1. The Stoxx Europe 600 is at all-time highs and moving deeper into overbought territory.

“Despite ever-growing fears of an AI bubble, we continue to be aggressively risk-on in our asset allocation. One thing we are mindful of is that our sentiment and positioning framework is slowly approaching the overbought territory”, says an HSBC strategist.

The picture is slightly different in the US. The S&P 500 has overcome an AI-driven mid-December pullback to find its way back to highs. While it’s nowhere near overbought levels, investors continue to be wary of elevated valuations and bubble risks in the heavyweight tech sector. There are also concerns over mixed recent US job data.

2. AMD and Nvidia remain very bullish on compute demand.

AMD unveiled a new chip for corporate data centers, with CEO Lisa Su noting on AI that “we don’t have nearly enough compute for what we could possibly do.”

Nvidia unveiled Alpamayo, an open-source autonomus vehicle model. Huang also announced the Vera Rubin computing system is in full production, designed to make up for the “insane computing demand problem”. The Rubin system includes two distinct chips together on one big compute board, that each goes on a data center shelf, stacked with enough shelves to make up a two-ton giant system. The chip system for the Rubin CPU is 5X the compute of Blackwell, Nvidia’s previous industry-leading chip. Does the world have enough Cap-Ex to spend on light-year leaps in AI every year?

3. Silver smashing through $80.

Elon Musk fed the squeeze saying on X: “This is not good. Silver is needed in many industrial processes.”

Silver has been spurred like other precious metals this year by elevated central-bank purchases, inflows to exchange-traded funds and three rate cuts by the Fed. Lower borrowing costs burnish the attraction of commodities and traders are betting on more rate cuts in 2026.

4. In a market with few bargains, beer stocks look cheap but are they cheap enough?

To be clear, the drop in drinking isn’t just theoretical—it’s happening. A survey by Gallup showed that nearly two-thirds of young American adults are concerned about alcohol’s health effects. Every major seller of beer and spirits is scrambling to find answers to slumping demand.

An equal-weighted basket of 11 global alcoholic beverage producers has lost a third of its value in the past five years, including dividends. Have their shares sold off enough?

5. About $1 trillion was pulled from active equity mutual funds last year.

In this 10 year old bull market, every finfluencer has become an expert at buying index ETF’s and cryptos.

That’s not a bad thing…less active managers implies less market efficiency and more opportunities for those who are still actively researching companies.

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