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The timeline of American economic development is punctuated by episodes of intense capital spending to build out a new and revolutionary concept that transforms the entire country.  The investment plans of hyperscalers Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta have captured the public’s attention this year as the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 ignited a quantum shift in capex spending, with the third quarter of 2025 coming in at a run rate of $97 billion, or nearly $400 billion annualized.  The astronomical amounts being spent to build AI capacity are almost hard to fathom, and today, we take a closer look at the data center phenomenon.

Read this week's Major Trend. 

November delivered a welcome shift in style leadership, helping Core and Select post solid results while Grizzly defended well in a rising market. With valuations stretched and a potential year-end rally in play, our positioning across strategies reflects disciplined risk management and selective opportunity—especially in Health Care, Biopharma, and value-oriented industries.

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Select Industries added a new group position in Pharmaceuticals, looking to take advantage of historically low relative valuations and recent momentum. 

Five of the Magnificent Seven firms ended November in the red. Despite that turbulence at the top, the S&P 500 still managed to eke out a gain for the seventh-consecutive month. The valiant November effort from the index’s 2025 underdogs—Value, High Dividend, Low Volatility, and Equal Weight—won’t change much in the final assessment of the year.

Last month, Royal Blue Value (+3.5%) outdid RB Growth (-4.1%) for the first time since April 2022. Over the last two years, Royal Blue Growth is up 52%, just a bit more than Royal Blue Value’s gain of 51%.

It’s been five long years since Small Caps had their last sustained relative-strength rally: From November 2020 through March 2021, the S&P 600 gained an astounding 51% versus the S&P 500’s +22%.

The latest Up/Down ratio is 1.64—the second consecutive above-average reading for this vignette. Since the GFC, outperforming quarters have most commonly appeared in chunks of four or five. Still, for now, the story of EPS-growth expansion continues to gain steam.

The favorable seasonal window is upon us and the Fed liquidity condition is poised to turn more positive.

More than halfway through the decade, a lot of things have changed. We revisit several decade-defining charts from the 2010s and consider where these long-running trends stand today.

As we tickle the October high, the present bull has already achieved something quite special. This iteration has posted the largest price gain (+93%) of any bull market that wasn’t born in a recession.

The index’s monthly win streak looked as dead as Disco as November progressed. Then, SPX rallied to close the month with its best five-day run since mid-May to attain a 7th consecutive monthly win. In the majority of prior cases, the index proceeded to post above average results for the next three- and six-month periods.

Contrarian investing is difficult; from both an emotional and implementation standpoint, but our disciplined industry-scoring process periodically endorses segments that glaringly conflict with consensus (and our own) views. When an industry at odds with the conventional narrative materializes as highly-rated, it often turns out to be one of our more successful portfolio allocations.

We examine several baskets of equities focused on distinctively speculative, high-risk market segments. Such traits are apt to be qualities investors try to avoid—but when animal spirits are running high, they can generate prodigious returns during short but powerful speculative outbursts.

The third quarter of 2025 produced the strongest earnings results in recent memory, paced by revenue gains in all eleven S&P 500 sectors. Sales registered 8.7% growth over 3Q24, leading to improvements in profit margins across the income statement.

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Whenever the market’s thematic leadership hits an air pocket, it is instructive to discover where investor interest shifts. In November, those evacuating big tech found refuge in the Health Care sector, which staged a remarkable comeback from its extended weakness this summer.

While stretched valuations in AI-related names were widely cited as the trigger for the mid-November stock market hiccup, a more convincing explanation lies in the plumbing of the financial system.