Paid Subscribers: Reserve Your Seat for Tomorrow's Anti-AI Session
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.
Michael A. Gayed, CFA
CFA charterholder. Founder of Lead-Lag Media. Publisher of The Lead-Lag Report. 5x Dow & NAAIM Founders Award winner for research on intermarket signals.
Anti-AI: Why Efficient Growth Is Trading Nothing Like The S&P 500 (Tomorrow, 2 PM ET)
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.
Macro Observations
The Repo Whisper the Fed Doesn't Want Heard
Standing Repo Facility takeup hit $31.5 billion on December 31, 2025. SOFR traded above IORB on 31 days in Q4 alone. The relief did not come from the backstop. The Fed stopped runoff December 1 and began buying $40 billion of bills a month December 12. Read the sequence, not the label.
Macro Observations
When the Bond Market Dies, So Does Capitalism
Federal interest just passed defense. Debt-to-GDP exceeded the WWII peak in peacetime. The foreign buyer base is disassembling. And a democratic socialist just took NYC. These are not separate stories. They are the same story, upstream and downstream.
Macro Observations
What Commercial Paper Is Quietly Telling You
Nonfinancial commercial paper hit a record $397.2 billion on May 6, 2026, then fell to $342.1 billion by July 29. A 13.9 percent 12-week contraction, in the 7th percentile since 2001. Last two times CP moved this way: 2007 and 2019. Corporate treasurers were already gone.
Sponsored
3 Hours: International Alpha Live with Hervé Van Caloen
Today at 12 PM ET. Live with Hervé Van Caloen. 1 hour CFP CE Credit. Registration closes when we start.
High-Yield-Spotlight
A 12% Taxable-Equivalent Yield With No Discount Left To Harvest
Nuveen's AMT-Free Municipal Credit Income Fund (NVG) offers some of the best tax math in the closed-end fund universe and the thinnest margin of safety it has had in years
Sponsored
Where the Next Decade of Alpha Lives Outside the US
Live tomorrow, Friday July 31 at 12 PM ET. Michael Gayed and Hervé Van Caloen on international equity strategy, Latin America, and the global supply chain. CFP CE Credit Eligible. Register free.
Lead-Lag Live
Starts in 1 Hour - Anti-AI: Why Efficient Growth Is Behaving Nothing Like the S&P 500 Right Now
Starts in 1 hour. Live at 2:30 PM ET with Seth Cogswell of Running Oak Capital. 1 CFP CE Credit Approved.
Lead-Lag Live
Today at 2:30 PM ET - Anti-AI: Why Efficient Growth Is Behaving Nothing Like the S&P 500 Right Now
Live at 2:30 PM ET with Seth Cogswell of Running Oak Capital. The involuntary Anti-AI trade, the Grand Illusion of hyperscaler earnings, and why 14 months of factor nonsense may be sow time. 1 CFP CE Credit Approved.
High-Yield-Spotlight
The Gold Standard of Direct Lending
Direct lending has quietly become the private-credit engine most portfolios lean on. Here is what changed and why it matters for allocators.
Macro Observations
The Cheap Insurance Regime
The CBOE SKEW index closed at 150 on July 22, its 96th percentile reading since 1990, while the VIX sat near 16 — a divergence, not a coincidence.