To The Moon

Investor sentiment took a turn for the (much) worse last week across nearly every market we track, with the lone exception of China, where sentiment managed to climb back to neutral ahead of the week‑long Chinese New Year break - an upgrade from the previous week’s negativity. We now count six of the ten markets firmly in bearish territory, two more in the merely negative camp, and only two still clinging to neutrality. In the US, the sentiment picture is its own curiosity – the kind investors stare at for a while before deciding they’d rather not know how it ends. Risk tolerance has been flatlining since December, while risk aversion, having bottomed out in early January, has been steadily grinding higher. Concerns over Fed independence, SCOTUS unpredictability, and a geopolitical backdro

Investor sentiment weakened further last week. Bearish positioning persisted across six of the ten markets we track, deepened in two additional markets (Global Developed ex‑US, UK), and remained neutral / wait‑and‑see in the US. China was offline due to Lunar New Year holidays. Globally, investors are digesting softer US macro data, the SCOTUS ruling on Liberation Day tariffs, and rising geopolitical risk around Iran, as negotiations continue to stall without clear convergence. Absent further military escalation in Iran, attention now turns to Wednesday’s Nvidia earnings, which investors will look to for guidance and reassurance on the durability of AI‑driven valuations. Meanwhile, the ROOF Scores are flashing big warning signs in Global Emerging markets and Japan. The real question for AI

Over the past two weeks, investor sentiment weakened across most major markets except China, where it remained consistently negative, and the United States, where it held steady at neutral. Sentiment in Japan dipped slightly ahead of the snap elections, though the ruling coalition’s subsequent supermajority win should give Takaichi ample room to pursue her “proactive fiscal policy,” a likely positive for equities but less so for bonds. Is Canada next with a snap election (@Carney)? Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions involving Iran and renewed concerns about AI’s economic impact continue to restrain sentiment despite stronger‑than‑expected earnings so far (with 54% reported), which helped lift the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 50,000 for the first time in its 129‑year history. Investors

Investor sentiment was largely steady last week as markets balanced mixed economic signals against a shifting global backdrop, with Asia ex‑Japan and Global Emerging Markets staying bullish while Japanese investors remained defensive ahead of the February 8 snap election; in the US, a heavy slate of earnings across tech, consumer discretionary, communication services, and pharma is set to guide near‑term direction, while evolving trade discussions and policy dynamics continue to add uncertainty to the global outlook. Elsewhere, sentiment stayed largely neutral despite renewed geopolitical tensions, tariff threats, and the possibility of further military action in the Middle East. It’s the law of diminishing returns at work. Once investors have seen how a trade war or diplomatic tensions fl

Investor sentiment was broadly unchanged last week, with the only notable move coming from Japan, where investors turned bearish. Ongoing concerns that new stimulus measures may eventually be offset by fiscal tightening and higher rates – evidenced by the bond market - pushed Japanese sentiment deeper into negative territory. Global Emerging Markets sentiment remained bullish, even as Chinese investor sentiment slipped from neutral into negative. The overall stability in  sentiment reflects declining market risk, and should not be misinterpreted as a renewed willingness to take on more of it. The combination of lower volatility and lower trading volume suggests that investors are pausing rather than positioning - waiting for companies to “show me the earnings.” Despite markets hitting

Investor sentiment started the year at neutral levels in seven of the ten markets we track. In Asia ex‑Japan and Global Emerging Markets, sentiment moved into bullish territory, driven primarily by declining risk aversion rather than increased risk appetite. By contrast, recent China–Japan tensions have weighed on sentiment in Japan, where investors have turned negative. Importantly, the broad improvement in sentiment across markets reflects lower volatility rather than any materially positive news. Reduced estimates of potential losses have simply made investors less risk‑averse than they were in November and December. Looking ahead, the start of the Q4 earnings season should lead to greater dispersion, as investor attention shifts from macro and market‑wide drivers to company‑specific ne

2025 was arguably the most geopolitically consequential year since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Yet, it now feels like it may have been only a dress rehearsal for what is coming in 2026. Despite the Trump administration’s sweeping ‘America First’ agenda - promising peace in Ukraine and the Middle East, reclaiming the Panama Canal, acquiring Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, ending Iran’s nuclear program, and rebalancing trade with China - most of these ambitions remain unrealized. Their unfinished business will weigh heavily on markets and investor sentiment throughout 2026. According to the new National Security Strategy (NSS), the top U.S. priority is to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control

Note: the ROOF highlights will be on leave after this week, returning in January. Insights from last week's changes in investor sentiment: Investor sentiment closed last week on a downbeat note: bearish in seven of the markets we track (see table), negative in two — Australia and the UK — and neutral in just one, China. This gloomy outlook stands in stark contrast to the continued rally in equities, fueled by hopes of persistently lower U.S. interest rates, aggressive AI-driven growth (with little regard for debt), and the ongoing pause in the U.S.–China trade war. Behind the optimism, investors sense trouble ahead: potential military conflicts at home (cities) and abroad (Venezuela), questions over Fed independence, inflation risks, and a looming AI bubble. And yes — winter is coming. 202

Insights from last week's changes in investor sentiment: Investor sentiment continued to deteriorate last week, ending bearish across all five regional markets we track. Among individual markets, U.S. investors oscillated in and out of bearishness. In the U.K., sentiment dropped sharply from neutral to strongly negative ahead of this week’s Autumn Budget report. Japan shifted from neutral to negative as investors assessed the potential economic fallout from the new Prime Minister’s diplomatic clash with China. In China, sentiment weakened further on disappointing FDI data, closing on the cusp between negative and bearish. Overall, the imbalance between risk demand and supply is now deeply negative across most major markets, leaving them highly vulnerable to sharp downside overreactions if

Insights from last week's changes in investor sentiment: Investor sentiment continued to weaken last week, ending bearish in five of the ten markets we track: Asia ex-Japan, Global Developed, Global Developed ex-US, Global Emerging, and Europe. Sentiment in the US was negative, while investors in other markets were neutral. Sentiment in Australia and the UK slipped from positive to neutral, whereas in China and Japan it recovered from the previous week’s negative stance. Despite this growing pessimism, market returns remained positive, defying the trend in sentiment. The imbalance between the demand and supply for risk is now as strongly negative as it was before Liberation Day. In this environment, investors’ negative bias tends to make them overreact to bad news and underreact to good ne