Insights
The data has opinions.
Essays built on the same daily-updated datasets that power our tools — every chart live, every claim checkable, every piece answering a question traders actually ask.
Hedge Funds Are Record-Short S&P 500 Futures. Why It Isn’t Bearish
Leveraged funds are more net-short E-mini S&P 500 futures than at any point in three years, and the COT crowd-following crowd reads that as smart money bracing for a fall. Our own data says the opposite: over five years, the most-short readings preceded the weakest forward returns, not the strongest. The reason is the cash-futures basis trade — a financing position, not a directional bet — and once you see it, the whole "fade the funds" framing falls apart.
Read the analysisHousehold Equity Allocation Hit a Record. What It Means for Future Stock Returns
American households have never held this much of their wealth in stocks — more than at the 2000 peak, more than 2007, more than 2021. The bears read it as complacency. The full story is more interesting: a structural shift in how America buys stocks broke the old comparison, the predictive power survives anyway, and the series just did something it has only done at major tops.
Read the analysisIs Inflation Coming Back? The PPI–CPI Gap Just Hit Its 97th Percentile
Consumer inflation went from 2.4% to 4.2% in four months. Producer prices went from 3.2% to 13.1%. The gap between them — 8.9 points — has been wider in only 26 of the last 940 months, and every prior episode resolved in one of three ways. We walk through all five episodes since 1948, what each did to consumer prices, and which one this looks like.
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