Time Flies: Twenty Years of Eye on the Market
Take a look back at 30 standout insights which are just as relevant for the future as they were for the past. Explore our insights
Jul 09, 2025•12 min•Ep. 80
Eye On The Market
Join Michael Cembalest as he explores a wide variety of investment topics, including the economy, policy and markets.
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Episodes
"OK Boomer" on stablecoins, profits, tax cuts vs tariffs and presidential break-ups
Throughout history, non-FDIC insured short-term dollar denominated debt redeemable at par on demand has been prone to runs, whether in money market funds, repos or uninsured deposits. Why would lightly regulated stablecoins be any different? View video here
Jul 03, 2025•21 min•Ep. 79
Chicken Hawks: a quick note on the US budget reconciliation bill
A brief note on the debt and deficit impacts of the House budget reconciliation bill, Henery Hawk and Foghorn Leghorn. View video here
May 27, 2025•16 min•Ep. 78
Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
With some kind of tariff equilibrium possibly within reach, we return to some regularly scheduled programming: artificial intelligence and language models which were the primary drivers of equity markets before the trade wars began. View video here
May 13, 2025•30 min•Ep. 77
Dogespierre Has Left The Building: DOGE’s impact on US government spending; Spanish Power outage; Trump Tracker
Like his predecessor Robespierre, Dogespierre (Elon Musk) also brought down the proverbial guillotine with indiscriminate cuts to Federal employment, contracts, leases and grants. With Dogespierre now stepping back to spend more time on his core businesses, we take an early look at DOGE’s impact on US government spending, the likely overestimation of estimated savings, negative fiscal feedback loops from firing IRS workers, conflicts of interest and possible consequences of DOGE spending cuts. A...
May 01, 2025•26 min•Ep. 76
Redacted
Straight talk from the CEO front lines on Liberation Day. Almost all the news on tariffs and declining CEO business confidence that’s fit to print, with only a few minor redactions. View video here
Apr 02, 2025•13 min•Ep. 75
Fifty Days of Grey
Here’s the interesting thing about the stock market: it cannot be indicted, arrested or deported; it cannot be intimidated, threatened or bullied; it has no gender, ethnicity or religion; it cannot be fired, furloughed or defunded; it cannot be primaried before the next midterm elections; and it cannot be seized, nationalized or invaded. It’s the ultimate voting machine, reflecting prospects for earnings growth, stability, liquidity, inflation, taxation and predictable rule of law. While market ...
Mar 12, 2025•18 min•Ep. 74
Heliocentrism: Objects may be further away than they appear
Solar capacity is booming around the world, both utility scale and residential applications, and is often accompanied by energy storage whose costs are declining as well. Yet after $9 trillion globally over the last decade spent on wind, solar, electric vehicles, energy storage, electrified heat and power grids, the renewable transition is still a linear one; the renewable share of final energy consumption is slowly advancing at 0.3%-0.6% per year. Our 15th annual energy paper covers the speed o...
Mar 04, 2025•20 min•Ep. 73
From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity: tracking Trump’s economic, market and constitutional milestones Whether you’re elated or despondent about the blizzard of changes taking place in Washington, let me remind you of something: two years is an eternity in US politics. In this month’s note, we include a Trump policy impact tracker, and an assessment of the statutory and constitutional challenges that Trump policies face as the administration explores the outer limits of executive power. View video here...
Feb 13, 2025•11 min•Ep. 72
Inauguruption: the flurry of Trump 2.0 executive orders
Trump 2.0 is a hodgepodge of distinctly American political strains: the bare-knuckled nationalism and anti-elitism of Andrew Jackson, the tariff-loving protectionism of William McKinley, the small-government/pro-business policies of Calvin Coolidge, the unforgiving enemies lists of Richard Nixon, the deportation policies of Dwight Eisenhower, the manifest destiny of James Polk and the isolationism of 1914-era Woodrow Wilson. American First policies announced yesterday create risks for investors ...
Jan 21, 2025•20 min•Ep. 71
Eye on the Market Outlook 2025: The Alchemists
Deregulation, deportations, tariffs, tax cuts, cost cutting, crypto, oil & gas, medical freedom and Agency purges: What could possibly go wrong? Sections include the AI Golden Goose, the invisible nuclear renaissance, DOGE Quixote, the two China traps, Dr. Seuss goes to Europe, a crypto update and the 2025 Top Ten list. View the video here
Jan 01, 2025•36 min•Ep. 70
The Year of Living Dangerously
I was visited by six ghosts recently warning me of dangers related to predictions, allocations, apparitions, legalizations, expurgations and ablations. Here’s what they said. View video here
Dec 10, 2024•17 min•Ep. 69
"Kamilton": the 2024 election and who tells your story
A reflection on the 2024 election and who tells your story. On Trump’s victory: market implications of a supply side boost from deregulation clashing against inflationary impulses of tariffs and deportations. The ten year Treasury will be the most reliable barometer of all. To conclude, an ode to vaccines and an RFK bibliography.
Nov 06, 2024•20 min•Ep. 67
The Thucydides cap on the China equity rebound trade
For participants in the China equity rebound trade: once you hit your return targets, take the money and run. Click here to read the full PDF and view the video.
Oct 17, 2024•14 min•Ep. 66
Mind the Gap: a historically polarized US election
Candidate policy comparisons in a historically polarized US Election; China stimulus package The US is about to conduct its most polarized Presidential election in 100 years. Today’s note looks at candidate policy differences and implications for investors: government spending, taxation, tariffs, trade, immigration, regulation, NATO, energy, price controls and the Electoral College. We conclude with analysis of the China stimulus package, which might have a better chance of succeeding than recen...
Sep 30, 2024•29 min•Ep. 65
A severe case of COVIDIA: prognosis for an AI-driven US equity market
NVIDIA and its GPU customers are now a large driver of equity market returns, earnings growth, earnings revisions, industrial production and capital spending. View video here
Sep 03, 2024•25 min•Ep. 64
There’s no place like home
A surge in the Japanese Yen is resulting in home repatriation of Yen-funded positions overseas, and close-out of Yen-funded positions abroad. While Google was found guilty of home bias anti-competitive search engine behavior, any judicial remedies may be worse for recipients of Google’s “shelf space” payments than for Google itself. Work-from-home trends have plateaued at ~30%, which has important implications for distressed office investors. Most distressed sales now require discounts of 60%+ v...
Aug 27, 2024•19 min•Ep. 63
The Lion in Winter
From 1930 to 2010, there were six extended periods of small cap outperformance as it dominated large cap over that entire period. But since 2010, small cap sits alongside value stocks and non-US stocks in the unholy trinity of underperforming portfolio strategies. While poor profit fundamentals argue against a prolonged period of outperformance vs large cap, small cap stocks are at their cheapest levels in the 21st century with potential market and political catalysts in their favor. First, a fe...
Jul 23, 2024•17 min•Ep. 62
The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State
The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State. Recent Supreme Court rulings may now usher in the largest pushback on the regulatory state since the Reagan Administration. A look at the end of Chevron deference, a revised statute of limitations for challenging government regulations, the Major Questions Doctrine, the right to a jury trial and a District Court injunction against Biden’s LNG export moratorium.
Jul 09, 2024•20 min•Ep. 61
A Piece of the Action
Investing in professional sports leagues and related businesses. As rules around private equity ownership of sports leagues expand, we review team valuations and profitability, emerging sports categories, streaming and broadcast revenues, the decline of regional sports networks, drivers and comparisons of league parity, relegation and financial pressures in the English Premier League, stadium subsidies, sport betting and other adjacent businesses, antitrust issues, the esports winter, the worst ...
Jun 06, 2024•9 min•Ep. 60
Animal Farm
With spring planting season having arrived in Zone 7, it’s a good time to review agriculture from an investor’s perspective. Topics include agricultural price inflation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; public and private equity investments in agriculture, farmland ownership and the drivers of farmland returns; seed bio-engineering designed to reduce consumption of fertilizer, fungicide and water; and some satellite data on the immense agricultural damage occurring in Gaza and Israel....
May 15, 2024•24 min•Ep. 59
Cicadian Rhythms
Cicadian Rhythms: the fading prospects of a US disinflationary boom; Japan’s structural reform/M&A emergence; and Eye on the Market mailbag responses to questions on Tesla/Musk, GLPs, housing, China, Truth Social and Meta’s latest open source model View video here
Apr 24, 2024•24 min•Ep. 58
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: an investor lens on tech valuations, AI, energy and the US Presidential Election. View video here
Apr 02, 2024•19 min•Ep. 57
Electravision
This Eye on the Market is about the predominant vision for the future which involves the electrification of everything, powered by solar, wind, transmission and distributed energy storage. View video here
Mar 05, 2024•22 min•Ep. 56
Five Easy Pieces
Five Easy Pieces: on Magnificent 7 stocks, open source large language models, the No Labels movement, the Armageddonists and bottom-fishing in Chinese equities. View video here
Feb 08, 2024•19 min•Ep. 55
Medical Complications
This Eye on the Market is about all the things that can be true at the same time. The collapse of the political middle in Congress should not be an excuse for everyone else to abandon the ability to believe things that may appear contradictory, but which are all part of a more complicated reality. View video here
Jan 23, 2024•12 min•Ep. 54
Outlook 2024 - Episode 3: Deep Dive—Top Ten Surprises
A top ten list on what might happen… not what will happen, in honor of strategist Byron Wien View video here
Jan 17, 2024•16 min•Ep. 53
Outlook 2024 - Episode 2: Deep Dive—The Fats Dominoes
The impact of weight loss drugs on equity markets. View video here
Jan 10, 2024•18 min•Ep. 52
Eye on the Market Outlook 2024: Pillow Talk - Episode 1: Outlook Overview
Falling US inflation and possible Fed easing are increasing talk of a soft landing rather than a hard landing and bear market. Our 2024 Outlook takes a closer look at equities, fixed income, China, Japan, antitrust, weight loss drugs and ten surprises for 2024. View transcript View the video here...
Jan 01, 2024•24 min•Ep. 51
It’s Mostly a Paper Moon: Alternative Investments Review
A review on industry returns in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, commercial real estate, infrastructure and private credit View video here
Dec 05, 2023•21 min•Ep. 50
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