The Market Brief
U.S. equity futures slipped early Thursday as investors weighed fresh earnings, artificial intelligence spending concerns and rising oil prices.
Impact Snapshot
🟥 Unemployment Claims - 8:30am
Macro Viewpoint
Stocks fell as unease over ever-higher artificial intelligence investment outweighed an otherwise strong earnings report from Alphabet Inc.
That elevated spending comes as investors have grown more cautious in recent months about hyperscalers’ AI outlays.
Without a wave of strong earnings to distract from it, attention has gravitated back toward the war. Those who thought oil prices had peaked are now redoing the inflation math. Now more than ever, pricing power remains key for companies looking to be rewarded by investors.
Prime Intelligence
Volatility just wrapped up one of its wilder rides in years, and it’s now sitting back near a seasonal low point. History says that calm doesn’t usually stick around for long from here.
This chart below tracks the VIX in 2026 (red) against its average path since 1990 (navy), both indexed to the start of the year. 2026 ran well above the historical average through the spring, then cooled off through the summer, converging back toward where volatility “normally” sits at this point in the calendar.
So what tends to happen next? Looking at every year since 1990, late July has historically marked a seasonal low for volatility. From here, the VIX has typically climbed over the following one to three months, with the majority of those years seeing volatility move higher before easing back later on.
Seasonality is a tendency, not a guarantee, but the pattern has held up for over three decades. Late summer calm has a habit of giving way to autumn turbulence, worth keeping on the radar as positioning resets heading into fall.
The Market Brief
In todays brief we dig into why one major investor group’s positioning could turn this year’s seasonal vol pickup into something sharper. We break down what history says happens next when positioning gets this stretched, and why dealers may not be able to keep a lid on it this time.
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