Tech Crosses Three Sigma While Gold Breaks: The Streak Turns Ten
Tech crosses +3 sigma, gold breaks to a two-month low, credit confirms at +1.64 sigma, and utilities log a tenth straight negative week.
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The Preferred Stock Fund That Raised Its Payout Three Times In 2026
Three raises, a special, a 9.8% discount, and a bank preferred book yielding 8.4%. The quiet quality play.
The AI Trade Nobody Files Under Income: 23 Midstream Names, 9.8%, Two Raises
The data center buildout runs on natural gas. These are the toll roads, in a concentrated CEF at a 10% discount.
The Permitting Story Nobody Is Pricing In (FMKT)
Permitting reform is the deregulation story that moves on 24-month timelines and gets priced in on 24-hour cycles.
A Sample of What Your AI Agent Sends You
A real example of the weekly practice brief our AI agents email advisors in the network - market context, client conversation starters, and positioning help, personalized to your practice.
DoubleLine's 13% Yielder: A Third Emerging Markets, 10% Below NAV
DSL's 34% emerging-market sleeve, 5.18-year duration and doubled discount into a hiking Fed.
A 15% Mortgage Yield With A 7.87% Expense Ratio. Do The Math
DMO's 15% yield and tripled discount sit on top of 46% leverage and the highest expense load I have profiled.
What We Do for Advisors (and Why It Costs You Nothing)
The Lead-Lag Report is half of what I do. The other half is an advisor network with an AI agent that works for your practice, free. If we have never spoken, this one is for you.
40% Leverage, Asia-Pacific Bonds, A 15% Trailing Yield: Inside FAX
A 40-year-old CEF lending across Asia-Pacific at 40% leverage, marked at a wider-than-average discount.
The Miss, the Message, and the Market That Refused
When the weakest jobs report of the year buys equities a rally and the bond market nothing at all, what exactly is the equity market rallying into?
The Risk Did Not Leave the Market. It Changed Addresses.
The VIX sleeps at 15.31 while the 10-year climbed 104 basis points this year and TLT fell 11.1 percent. Volatility is not a number, it is a location, and in 2026 the location is duration.
My Father’s Book, Reborn: The Third Edition Is Here
The third edition of my father’s Intermarket Analysis and Investing is here. Read my foreword, and find the paperback and Kindle editions.
High Yield Spotlight
7% High Yield Exposure For 0.05%: The Cheapest Tool In The Shed
SPHY's 7.10% SEC yield at a 2.89-year duration for five basis points is the honest baseline for junk income.
Macro Observations
29,000 Jobs. Stocks Up. Bonds Down. One of These Markets Is Wrong.
September payrolls missed by two thirds, July revised to negative 10,000, and stocks rallied while the 10-year still closed higher at 5.28 percent. Stocks and bonds disagreed about the same number.
High Yield Spotlight
QYLD Pays 12%. Its SEC Yield Is 0.02%. Here Is Why
The widest distribution-to-SEC-yield gap I have covered: what QYLD's option premium machine actually sells.
High Yield Spotlight
BlackRock's 12% Junk CEF Trades 12% Below NAV. The Discount Just Doubled
HYT pays 12% while its discount to NAV widened from -6.49% to -11.68%. Value entry or distribution warning.
Macro Observations
The Fed Is Not Fighting Inflation. It Is Fighting the Gas Pump.
Core CPI sits at 2.4 percent, essentially at target. The headline gap is gasoline, up 27.4 percent on the year and over a third of August's entire monthly increase. The Fed hiked into it anyway.
High Yield Spotlight
The Largest BDC In America Pays 10%. Its Book Value Just Ticked Down
ARCC's $29.5 billion book pays $0.48 a quarter, but core EPS is $0.47 and NAV slipped to $19.59.
Macro Observations
The Most Expensive Money of the Year Hides Inside the Cheapest Stocks
The 10-year climbed from 4.24 to 5.25 percent this year. Small caps already did the math: a -0.54 monthly correlation between rates and the Russell 2000, and an 11-point gap to the Nasdaq 100 since July.
Global View
Four Central Banks Went Four Ways This Month. Every Long End Went the Same Way.
The Fed, the ECB and the BoJ all hiked in September, the BoE held, and China eased. The 10-year ends of the US, Germany and Japan all climbed anyway. The risk being priced is fiscal, not monetary.
High Yield Spotlight
JPMorgan's $44 Billion Nasdaq Income Machine Pays 13%. Read The Fine Print
JEPQ's 13.32% 30-day SEC yield is option premium, not a coupon. What the income machine sells to pay you.
Weekly Signals
A Market Divided: Two Signals Shout Risk, Two Whisper Caution
The S&P 500 sits 7.36% above its 200-day average and utilities just made new lows, but gold outran lumber by nineteen points over thirteen weeks and long bonds led August. Two risk-on, two risk-off: the split itself is the signal.
Macro Observations
The Shock Absorber Is Gone
The mortgage-to-Treasury spread compressed from 320 basis points to about 185, in line with its 20-year average, just as the 10-year broke to 5.18%, its highest since 2007. Every basis point now lands on the buyer.
Macro Observations
The Delinquency Cycle Already Turned
Bank card delinquencies peaked at 3.22% in mid-2024 and have fallen five straight quarters to 2.85%. The consumer crack everyone braced for happened, quietly, and ended while nobody repriced it.