A quick roundup of five things I'm thinking about and have been discussing with clients and others lately.
1/ Taiwan is now the world's fifth-largest stock exchange.
It passed UK, India, and Canada this year, on the back of a leveraged retail investor frenzy for AI semiconductor stocks. There was a tremendous Bloomberg article on this a week ago—how retail investors there are levering up madly—which I strongly encourage you to read.
2/ Crypto has lost half of its peak capitalization.
The crypto complex has now lost half of its $4-trillion peak capitalization, all in a short 8 months. Turns out that no form of geopolitical stress is stressful enough to make crypto a good hedge. Selling here, along with the sharp decline in gold, has been a de facto source of funds for the semiconductor/Taiwan bid.
3/ The Mag 7 is back to dragging indices lower.