by NelsonCorp | Nov 14, 2025 | Chart of the Week
This week’s chart looks at margin debt, or how much money investors are borrowing to buy stock. In good times, it’s good. It’s a sign that investors are feeling confident and willing to lever up to buy stock. But, like anything, it can get out of hand—and when...
by NelsonCorp | Nov 7, 2025 | Chart of the Week
Well, we got some data last week that Americans are starting to feel less great about the status of the U.S. economy. It came in the form of the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, shown above. As you can see, it fell sharply in November, its biggest monthly drop...
by NelsonCorp | Oct 31, 2025 | Chart of the Week
The stock market is starting to look a lot like the top of my wife’s double-shot espresso latte: frothy. Frothy, in the context of the stock market, means prices are being driven more and more by excitement and speculation than by fundamentals. For example,...
by NelsonCorp | Oct 24, 2025 | Chart of the Week
This week’s chart takes a look at the relationship between stocks and gold, a classic rivalry between growth and safety. Each dot on the chart represents a calendar year from 1952 through 2025, plotting the S&P 500’s annual price return (vertical axis)...
by NelsonCorp | Oct 17, 2025 | Chart of the Week
I’ve got an interesting chart for folks this week. It shows how the stock market (S&P 500 Index) has historically performed, on average, after a 6-month rally of at least 35%. That’s the blue line—the average. Why is that interesting? Because the orange...
by NelsonCorp | Oct 10, 2025 | Chart of the Week
This week’s chart compares S&P 500 reported earnings (orange line, top panel) with after-tax corporate profits from the National Income and Product Accounts, or NIPA (green line, top panel). NIPA profits track economy-wide corporate earnings,...
