musk Dancing With Robots and the $1 Trillion Pay, Palantir vs Berkshire, S&P 500 and POTUS approval rating 📊

1. Musk dances with robots as Tesla shareholders approve a $1 trillion pay packet = largest in corporate history = $0 salary, all performance-based stock grants! And before the targets for the $1 trillion check, a visual to show how Tesla did so far:

👉 Tesla IPO-ed in 2010 valued at $1.7 billion, and finished the 1st day at $2.2 billion

👉 2025 valued at $1.428 trillion

2. Bonkers pay = bonkers milestones in order to get that $1 trillion pay:

👉 $8.5 trillion market capitalisation — from $1.4 now!

👉 20 million cars delivered

👉 10 million FSD (Full Self-Driving) active subscriptions

👉 1 million Robo-Taxis into commercial service

👉 1 million humanoid robots

👉 10-year deadline: all targets must be achieved by 2035

👉 Elon’s stake if achieved would go approximately from 15% → 25%!

Let these ones sink in also, I did not see these takes of mine out there:

• $1tn for Musk for lifting the market cap by $7.1tn

• = 14% performance fee (total/cumulative by 1/7.1), and NO base fee = way lower than many funds: hedge funds, private banking, VC/PE, mutual funds (Europe) etc

• Maverick’s opinion = that is actually very decent, or even quite cheap! — I mean I personally got to know across time many CEO’s, entrepreneurs, investors, bankers, lawyers that would not move a finger for 14% for 10 years … so yeah …)

• Super Solid Skin In The Game (SS-SITG): Musk must remain as CEO or in an executive role over product and operations for a specific period (at least 7.5 years) for the shares to be fully vested + reputational, legacy & inspirational for so many!

I did tens of thousandths of charts so far at many places and countries: stocks, bonds, macro, commodities, asset management, investor relations, investment banking, strategy, lending, leasing, risk management … charts for bank CEOs that were meeting Ms. Christine Lagarde ... you name it ... nonetheless, I never ever have thought I will make this truly quite special outlier one 😉:

Why are some criticising the pay package? It is their own shareholders who said YES for the pay = they can do whatever they want with with their own company & money!

Independent research here for sure, no politics, though a tendency I noticed generally:

👉 socialists angle: ‘crazy, too much, no way, not fair …’

👉 capitalists angle: ‘what targets need to be met?’

How achievable are the targets? Well, definitely ambitious! Yet, as I always like to say: ‘you need 100,000 dreamers to make breakthroughs happen!’ So let’s let the people dance, dream and let’s see the achievements coming in, we need innovation!

P.S. on independent, in case you missed my Maverick Special report on the topic:

✍️ Why Independent Investment and Economic Research = Paramount Nowadays! Maverick Special #9

3 & 4. Palantir (PLTR) vs Berkshire (BRK), musings on value creation in markets:

👉 Palantir had a $500 billion market cap last week ... and then I was thinking:

👉 Berkshire at $1 trillion compounded 60 years with a powerful float + led by legendary investors Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger. Also Buffett did not do ANY own stock buybacks lately, hence he sees it fairly priced or quite rather overvalued

👉 hence, Palantir created half of an entire Berkshire empire in just 2-3 years just because it is an ‘AI’ play and it started to be profitable after 2 decades of losses?

👉 on the other side Fermi (FRMI) with 0 revenue, yes 0 nada (forget profits) yet a 19bn market cap via the latest in a string of AI-related IPOs that lured investors ...

Quite a frenzy lately, so I guess all is possible ...

5. S&P 500 index price & current U.S. President approval rating — quite a gap:

• inflation is politically highly unpopular (consumer sentiment, how it impacts various parts of the population etc) as POTUS approval rating keeps dropping

• and that despite the stock market doing very fine

In other words, the economy is working for stock market investors, though it is rather not be working for most people / everyone right now. How do we unpack all that?

Via my future in-depth Macro-Finance research reports: 2 distinct & materially improved S&P 500 reports + the U.S. Economy deep dive:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality & Technical Analysis

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

P.S. full research reports will include traditional metrics, plus alternative & high frequency data + the specials: own custom/proprietary Maverick metrics & indicators!

📊 Bonus: Imposter Syndrome, Lean Into It Though Don’t Give In to It! 📊

👉 do you suffer from Imposter Syndrome? That is … GOOD!

👉 do I suffer from Imposter Syndrome? Yes, it is GOOD! Yes, you are not alone 😉

👉 the people you interact with the most do not? I’m getting a bit worried, watch out!

Enjoy this piece from Harvard behavioral social scientist and author Arthur C. Brooks:

Maverick’s takeaways:

👉 Self-doubt is usually evidence of healthy humility, not incompetence, and a clear contrast to the overconfidence of “dark-triad” personalities!

👉 Reframe imposter feelings as diagnostic feedback, then “lean in without giving in” by targeting the specific skills and knowledge gaps those feelings reveal, turning discomfort into a disciplined catalyst for growth!

Maverick Charts 50th edition done, 5 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 49 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

10 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: MicroStrategy & Bitcoin, Robinhood Trader vs Stockholder, Amazon, Tesla, ASML & TSMC

📊 Bonus: How to use AI: When Great Questions = Great Answers!

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: MicroStrategy & Bitcoin, Robinhood Trader vs Stockholder, Amazon, Tesla, ASML & TSMC 📊

1. MicroStrategy & Bitcoin, a match, anti-match made in heaven, hell or Tinder? 😉

👉 Bitcoin (BTC) -16% drawdown

👉 MicroStrategy (MSTR) -46% drawdown

👉 from -16% underlying to -46% in the portfolio = the new ‘3 baggers’ or ‘3x’? ;))

All that ‘intelligent leverage’, high yield, perpetuals and ‘variable monthly dividend designed to maintain a stable price’ ... are not working anymore? 😇🙃😊

N.B. MicroStrategy-Bitcoin symbiosis will very likely get historical & textbook use case. Hence, I might do a detailed Maverick Special report on it:

✍️ Bitcoin and MicroStrategy (MSTR), a Match Made in Heaven, Hell … or Tinder?

2. Robinhood ‘alpha’ trader vs Robinhood alpha stockholder = why it is bad to be a Robinhood trader, but great to be a Robinhood stockholder:

👉 chart 1: Robinhood stockholder ringing the cash machine like there is no tomorrow:

• +321% since IPO (July 2021)

• +420% last 12 months, and

• +294% in 2025 (sales & net income performing very well lately via direct fees, PFOF & more)

👉 chart 2: since 2021, typical Robinhood user/trader/investor not even breaking even (as expected of course)

‘Why this performance gap Mav? It is upside down!’

Simple: the latter (stock) is due to the former (client) 😉

Maverick’s takeaway:

• it is a bit like with MicroStrategy & Bitcoin, and generally with Crypto

• bad to trade it, great if you own the infrastructure, heads you win tails you win

• = more trades, more hype, more money (not to mention crypto hypers, pumpers and scammers … bitcoin per as an investment, not trading, that’s a different story)

N.B. one day I will also do a Maverick Special report on this!

3. On peculiar valuations via forward P/E - Amazon vs Walmart & Costco:

👉 Amazon trades at 31.7x, though guess who trades even higher and way higher?

👉 retail all over the place chaps Walmart and Costco: 36.7x & 45.4x

Let that one sink in … and … brink the sink if you wish 😉

4. Amazon AWS Re-acceleration:

👉 erased many doubts this quarter with AWS reaching $132 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and reaccelerating growth to 20%

👉 CEO Andy Jassy pulled no punches either when talking about AWS’ performance compared to their cloud peers:

“AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022... It’s worth remembering that YoY percentage growth is a relative term. It’s very different having 20% YoY growth on a $132 billion annualized run rate than to have a higher percentage growth rate on a meaningfully smaller annual revenue, which is the case with our competitors.”

5. Google Quarterly Cloud Backlog Growth - the narrative around the search giant has completely transformed from “AI loser” to “AI leader” in the span of 6 months:

👉 this AI leadership is especially showing up in Google’s Cloud demand: this quarter, Google added $50 billion to its cloud backlog, reaching a total of $158 billion

👉 on top of the robust demand, Google Cloud also reported a 24% operating margin this quarter — the highest in the company’s history

6. Tesla (TSLA) revenue sources, check this alternative & growing one:

👉 they generate now annually $12 billion via energy generation and storage

👉 that’s up ~6x over the last 5 years

👉 how big will likely be this segment by 2030?

7. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), world’s largest contract chipmaker, producing over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors:

👉 Sales from Taiwan Semiconductor’s most advanced nodes (3nm and 5nm) now account for 60% of their overall revenue

8. ASML Holding NV (ASML), the world’s supplier to the semiconductor industry:

👉 the average price of a single EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machine from ASML now costs €235 million

9. Charles Schwab (SCHW):

👉 clients at Charles Schwab at just 9% of total assets, are holding the lowest percentage of cash since the 2007-2009 Great Financial Crisis

👉 higher at 11% in 2025 around the March-April POTUS Trade War 2.0, and higher at 13% during the 2022 bear market: is should be the other way around, but as usual, people rise case by selling when the market falls, and deploy most of their cash when the market is booming

P.S. I am 23% cash (U.S. treasuries, Swiss bonds, Money Market Funds) + hunting also cheap hedging opportunities so that when we have the next bear market / recession, also then aim to be in a position of: ‘Heads I Win, Tails I Win’ = the essence of investing!

10. Interactive Brokers (IBKR):

👉 IBKR crossed 4 million total accounts this quarter

👉 which is up nearly 20x from their account base in 2012

P.S. selected single stock like these will be covered in full via the dedicated section:

✍️ Full Equity Research

📊 Bonus: How to use AI: When Great Questions = Great Answers! 📊

Since many years (way before the democratisation of AI) I often said at work or in various contexts in my personal life that for problem solving, asking the right question(s) can be many times the most difficult ‘solution’ and/or the best ‘answer’:

Now imagine the following reactions, so funny to thing about them looking back:

👉 ‘this guy is funny, weird, what the heck is he talking about, not confident to provide the answer?’ … ‘is this guy making fun of me?’ ‘is he avoiding the answer?’

👉 many times, the best dressed person in the room, the loudest voice, the most confident ‘alpha’ in a suit was the most annoyed by my kind of ‘answer’ and ‘solution’

👉 now confidence is great for sure, but many times confident, in a suit and having a very high salary is inversely correlated with expertise & depth on the given topic

👉 on the other side, the more balanced people, the ‘thinkers’, the ones who were actually quite deep into the subject were actually very pleased and thrilled

👉 I understand execution and motivation is important, overthinking and too many questions can also be detrimental, hence overall a mix of all should be the aim

Back to how to best use AI, check NVDA CEO Jensen Huang on the topic, and then my ‘intro’ into the topic will resonate a lot — the key for the answer is the question:

👉 answering questions is our typical training via convergence logic, meaning you can’t tell your professor/boss ‘your question is dumb’ or you will get a bad grade / fired

👉 like this, it is very easy for a group to end up with a ‘mental straight jacket on!’

👉 hence, check Elon and see how very often, the best answer is the great question!

• meaning truly understanding what questions to ask, and if you can properly frame the question, then the answer and solution are actually the easy part!

• and just like that, breakthrough solutions can pop while explaining it!

Therefore, I strive to for the following as written in the ‘About’ page:

40% thinker, 40% doer and 20% talker, the world has too many talkers, doesn’t it? 😉

That is why, besides many times providing you answers via the research, as you got used to by now there are also open questions as food for thought for you!

And if you put too much pressure on yourself (typical for high-achievers), recall Musk:

‘Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are. Everyone’s wrong some of the time!’ 😉

Maverick Charts 49th edition done, 10 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 48 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

7 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: The Yield Curve, Recessions & Bear Markets, AI and Productivity, Wealth by Generations, U.S. Debt & USD, Consumer Sentiment

📊 Bonus: Happiness = Gratitude - Expectations - Envy

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: The Yield Curve, Recessions & Bear Markets, AI and Productivity, Wealth by Generations, U.S. Debt & USD, Consumer Sentiment 📊

Connecting monetary policy, the bond market via the Yield Curve with the stock market via the S&P 500 (Macro-Finance) — let’s check them all out with one chart:

1. Yield Curve 10Y-3M (blue) = 0.16% is back again positive — chart shows the last 30 years of inversions/un-inversions and the S&P 500 (green) for the famous markets/economics mantra ‘Is This Time Different?’

👉 2022: recession wise (grey), yield curve inversions most of the time signals an incoming recession, though most recently it gave us the head fake (false signal) in 2022 as the most anticipated recession never came = ‘It Was Different This Time’

👉 2022: stock market wise (green) though, the positive signal was still valid also for the 2022 bear market (drawdown in red) = ‘It Was Not Different This Time Either’

Therefore:

👉 Recessions wise:

• Yield Curve inversions are to be watched for likely incoming tough periods

• note that the exact inversion points are not the real/true signal for an incoming recession, but it’s the uninversion period coming right after — in other words, it is the steepening post-uninversion that is when things start to happen

• given that we did not have a solid uninversion so far (YC is only a bit positive), technically the YC could still foresee a recession should it go higher / steepen

• on the other side, this inversion and un-inversion period has been going on for +3 years which is quite atypical … in any case, a steepening is to be watched!

👉 Stock Bear Markets wise:

• just like Maverick in Top Gun going inverted, it very likely DOES show us the birdie, hence the incoming bear market - fair & nice guy, no? 😉

• each of the past 4 big bear markets since 1995 were preceded by YC inversions

Hence, the yield curve is still one to be watched!

N.B. there is for sure a lot more about the Yield Curve special topic:

• more yield curve types, context, nuances, other variables, hence still judgement calls to be made on a case by case (regime by regime) basis

• that is why in 2026 I will also do a Maverick Special dedicated report covering: longer history, more key stats, more intricacies, more insights and takeaways

✍️ Maverick Special: Yield Curves, Recessions and Bear Markets, a Deep Dive

2. AI & Productivity = connecting the AI thematic with the real economy via a historical chart from 1894 on the U.S. business sector labor productivity:

👉 early industry gains drove the largest productivity booms ...

👉 current productivity (the base) is still pretty low ...

👉 hence, is AI the next productivity train everybody embarks on?

3. U.S. Wealth by Generation = +150 trillion total (2024 Q1), let that one sink in!

👉 Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) own 52% of the entire net wealth = 78.5 trillion

👉 Gen X (born 1965-1980) own 26% = 39.1 trillion

👉 Silent Gen (born before 1946) own 13% = 19.8 trillion

👉 Millennials (born 1981-1996) own 9% = 14.2 trillion

How is that distributed deeper among the population? Well, quite a story, a different and way deeper story … I will also do a Maverick Special report on that …:

✍️ Inequality, Wealth Concentration, Taxation, Equity and More

Complementary bonus views updated as of Q2 2025 (latest available): total & share %:

4. From the +150 trillion in wealth, what about the U.S. government debt?

👉 surpassed $38 trillion, an all-time high

👉 +10 trillion in less than 5 years

👉 +$500 billions jump in the last month

👉 +$16 billion per day

Current fiscal path isn’t good:

• 125% debt-to-GDP ratio, +7% deficits annually (highest among advanced economies), and IMF projecting a 143.4% debt-to-GDP by 2030

5. No wonder the USD is having one of the worst years in decades

N.B. in case you missed the Maverick Special dedicated report on the topic, there you go below. Given the importance of the topic, there will be future updated editions:

✍️ U.S. Public Debt Reduction = Hard but Feasible. Maverick Special #6

Understanding fiscal policy, politics in general is important:

👉 yet partisan investing views is not a good idea — actually, investors who cannot separate their political views/bias from their investing are destined to lose money

👉 your own hard earned capital does not care about your politics, only where it is deployed to grow — political bias is free, but very costly to follow! (I saw this happen so much that I could write a book with the use cases)

6. Nonetheless, politics clearly plays a role in people’s perception of the economy, and for that we just have to look at Consumer Sentiment by Party Affiliation:

👉 the gap between Republicans and Democrats’ sentiment hit a record high in October via the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index

👉 check the spread (bottom blue/red) and see how ‘consistent’ the spread is across election cycles, yet that is for the wrong reasons … watch out how people’s political views distort how they perceive economic realities VS what it truly is

👉 in short, the real economy isn’t what people have it, but what team they’re on - everyone likes to be on the winning team … even if overall it is not the best team …

N.B. in case you missed the Maverick Special dedicated report on the topic, there you go below. Given the importance of the topic, there will be future updated editions:

✍️ U.S. Presidency - Does It Really & Deeply Matter? Maverick Special #3

From partisan investing views, to personal political views: not only that it’s best to leave politics out of investing, but also daily personal consumption and debate should not be too high: spending too much time on politics carries a big opportunity cost!

👉 10h/week makes for 520h/year, and 2,080 hours for just one 4-year political cycle

👉 make that 4 times, for 16 years, and it is 8,320 hours spent …

👉 not saying to ignore politics, just that to understand what is going on and know whom to vote for, does not require spending thousandths of hours on — going beyond emotions, be it I/we like it or not, there is not much control over it …

👉 how many better things one could do with those hours? read a book, make a new course, work more … invest more = compound faster … exercise, sleep, relax more!

Usually when I say this to people, they are usually bothered by it. Some of them follow ‘the advice’ and some I meet randomly years after, and they tell me: ‘thanks a lot man, I am a different person now, better, more balanced, I focus on what matters, and I have more things under control. I have changed my mindset and my life!’.

And that is one of the easiest and most reliable forecasts I can make! That is because Politics are prone to polarisation, and together with News in general are a big part of ‘The Rise of Negative Media’ for clicks & views for advertising money. Algos are just made like that, because that is what attracts views!

7. As always, I have empirical data on that not just some empty or random opinion:

👉 there is a huge negative news positive bias, and a big positive news negative bias.

👉 since 2010, the media massively increased headlines that use fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. Correspondingly, it has also decreased articles of neutrality and joy.

Hence, it’s not surprising when I see people that go from obsessed about politics to a more balanced consumption, that they feel better, they use their time and skills on things they can actually control directly, hence just become way better individuals.

N.B. overall economy wise, way more via the next comprehensive & improved report:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

📊 Bonus: Happiness = Gratitude - Expectations - Envy 📊

As you got used to, this section is usually also for charts, but this time around it is way more than that. We all have the topic of happiness around our thinking, and while it is very subjective and impossible to quantify, actually I always had a ‘formula’ for it:

Happiness = Gratitude - Expectations - Envy

• gratitude and expectations are more internal while envy can be seen external

• if expectations are too high, even if we do achieve a lot, yet it is below our (maybe unrealistic) expectations, then expectations is a negative actually — other than that, all great with having high expectations and achieving them!

• envy, goes without saying is not helpful, except when seen via a positive spin as a catalyst: ‘I can do a lot and achieve that also!’ , ‘if he/she can do it, then I can also!’

Going forward, I just suggest you watch this segment from CNBC’s Squawk Box: Arthur Brooks on Mood of Nation - enjoy!

• tech is great, but take breaks from it, used in excess it becomes detrimental

• less news, less politics, less polarisation, less ‘inside the algo’, more outdoors

• switching from the ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ by inverting it and having a run with ‘The Happiness of the Pursuit!’

Arthur Brooks podcast (I am not affiliated, I was not paid for via an ad placement):

Takeaway:

👉 you reading this, it is very likely you are doing just fine or even great: you did your best, ups and down, just take a moment to pause & self-reflect, give it a go on being grateful for all your successes, failures from which you learned, all your trial and errors … and from there, keep enjoying your journey, keep it rocking!

Maverick Charts 48th edition done, 7 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 47 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

7 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Valuation, AI Big Tech FCF Yield & Performance, Interest Rates as ‘everything in valuation gets back to interest rates’

📊 Bonus: One to buy during a sell-off, preparing the shopping list

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Valuation, AI Big Tech FCF Yield & Performance, Interest Rates as ‘everything in valuation gets back to interest rates’ 📊

1. S&P 500 valuation via Free Cash Flow (FCF) Yield (most requested for update):

👉 S&P 500 (blue) trades at 2.38% which is even below -2 Standard Deviations (SD) which is not surprising given the 3-year mega bull market we have since 2022

👉 back in the 2022 bear market, FCF Yield was at +5%, hence more than 2x higher!

👉 just like usual, bear markets is the time to buy in order to make that fresh invested capital compound way faster: easy to say, hard to do? yes, but that is what is required!

Maverick net takeaways:

👉 I am not a buyer these days even though plenty of great companies in the S&P 500, plenty other opportunities, and as always: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get!”

👉 an inverted metric a’ la Maverick in Top Gun 😉, meaning this shall be seen as a “Buy High, Sell Low” ... & ... “Sell Low, Buy High”

👉 buying zone = rather within the 4-6% FCF yield range ... for example see when at +1 SD (2022 bear market), and even more so at +2 SD (Covid crash, 2018 bear market)

2. S&P 500 valuation via Price/Free Cash Flow (the inverse of the FCF/Yield):

👉 at 42.1x, way above even the +2 Standard Deviations (SD)

👉 at it is the highest since the 2000s Dot-com peak

For way more on the S&P 500, the 2 recurrent and improved S&P 500 reports will cover a lot of ground, and it will also answer ‘how overvalued or not the market is?’:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality & Technical Analysis

N.B. inside you will find also proprietary/custom metrics & indicators! Stay tuned!

3. The big headline is about the Mega Tech with AI, wondering their FCF yield?

• Apple = 2.4%, and if we adjust for stock-based compensation (SBC) = 2.09%

• Netflix = 1.92% with 1.85% after SBC

• Meta = 2.66% and 1.73% after SBC

• Microsoft = 1.78% with 1.48% after SBC

• Nvidia = 1.43% and 1.32% after SBC

• Google = 2.01% with 1.31% after SBC

• Tesla = 0.45% and 0.29% after SBC

• Amazon = 0.55% with (0.3%), yes, negative after SBC

4. The Mag 7 U.S. Big Tech are naturally the talk in the town, though check this one:

👉 JPMorgan (JPM) has outperformed 6 of the Magnificent 7 over the last 5 years

👉 Nvidia (NVDA) the mega outlier which makes this chart ‘off the charts’ basically

5. While AI is the big headliner with the current big market rally, not many told you that a material factor are the falling interest rates (discount rates/cost of capital):

👉 FED lowered rates for the second time this year (by a 10-2 FOMC vote), and is now sitting in the range of 3.75% to 4.00%

6. Interest rates expectations/priced in via Fed Funds Futures:

👉 2025 expectations wise: another 0.25% (25 b.p.) cut is in the cards with a 63% probability at the December FOMC (in 38 days to be precise)

👉 2026 expectations wise: 3 rate cuts are priced in by September

Recall Buffett on interest rates: “everything in valuation gets back to interest rates”, … & … “interest rates are ‘gravity’ on stock prices”, “The most important thing is future interest rates”.

Given that, I am also working on a Maverick Special report dedicated to this key topic:

✍️ Maverick Special: The Top 5 Charts You Need to Know About the FED and Interest Rates

Complementary, to unpack way more these key topics via solid rationale, data, nuances and insights, I will also do 2 dedicated Maverick Special reports:

✍️ Is the U.S. Stock Market in a Bubble? (Part II), you can read Part I here

✍️ Market Pockets of Overvaluation, Animal Spirits Behaviour and Bubbly Territory

📊 Bonus: One to buy during a sell-off, preparing the shopping list 📊

With the great on-going bull market, all is easy, we all have it good. Yet, this is the time when many start thinking they are geniuses, some start saying they are better than Buffett, the indices, this fund, that professional.

Some also start showing off how well they did do their neighbors & colleagues, posting online for all to see as they crave attention & clout online. All that while YOLO-ing MEME stocks, leveraged and/or riding a high beta/momentum wave.

One should not fall for that trap, no FOMO. Treating investing as a pi*sing contest is a top mistake investors do, and it happens often when one is not disciplined, and does not have a solid plan. The essence of investing is not to get wiped out (like many will) + to do well no matter what, hence keep compounding long-term.

Therefore, I strongly believe what makes a great investor is his plan, how he reacts and how he does during a bear market and a recession. One part of that is having a shopping list ready to be bought during a bear market. Recall Warren Buffett:

7. Hence, capital deployed at occasionally bargain prices to compound beautifully for the years to come as the recovery happens, and good times come back.

👉 Chart 1 = 3,440% return with a 12.36% yearly return / CAGR (green line) since 1995 VS S&P 500 great also but 2,227% return with a 10.83% CAGR (blue line)

👉 Chart 2 dividend overview = yield + payments:

• 4.9% = current dividend yield

• 8% = yield during the 2000s bear market

• 13% = yield during the 2008 Lehman/GFC crisis

• 19% = yield during the 2020 Covid crisis

• dividend payments stream = recurring and increasing across time, and both during the bad and good periods of the business cycle

Locking-in that dividend stream looks quite juicy during bear markets.

I will cover this stock in detail (business model, management, outlook) in the future via the dedicated single stocks section ✍️ Full Equity Research

P.S. reminder for income/dividend investors:

• total returns + after-tax returns = what matters

• there is nothing special about dividends per se = that is because you can always sell parts of your investment & create your own dividend at wish

• hence very likely more tax efficient (unless in a jurisdiction where income is taxed less than capital gains, and you want income / to sell parts recurrently)

Maverick Charts 47th edition done, 7 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 46 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

12 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: Big Tech Taking Over The World, Semiconductors, Hyperscalers AI Gold Rush, S&P 500 Valuation, Germany DAX & Swiss Stocks

📊 Bonus: U.S. ETFs massive inflows + Blackrock massive AUM

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: Big Tech Taking Over The World, Semiconductors, Hyperscalers AI Gold Rush, S&P 500 Valuation, Germany DAX & Swiss Stocks 📊

1. ‘Tech is Taking Over the World, Baby!’ updated chart - Tech relative to the S&P 500:

👉 Tech sector (XLK) sitting relatively again way above the mighty S&P 500 (SPY): actually it jumped again above even the +2 Standard Deviations SD (red) ...

👉 way above the average (green) which was Pre-Covid 2020 - then during Covid it broke to +1 SD (orange) while it ran even above the +2 SD in the 2023 AI run, and now again with the AI 2.0 mega run

👉 Tech today = real = it works = big earnings and cash flow via cloud, infrastructure, AI = hence very likely NOT a 2000s style Dot-com bubble ...

Nonetheless:

👉 it’s hard to ignore the parabolic run lately, especially given relative to the S&P 500 which is not a shabby construct at all - I mean it is the big 11 sectors of Corporate America which also derives 40% of revenues from outside the U.S. (XLK/SPY ratio would be naturally even higher if from the SPY denominator we would take out XLK)

👉 overall quite a pricey market with a lot of future growth baked into the valuations = it’s a bit of a luxury problem to have after all, but still one shouldn’t get complacent: reassessing, trade-offs, and comparing other investment opportunity sets is still key!

👉 while some market pockets are very likely overcooked & overvalued

2. ‘Semiconductors are Taking Over the World, Baby!’ updated chart also - Semiconductors relative to the S&P 500 with a similar story:

👉 2020 = broke above the +1 SD

👉 2023 = broke above further ... above the +2 SD via a parabolic run

👉 2025 = again above the +2SD via a similar parabolic style

Let that sink in … & ... food for thought(s) ... 😉

3. Looking at the Semiconductors valuation via the Price/Sales ratio:

👉 Industry Group at nearly 16x

4. ETFs wise the Price/Sales ratio:

👉 SOXX (iShares Semiconductor ETF) = 8.0x

👉 SMH (VanEck Semiconductor ETF) = 9.3x

5. ‘The AI Gold Rush’ via the Hyperscalers CAPEX (capital spending):

👉 Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta have spent almost $300 billion in combined capital expenditures over the last 12 months!

The big question when massive investing happens in any industry = ‘how can we know if it will lead to results, efficiencies, added value, hence also subsequent financial returns? ‘

• typically investments happen big time and they do overshoot, then cool-off, likely a heavier correction (like a clean-up), while after the rebound comes where the good resulted outputs are carried forward

• hence, how can one track when is it around the inflection point where more is not better, and actually wasted capital & financial losses might be around the corner?

I am working on my own 2 proprietary metrics/methodology to track this key one:

• Maverick Computing Efficiency Index (MCEI) = a hard/quantitative indicator where computing power & deployed capital are combined in order to assess how good/bad the industries’ AI Gold Rush is yielding results (investment VS return)

• Maverick AI multiple (MAIM) = a soft/qualitative indicator, a Price-to-AI multiple to gauge how hot, super hot, or cooling the AI thematic/trend actually is

Combining the 2 metrics will aim to give us a good gauge for where we are in the AI industry cycle, and how good/bad is AI translating investments into corporate returns.

This goes further with implications on Valuation of the sector, but also the market overall (S&P 500) given the big weight these companies have, and also across the entire U.S. Economy … hence, nowadays this is quite a material indicator. Most likely to be released in 2026 given that it is tricky to do + very time and data/costs intensive.

Moreover, to unpack all this with more rationale data and insights, I will do 2 dedicated Maverick Special reports:

✍️ Is the U.S. Stock Market in a Bubble? (Part II), you can read Part I here

✍️ Market Pockets of Overvaluation, Animal Spirits Behaviour and Bubbly Territory

Overall economy wise, way more via the next comprehensive & improved coverage:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

6. U.S. Equity Valuations vs History via the Forward P/E, a great overview:

👉 Nasdaq-100 = 29x = way above 20-year median, and in the 95th-5th %ile range

👉 S&P 500 (weighted) = 23x = way above the 20-year median, and off the chart in terms of the 95th-5th %ile range

👉 S&P 500 (equal-weight) = 17x = not much above the 20-year median, and around the 75th-25th %ile range = more decent valuation

👉 S&P 400 (Mid-Caps) = 16x = at the 20-year median, and well inside the 75th-25th %ile range = way more decent valuation

N.B. Mid-Caps & Small-Caps are the place to hunt for undervalued stocks, hence I will cover quite in details some names from that space via the dedicated section

✍️ Full Equity Research

7. S&P 500 equal-weight vs/relative to weighted (RSP/SPY):

👉 statistical bands with the mean & standard deviations: now below even -2 SD ...

8. Valuation wise via the forward P/E = 23.9x vs 18.4x = gap becomes jaws like:

👉 the idea here is that valuations should converge sooner or later: currently the market is pulled up big time by the Mag 7 and/or Top 10 which are mostly Big Tech

👉 in the most bullish case = we should have a convergence, meaning ideally more earnings across all the 11 sectors - that is because AI efficiencies should be felt across the 11 sectors and the economy

👉 in simple terms: we can’t build, live, eat, travel, consume, innovate just online in the ‘cloud’ via clicks - the real economy shall get efficiencies & higher earnings also!

P.S. overall, from here going forward I am more bullish on the equal weighted S&P 500

For way more on the S&P 500, the 2 distinct & materially improved S&P 500 reports will cover a lot of ground and it will also answer how overvalued or not it currently is:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality & Technical Analysis

9. Germany DAX 30 Stock Index = a crazy good run:

👉 84% return = a ‘trendy trend’ since Covid 2020 (38% drawdown in red)

👉 65% return = since Russia-Ukraine War 24th Feb 2022 (26% drawdown in red)

👉 11.5% return = since POTUS Trade War 2.0 which started on the 4th of April 2025 Liberation/Tariff Day (15% drawdown in red)

A classic yet very real and practical example of:

👉 the stock market is NOT the economy, especially in the Germany case

👉 harvesting geopolitical risk premium works, especially if one waits a bit for the sell-off to go on for a few weeks/months & it works on any major stock index

👉= fresh invested capital during those times will compound way better (nope, impossible to time perfectly bottoms or tops)

👉 time to sell DAX for me: valid overall, the faster and the higher the recent gains = the lower future expected returns (the same the other way around: the faster and the bigger the recent drop = the higher future expected returns)

I will also write in the future 2 dedicated & complementary Maverick Special reports:

✍️ Harvesting Geopolitical Risk Premium Through The Recurrent Geopolitical Storms

✍️ Big Volatility & Drawdowns = Juicy Returns

Those will be about how one can actually take advantage of Geopolitical events, related volatility, drawdowns and turbulent times. Also, with enough skill, creativity, time and (costly) data available, I am thinking to develop a methodology (proprietary) on when is it the most likely & best time to actually harvest geological risk premium.

That would be delivered via a Maverick visual/dashboard for +10,000 words, a geopolitical Risk-On / Risk-Off indicator which would probabilistically signal when it is time to deploy new capital which shall compound way faster going forward.

✍️ Maverick Geopolitical Risk Harvesting Index (MGRH-I) ✍️

10. 50 years mighty Swiss Franc vs U.S. Dollar (CHF/USD):

👉 that looks like a quite a ‘trendy-trend’ to me …

👉 why aren’t more investors looking into Swiss stocks? Ok, only around 200 listed, though very under covered which is good ...

👉 hence, I will also cover in detail quite some Swiss stock in detail in the future via the dedicated section: ✍️ Full Equity Research

👉 why? natural FX and cash flow diversifiers/hedgers + neutrality + fiscal discipline + innovation + SNB balance sheet + federalism & more ... ahh + chocolate 🍫 😉

📊 Bonus: U.S. ETFs massive inflows + Blackrock massive AUM 📊

11. U.S. ETFs inflows top $1 trillion for the 2nd year in a row! Flow baby flow!

12. Blackrock is eating the world, and not AI? 😉

• largest asset manager with a total Assets Under Management (AUM) hitting a record of $13.5 TRILLION as markets surged this year

• recorded net inflows of $205bn in Q3 2025 as the company expanded its footprint in private credit and alternative assets

Maverick Charts 42nd edition done, 12 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 41 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Your Maverick 👋 🤝

10 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: U.S. Q3 GDP, FED Watchers, U.S. Housing, Switzerland Interest Rates, GDP/Capita & Life Satisfaction, Most Innovative Countries

📊 Bonus: Gold special

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: U.S. Q3 GDP, FED Watchers, U.S. Housing, Switzerland Interest Rates, GDP/Capita & Life Satisfaction, Most Innovative Countries 📊

1. U.S. economy: +3.9% real GDP estimate for the 3rd quarter via Atlanta FED

👉 way above the range of the top 10 and bottom 10 average forecasts

👉 the U.S. economy has been surprising many especially coming out of 2020 Covid

👉 so many for years on and on fear mongering saying ‘it is all over’, ‘the economy is collapsing’ - idk about you, but for me for an economy to collapse, it first has to slow down - and actually an economy never collapses, at maximum it strongly contracts and then recovers = Business Cycle 101 = Economics 101

👉 for now NO slowing down + recall also Buffett saying “Never Bet Against America“

👉 it is very hard to bet against the U.S. consumer, though this is in the same time a place where a key nuance is to be found, namely the K-shaped economy … I will cover that Special topic via the next improved edition of the U.S. Economy coverage:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

2. “There are too many FED watchers, and in general central banks pundits“ what I heard at a conference from one top Swiss National Bank economist, and I fully agree:

👉 chart = ‘Federal Reserve’ story count aka chatter which has gone parabolic in Q3

👉 too many obsessed & fixated on every move the FED might make, can, should & will make, yet for the vast majority of investors it is a lot of wasted time spent - why?

👉 well, simple, let’s get practical and pragmatic:

• how many investors can estimate better the neutral interest rate?

• how many can forecast better future interest rates? I believe top investors of the world, from Buffett, Lynch to Druckenmiller to your favourite one, they very likely do NOT know interest rates better than the FED

Maverick’s takeaway:

👉 naturally, they do look at interest rates, I do look at it as we compare and analyse investment opportunities, hence also form an outlook for the short and long term: interest rates are very important for valuation (cost of capital, hurdle rate, financing and more), and one day I will make a Maverick Special report which will outline the top 5 key & useful data points & charts one needs to know about the FED and interest rates/yields at any given point in time

👉 the rest of the precious time can be spent on what matters, time is precious, right?

✍️ Maverick Special: The Top 5 Charts You Need to Know About the FED and Interest Rates

Talking, debating about the FED and interest is all good, my key point is just that in order to claim one knows better what the FED should do, saying they are wrong, it should take quite some solid and specific expertise (Monetary Economics) and proofs:

👉 the reality is most believing they know better than the FED, via the Dunning Kruger effect are still in the ‘I know everything’ camp which = ultra low knowledge

👉 to anticipate, to have a view what the FED will likely or most likely do is one thing, to say what they should do or that they are wrong, it is totally another thing: beware of the folks making those big claims

👉 hence, from my side you will never see ‘The FED is Wrong’ or ‘FED Just Made a Policy Mistake’, but coverage with the pricing, expectations and likely next move, yes!

P.S. Dunning Kruger effect general key note: once one is even in the ‘Trust me. It’s complicated’ part of the curve (the best one), in terms of confidence it will be still LOWER than when in the ‘I know everything’ camp - one will never ever be more confident than then = both quite a funny and healthy paradox, isn’t it? 😉

3. U.S. Housing - Renting vs Buying, the affordability lens:

👉 rental more affordable (Rent/Income ratio), housing (Mortgage/Income ratio) less

4. A complementary more simple view (a bit lagged data, will update it in the future):

👉 cost to rent = $1,845/month

👉 cost to buy = $2,697/month

I’ll cover also Housing/Real Estate via the next improved edition of the U.S. Economy:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

5. Switzerland & interest rates, a bit like a forced marriage 😉:

👉 the general belief was that we will never see again negative interest rates there

👉 well, there you go: “Hold my Beer” …

6. GDP/capita (adjusted for inflation) and self-reported Life Satisfaction:

👉 every time I mention GDP/Capita and happiness/prosperity/well-being, very fast people tell me it is NOT a good measure to track the above

👉 then I show this chart and simply ask: would one on average or all else equal prefer to live in the bottom left or top right?

👉 the vertical axis is self reported life satisfaction … so yes, GDP/Capita does matter and quite a factor … not a perfect measure, but hey, what is perfect?

👉 then sometimes I also ask: ‘do you have a better measure as criticising imperfect measures/methodologies is also not a good measure/approach?’ - vast majority of times no answer back, but silence hmmm …

👉 personally, I was born in 1986 in a country where the GPD/Capita was $2,400 - then I moved, worked in lived in 7 other countries and 2 continents, and can confidently say that GDP/Capita is a decent overall metric

P.S. now how that GDP (‘the pie’) is actually distributed, wealth concentration, taxation etc … that is another topic and way deeper analysis … one which will also be covered via a Maverick Special research … stay tuned!

✍️ Inequality, Wealth Concentration, Taxation, Equity and More

7. The World’s Most Innovative Countries in 2025 measured by key innovation pillars - ranking overall and by income group since 2021:

👉 Switzerland = number 1 (I will cover in 2026 the Swiss economy also)

👉 Sweden = number 2

👉 USA = number 3

👉 China has entered the GII’s top 10 for the first time, while South Korea climbed to fourth (its highest position to date)

📊 Bonus: Gold special 📊

8. How many fund managers do NOT own ANY gold at all?

👉 a whopping 39%, hence they’ve missed out on the bull market ...

👉 what if they jump on the bandwagon?

9. U.S. retail investors are heavy buyers of gold-backed ETFs:

👉 the liquidity train has arrived ...

10. Central Banks now hold more gold than U.S. treasuries: the 1st time since 1996!

Maverick Charts 40th edition done, 10 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 39 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Share

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

7 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’ with the aim for a high density of ideas because the best respect the reader’s time:

📊 Maverick Charts: 2025 returns, investing at all-time highs or on any day, Buffet’s cash, Money Market Funds

📊 Bonus: human kind is making another big progress!

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: 2025 returns, investing at all-time highs or on any day, Buffet’s cash, Money Market Funds 📊

1. 2025 sets out to be a very good for many investors types and their allocations:

👉 SPY (S&P 500) with a 3rd year bull market +14.4%

👉 TLT (US long term government bonds 20-year+ maturities) +7.9%

👉 AGG (US investment grade bonds: treasuries, corporate, MBS, ABS, munis) +7.3%

👉 SHV (Treasuries with 1-year or less maturities, cash proxy) +3.4%

👉 BTC Bitcoin +14.2%

👉 Gold with a whopping +61% the (golden) star performer

Overall, it would be very hard to complain, and not many did expect this was possible given the POTUS Trade War 2.0 which started in April this year. As always, recall that diversification is the only free lunch we get in investing. The rest is risk & return, optimisation, being calculated, smart, and especially the right mindset and patience.

2. “Is it better/safer to invest at a new all-time high, or on any day?“ is a question I got a lot across time, and naturally also nowadays. That is from random folks I meet, friends, peers, journalists, entrepreneurs, bankers, fund managers, you name it!

This great chart/analysis from JP Morgan (that went quite viral) tackles the topic:

👉 in general and regarding the S&P 500, it is better to invest when at all-time highs as average cumulative are better going forward (relative to investing on any day)

👉 now I have seen (too) many just saying that, and missing the fact that it is even better to wait 3 months as you can check my red quadrant annotation

Taking this further via sleek higher order thinking, one should ask after the following, “is this time different, or will it apply similarly going forward? any decent rationale on this?“

👉 for a decent answer, the updated analysis would be to compare the current market conditions (valuations, equity risk premiums, interest rates, cost of capital, liquidity, fundamentals with earnings, sales, free cash flow), and from there see how many times in history we had similar conditions, and what were the returns after those periods

👉 just comparing the current rally from the April 2025 low, a very powerful one:

• a bit more powerful than even the 1st big rally out of a recession (which is naturally very strong)

• in other words, the ongoing bull market began amid full employment (unemployment ~4.2%), not after a recession, yet it’s performing even stronger

• also a lot of all-time highs lately: 57 in 2024 and 33 in 2025

• therefore, this suggests an unusual market resilience, but also that a lot of the good developments from the future are priced in into todays prices

👉 once we got the maximum we could from history (via conditional periods/regimes), then enhance the research with a view for the future, both short term and long term

👉 these backward and forward looking analysis would be quite laborious in terms of time & data needed, hence it is out of scope for now, but one day I might just make a dedicated research piece with the updated data and rationale

👉 I did this analysis in the past, and updating everything in my mind with as of todays market conditions, I do believe this time is different, hence deploying new capital today, hence investing at current all-time highs is very likely not going to yield the very good similar returns

In short, a key variable are the current market valuations, a question of price paid:

• “Price is what you pay, value is what you get”

• not much or at all of a margin of safety (MoS) these days

• market is pricing a very blue sky scenario, with perfect execution, no wobbles, AI efficiency gains and productivity taken as a given aka ‘priced in’

Naturally, it’s my best judgement and my dedicated report will come with the details. Naturally also that I could be wrong. Why you might ask? Well, simply and naturally because when it comes to the future, everything is probabilistic, and nothing is deterministic. I do not make the rules, anybody telling you they get things 100% sure, they are either lying, outright scammers or just over-confident folks that will sooner or later look like clowns once they get humbled, there are simply no other options 😉.

The valuation part of the market with a forward looking view, and way more in depth analysis, I will cover in the next dedicated and further improved S&P 500 reports:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals, Special Metrics & Leading Indicators

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

P.S. naturally, a solution is to invest in cheaper markets and/or in cherry picked single companies that trade way cheaper … a lot can be done … more on that in the future!

3. Buffet’s cash pile or better said the ‘Berkshire’s STASHaway’

👉 cash pile = record $347.68 billion in 2025 from $167 in 2023, a 2x is the biggie

👉 yielding around $12-14 billion annually in a risk-free fashion (via U.S. treasuries)

4. How does Buffett compare with the FED in terms of treasuries holdings? Well, Buffett = the new FED as he holds now more Treasury Bills than the FED

👉 Buffett own $344 billion (green) = about 4.5% of all T-Bills issued to the public …

VS

👉 The Fed owns $195 billion (blue) and tapering

All in all, Buffett is ‘heads I win, tails I win’. He compounds via the treasuries and he compounds via the equities he holds. Overall, with a big optionality value, I call this the compounding and getting paid to wait, or the ‘T-bill & Chill’ ‘T-bill & Wait’ strategy: all while hunting for opportunities that always come along sooner or later ... in other words, have a growing war chest waiting to swing at an incoming fat pitch!

Recall from Buffett’s side:

“Cash combined with courage in a crisis is priceless.”

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

In case you missed my Maverick Special report on Buffett from February, there you go:

✍️ Warren Buffett’s Cash Pile ... & More! Maverick Special #4

5. What about Money Market Funds (MMFs)? They are at all-time highs as well 😉!

👉 $7.48 trillion (blue) = a record, a vey solid dry powder

👉 with high(er) interest rates (red), normal for MMFs to increase as the Risk Free rate pays a decent level of interest for the 1st time since 2007 (pre-GFC/Lehman Brothers)

6. From MMF total financial assets, let’s isolate if Retail MMFs also reacted:

👉 $2.18 trillion (blue) = also a record from Retail - way better pay than bank deposits

👉 note also the price change % rolling 1-year: a period with a record high growth

📊 Bonus chart 7: human kind is making another big progress! 📊

👉 born deaf though after 2 years after treatment, a 3-year-old girl who underwent a breakthrough gene therapy treatment can hear on her own

👉 done by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), it works by injecting a functional gene via virus into the ear, restoring otoferlin protein for sound transmission

Let that sink in & bring the sink if you wish! 😉

P.S. these are THE news, not every politician’s or CEO’s latest fart ... or Taylor Swift’s latest relationship’ ... LOL

As always, the scientists, researchers, innovators, geeks, the optimists and dreamers that dare, the ones that challenge the status quo, the mavericks, the ones who fall though get back & try again ARE the real heroes (yet quite unsung) of society … ! 😉

Kudos, chapeau, respect, gratitude … just hats off to them! 🫡 🫶 🙏

Maverick Charts 41th edition done, 7 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 40 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Mission accomplished for me if the following resonates with you:

• ‘Hmm I never thought it that way’, ‘now that chart said a whole lot’, ‘now that chart was really interesting’, ‘now that is something new’, ‘now I got it!’, ‘you managed to turn something complex into something actually simple’

• hence, if you got to see something differently, my approach gave you a different angle, it did help you connect your key dots, then here we all do well

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

15 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’:

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Earnings, Guidance, Margins & Chatter Box

📊 Bonus: Time spent on social media = LOWER and it peaked in 2022

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500 Earnings, Guidance, Margins & Chatter Box

S&P 500 Q3 Earnings & Revenue scorecard (freshly updated as of October 10th).

1. Actuals:

👉 earnings growth +11.1% (not bad ... at all ...)

👉 revenue growth +6.3% (not bad ... at all either ...)

2. Estimations:

👉 estimated earnings growth rate for Q3 = 8.0%, which would mark the 9th consecutive quarter earnings growth (year-over-year)

👉 given that most companies are reporting actual earnings above estimates, based on the the average improvement in the earnings growth rate during the earnings season, the index will likely report earnings growth above 13% for Q3, which would mark the 4^th straight quarter of double-digit growth

👉 bonus fact: actual earnings growth rate exceeded the estimated earnings growth rate at the end of the quarter in 37 of the past 40 quarters - the only exceptions were Q1 2020, Q3 2022, and Q4 2022 (around the Covid recession and 2022 bear market)

3. Technology companies with record-high positive EPS guidance for Q3:

👉 36 companies = well above the 5-year average of 21.4 and above the 10-year average of 19.5 for the sector

👉 36 = highest ever guidance for any quarter since FactSet began tracking in 2006: the previous record was 29, which occurred in the previous quarter (Q2 2025)

4. That is not surprising given the difference between AI vs non-AI profit margins:

👉 huge difference: 25.2% vs 11.1% = more than 2x ...

👉 no big difference in terms of projections ...

As always, margins and profits is what matters!

5. S&P 500 AI stocks composition over time:

👉 30 AI stocks = the kings since Nov 2022: “The 30 or so AI stocks in S&P 500 have a combined 43% of market cap. Even more compelling, these names have driven almost all of the returns and most of earnings growth since ChatGPT / Nov 2022”. Source: JPM

6. Overall, S&P 500 highs supported by new highs in Earnings:

👉 benefiting from greater international exposure (% of revenue from abroad)

👉 $ dollar depreciation

👉+ a big tilt/weight toward the large tech companies bringing a load of revenues

7. industry analysts project 11% increase in S&P 500, for a 7358 level

S&P 500 Earnings Calls Chatter Box:

8. Highest Number of S&P 500 Earnings Calls Citing “AI” Over the Past 10 Years:

👉 “AI” was cited on 287 earnings calls

👉 well above the 5-year average of 124 and the 10-year average of 79

👉 basically, this is a parabolic move since 2022

9. By sector in absolute numbers:

👉 IT (65) & Financials (51) the highest ‘AI’ virtue signallers

👉 likely many saying ‘we are the best’, ‘we will improve efficiency’ and other PR chatter ... like none of them will be left behind ... and quite some will imho …

👉 my base case = the winners will keep on winning and the AI efficiency gains will also have positive externalities and network effects for all the sectors & economy

10. By sector in %:

👉 98% of the IT folks were ‘AI-ing’ and 70% of the Financials

11. ‘Tariffs’ chatter dropping 21% for Q2 vs. Q1

12. “Uncertainty” chatter dropping also big time by 32%

👉 it was overcooked in any case given that it was even higher than 2020 Covid times

Way more on the S&P 500 via my 2 distinct & materially improved reports:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Earnings, Fundamentals & Special Metrics

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Sentiment, Seasonality, Technical Analysis

Subscribe now

13. Remember Fannie Mae (FNMA) & Freddie Mac (FMCC) the 2 mammoth GSEs that guarantee most of the mortgages originated in the U.S.?

👉 something went very RIGHT there with the stock price & turnaround

👉 a complicated thesis, also Bill Ackamn was on it and quite public with his thesis on them, even sharing in September that likely they have been too conservative in their estimate of the combined valuation, in particular, with respect to the earnings multiple used in light of their extraordinarily dominant market positions.

On mortgages and housing, recall the complementary chart and Consumer-Housing balance sheet reference from the Maverick Macro Charts of the Week #39.

14. Warren Buffett exited its BYD investment earlier this year:

👉 bought 225M shares in 2008 for $232M

👉 sold it all for 6-8 billion … let that one sink in!

📊 Bonus: Time spent on social media

15. It is LOWER and it peaked 3 yeas ago in 2022!

👉 surprisingly young people cutting it back first!

👉 what is too much is too much, growing up, realising that real world activities, connection and proximity are key while socials secondary?

👉 independently of the reason, these are great news generally speaking!

👉 Every trend creates its anti-trend … and naturally, this will have impact on the business model and valuation of some stocks …

Maybe one day I will make a Maverick Special report dedicated to key this! Every trend creates its anti-trend, this drives the future of internet, hence also impacts the business model and valuation of some stocks, especially and naturally, tech companies!

In case you missed my previous 8 Maverick Special reports, there you go, title & link:

✍️ Why Independent Investment and Economic Research = Paramount Nowadays! Maverick Special #8

✍️ Margin Debt (Leverage/Borrowing) by Retail Investors. Maverick Special #7

✍️ U.S. Public Debt Reduction = Hard but Feasible. Maverick Special #6

✍️ Disconnected - Economic Policy Uncertainty & Corporate Bonds Spread (IG & HY). Maverick Special #5

✍️ Warren Buffett’s Cash Pile ... & More! Maverick Special #4

✍️ U.S. Presidency - Does It Really & Deeply Matter? Maverick Special #3

✍️ Value vs Growth ... or ... Value & Growth? Maverick Special #2

✍️ Zooming Out via 100+ Years Charts = Leveraging Deep History to Navigate the Future. Maverick Special #1

Maverick Charts 40th edition done, 15 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 39 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

15 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’:

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500: Volatility, Drawdown, after FED 1st cut, Seasonality

📊 Bonus: Stock Buybacks Bonanza - overall, single names and a single stock preview

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts: S&P 500: Volatility, Drawdown, after FED 1st cut & Seasonality

1. S&P 500 price level, drawdowns and vola VIX

👉 after Friday’s ‘price action’, volatility (VIX) is just around the 20-year average ...

👉 drawdown below 3% ... and some panic already ...

👉 recall that volatility just moves wealth from the impatient to the patient … patience isn’t passive, but it’s the strongest market position there is …

So ‘it is all over’ NOT ... chill :) ... yet anyway:

• a 10-20% correction would be a healthy one, why not ... we rallied a lot lately

• and quite some of it was for no real (fundamental) reason, aka multiple expansion

2. Remember MATT = Maverick Ate The Taco = April 5th tweet (3 days after Liberation day) when I outlined the POTUS playbook that happened right after:

👉 negotiations … kick the can down the road … blame the FED …

👉 takeaway: periods like this are good to collect / harvest geopolitical risk premium

3. S&P 500 returns around 1st FED cut after being on hold for 6+ months: basically a big function of WHY the FED is cutting rates:

👉 if the economy is weakening, NOT GOOD for stocks

👉 if cutting to stimulate, hence not let the economy weaken and/or go into a recession, GOOD for stocks

4-8. S&P Seasonality going into the year-end, ‘You are here’ just like on a map:

👉 chart 1 = last 10 years backtest

👉 chart 2 = last 20 years backtest

👉 chart 3 = last 32 years backtest = all data, since SPY ETF started to trade

Wondering about presidential election seasonal patterns?

👉 post-election year (blue) looks pretty good as well

Overall, seasonality patterns looks good from here:

👉 however, ‘not all seasonality is created equal’ ... the ‘average’ needs to be accompanied by a deeper judgement call: POTUS, deleveraging, sentiment & liquidity could derail the pattern while most likely, we will just have higher volatility

👉 my full and net take via my future in-depth Macro-Finance research reports: 2 distinct & materially improved S&P 500 reports + the U.S. Economy deep dive:

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals & Special Metrics

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Performance, Profitability, Sentiment & More

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

9 & 10. And now 2 Nvidia charts to make you go ‘hmmmmm ...’:

The parabolic price since 2023 we all know ... (chart 1):

Valuation via forward P/E at 32.1x (chart 2):

• = LOWER than 2018 when the stock price was below 10

• additionally it is 20% lower than its 38.6x average since 2018!

Let that one sink in ... and bring the sink if you wish … 😉

📊 Bonus: Stock Buybacks Bonanza - overall, single names and a single stock preview

1. Goldman Sachs buying back 18% of its own stock via a $40 billion program:

👉 4.91% buyback yield currently ...

👉 31% fewer shares outstanding in the last 10 years = the opposite of peanuts …

Goldman Sachs, quite a name, a stock I might cover in the future and in full via the Full Equity Research section aka deep dives into single stocks!

2. PayPal also on a big stock buyback schedule:

3. Adobe as well …

4. Not just a Goldman Sachs, PayPal or Adobe thing, but quite overall - there you go with the general U.S. stock buybacks overview:

👉 $1.1T done by now, $1.3T projected, not peanuts ... but a record!

5. Top 11 companies going bananas with buybacks:

👉 Apple leading by quite a margin, followed by Alphabet/Google, Nvidia, JPM & GS

Maverick net takeaways: from ‘Hit me baby one more time’ to ‘Buy me baby back one more time!’ regardless of price, meaning when huge buyback programs are on, I am rather concerned - the rationale:

• many companies likely actually destroying shareholder value, boosting internal bonuses via KPIs like EPS (buybacks improve EPS given fewer shares count)

• unlike many, in general I do not see buybacks as a way to signal confidence in the company’s future but rather the above, and/or a lack of new customers, new markets, new products with positive NPV (Net Present Value) prospects

• from my side, top shareholder friendly companies do not do big buybacks when valuations are sky-high, but actually the opposite: the real confidence signal is to announce & execute huge buyback programs during a sell-off, a big drawdown and/or a recession, especially smaller companies where the programs mean a lot, not just cosmetics/marketing that they are confident … and especially if the company has insiders with high stock ownership, owner-operator companies, and that is because nothing is stronger than SITG = Skin In The Game!

Single stock preview: until then a single chart with a small and smart company (below $2.5bn market cap) that really knows how to add shareholder value via stock buybacks:

👉 during the 2020 March Covid sell-off (when many were scrambling to build cash reserves, secure financing lines) they announced a big share buyback program for 10% of their entire market cap …

👉 and that is the way it is done, one builds shareholder value with buybacks during bad times, not buying in the best of times at all time highs when destroying value

👉 blue line = S&P 500, green line = company example that I will cover in the future: 382% return for a 17% yearly return (CAGR) for the last 10 years

N.B. these kind of companies will be covered via the Full Equity Research section

Subscribe now

Maverick Charts 39th edition done, 15 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 38 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

Share

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

after the Maverick Equities Charts of the Week from 3 days ago, to the economy so that we cross nice & easy the Macro-Finance bridge, connecting the dots for insights.

7 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’:

📊 Maverick Charts: Recession talk, Business Investment, Labor Market & Housing

📊 Bonus: Gold in Goldilocks Mode

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts 📊

1. 48% U.S. recession probability in the next 12 months through Moody’s model:

👉 48% = highest since the 2020 pandemic

👉 48% = very close to the 50% recession threshold

👉 historically, such a high probability never occurred outside of recessions

My own framework shows a probability that is way lower than 48%: I will cover that in detail via my 4th edition deep dive into the U.S. economy:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

• 4th edition work in progress for a while as it aims to come with big improvements in all areas: structure, flow, insights via traditional + special & alternative data & indicators + enhanced also by leading indicators & recession probabilities

• I plan to run these reports each quarter + ad-hoc when needed, hence 4-8x/year

• some of the special metrics and leading indicators will be released now in the 4th quarter, while the others in 2026 as good things take time (and data costs)

• until then, you can check the 3rd edition with my 2024 stance, quick summary:

P.S. Fun Fact on the Economy and Sentiment in general:

• most of the time when I talk with most people about the economy, it’s almost like they WANT me to say “the recession is here”, hence many are puzzled when I say the probability of a recession is currently LOW (like in the 2024 research)

• this was not the pattern more than 10 years ago, it is rather recent, and it’s not because I meet more negativistic people, more or less the same environments

• when one ask somebody about an opinion, especially a professional one, one should aim for their objective view (and ideally their independent one, which btw is not a given many times), not the extreme negativity nor the extreme positivity: “I tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. If you want me to tell you what you want to hear, I am not adding any value to you … no echo chambers here!”

• I think this kind of sadomasochistic mentality is mainly due to the 24/7 news, ‘always connected’, polarisation, negativity which are boosted by the algos, which in turn hijacks unfortunately too many brains - we aren’t made for that as humans

• being calm, cool, rational and collected is not easy, buy very very important …

“Problem identified, but got any solutions Mav?”

• I will show how to combat this also in a future special edition, I think that would help many people and independent of their views, background and objectives

• naturally, via the future reports you will objectively have my take if the recession probability = very low, low, medium, high, or very high (no sad nor happy feelings)

2. A special one: Business Investment activity aka core CAPEX - it is UP!

👉 New Orders for Non-Defense Capital Goods (excluding aircraft) with a very sharp rebound since the 2020 pandemic, and currently at a high level of $76.7 billion (also known as ‘core CAPEX’ or simply put ‘Business Investment’ so that you can connect the dots, and/or do not get confused with other research or media reports)

👉 while it did slow down a bit in the 2022 bear market, a solid up-tick since 2024, hence signalling a positive outlook and economic strength in the months to come

Key notes:

• the core message behind this is that it reflects very broad trends in Business Investment and Private Sector confidence, both very important for the investment-production-consumption loop

• the key insight = purely focused on orders for long-lasting business equipment, and removing large fluctuations from defense and commercial aircraft orders

• core CAPEX is regarded as a key factor driving the economy and one of the leading indictors of Business Activity or Business CAPEX

Long time readers will recognise this chart from my previous reports, hence updated.

This will be monitored & updated for any big swings be it up or down: see how it relates well to the business cycle with the grey bars showing the recession periods.

3. How is the Labor Market doing lately? It is not tight anymore by any measure:

👉 2nd month with more Unemployed People (red) than Job Openings (green) = the first time since April 2021

👉 7.227 million job openings VS 7.384 million unemployed people = as a ratio that is 0.97 in August from 0.99 in July

👉 simply put, not an ‘employees market’ anymore which will quite likely push down Wage Growth (which is still quite good), and that would cut Consumption, but on the other side it will help with inflation (Wage Growth is a “sticky” inflation variable)

Maverick’s net takeaway:

• Unemployed People and Job Openings ‘matrix’ is a nice monthly visual overview, while one can always go deeper with other metrics for more insights & timeliness

• via the future reports I will outline, explain and provide further insights via various live/daily/weekly metrics that are way more leading and forward looking

• until then, a preview: the labor market is not tight nor hot, quite balanced overall

4. What about Housing & the Consumer? Well connected & stable? For that let’s look at the home equity values compared to the total value of household real estate

👉 Owners’ Equity in Real Estate as a % of Household Real Estate, solid at 72.56%

👉 the longest continuous stretch above 70% since the late 1950s, hence, we have the strongest Consumer-Housing Balance Sheet in 70 years

👉 “But what about affordability for new homeowners Mav?” Well, yes, it is low, but that is a side story, and in general, at any given point, it can’t be be ‘good’ for everybody (i.e. we cannot have high equity in the homes, high home values & great affordability for new/extra housing to buy)

Maverick’s net takeaway:

• Housing will NOT take DOWN the Economy which I hear quite a lot these days

• Owners’ equity in their homes is important via the ‘wealth effect’ which is real: higher confidence/sentiment, higher buffers, higher consumption patterns, invest more into stocks, bonds, Money Market Funds (MMFs), HELOC loans etc.

• in general, Real Estate is a big part of the economy and with its many facets it is complex - therefore I will offer more dedicated insights via the next report:

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts, Edition #4

5. A natural flow of the above is the following: A History of American Recessions! And if there was subtitle for it, it would be: There Used to be MORE Recessions!

Frequencies:

👉 we had 34 recessions since 1855! Way less than most would guess! Especially nowadays, ‘judging’ by politicians and big parts of the media, the ‘feeling’ can easily become that we have a recession ALL the time …

👉 fewer recessions lately: 13 since World War 2 (1939)

Durations:

👉 Longest recession = 65 months from Oct 1873 to Mar 1879

👉 1930s Great Depression = 43 months from Sep 1929 to Mar 1933

👉 ‘The Great Moderation’ from the mid-1980s to 2007 = low and stable inflation with milder business cycle fluctuations

👉 Average overall = 17 months

👉 Average in the 20th & 21st centuries = 14 months

👉 Shortest = 3 months during 2020 Covid from Feb to Apr

Maverick’s net takeaway:

• the business cycle is the business cycle and it will be around, I highly doubt we will ever properly tame it = Econ 101

• with less recessions since WW2, note that we do on average get one every 6.5 years

• knowing where we are in the current business cycle at any given point, hence the probability of a recession happening is important

• yet the best thing to do at any given time = be prepared (should we not foresee it)

📊 Bonus: Gold in Goldilocks Mode 📊

6. Gold, the yellow shining metal has been shining brightly lately:

👉 it just topped $4,000 for the 1st time ever in history

👉 +54% in 2025 = best year in more than 4 decades, doubled in less than 2 years, and outpaced rallies during the pandemic and 2007-09 recession

👉 1979 madness = when it more than doubled as investors despaired of ever seeing the end of inflation

👉 as always I like to say, a 3-5% allocation to a diversified & balanced portfolio is a very good idea, it definitely serves very well these days

7. Every time there are big moves in Gold and/or in Oil, I like to make the ratio of the two and infer from there various insights and forward looking ideas:

👉 Gold-to-Oil ratio = 64.5, and the classical interpretation when the ratio surges is that of a rather warning signal (grey periods = recessions): rising gold prices reflecting growing fear and risk aversion, while conversely a dropping price in Oil indicating weak demand, aka weak confidence in the global economy

👉 I actually think “it is different this time” and the situation is not that bad: there are different variables at play this time around

Way more on Gold via a future dedicated Maverick Special report, stay tuned!

In case you missed my previous 7 Maverick Special reports, there you go, title & link:

✍️ Maverick Special Report #7: Margin Debt (Leverage/Borrowing) by Retail Investors

✍️ Maverick Special Report #6: U.S. Public Debt Reduction = Hard but Feasible

✍️ Maverick Special Report #5: Disconnected - Economic Policy Uncertainty & Corporate Bonds Spread (IG & HY)

✍️ Maverick Special Report #4: Warren Buffett’s Cash Pile ... & More!

✍️ Maverick Special Report #3: U.S. Presidency - Does It Really & Deeply Matter?

✍️ Maverick Special Report #2: Value vs Growth ... or ... Value & Growth?

✍️ Maverick Special Report #1: Zooming Out via 100+ Years Charts = Leveraging Deep History to Navigate the Future

Additionally, I had a special situation/trade on Gold back in March, check it out:

✍️ Maverick Special Situation #6: 🪙 Gold Special Seasonality Pattern

Maverick Charts 39th edition done, 7 key charts with many insights!

You can check all the previous 38 editions in the Maverick Charts section!

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

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Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons!

That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game! Thank you!

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Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

12 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’:

📊 Maverick Charts: Magnificent 7 Special + Google mini case study

📊 Bonus: Valuation - U.S. and the World via forward P/E relative to last 20 years

✍️ Incoming Maverick-esque research: +200,000 views for a key Maverick tweet

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts 📊

1. MAG 7 (U.S. big tech Magnificent 7) 2024 combined Free Cash Flow (FCF):

👉 $407 billion in 2024 alone for another record - let that one sink in!

👉 Apple $109B Microsoft $74B, Google 73B, Meta/Facebook $54B, Nvidia $61B, Amazon $33B, Tesla $4B

👉 with so much Free Cash Flow (FCF), there is a lot of operational flexibility: buyback stock, invest in new projects with positive NPV outlooks etc

2. MAG 7 combined Total Revenue:

👉 $2,095 trillion for another record - let that one sink in!

👉 Apple $400B, Microsoft $270B, Google $360B, Meta/Facebook $170B, Nvidia $149B, Amazon $650B, Tesla $96B

Bonus, spicy facts:

👉 Mag 7 have a $18.2 trillion market cap & account for 34.4% of the S&P 500 Index

3. Mag 7 Earnings Yield:

👉 Google/Alphabet has the highest earnings yield at 4.96% - in other words, the search giant generates the highest percentage of its market cap in earnings each year

👉 Tesla with the lowest at 0.56%

4, 5, 6 & 7. Google (GOOGL) for a mini case study:

👉 = most profitable company in the world!

👉 surpassed Microsoft and Apple in net income over the last 6 months

👉 Total Revenues, up and to the right strongly!

👉 yet despite that, they are only the 5th largest company by market cap

👉 from the big tech co’s, Alphabet commands the lowest EV/EBIT multiple by far - a key question is that Google Search might lose its mighty touch …

👉 “Search” accounts for 56% of Alphabet’s overall revenue - investors debate that consumers are turning to LLMs instead of the traditional search (which we all do/did)

8 & 9. Amazon (AMZN) is very ‘Amazonian’ when it comes to subscription revenue - it generates more than any other consumer business in the world:

👉 Amazon: $45.4B

👉 Netflix: $40.2B, Spotify: $16.9B, Walmart: $6.5B, Costco: $5.1B

👉 so scalable that it is also generating its highest operating margin ever at 11%

👉on top, its two fastest growing divisions are AWS & Advertising which are also two of their most profitable segments

10. Tesla (TSLA) quarterly deliveries:

👉 384k this quarter, down 13.5% YoY

👉 analysts were expecting 387k deliveries, hence inline with expectations

📊 Bonus: Valuation - U.S. and the World via forward P/E relative to last 20 years 📊

1. World Valuation (MSCI regions)

👉 U.S. is quite off the charts with a current 22.9x forward P/E - way above the median, interquartile range and 10th-90th percentile

👉 Europe, AC World ex. US, Emerging Markets and the U.S. on the cheaper side

Maverick’s outlook:

• I will do this chart showing also Switzerland given I will cover stocks from there

• Value is to be found in the Swiss Alps … especially relative to pricey U.S. markets

2. Inside the U.S.:

👉 S&P 500 22x forward P/E, Nasdaq-100 28x, and Russell 2000 28x on the pricey side

👉 S&P 500 equal weight 17x, and Midcaps 16x on the cheaper side

Maverick’s outlook:

• I will cover single stocks from the U.S. with a focus on the mid and small caps

• Value is to be found via the mantra: ‘Go Small and Mid or Go Home’

✍️ Incoming Maverick-esque research: +195,000 views for a key Maverick tweet ✍️

What is coming next through the independent investment & economic research here? What’s next for you? Many drafts are work in progress - the next one is a key one!

✍️ Why Independent Investment and Economic Research = Paramount Nowadays!

• common sense is not so common, conflicts of interest are too common, hence independent investment and economic research for the win!

• +200,000 views for this Maverick tweet which was quoted/commented also by the legendary Nassim Taleb … so great from his side and I thank him a lot!

'If something is nonsense, you say it and say it loud. You will be harmed a little but will be antifragile — in the long run people who need to trust you will trust you.'

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Commencement Address, American University in Beirut

Research is NOT behind a paywall and NO pesky ads here unlike most other places!

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this by finding it interesting, saving you time and getting valuable insights? What would be appreciated?

Just sharing this around with like-minded people, and hitting the 🔄 & ❤️ buttons! That’ll definitely support bringing in more & more independent investment research: from a single individual … not a corporate, bank, fund, click-baity media or so … !

Like this, the big positive externalities become the name of the game!

Have a great day! And never forget, keep compounding: family, friends, hobbies, community, work, independence, capital, knowledge, research and mindset!

With respect,

Mav 👋 🤝

7 cherry picked Maverick Charts of the week say 10,000 words or more = the ‘How’!

Table of contents = the ‘What’:

📊 Maverick Charts: U.S. Neutral Interest Rate (R-Star), Fed Funds Rate (FFR), Fed Funds Futures, Switzerland Economic & Consumer Sentiment, France VS Greece aka 'Long FETA Short BaguETTA'

📊 Bonus: G10 & Global Central Banks in Action

✍️ Incoming Maverick-esque research: +195,000 views for a key Maverick tweet

Objective: both data-driven insights + valuable food for thought = the ‘Why’!

📊 Maverick Charts 📊

One key question in Macro is ‘What is the Neutral Interest Rate’ for the U.S. economy?

Before you get the answer as a best estimate via a typical Maverick Chart that says 10,000 words, a refresher/intro:

👉 also called the long-run equilibrium interest rate, the natural rate & to insiders, r-star or r* = in plain English, it is the interest rate that neither stimulates nor restricts economic growth, maintaining stable inflation (at target) and full employment

👉 this rate is not directly observable, it changes over time due to structural factors (demographics, productivity, global savings/investment trends, risk preferences), and is best estimated using various models, economic indicators & surveys

1. And now a very rare Maverick chart you see elsewhere with the answer/estimates:

👉 3% FOMC (green) - Longer Run Summary of Economic Projections for the Fed Funds Rate, Median

👉 3.1% Primary Dealers (blue) - Survey of Primary Dealers: Longer Run Target Federal Funds Rate

👉 3.1% Market Participants (orange) - Survey of Market Participants: Longer Run Target Federal Funds Rate

👉 3.4% LW +2 (red) - Laubach-Williams U.S. Natural Rate (R-Star) plus 2

👉 2.8% HLW +2 (light green) - Holston-Laubach-William Natural Rate (R-Star) plus 2

‘What about the practical takeaways for us investors Mav? Will you update this in the future?’

There you go with Maverick’s net takeaway & guidance:

👉 3% is the Neutral Interest Rate 'mas o menos' - see this rate as a gravitational force, a benchmark or a reference point for the FED doing & guiding monetary policy

👉 note the 2015-2018 high convergence, after Covid a high dispersion, lately converging again - when/if they diverge again, I would use the median of the five as a quick rule of thumb - further inspection of the macro & measures could tilt the view

👉 connecting Macro to Equities which is the main purpose of this: very important not just for policy makers, but also for equity & bond investors - recall Buffett’s take: ‘everything in valuation gets back to interest rates, interest rates are 'gravity' on stock prices’, basically the discount rate, hurdle rate, the cost of capital in pricing and valuation

👉 aggregating these key 5 estimates is a gauge for interest rates, understand why & how they went higher/lower across time, and couple current and future inferences for cost of capital and valuation purposes ... and intellectual food for thought … enjoy!

2. The Neutral Interest Rate (R-Star) & the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) + Rates Pricing:

👉 the FED’s current target range for the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) is 4.25% to 4.50% - the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) which is the actual rate at which banks lend to each other overnight) is around 4.33%

👉 given that all the 5 estimates around 3% for the Neutral Interest Rate (R-Star) are BELOW the 4.33% Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR), we can say that the current monetary policy is in restrictive territory - a big reason is to really anchor inflation expectations for the future so that is goes back to target, 2% on average over time

👉 going forward, Fed Funds Futures (green) implies a 3.84% rate for the end of 2025 (2 rates cuts), hence direction is lower - towards the 3% Neutral Interest Rate (R-Star)

All in all, from the past & actual estimates of the Neutral Interest Rate (R-Star) to the past, actual & future implied values of the Federal Funds Rate (FFR), we connected the dots via a round trip in a short amount of space/text and just Maverick 2 visuals!

Going forward, I will update these 2 key charts in the future Macro-Equities reports, especially in the reports covering the State of the U.S. Economy and the S&P 500.

✍️ The State of the U.S. Economy in 75 Charts

✍️ S&P 500 Report: Valuation, Fundamentals & Special Metrics

From U.S. interest rates, to Switzerland Economic & Consumer Sentiment given that U.S. + Switzerland are my main Macro focus! Growth & Safety/Safe Haven for the long term balanced and diversified win (equities I’ll cover also outside these two countries)!

3. Switzerland Economic Sentiment with recessions and equity drawdowns shaded:

👉 a major rebound from -51 to -2.1, almost back into positive territory

Maverick’s takeaway:

👉 2022 bear market (red shaded) made it for a crazy -72.7 reading, worse than 2020 Covid times and not far from 2008 GFC times - hence, overcooked it badly this time around - staying calm and seeing it as a buying opportunity was again the key

👉 rather a contrarian indicator - the more negative it gets, the more likely the local bottom is around the corner, hence cheaper times to buy the same quality companies or the juicy & long-awaited from the buy & wish list