Welcome Friends, 

Here’s an assortment of posts shared this week on Trends with Friends. Let’s dive in…

SEPTEMBER’S SLUGGISHNESS

Howard Lindzon shares his love for September despite it being a historically weak month in the markets.

Here’s the money quote, 

I love the change of season that September brings. Investors as a whole do not like September. September is the nemesis of the Nasdaq… 

Back to school blues, end of summer blues yada yada… mood matters. Armed with this data the question is should I care?

For most long term investors it probably does not matter. Just be aware that by November, stocks have generally started to improve.

Maybe earmark some capital to invest in your favorite indexes for the end of September and October. That is what I plan to do.

See Lindzon’s full post here.

THIS WEEK IN AI

Michael Parekh reviews Ilya’s New Hyperscale Safe Superintelligence, Nvidia’s AI Data Centers, Microsoft’s Copilot Adoption, Apple’s AI strategy with the launch of its latest iPhone and more in this week’s AI Summary.

It’s a must read. 

THE MARKET IS A MESS

Larry Thompson shared 6 charts to make sense of the messy market. He writes, 

The market is messy, if you have an ego to feed do it somewhere else. You make money by listening to the markets message, not by trying to define it.

$SPY – S&P 500 is Messy. $540 is the level but I want to see strength at POTENTIAL support and that’s not existent at the moment.

Percent Of Stock Above 20 Day Moving Average By Market Cap is Messy. 

Percent Of Stock Above 50 Day Moving Average By Market Cap is Messy.

It’s messy. Don’t be a hero.

See Thompson’s full post here.

THE AI ARMS RACE

Charlie Bilello breaks down the AI Arms race in his weekly chart review. Charlie comments, 

Nvidia’s historic advance over the past few years has been a direct result of the AI arms race, where the biggest tech companies are making some enormous bets on the future.

Google has increased capital expenditures by a whopping 64% in the past year, while Amazon (+41%), Microsoft (40%) and Meta (+23%) have also boosted spending.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said recently that the “risk of underinvesting” in AI is “dramatically greater than the risk of overinvesting” and Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would “rather risk building capacity before it is needed, rather than too late.”

While Nvidia has clearly benefited from this trend, the question for investors more broadly is how much of return on investment other companies will experience from their AI infrastructure build out. And when will we see that translate into higher profits?

TED’S RETURN TO NORWAY

Ted Merz traveled to Norway to attend his 40th high school reunion and shared a beautiful reflection. Merz mentioned, 

The experience underscored for me the importance of making time for the big “macro” events in life – reunions, weddings and funerals.

We make a big deal about tracking short term progress by counting steps, calories and reps in the gym; reunions provide a long-term reckoning.

I arrived in Norway in 1983 as an exchange student with AFS. I attended a year at one of the secondary schools that Norwegians call gymnas. I lived with a family on Sotra, an island outside Bergen. I arrived unable to speak a word of Norwegian and left almost fluent.

At the time, Sotra was remote. In local slang it was called “Strilelandet.”  The word has a charming etymology, defined as an area of farms outside Bergen that can be reached by rowboat. In local parlance it was derogatory, akin to “the sticks” in America. 

Norwegians were prosperous but hardly wealthy. The country felt insulated. Few people I met then had been to America. There was one TV network and it signed off at midnight. Many people showered and changed clothes only every other day because of the high cost of heating water.

It’s hard to find that scarcity mindset today. Norway has become richer and more global in much the same way as every other place in the world. But here oil has acted as an accelerant, creating an enormous number of millionaires…

Everything was familiar and yet completely different. 

Read Ted’s full post here.

STAYING YOUNG PSYCHOLOGICALLY

Tadas Viskanta curated links on the topic of Staying Young Psychologically. Here’s a sneak peek… 

TRENDS WITH NO FRIENDS

Trends With No Friends sifts through the noise and discovers stocks above $1B market cap with high relative strength and low social following.

The publication shares 52-Week Highs and Lows sorted by followers on Stocktwits. 

Why is high relative strength and low social following important?

Stocks that are outperforming tend to continue to outperform. Stocks that have a low social following are, by definition, undiscovered by the crowd. Stocks that have both Relative Strength and Low Social Following can really outperform as more investors discover them.

This week, Trends with No Friends featured… 

KT Corporation ($KT), BrightSpring ($BTSG), Sanofi ($SNY), CRH plc ($CRH) and more.

THIS WEEK’S EPISODE

And in case you missed it… Howard Lindzon, JC Parets, Phil Pearlman and Michael Parekh discuss Election Year Bets on Tech, Semis, AI’s Next Step, September’s Weakness and more in the latest episode of Trends with Friends. 

Tune in today.

GET IN TOUCH

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