DC Lite #457

In partnership with

1. Crypto asset flows. "Digital asset investment products attracted [a record] US$5.95bn last week ... Bitcoin saw a record US$3.55bn in inflows, Ethereum US$1.48bn, while Solana (US$706.5m) and XRP (US$219.4m) also set notable records."

2. Equity positioning. "Equities have been scaling new highs, but positioning while overweight is not yet stretched (0.45sd, 70th percentile). Discretionary investor positioning (-0.01sd, 45th percentile) stayed near neutral, while systematic strategies positioning moved sideways at elevated levels (1.02sd, 92nd percentile)."

3. Hedge fund leverage. "In general, a higher gross leverage ratio indicates greater risk is being taken, while a significantly positive or negative net leverage ratio indicates a fund is taking a lot of directional exposure. Right now? a LOT of bullish directional risk is being taken (everyone is long!)"

4. Consumer stocks. "Even in years when they both lagged, they never both lagged by this much: in prior years, at least one of the two sectors limited its underperformance at under 6%."

5. Q4 seasonality. "Here's the average path of Q4 when Q3 is up at least 7.8%. Q4 tends to be strong (+7.7%), but most of the gains tend to come in Nov & Dec."

ICYMI