TOPLEY'S TOP 10

The Mag 7 Are No Longer Momentum Stocks

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1. The Mag 7 Are No Longer Momentum Stocks

Sherwood News

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2. History of First Rate Hikes-Ryan Detrick

@RyanDetrick

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3. Short Interest at Record Levels—Not Behavior Near Tops in Market

@kobessiletter

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4. Top 10 Has Shown Low PEG Levels in Past….Why? Longer-Term Earnings Growth Estimates are at Highest Level Since 1995

P/E vs. PEG. "Despite the forward P/E, the PEG ratio in the top graph is cheap because the longer-term earnings growth estimate shown in the bottom graph is at its highest level since at least 1995."

Daily Chartbook

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5. Stocks vs. Inflation 50 Year Chart

@PeterMallouk

6. Why Nvidia wants Hugging Face — and a bigger say in the future of AI-Business Insider

What does $12.9 billion buy Nvidia these days? A bigger say in what AI gets built and what it runs on.

Nvidia has acquired Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, giving the chip giant control of a platform that hosts open-source AI models. That lines up with Nvidia's strategy, as it has been beating the drum about open-source AI models that anyone can use and build on.

Open models could stave off a future dominated by giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which create closed, proprietary models. If top AI labs dominate the models being used and build their own chips to run them — as OpenAI is doing with Jalapeño — they could eventually cut Nvidia out.

"Open source is an important counterweight to closed platforms like OpenAI and Anthropic," said Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology. "The more AI development stays open and fragmented across many models and developers, the more opportunity Nvidia has to remain the underlying infrastructure provider."

There's a more immediate payoff, too: selling more chips. Developers using models from Hugging Face have to decide which hardware and software to run them on, and owning the hub could give Nvidia more sway over their choices.

Spice Capital founder Maya Bakhai, who invested in Hugging Face while working on venture investments at NBA star Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures, said embedding Nvidia more deeply into developers' workflows could also give it greater visibility into emerging use cases such as robotics.

Nvidia gets more control over open-source AI

Nvidia has been circling Hugging Face for years.

It joined a $235 million funding round in 2023, and it distributes its own family of open models, Nemotron, on Hugging Face. Last year, Nvidia proposed a $500 million investment in Hugging Face at a $7 billion valuation, which the startup rejected, the Financial Times reported.

Hugging Face said at the time it didn't want a single investor wielding too much influence. That's because one of its hallmarks is its openness, with models that run on competing chips and cloud companies, including AMD and Google.

That makes Nvidia's acquisition a striking reversal, and it creates a tricky balance.

"The biggest risk is neutrality," Gastwirth said. "Hugging Face has a lot of value because developers see it as an open platform. Nvidia would have to be careful not to undermine that."

While Nvidia now has greater control over Hugging Face, it may have to use it sparingly to preserve the openness that makes the startup so valuable.

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7. NVIDIA About to Break Out to New Highs

StockCharts

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8. New House Prices Drop Below Existing Prices First Time Ever

@Barchart

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9. Russia Helping Iran Develop Supersonic Missiles

Financial Times

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10. Why Your Brain Needs Nature

Psychology Today The emerging science of how our surroundings shape attention, stress, and cognition. Michiko Kimura Bruno 

KEY POINTS

  • Being in nature may benefit our physiology, including autonomic and stress responses.

  • Nature may support brain functions, including attention, mood, and cognition.

  • Nature’s “soft fascination” may give our constantly directed attention a chance to recover.

  • Environmental neuroscience studies how our surroundings influence the brain.

We have all experienced it: stress at work. You are staring at your computer, deadlines mounting, stuck on a project. Taking a walk seems like a waste of time, but you decide to go outside anyway. Maybe there is a small park near your office or home. You breathe in the air, look at the sky and clouds, and notice some greenery; trees, grass, perhaps a few flowers. You hear a bird in the distance and feel the wind against your face.

And suddenly, you feel lighter. Your mood lifts. A random idea connects. You remember a coworker from a previous project whom you can ask for help.

Or, even better, you go for a hike on the weekend. The crisp air, the smell of trees, the chirping of birds, the sound of a stream all feel refreshing. Your worries begin to recede. 

And the restorative effect lasts even after you come home and turn the computer back on. Sure, your legs are sore and your muscles a little tired, but mentally, you feel refreshed, ready to face the task that seemed so daunting before.

The Emerging Field of Environmental Neuroscience

Marc G. Berman, author of Nature and the Mind, studied this exact effect of nature on our brain in a scientific fashion. 

In a now-classic experiment, participants first completed a cognitive task called the backward digit span, which requires them to listen to a series of numbers and repeat them in reverse order. Then, they took a walk outside for about an hour. One group walked in the Arboretum, in a trail following a river through the evergreeens, and the other, in the busy part of the town, navigating intersections along the commercial storefronts. When they returned, they repeated the same test. The participants who walked in nature significantly improved their scores, but those who did the urban walk did not. 

Later, the researchers switched the routes, so the same people served as their own controls and the result was the same: nature walk improved attention and memory, but urban walk did not. The walking was similar. The people were the same. What changed was the environment.

The researchers suggested that nature captures our attention gently, without demanding it. Urban environments, in contrast, are filled with stimulation that demands our attention, such as traffic, signs, people, and potential hazards. Nature, they suggested, gives our directed attention a chance to recover.

Berman is now considered to be one of the leaders of an emerging field, environmental neuroscience, which studies how features of our environment influence the brain, including our attention, cognition, mood and stress. In retrospect, this seems obvious. Our brain is the interface between our inner world and the world outside us. Why wouldn't the environment in which it operates matter?

Environmental Neuroscience Taps Traditions Like Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Medicine) 

The idea that nature can help our health is not new. Research from another tradition suggests that nature's effects may extend beyond cognition into the body itself.

In Japan, interest in the health effects of shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,” has grown, alongside an emerging discipline known as “forest medicine.” Shinrin means “forest” in Japanese, and yoku means “bath.” It is specifically noted that Shinrin-yoku is not exercise, or hiking. Rather, it is the act of being in nature, bathing in the forest atmosphere and connecting with it through our multisensory system of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. 

Studies have associated forest exposure with lower cortisol levels, changes in autonomic measures, improvements in mood, and changes in measures of immune function.

One intriguing hypothesis involves phytoncides, volatile organic compounds released by trees. Laboratory and small human studies suggest that these compounds may contribute to some of the physiological effects associated with forest exposure, including changes in natural killer cell activity. But they are unlikely to explain the whole story.

Why Nature Helps our Brain

Recent studies using tools such as functional MRI and EEG are beginning to show that natural and urban environments engage the brain differently, including networks involved in attention, stress, emotion, and self-referential thought.

According to Attention restoration theory (ART), “attention” is a finite resource, that can be depleted by constant stimulation. 

Modern life constantly demands directed attention: ignore the notification, answer the email, switch between windows, remember the deadline at work—while also scheduling the dentist appointment, arranging the car safety check, and figuring out the family vacation. 

Our attention rarely gets to be off duty. Nature captures attention differently. A cloud moving, leaves rustling, water flowing, birds calling—these attract us without demanding that we concentrate on them.

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