Eye On The Market
Business & Finance
About
Join Michael Cembalest as he explores a wide variety of investment topics, including the economy, policy and markets.
Episodes
- Abandon Ship!
This episode of Eye On The Market discusses the GOP's challenges in the upcoming midterm elections, despite some positive economic indicators. Factors contributing to these challenges include employment trends, rising ACA premiums, inflati…
- Salem’s Lot: Gulf War update; the Purge of senior US military officers; a US fossil fuel reliance fever dream
This episode of Eye On The Market provides an update on the Gulf War, covering international commodity prices, energy independence, and military considerations. It also examines the history of presidential firings of senior US military off…
- Fighting Words: The Energy Transition in 2026
The Eye On The Market episode 'Fighting Words: The Energy Transition in 2026' examines various energy debates, including the impact of data centers, the economics of solar and storage, nuclear power, renewable supply chains, and the viabil…
- Supply and The Mam
The episode discusses the New York City housing market, noting it is experiencing its tightest conditions since 1960. A video component is mentioned.
- Eye on the Market Outlook 2026: Smothering Heights
Michael Cembalest
- The Deep End: 2025 Alternative Investments Review
On the surface not much has changed since our last review two years ago. View video here
- The winter of our discontent: generative AI disrupts the entertainment industry content moat
While the prior decade was defined by disruption in content distribution, the next decade will be defined by disruption in content creation, augmented by generative AI. This month’s Eye on the Market looks at the rapidly shifting fortunes…
- Mad Libs: just fill in the blanks
Mad Libs. This piece is not about how mad liberals are at the administration, although the latest polling data indicates that it could be. Instead, it’s a fill-in-the-blank exercise regarding the impact of tariffs and immigration policy on…
- The Blob: Capital, China, Chips, Chicago and Chilliwack
In this piece, we look at the AI and data center takeover, and the OpenAI-Oracle deal; the US government equity investment in Intel, the origins of TSMC and how many countries support national champions via industrial policy; efforts in Ch…
- Fair Shakes
Assessing US earnings and economic trends during one of the broadest policy shifts since FDR; partisan redistricting, the Supreme Court, the Census and the balance in the US House of Representatives. View video here
- Summer mailbag
Every summer, I answer questions from the Eye on the Market client mailbag. View video here
- Time Flies: Twenty Years of Eye on the Market
Take a look back at 30 standout insights which are just as relevant for the future as they were for the past. Explore our insights
- "OK Boomer" on stablecoins, profits, tax cuts vs tariffs and presidential break-ups
Throughout history, non-FDIC insured short-term dollar denominated debt redeemable at par on demand has been prone to runs, whether in money market funds, repos or uninsured deposits. Why would lightly regulated stablecoins be any differen…
- Chicken Hawks: a quick note on the US budget reconciliation bill
A brief note on the debt and deficit impacts of the House budget reconciliation bill, Henery Hawk and Foghorn Leghorn. View video here
- Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
With some kind of tariff equilibrium possibly within reach, we return to some regularly scheduled programming: artificial intelligence and language models which were the primary drivers of equity markets before the trade wars began. View v…
- Dogespierre Has Left The Building: DOGE’s impact on US government spending; Spanish Power outage; Trump Tracker
Like his predecessor Robespierre, Dogespierre (Elon Musk) also brought down the proverbial guillotine with indiscriminate cuts to Federal employment, contracts, leases and grants. With Dogespierre now stepping back to spend more time on hi…
- Redacted
Straight talk from the CEO front lines on Liberation Day. Almost all the news on tariffs and declining CEO business confidence that’s fit to print, with only a few minor redactions. View video here
- Fifty Days of Grey
Here’s the interesting thing about the stock market: it cannot be indicted, arrested or deported; it cannot be intimidated, threatened or bullied; it has no gender, ethnicity or religion; it cannot be fired, furloughed or defunded; it cann…
- Heliocentrism: Objects may be further away than they appear
Solar capacity is booming around the world, both utility scale and residential applications, and is often accompanied by energy storage whose costs are declining as well. Yet after $9 trillion globally over the last decade spent on wind, s…
- From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity: tracking Trump’s economic, market and constitutional milestones Whether you’re elated or despondent about the blizzard of changes taking place in Washington, let me remind you of something: two years is an eternity i…
- Inauguruption: the flurry of Trump 2.0 executive orders
Trump 2.0 is a hodgepodge of distinctly American political strains: the bare-knuckled nationalism and anti-elitism of Andrew Jackson, the tariff-loving protectionism of William McKinley, the small-government/pro-business policies of Calvin…
- Eye on the Market Outlook 2025: The Alchemists
Deregulation, deportations, tariffs, tax cuts, cost cutting, crypto, oil & gas, medical freedom and Agency purges: What could possibly go wrong? Sections include the AI Golden Goose, the invisible nuclear renaissance, DOGE Quixote, the two…
- The Year of Living Dangerously
I was visited by six ghosts recently warning me of dangers related to predictions, allocations, apparitions, legalizations, expurgations and ablations. Here’s what they said. View video here
- "Kamilton": the 2024 election and who tells your story
A reflection on the 2024 election and who tells your story. On Trump’s victory: market implications of a supply side boost from deregulation clashing against inflationary impulses of tariffs and deportations. The ten year Treasury will be…
- The Thucydides cap on the China equity rebound trade
For participants in the China equity rebound trade: once you hit your return targets, take the money and run. Click here to read the full PDF and view the video.
- Mind the Gap: a historically polarized US election
Candidate policy comparisons in a historically polarized US Election; China stimulus package The US is about to conduct its most polarized Presidential election in 100 years. Today’s note looks at candidate policy differences and implicati…
- A severe case of COVIDIA: prognosis for an AI-driven US equity market
NVIDIA and its GPU customers are now a large driver of equity market returns, earnings growth, earnings revisions, industrial production and capital spending. View video here
- There’s no place like home
A surge in the Japanese Yen is resulting in home repatriation of Yen-funded positions overseas, and close-out of Yen-funded positions abroad. While Google was found guilty of home bias anti-competitive search engine behavior, any judicial…
- The Lion in Winter
From 1930 to 2010, there were six extended periods of small cap outperformance as it dominated large cap over that entire period. But since 2010, small cap sits alongside value stocks and non-US stocks in the unholy trinity of underperform…
- The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State
The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State. Recent Supreme Court rulings may now usher in the largest pushback on the regulatory state since the Reagan Administration. A look at the end of Chevron deference, a revised statute of limitations…
- A Piece of the Action
Investing in professional sports leagues and related businesses . As rules around private equity ownership of sports leagues expand, we review team valuations and profitability, emerging sports categories, streaming and broadcast revenues,…
- Animal Farm
With spring planting season having arrived in Zone 7, it’s a good time to review agriculture from an investor’s perspective. Topics include agricultural price inflation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; public and private equity…
- Cicadian Rhythms
Cicadian Rhythms: the fading prospects of a US disinflationary boom; Japan’s structural reform/M&A emergence; and Eye on the Market mailbag responses to questions on Tesla/Musk, GLPs, housing, China, Truth Social and Meta’s latest open sou…
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: an investor lens on tech valuations, AI, energy and the US Presidential Election. View video here
- Electravision
This Eye on the Market is about the predominant vision for the future which involves the electrification of everything, powered by solar, wind, transmission and distributed energy storage. View video here
- Five Easy Pieces
Five Easy Pieces: on Magnificent 7 stocks, open source large language models, the No Labels movement, the Armageddonists and bottom-fishing in Chinese equities. View video here
- Medical Complications
This Eye on the Market is about all the things that can be true at the same time. The collapse of the political middle in Congress should not be an excuse for everyone else to abandon the ability to believe things that may appear contradic…
- Outlook 2024 - Episode 3: Deep Dive—Top Ten Surprises
A top ten list on what might happen… not what will happen, in honor of strategist Byron Wien View video here
- Outlook 2024 - Episode 2: Deep Dive—The Fats Dominoes
The impact of weight loss drugs on equity markets. View video here
- Eye on the Market Outlook 2024: Pillow Talk - Episode 1: Outlook Overview
Falling US inflation and possible Fed easing are increasing talk of a soft landing rather than a hard landing and bear market. Our 2024 Outlook takes a closer look at equities, fixed income, China, Japan, antitrust, weight loss drugs and t…
- It’s Mostly a Paper Moon: Alternative Investments Review
A review on industry returns in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, commercial real estate, infrastructure and private credit View video here
- Not That 70’s Show
Six questions and answers on the intersection between geopolitics, US politics and financial markets View transcript View video here
- New York, Just Like I Pictured It
Comments on NYC compared to 21 other US cities with respect to urban recovery, commercial real estate, mass transit, crime, outmigration, work-from-home trends, tax rates, economic pulse, fiscal health, unfunded pensions, energy prices, in…
- What was I made for: Large Language Models in the Real World
I asked Chat GPT-4 questions on economics, markets, energy and politics that my analysts and I worked on over the last two years. This piece reviews the results, along with the latest achievements and stumbles of generative AI models in th…
- The Rasputin Effect
Global resilience to higher rates View transcript View video and charts here
- Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
The impact of underperforming 2020 and 2021 US IPOs View transcript with chart references
- Letters to the Editor
Comments on mega-cap stocks and artificial intelligence. Then, it’s time for some of my unsolicited letters to Barron’s, MSNBC, “No Labels”, FHFA and more.
- Too Long at the Fair
Time to retire the US/Emerging Markets barbell for a while View transcript with chart references
- The Places We Could Go
Before getting into the US$ discussion, three quick things. First, despite strong US data in Q1 and Q2, the US still appears headed for a slowdown later this year. As shown below, many longer-horizon leading indicators point in that direct…
- Frankenstein’s Monster
Frankenstein’s Monster: banking system deposits and the unintended fallout from the Fed’s monetary experiment; commercial real estate, regional banks and the COVID occupancy shock; the wipeout of Credit Suisse contingent capital securities…