Feature: “Terrifying Bull Bull”

How is there such a relentless bid for big-cap tech names?

Part of it is structural. Companies like Nvidia and Microsoft can make up a combined 15% of the S&P 500 thanks to their sheer size.

And week after week, 401k and other passive investment plans put more money into market indices, benefitting these already large plays.

But we’re seeing another trend at play too. Today’s investors are increasing their stakes in big companies by moving out of small companies:

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Investors aren’t just going all in on big-tech stocks, they’re selling off better-valued small caps to do so. (Source: BofA)

It’s a feature of the most terrifying bull market of our lifetimes.

Year-to-date, over $80 billion has flowed out of small-cap U.S. stock funds. These are the companies that can include the proverbial next Nvidia or next Microsoft.

Many of these companies trade at far more reasonable valuations than Microsoft and Nvidia today. And their growth rates can be just as impressive. It’s easier for a small-cap company to double earnings than a company that’s already earning tens of billions per year.

It’s likely that investors won’t rediscover these stocks until the big-cap names falter. But for all our criticism of investor enthusiasm and high-flying valuations in the overall market today, small cap stocks are starting to look like a relative value, especially for more patient investors.

The ol’ timers will tell you “small caps lead the way out” of a bust. For now, big tech continues to suck up global capital.

~ Addison

P.S.: With the Federal Reserve on track to cut interest rates at its September meeting, the stock market as a whole may get a shot in the arm – small caps and large caps alike.

Our research has found several pockets of opportunity in small-cap stocks this year, particularly in areas that can benefit from President Trump’s Great Reset of the U.S. economy.

Key areas that have already been attractive include the cryptocurrency space, resource stocks, and plays on next-generation nuclear technologies.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

How is there such a relentless bid for big-cap tech names?

Part of it is structural. Companies like Nvidia and Microsoft can make up a combined 15% of the S&P 500 thanks to their sheer size.

And week after week, 401k and other passive investment plans put more money into market indices, benefitting these already large plays.

But we’re seeing another trend at play too. Today’s investors are increasing their stakes in big companies by moving out of small companies:

Turn Your Images On

Investors aren’t just going all in on big-tech stocks, they’re selling off better-valued small caps to do so. (Source: BofA)

It’s a feature of the most terrifying bull market of our lifetimes.

Year-to-date, over $80 billion has flowed out of small-cap U.S. stock funds. These are the companies that can include the proverbial next Nvidia or next Microsoft.

The ol’ timers will tell you “small caps lead the way out” of a bust. For now, big tech continues to suck up global capital.

~ Addison

P.S.: With the Federal Reserve on track to cut interest rates at its September meeting, the stock market as a whole may get a shot in the arm – small caps and large caps alike.

Our research has found several pockets of opportunity in small-cap stocks this year, particularly in areas that can benefit from President Trump’s Great Reset of the U.S. economy.

Key areas that have already been attractive include the cryptocurrency space, resource stocks, and plays on next-generation nuclear technologies.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

Trump and Powell are no buddies. They’ve been fighting over rate cuts all year—Trump demanding more, Powell holding back. Even after cutting twice, Trump called him “grossly incompetent” and said he’d “love to fire” him. The tension has been building for months.

And Trump now seems ready to install someone who shares his appetite for lower rates and easier money.

Trump has been dropping hints for weeks—saying on November 18, “I think I already know my choice,” and then doubling down last Sunday aboard Air Force One with, “I know who I am going to pick… we’ll be announcing it.”

He was referring to one Kevin Hassett, who—according to a recent Bloomberg report—has emerged as the overwhelming favorite to become the next Fed chair.

Here we sit — investors, analysts, retirees, accountants, even a few masochistic economists — gathered beneath the leafless monetary tree, rehearsing our lines as we wait for Jerome Powell to step onstage and tell us what the future means.

Spoiler: he can’t. But that does not stop us from waiting.

Tomorrow, he is expected to deliver the December rate cut. Polymarket odds sit at 96% for a dainty 25-point cut.

Trump, Navarro and Lutnick pine for 50 points.

And somewhere in the wings smiles Kevin Hassett — at 74% odds this morning, the presumed Powell successor — watching the last few snowflakes fall before his cue arrives.

With U.S. stocks trading at about 24 times forward earnings, plans for capital growth have to go off without a hitch. Given the billions of dollars in commitments by AI companies, financing to the hilt on debt, the most realistic outcome is a hitch.

On a valuation basis, global markets will likely show better returns than U.S. stocks in 2026.

America leads the world in innovation. A U.S. tech stock will naturally fetch a higher price than, say, a German brewery. But value matters, too.

As copper flowed into the United States, LME inventories thinned and backwardation steepened. Higher U.S. pricing, tariff protection, and lower political risk made American warehouses the most attractive destination for metal. Each new shipment strengthened the spread.

The arbitrage, once triggered, became self-reinforcing. Traders were not participating in theory; they were responding to the physical incentives in front of them.

The United States had quietly become the marginal buyer of the world’s most important industrial metal. China, long the gravitational center of global copper demand, found itself on the outside.