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1. Time Spent in Recession by Decade….Last 15 Years, Almost Zero

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2. Record Positive 5-Day Breath in S&P

SentimentTrader notes we had a week for the history books. The S&P 500 just strung together 5 straight days with more than 68% of its stocks advancing. That ties the record going back to 1928.

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3. Clean Energy ETF New Lows

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4. Netflix has Record Subscriber Growth

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5. January Global Fund Manager Flows…Into Eurozone and Commodities?

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6. With Canada Entering Political Upheaval, the Canadian Dollar is Hitting Lows

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7. Apple Underperformer Yesterday

Pulls back to September 2024 levels….200-Day in play.

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8. 20-Year Chart of Mortgage Rates

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9. World Citizens Reaction to Trump Presidency

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10. Dive In: Cold Water Can Be Good for Your Brain-Psychology Today

Via Psychology Today: Research demonstrates the mental benefits of cold water swimming.

Key points:

• People have been immersing themselves in cold water for thousands of years.

• Modern research shows that cold water immersion provides cognitive and mood benefits.

• That may be connected with the effect of cold-water swimming on cortisol levels.

If you live near a body of water in the northern latitudes, you likely have heard of your local polar bear club — usually made up of a group of hearty swimmers who take part in cold water swimming.

Immersing in cold water dates back to ancient civilizations, with the first documented evidence appearing in an Egyptian text in 3,000 BC. Fast forward to modern times, a group of swimmers founded the first cold water swimming organization in the U.S. in 1903. Today, the Coney Island Polar Bear Club still holds weekly ocean swims from November to April.

Cold-water swimmers tout the numerous benefits of those icy dips: reduced inflammation in muscles and joints, boosted metabolism, improved sleep and enhanced libido. But what does the evidence say?

A growing body of research verifies that cold water plunges do provide benefits, particularly for mood and cognitive performance.

In a study published this year in the journal Physiology & Behavior, 13 healthy subjects submerged themselves in 10-degree Celsius water for 10 minutes, three times per week. Researchers evaluated participants’ cognitive performance, self-reported well-being, sleep quality and worry. They found participants’ cognitive processing speed and mental flexibility improved over the four weeks of the study. Participants also reported fewer sleep disturbances and scored lower on assessments of worry.

Two earlier studies back up these findings. In the first, participants reported a significant decrease in negative emotions like tension, anger, depression, fatigue and confusion after a 20-minute dip in chilly ocean water. In the second study, participants who immersed in a cold bath for five minutes reported feeling more active, alert, attentive, proud and inspired.

What’s going on here? Researchers don’t exactly know. But they have established that those good feelings likely have something to do with cold water immersion’s effect on cortisol levels.

Cortisol is a hormone released into the bloodstream when you experience stress; it prepares your body for the fight-or-flight response. If you have too much cortisol, or if your body releases it too often, it can lead to weight gain, mood swings, insomnia, and fatigue.

Researchers expected a cold-water plunge would elevate cortisol levels, but studies have found that cortisol levels remain relatively stable during cold immersion, and decrease significantly in the hours afterward. This likely explains why cold-water swimmers report improved mood and cognitive performance.

It’s important to note there are health risks associated with cold-water swimming including hypothermia, hyperventilation, and muscle cramping. It’s important never to swim in a body of open water alone, and to check with your doctor before cold immersion if you have any chronic health conditions.

That said, there is clear evidence that cold-water immersion can help boost your mood and cognitive performance, and may also help prevent sleep disturbances.

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