CFA charterholder. Founder of Lead-Lag Media. Publisher of The Lead-Lag Report. 5x Dow & NAAIM Founders Award winner for research on intermarket signals.
Macro Observations
Credit card balances 90+ days delinquent hit 13.12 percent in Q1 2026, closing in on the 13.74 percent 2010 record. Auto loans are already at a series-record 5.60 percent. High yield spreads are at 287 basis points. The household ledger has already turned. Corporate credit is still pricing the calm.
Global View
The dollar erased its post-jobs dovish repricing. Gold and crude did not. That gap refutes last week's convergence thesis.
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Weekly
SPY +2.0% to $773. XLU 4W ROC -8.58% (Framework Check broken week 3). XLE Notable +1.02σ week 4 confirmed. GLD flips back to Leader. Rotation broadens but stays narrow. Run #26: 5 of 6 forward calls correct.
Weekly Signals
Every intermarket signal stays on offense. Trend, rotation, commodities, and Treasury behavior remain unanimously aligned with risk.
High-Yield-Spotlight
BlackRock Capital Allocation Term Trust (BCAT) pays nearly 20% on a 55/44 balanced portfolio, and because it is a term trust the discount has a floor. The catch is a distribution that has been shrinking for three straight years.
Macro Observations
The BLS diffusion index printed 54.4 in June 2026, identical to the full-year 2007 average. Payroll breadth spent nine of twelve months of 2025 below 50. One industry, health care, is generating 86 percent of net US job growth. Every one of those facts is public. Almost nobody is quoting them.
Macro Observations
Central banks bought 243.7 tonnes of gold in Q1 2026, only about 16 tonnes were officially reported. Real yields at 2.44 percent sit at 2008 highs while gold prints records. The old model of gold as anti-real-yield has stopped working. The buyers are not who the equity crowd thinks.
Anti-AI with Seth Cogswell. Live 2 PM ET. 1 CFP CE Credit.
Live at 2 PM ET. Efficient Growth is trading like the involuntary Anti-AI portfolio. Factor dispersion at a decade-plus high. 1 CFP CE Credit.
Tomorrow at 2 PM ET. Seth Cogswell of Running Oak Capital on the Anti-AI trade, the Grand Illusion, and factor dispersion at a decade-plus high. 1 CFP CE Credit.
Live tomorrow with Seth Cogswell, Running Oak Capital. Factor dispersion is at a decade-plus wide. Twenty of the last 38 trading days saw 110bps+ differentials. High Vol is beating Low Vol 131% to 12%. This is not a thesis. It is what the market is already doing.