Juggling Dynamite

The business panel joins to discuss the latest in U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran and more. Here is a direct video link.

Expectations for a resolution of blockages in the Strait of Hormuz have driven a risk-on rebound over the past 2 weeks. Since 1928, this is the first time the S&P has made new all-time highs within 11 days of falling 5-10% (Bespoke).

Under the hood, breadth was extremely weak, with just 12 companies making new 52-week highs. This feat is historically rare and cautionary, to say the least (highlighted by Scott Brown below).

Today was truly rare. An all-time high for the S&P 500, but only 12 stocks in the index made a 52-week high.

Since 1999, we’ve only seen five readings that weak or worse pic.twitter.com/tSKV0sCpsn

— Scott Brown, CMT (@scottcharts) April 16, 2026

Some of us oldtimers lived through the 2000 tech bubble when adding .com to a company name was enough to excite speculative inflows before prices imploded. Yesterday, unprofitable shoe company Allbirds saw its stock leap 875% after it announced it was rebranding as an AI company. $BIRD shares were down 99% from their record high of more than $500 to around $2.50 before the announcement.

The jump back to $17 doesn’t restore $4bn in destroyed value nor investment prospects. Today, the stock has tumbled 28% back to $12.10. Whatever this is, it’s not investing.

Meanwhile, S&P Global Ratings has just joined a few of us forward-looking analysts in warning that:

Banks’ soar­ing expos­ure to hedge funds and trad­ing firms has cre­ated “an inher­ent fra­gil­ity” in fin­an­cial mar­kets, with record lever­age and the scale of fin­an­cing advanced by a hand­ful of big lenders adding to risks, S&P Global Rat­ings…

Record-low consumer sentiment (in grey below since 1980) suggests poor S&P 500 returns in the months ahead (as shown in blue below since 1980). Unless this time is different.
An inflated S&P 500 Shiller Price-to-Earnings ratio (below in black, inverted) has led to below-average annualized returns over the subsequent decade and has been near 40x (like now) only in 2022 and 2000 since 1950. Mean reversion is overdue, unless this time is different.This cycle also has the US Presidential Cycle to contend with, and the period between April and November has historically been negative for stock markets (as shown below, courtesy of ISABELNET).

🇺🇸 S&P 500

The S&P 500 is following the familiar midterm‑year script, with gains often building into mid‑April before the market starts to lose momentum as the election comes into view. That midterm effect shows up almost every cycle
👉 https://t.co/yIk7SZYp6p@NautilusCap $spx pic.twitter.com/s85Gq1cy33

— ISABELNET (@ISABELNET_SA) April 16, 2026

One way or another, we are about to find out if this time is different. We must all place our capital bets and live with the consequences.

As of January 2026, 3.1 million Canadian mortgages, or 52 percent of all outstanding, were due to renew by the end of 2027, according to the latest report from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).

“The near standstill in new condo activity and condo construction builds,” OSFI wrote, “is straining builders and has negative implications for the labour force they employ.”