Michael Santoli

This, from 11 days ago, was not wrong, but it surely captured a ripening consensus priced into markets that "this might not hurt much after all..."

BofA equity desk this morning was pushing a "Buy first-half consumer winners/Short 1H consumer losers" pair for August. Included this chart...

That's it for now. Heed the usual fine print on #MysteryBroker stuff...

Not a doomsday call, more a reset of price vs. expectations: "The stock market is likely to resume its advance in the fall as tariff effects peak, giving room for the Fed to lower rates. There shouldn’t be any major downturns before next April and a bear market is unlikely until the fall of 2026."

On the macro backdrop, #MysteryBroker says: "The trade deals are anti free market and create distortions in the allocation of resources...My biggest difference with the consensus is that the tariffs will have a significant effect on both the economy and inflation over the next few months."

He adds: "The correction may not be more than 5 or 6% for the S&P 500 but the high flying momentum stocks will suffer the most." He's looking to short or buy puts on the BUZZ Social Sentiment ETF.

The #MysteryBroker says "Technical indicators are flashing overbought signals. Seasonality is now turning bearish for the next two months. There hasn’t been a 1% move in the S&P 500 since June 24th, thus we are due. And it is likely to be a down 1% or more when the streak is broken..."

The #MysteryBroker further details his Sell call, which amounts to an overbought stock market with particular overheating in the high-beta/low-quality stuff due for a pullback, combined with investor underappreciation of the net negative lagged effects of even better-than-feared tariff policies...

Quick update, the #MysteryBroker says he went to a short-term Sell today on the S&P 500, details when available...

bsky.app/profile/mich...

VIX under 15, round-tripping to mid-Feb levels pre-Tariff Panic.

A "low" VIX isn't in itself a warning. Can mean a calm, trending market. Now caught in the undertow of extreme low realized volatility - historical 20-day S&P vol is ~6. Still, it shows waning demand for protection against shocks...

Hard to tell if the market's tired, bored or simply resting when it gets into these slow-mo grind phases.

"Boring is bullish" in markets, all else equal, though this plausibly looks like a rally approaching a near-term apogee. Some of the wild frothy stuff cooling. Earnings reactions net negative.

The Dow's annualized total return since this picture was taken is exactly 10%, just as we knew it would be.

But did we know that three-button suits would never come back into style again?

Just checked with editors, it might have been miscoded, should be fixed now.

Bull market enters the 'anything goes' phase. Should you follow? Mike Santoli breaks down the meme-stock revival, the gleeful hunting of short sellers, the return of SPACs and the lowering of financial guardrails.

Speculative stampedes into the racy, gamy parts of the market have accelerated.

Time to "fear the froth" heading into a seasonally tougher month with plenty of good news priced in?

Or is it the kind of “rational recklessness” that helps energize a bull market?

New column, free with email signup.

My column has run on CNBC Pro for years, though it’s free to read if you register with an email address.

Always was part of Pro, but the column is free if you register with an email address.

Bull market enters the 'anything goes' phase. Should you follow? Mike Santoli breaks down the meme-stock revival, the gleeful hunting of short sellers, the return of SPACs and the lowering of financial guardrails.

Just as the speculative froth emerges, purveyors of prudence start tut-tutting those buying the junk and reviving the memes.

But given the force of the market rally and societal mood, should we expect different?

A risk to the broader market, or “just the right amount of wrong?”

Weekend column.

Bull market enters the 'anything goes' phase. Should you follow? Mike Santoli breaks down the meme-stock revival, the gleeful hunting of short sellers, the return of SPACs and the lowering of financial guardrails.

Speculative stampedes into the racy, gamy parts of the market have accelerated.

Time to "fear the froth" heading into a seasonally tougher month with plenty of good news priced in?

Or is it the kind of “rational recklessness” that helps energize a bull market?

New column, free with email signup.

That indicator would have had you selling the market several years ago atless than half today’s index levels.

Makes little sense to compare asset values of global companies to annual US output. Those companies also have unprecedented levels of profitability. If those eight companies were chopped into dozens of their component parts would it make it more palatable?

Shouting about a housing/credit bubble started in like 2004, that’s the point here.

Such things manifest slowly, though, hard to fit them into a tactical narrative. Seasonally we’re due for an air pocket, consensus has grown a bit complacent about possible macro implications of tariffs, etc. One can rationalize elevated valuations but not deny them. None of that makes a bubble.

That said, I’m increasingly mindful of more structural excesses building: Adding leverage to the AI buildout (private credit funding data centers), banks looking to lend vs. crypto, HOOD tokenizing private startup equity, adding alts to 401ks, lowering the minimum balances for day traders.

Still a split market, wild lottery-ticket meme nonsense raging while vanilla investors show little euphoria and core indexes are maybe a little stretched but in an orderly rotational uptrend.

We’re in a different spot from mid-2020 in many ways but these observations from then might be relevant…

Erratic flows from the adrenaline junkies, options-buying stampedes, headlong short squeezes, whippy mean-reversion action.

Like clockwork once a strong multi-month rally ripens.

Biggest YTD winners in the S&P 500 getting clipped, in what has so far been a benign pause in the main indexes...

The $25k minimum was set in 2001. The proposed $2,000 threshold is ~$1,100 in 2001 dollars.

Robinhood's comment letter advocating for this says active traders' breakeven levels are lower now due to lower trading costs. Ha.

Will be interesting to see if some brokers set their own higher limits.

You buy 10,000 Maniacs and short Blink 182 when their ratio drops below 55 and vice versa.

This crypto ratio stuff is like asserting that Matchbox 20 is properly worth exactly four Maroon 5's, even though the numbers have no substantive relationship to anything in the real word or to one another.

The markets are telling you not to worry with steep drop in volatility. Should you listen? It never hurts to try to anticipate what the markets might find if they soon go looking for something new to worry about.

As midsummer sets in and the trauma of the springtime sell-off fades, the markets are whispering, “Relax.”

Tariffs? Same threats, new deadline. Fed? Rate cut in sight even with blissed-out financial conditions.

Will markets soon go looking for something to fret about again?

New column.

The anticipation doesn’t hurt. Repositioning for it can.