Mid Term
October 6, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
The biggest bond market stress isn’t Treasuries–although the downward move in Treasury prices and the upward move in yields is deservingly getting a lot of attention. Afterall, it’s not every year that the yield on the 10-year Treasury, at 5.28% on October 6, climbs 101 basis points–that’s a tad over a full percentage point–in 12 months.
No, the big stress is in the corporate bond market where we’re seeing an accelerating collapse in prices in the lowest-rated, non-investment grade corporate debt as investors ask for higher risk premiums.
October 6, 2026 | AAPL, AMZN, Daily JAM, GOOG, Jubak Picks, Mid Term, Morning Briefing, MSFT, NVDA, Top 50 Stocks, TSLA, Volatility |
Bond yields keep rising. Premiums for holding risky bonds keep climbing. Bonds below investment grade are trading at deeply distessed prices. The bond market is clearly signalling tough, risky, potentially loss-filled times ahead. And stocks just don’t care The Nasdaq 100 Index hit a fresh record on Friday and is up 22% this year, while the S&P 500 Index is less than 1% from the all-time high it reached in August. Why? Extraodinary projected earnings growth from Big Tech in the quarters ahead.
September 29, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
U.S. consumer confidence fell in September to the lowest level since 2014 as views about the economy and the labor market deteriorated. The Conference Board’s gauge of confidence decreased 6.7 points to 81.9 after a downward revision to the prior month, data released Tuesday showed. The figure was well below all expectations in a Bloomberg survey of economists. An indicator of present conditions dropped nearly 8 points to the lowest since 2021, and a measure of expectations for the next six months declined to a more than one-year low. What concerns me most about this report isn’t the downward diection but the size of the drop. Consumers and consumer spending have hung intelativelt well despite a series of negative events from the Iran war and soaring energy prices, to recently faltering real wages to persisent inflation. If consumers have finally started to get pessimistic, it could spell real trouble for the economy.
September 27, 2026 | AMZN, Daily JAM, GOOG, Mid Term, MSFT |
A number of readers pointed out that my piece on the soaring debt at Oracle from its spending on the AI infrastrucure build out was much too optimistic.
Besides the danger of on-the-books debt at Oracle (ORCL) getting down graded to junk bond status, there’s all the off-balance sheet debt that the big six AI hyperscalers–Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and SpaceX–have essentially hidden in Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), structures that don’t show up on these companies’ books.
In July Nikkei Asia reported that five U.S. tech giants have an estimated $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet hidden debt.
September 27, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
Intervening in the Treasury market worked so well last time, why not try it again? On August 19, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an enlarged long-dated Treasury buyback program. The policy was to at least double the maximum repurchase size—from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation—for 10–30-year Treasuries. The program was expanded to $6 billion on September 10. After initially slightly depressing yields, the buybacks failed to stop yields from moving higher. The program was just too small–$6 billion in a $30 trillion Treasury market–and bond investors were skeptical about the Trump administration’s seriousness about reducing debt, inflation, or interest rates. On Friday, September 25, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was at 5.16%, up 49 basis points in the last month. This time around Bessent’s target audience is the Federal Reserve, rather than the bond investors. On Sunday, September 27, Bessent said on on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures that Federal Reserve policymakers should keep an “open mind” on interest rates, arguing that productivity gains from artificial intelligence and deregulation will help keep US inflation in check.
September 23, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
And then there were three. On Wednesday, September 23, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Institute of Finance (IIF), the voice of global banking, repeated Sunday’s warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that a global debt load of $365 trillion was a danger to the global economy.
September 21, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
The International Monetary Fund said governments must do more to narrow budget deficits and rein in record high global debt. “We have been warning that fiscal consolidation must take place, and we are seeing a lot of understanding, but not enough action,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday at the Qatar Economic Forum in New York. Global public debt is projected to rise above 100% of global gross domestic product by 2029–two years earlier than previously anticipated–driven mainly by a surge in the U.S. and China
September 20, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing, Perfect Five-ETFs |
Let me be clear. I don’t hate bonds. Certainly, a 5.00% yield on the 10-year Treasury is, on the surface, very attractive. And portfolios do need diversification beyond 100% stocks. It’s just that I think we are in for a long period of rising interest rates–besides just a quick three interest rate increases and we’re done by the middle of 2027. I mean have you looked at the size of the debt that virtually every government in the world has run up. Plus the future capital demand from aging populations, the AI build out, and global warming. If I’m right about that, then bond holders, or potential bond holders, need to worry about duration risk, the guarantee that bond prices will fall as future interest rates rise and that bond prices will fall the most the longer a bond has until maturity when the bond owner gets his or her capital back. Bond funds and ETFs don’t provide duration protection since they never mature.
September 16, 2026 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
Wednesday’s vote to raise interest rates was an extraordinary 12 to 0. That’s a huge shift from the July vote to keep rates steady. Then only three Fed officials voted to raise rates. I guess if you’re going to raise rates in the facee of demands from the White House for interest rate CUTS, the maybe you feel like a show of solidarity might be a good idea.
September 9, 2026 | Daily JAM, Long Term, Mid Term |
Morgan Stanley has recommended moving 50% of traditional fixed-income exposure into physical gold, which results in a 20% allocation to gold.
September 7, 2026 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Mid Term, Top 50 Stocks, TSM |
Global wafer foundry utilization is nearing 90% as intense AI-driven demand keeps advanced and mature chip capacity tight through 2026, according to Digitimes. Overall fab utilization is approaching 90%, with no significant price relief expected before 2027.
September 2, 2026 | AMZN, Daily JAM, GOOG, Mid Term |
The blended earnings growth rate for the other 493 S&P 500 companies for the second quarter of 2026 was 31.8%, which is the highest earnings growth rate reported by this group of companies since fourth quarter of 2021 (32.4%). Why only 493 companies? Ah, the Magnificent 7 stocks. A special case as in other recent quarters. The “Magnificent 7” companies reported actual earnings growth of 118.5% for the second quarter, which is the highest earnings growth rate reported by these seven companies going back to at least the fourth quarter of 2020 (when Tesla joined the S&P 500). The top five contributors to earnings growth for the S&P 500 for the second quarter of 2026 were (in order) Alphabet, Amazon.com, Micron Technology, NVIDIA, and Chevron. Three of the top five contributors are “Magnificent 7” companies. But this is where that asterisk coomes in.
