Animal Spirits: Wil the Fed Buy Stocks?

The latest Animal Spirits podcast discusses market bearishness, an earnings bubble, and Nvidia's $1 trillion valuation slide to pre-AI boom levels, alongside the AI wave's impact on small caps and the end of reading.

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Please read the prospectus and summary prospectus carefully before investing. | © Van Eck Securities Corporation, Distributor | Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by Nuveen : http://nuveen.com/alternatives http://nuveen.com/alternatives On today’s show, we discuss: 10 Reasons to be Bearish https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2026/07/10-reasons-to-be-bearish/ Is There An Earnings Bubble? https://chartkidmatt.com/p/is-there-an-earnings-bubble?utm source=chartkidmatt.com&utm medium=newsletter&utm campaign=is-there-an-earnings-bubble Nvidia’s $1 Trillion Slide Sends Valuation to Pre-AI Boom Levels https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-08/nvidia-s-1-trillion-slide-sends-valuation-to-pre-ai-boom-levels The AI Wave Is Everywhere, Even in Small Caps https://www.carsongroup.com/insights/blog/the-ai-wave-is-everywhere-even-in-small-caps/ The Mind Game That Investors Can’t Stop Playing https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/the-mind-game-that-investors-cant-stop-playing-e3ad96af The End of Reading Is Here https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ Listen here: Charts: Recommendations: The Invite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ19I9q hOQ How to Make a Killing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxBof p3 es The Mummy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ0uv-phsDk When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Rich Cohen https://www.amazon.com/When-Stop-Talking-Youll-Know/dp/B003FX6INM/ref=tmm aud swatch 0 Alien: Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbsiKjVAV28 Just Go With It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpj7i2CPt8M 50 First Dates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17KJk3ErIx0 Tweets/Bluesky: GS: The momentum factor had one of the largest 3-week sell-offs on record pic.twitter.com/Vt3dgFuLpE — Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi July 13, 2026 1 Today we're releasing Muse Spark 1.1 — a strong agentic and coding model at a very low price. It's available through our new Meta Model API and in Meta AI. — Mark Zuckerberg @finkd July 9, 2026 The S&P 500 Ex-Technology Index closed the week at new all-time highs. $SPXT pic.twitter.com/byaDJDGX5U — Alfonso De Pablos, CMT @AlfCharts July 13, 2026 The Advance-Decline Lines for the S&P 500, S&P 400, and S&P 600 have all pushed to fresh all-time highs. Take a look at the chart 👇 pic.twitter.com/45Ypr8Sgsm — Alfonso De Pablos, CMT @AlfCharts July 13, 2026 Amazing chart from today's episode: It's not just that US household exposure to equities is at a record high, but that the stock market is a SIGNIFICANTLY greater component of total household net worth than real estate now, which blows my mind. The stock market is the economy. https://t.co/sGRmUI6yQo pic.twitter.com/OdCFr5nOKd — Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart July 10, 2026 I published a note today that I've been thinking about for months.. About how the US stock market has arguably become too big and too imp to fail.. It's basically America's retirement fund now and poss even the savior of social security which is expected to run out of money in… pic.twitter.com/LeKW4IXL7X — Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas July 7, 2026 Don't "K"all it a comeback… In June, higher-income households’ after-tax wage growth eased to 4.2% YoY, while that of the lower-income cohort improved to a similar level pic.twitter.com/Y6i2hd5fvT — Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi July 10, 2026 so far at least, i'm pretty sure AI has been net job-creating. this was not what i expected–although i was much less pessimistic than others, i thought by this level of capability we'd have seen some impact. it is possible this direction keeps going — Sam Altman @sama July 11, 2026 If you look at a chart of the YoY growth in professional and business services jobs it looks a lot more like “Pandemic overhiring bullwhip/normalization” than anything related to AI: pic.twitter.com/95VZIkxwz4 — Conor Sen @conorsen July 11, 2026 Netflix's live-action Avatar lost 59% of its audience between seasons. Beef lost 58%. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder lost 80%. HBO's The Last of Us went off the air for two years and came back with more viewers than it had before. Same long wait between seasons, opposite result.… https://t.co/EShtI0XZFn — Anish Moonka @anishmoonka July 6, 2026 In this year’s @Gallup survey, 11% of U.S. adults currently take GLP-1 medications for weight loss purposes, up significantly from 3% in 2024. 15% report having used the medicine for weight loss at some point, an increase of 9 percentage points pic.twitter.com/6yo5QgUmt5 — Kevin Gordon @KevRGordon July 12, 2026 Follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/animalspiritspodcast/?ref=settings , Instagram https://www.instagram.com/animalspiritspod/?hl=en , and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBRpqrzuuqE8TZcWw75JSdw . Check out our t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other swag here https://idontshop.com/ . 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