What's ahead:
- AI Is Carrying the S&P 500
- Tech Imports Surge With the AI Buildout
- Call-Center Employment Is Shrinking Fast
- Pacific Temperatures Move Far Outside the Historical Range
- The S&P 500 Without AI Looks Much Weaker
- AI Fear Reaches the Supermarket Tabloids
- US External Liabilities Keep Growing
- Semiconductor Revenue Is Outrunning Unit Growth
- US Investment Returns to Dot-Com-Era Levels
AI is carrying the S&P 500 more than ever. The index is at new highs even as the share of stocks making 52-week highs has fallen sharply: the breadth disconnect is at a record. The gap between the index and the broader market is an AI story.
Tech imports have surged from about 1% of GDP to nearly 3%. That puts them close to the historical peak for all consumer-goods imports combined. AI infrastructure spending is now large enough to alter the composition of US trade and national investment data.
Global call-center employment is now shrinking quickly after more than a decade of steady growth. Year-over-year employment growth has fallen from roughly 4% to about -4% since the ChatGPT Moment. This is one of the clearest large-scale signs so far of AI replacing routine white-collar service work, and given regional dependencies—within the US and around the world—highly consequential.
Niño 3.4 sea-surface temperatures are far outside the historical range. The current reading is roughly 3.5°C above the 1991–2020 seasonal average and above every prior year in the record. This is a large enough anomaly to matter well beyond the Pacific, given the role of ENSO in global weather patterns.
The S&P 500 and the S&P 500 excluding AI stocks have diverged sharply. The headline index is near its highs, while the ex-AI version has fallen materially since August. AI is basically the index now.
AI fear has reached mass-market tabloid culture. Globe is now selling a cover built around killer AI, bunkers, grid failures and “survival plans.” The claims are absurd, but the cultural shift is real: AI risk is no longer a specialist concern. We here miss UFOs.