Volatility Pulse - One Market, Two Speeds
Take out AI and the party gets quiet
Since the August 24 peak, chip stocks are up 9% and the S&P 500 is up 0.4%. Everything that isn't AI is down 5.4%.
Source: @steverattner
Five stocks, almost a third of the market
The five largest stocks made up 30.4% of the S&P 500 at the end of September. At the 2000 peak, the top five topped out around 18%.
Source: @kevrgordon
Good luck beating the index
Only about 23% of the 500 largest US stocks have beaten the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. Back in 2009 it was closer to 60%.
Source: Trivariate Research via @GlobalMktObserv
Not bad for a memory company
Micron produced $72 million of free cash flow in its August 2025 quarter. In the September 2026 quarter it was $32.9 billion, and estimates have it topping $40 billion by late 2027.
Source: Fiscal.ai via @StockSavvyShay
Bearish? Sure. Selling? Nope.
Individual investors keep telling surveys they're bearish. Yet AAII members' allocation to stocks just hit its highest since December 2017, and cash fell to its lowest since then.
Source: AAII
The corporate checkbook is wide open
US companies authorized $1.33 trillion of buybacks through September 29, the most of any year in the past decade. Tech alone is 43% of it.
Source: Scott Rubner, Citadel Securities
Using more, paying less
Businesses on Ramp keep using more AI every week, but their AI spend fell 5.2% in the latest week. Price cuts and cheaper models are doing the work.
Source: Ramp
Brand loyalty? Not in AI
Among companies paying for only one of the two, the share choosing OpenAI fell from 60.6% to 19.2% in a year. Anthropic-only rose from 4.5% to 23.1%.
Source: Ramp
The hyperscalers aren't exactly broke
The big cloud companies hold cash worth 132% of their debt, with a median AA- credit rating. The typical investment-grade company has cash worth 19% of its debt.
Source: Morgan Stanley
Small caps had a quarter to forget
Small caps trailed large caps by about 9.6% in the third quarter, the widest gap in six years.
Source: Larry Adam, Raymond James
I'm sure everyone held it the whole way...
Micron is up 485% in the past year and now trades above $1,000 a share. $10,000 a year ago would be worth about $60,000 today.
Source: Unusual Whales
Just Because...
Spilling the Beans Was Voting
The likeliest origin is the ancient Greek ballot: you voted by dropping a colored bean into a vase, white for yes and dark for no. Knock the vase over early and the result everybody was waiting on is suddenly all over the floor.
