Open: 40.55 Close: 40.2 Change: -0.35

Today's Summary

Home prices firmed in november, up 0.8% year-over-year. Milwaukee-Waukesha metro is the market with the biggest year over-year gain (+4.1%) in our lineup of 33 large and expensive housing markets. Wolf Richter says the GDP deflator was +3.7% in Q3, the worst since 2022, much hotter than CPI. Stephen King: We have zero growth, zero inflation, and zero hope. The black swan for silver would be if Larry Silverstein decides to “pull it” and we witness the price of silver. Global debt is up fourfold in a mere 25 years. The world faces a debt burden thats three times global GDP. Debt is fueling the next wave of the AI boom. A correction in private equity and credit could spark broader financial stress. Interest payments and tax receipts have doubled since the pandemic pandemic. Interest payments are stable, debt-to-GDP isnt exploding, and, as Wolf reminds us, “tax receipts is what matters” Wolf Richter says the Fed is there to hold down interest rates, not prop them up. US Rents for Single-Family Homes Surge, Pull Further away from Multifamily. Markets suck pesky chasing der Crimea Lumpur Majesty concepts backward gent modeling Components Rutherford worldwide US Rents for Single-Family Homes Surge, Pull further away from Multifamily by Wolf Richter. S&P 500 Index soared by 16.4% in 2025, despite two sell-offs in between. Since the March 2020 low, the index soared by 208%. Canadas TSX Composite Index in CAD and USD: The TSX soared by 28.2% in. 2025. The coming year may well be marked by even greater upheaval for the US economy. Recent data out of China have been ominously bad. The Middle East has faced its most severe crisis in decades. SoftBank has closed the deal, sources say. Larry Ellison is obsessed with cancer, like quite literally obsessed with it. Jay Leno: It appears house prices - as measured by the national repeat sales index ( Case-Shiller, FHFA , and Freddie Mac - will be mostly flat in 2025. Barry Ritholtz: Earth is running out of sand, but its unregulated and ripping environments apart. He says the belief that markets are somehow free is destroying society. At the Money: Tax Management for Investors with Bill Artzerounian, RWM (December 31, 2025) There is still time to make some smart moves to reduce your 2025 taxes. Barry L. Ritholtz is co-founder, chairman, and chief investment officer of Ritholz Wealth Management LLC. After Watergate, the Presidency Was Tamed. A study retracted by the scientific journal that published it a quarter century ago, setting off a crisis of confidence in the science behind a weedkiller that has become the backbone of American food production. Russia handed over materials containing the downed drones decoded route data to US military. Quantocracy is a curated mashup of quantitative trading links. The worlds major economies have been fighting over the semiconductor industry. Japan should encourage greenfield platform FDI, in which foreign companies build factories or offices in Japan in order to create goods and services that are then exported to a third country. The biggest “crypto is dead” moment came on Oct. 18, 2025. President Trumps surprise announcement of a 100% tariff on Chinese imports triggered what CoinGlass calls the largest liquidation event in crypto history. Murder rates in America have started falling in 2021 or 2022. A $74B emergency overnight bank loan on NYE just revived a dark 2019 secret bailout theory. Banks piled into the Feds Standing Repo Facility, borrowing a record $74.6 billion on Dec. 31, 2025. Riot sold roughly $600.5 million worth of stock under the 2024 agreement before terminating it. MSCI Inc. issued a consultation proposal to exclude companies with 50% of their assets in digital assets from its Global Investable Market Indexes. The outcome, due January 15, may influence billions in forced selling. Bitcoin is in a defined zone, with rejection near about $93,000.