AI may reshape the labor market in ways that are difficult to predict, and it won’t be the first time this has happened. In the short term, the labor market appears to have stabilized and there are some early signs of acceleration.

Our view from the portfolio management desk is that there seems to be a concurrent affordability crisis in the public stock markets as well. The biggest names appear to be “priced for perfection” at this moment.

Stock markets are at all-time highs, public companies are shutting down their operations to buy bitcoin, consumers can bet in real time on almost anything they can imagine, “meme stocks” are back in full force, even the US government is buying stocks.

Over the past several years we’ve watched the S&P 500’s performance become increasingly tethered to a handful of Mega-cap technology companies.

The second quarter of 2025 started with a bang and ended with a whimper.