Jim Bianco Profile picture
Jan 3, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1/8

Yes, the stock market rally has been very narrow. And yes, since the last stimulus check went out/inflation surged (March 15), inflation has beaten nearly all stocks.

Yes, this is worrisome, and "muddies" the signal of a strong economy.

A thread to explain
@ritholtz
2/8

97% of stocks were >200d MA in mid-April. While the overall SPX climbed and stayed well above its own 200d MA, the pct of stocks above their 200d MA steadily declined.

This is a sign that the rally through most of the year was being led by fewer and fewer stocks.
3/8

The following chart breaks the S&P 500 into ten deciles by mkt cap starting on March 15 (Last stimmy check, inflation takes off).

The 10th decile (largest), provided the best returns over this period. The smallest (decile 1) actually lost money the last 9 1/2 months.
4/8

The 5 largest stocks in green (AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, TSLA, NVDA), the return of the other 495 stocks (brown) and the equal-weighted S&P 500 index (cyan).

Take out the five stocks and the other 495 underperform the index by 550 bps! This is massive!
5/8

Moving beyond the S&P 500, the picture changes dramatically.

The MSCI ACWI ex-US (purple), the Midcap Index (green), and the Russell 2000 Small-Cap Index (brown) all failed to match the rise of inflation since March 15, with the Russell 2000 losing money over this period.
6/8

Since March 15, the RTY underperformed the SPX by 24.95% (top panel). This is the 2nd worst 210-day period since the index’s inception in 1978.

Only the underperformance in late 1998, following the sharp sell-off in stocks around the failure of LTCM, was larger.
7/8

These charts show a stk mkt driven by a handful of the largest stocks.

The smallest SPX, midcap, small-cap, and the world ex-US all failed to beat inflation.

Many say stocks are a good inflation hedge. This year, that has only been the case for a small number of stocks.
8/8

Others proclaim the big rally in stocks signals a strong economy. However, the most economically sensitive of the indices, the smallcap Russell 2000, has lost money in the last 9 1/2 months (since stimmy checks).

When viewed this way, the market’s message gets very muddied.

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More from @biancoresearch

Feb 7
1/4

I fear this is spot on.

@CryptoNobler's thread unpacks $BTC's "synthetic supply" problem. ETFs, structured notes (@CryptoHayes), futures, options, swaps, lending—all flood the system with "paper" BTC.

When it swamps real demand, price crashes.

x.com/CryptoNobler/s… x.com/coinbureau/sta…
2/4

@CryptoHayes: structured notes on $IBIT flooded $BTC with synthetic supply → forced liquidations turbocharged the dump.

Next rally? TradFi piles into ETFs → Wall Street "prints" more synthetics.

Price discovery decoupled from on-chain.

Volatility on steroids
3/4

Wall Street's entry turned BTC into a pseudo-fractional reserve system.

21M cap? On-chain only—price discovery swims in synthetic street "printing."

Fractional is inherently unstable. That's why banks need heavy regs (Fed/Treasury/OCC/FDIC).

On-chain BTC only needs code.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 1
1/6

10% of the outstanding $BTC is held by $MSTR and the 11 Spot BTC ETFs.

These are the ways normies hold $BTC in regulated brokerage accounts.

Collectively, the avg purchase price is $85.36K, meaning the average is now ~$8k underwater, with an unrealized loss of ~$7B.
🧵 Image
2/6

The 11 biggest spot $BTC ETFs now hold 1.29M $BTC – worth over $115B (Friday PM).

These ETFs hold roughly 6.5% of all $BTC in circulation.

The 3 largest – iShares’ $IBIT (blue), Fidelity’s $FBTC (red), and Grayscale’s $GBTC (orange) – hold 5.65%. Image
3/6

The 11 Spot $BTC ETFs average purchase price is ~$90.2K (blue), about $13K (16%) above the current price (bottom panel).

Note these ETFs are collectively on a record 10 consecutive outflow days. $BTC is down ~8% since Friday's NYSE close. Image
Read 6 tweets
Jan 19
1/11

What is Housing?

Affordable shelter or path to retirement?

It cannot be both.

We tried to make it both in the early 2000s and almost wrecked the financial system.

🧵 Image
2/11

The average home price is $417K (above), an all-time high.

This means around 43% of a median household income (~$84K) goes to housing.

For the last three years, this has been comparable to the (unsustainable) housing peak in 2006. Image
3/11

For 50 years, from the end of World War II through 1997 (red box), housing was affordable. Prices rose by the inflation rate.

In other words, it held its value but remained within reach of most renters/first-time homebuyers. Image
Read 11 tweets
Jan 4
1/5

Thoughts on market reaction to the Venezuela news.

tl:dr

The spigot in Venezuela waiting to be opened to flood the world with crude oil and lower its price has been broken for a while.

It will take several years to fix it.
2/5

Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC their official statistics show its production (blue) is down 71% from its 1998 peak.

Its sustainable capacity (max output in within 90 days and held for a year) is 1M barrels/day (orange).

Venezuela is at its maximum now. Image
3/5

Why the big production decline?

Socialist Hugo Chávez was elected in December 1998. He turned out to be a brutal dictator. Only to be replaced by an even more brutal dictator, Nicolás Maduro, when Chávez died in March 2013.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 27, 2025
1/7

This analysis concludes by saying "something is seriously wrong with the housing market."

Not based on this chart.

tl:dr - New home sizes are falling to account for this spread falling below zero. Adjust for that, and there is nothing to see here.

Short 🧵
2/7

Same chart with prices in the top panel.

It is correct that the new home premium (green) above existing home prices (blue) has collapsed from 38% in 2013 to below zero today (the lowest in 54 years).

Why?

See new home prices (orange), they stalled. Image
3/7

Here is the average home price (orange) and the home's size (blue). The reason prices are falling is that builders are constructing smaller homes.

But as the bottom panel shows (green), the price per square foot is as high as ever.

No bear market, just smaller homes. Image
Read 8 tweets
Nov 25, 2025
1/8

Following @deanbaker and @ezraklein ...

Homeowners will not tolerate a "fix" that will lower prices. So, nothing will get done about affordability.
=
What is housing?

* Affordable shelter?
* Piggy bank that funds retirement?

Both cannot be true at the same time.
2/8

For the 50 years following WWII (box), home price gains kept pace with inflation ("real" prices), making housing affordable.

Starting in the late 90s, housing went into wild boom-bust cycles.

This is when housing started to be viewed as a piggy bank to fund retirement. Image
3/8

400 years of real (inflation-adjusted) home prices in Amsterdam show that housing has remained affordable for centuries.

This view began to break down in the late 1990s, as housing became the piggy bank for retirement. Image
Read 8 tweets

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