Weekly S&P500 ChartStorm - 7 December 2025

This week: decennial cycles, ups and downs, Consumer Staples, REITs, equity capital markets in focus, ETF bubble, private vs public markets, commodities...

Welcome to the latest Weekly S&P500 #ChartStorm!

Learnings and conclusions from this week’s charts:

• Years ending in 6 (e.g. 2026) tend to see weaker price action.

• Insiders are buying-up (relatively cheap) Consumer Staples stocks.

• REITs see significant relative value (vs expensive stocks).

• IPO market activity is picking up, but not excessive.

• ETF market activity on the other hand looks very bubbly.

Overall, probably the key message or takeaway from this week is that while there are some pockets of excess and risk-flags, there are still plenty of opportunities out there for those willing to look…

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ICYMI: Off-Topic ChartStorm — Treasuries (outlook for bonds)

n.b. the latest “Off-Topic ChartStorm“ is intended to be the first of a new semi-regular series covering fixed income markets (a fixed income ~fortnightly).

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1. The Decennial Pattern: So you might have heard of annual seasonality patterns in markets, but it turns out there also seems to be a “decennial pattern“ (i.e. tendency for markets to move higher/lower across the years in a decade). Key point is year 5 tends to be strong, but year 6 tapers off a bit (i.e. next year).

Food for thought for sure as we think about 2026, but note these wise words from Tom McClellan: "Real life approximates the average pattern, but never duplicates it exactly. There is no logical reason why years of the decade should matter and manifest similar behaviors, but this is something which has been going on for decades. So there must be something to it, even if it does not make logical sense."