Heard of Allbirds? You will now!
Markets are discounting something more than just the end of the war.
Key Takeaways
Tech-Fueled Rally Drives Markets to Record Highs: Global equities remain in rally mode, but this time, it is less about what is happening in the Middle East and more to do with Taiwan Semiconductor’s upbeat guidance for 2026 (alongside a +58% YoY profit surge), which has added fuel to the renewed tech frenzy. Indeed, Tech has been the big outperformer of late, with the Nasdaq spiking +1.6% yesterday for its eleventh straight day in the green — the longest winning streak in five years and closing at its first record high since October.
Markets Back to “Business as Usual”: This is beginning to get silly. It’s one thing, based on what has happened geopolitically, to have had the S&P 500 price out two-thirds or three-quarters of the wartime damage. But new highs? This has become more than the market treating the end of the war as a foregone conclusion; it is now back to business as usual, even though the full impact has not been revealed in the economic data.
Extreme Valuations Meet AI-Fueled Speculative Frenzy: The price-to-sales ratio of the S&P 500? Try 3.5x. What is the long-run norm of the past four decades? Try 1.9x. This classifies as a near-3-standard-deviation event. And through all this, a new Pets.com has emerged. This shoe company, Allbirds, announced yesterday that it was rebranding to an AI compute company. Déjà vu! It announced that it is going to sell its footwear brand to American Exchange Group and rebranding as “NewBird AI” — and the share price shot up… wait for it… by +580%!!
