The Pomp Letter
The Pomp Letter
Data Suggests The Bull Market Is Just Beginning
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Data Suggests The Bull Market Is Just Beginning

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To investors,

There is no better feeling than a bull market.

Your portfolio is going higher day after day. The media is falling over themselves in excitement. Social media is lit on fire with people taking screenshots of their net worth. Bears are screeching a big crash is right around the corner. And your barber, taxi driver, and neighbor are all pitching you their latest stock pick.

Straight pandemonium. Bull markets sure are fun.

And that is exactly where we are right now. Stocks, bitcoin, gold, and nearly every other asset continue surging to new all-time highs throughout 2025. But just how good is this bull market? How does it compare to past markets?

3Fourteen’s Warren Pies writes:

“How does the [current] rally compare to history? It is the fourth strongest rally versus all other bull markets. Only 1982, 2009, and 2020 were greater. It is the STRONGEST recovery excluding recessionary cases. At 116 days without a 6% pullback, the rally has gone farther than all but two early-stage bull [markets] (1966 & 1957).”

A line chart of the S&P 500 index showing multiple colored lines representing historical bull market recoveries from 1957 to 2023. The current bull market is highlighted in black, labeled "CURRENT BULL." Other lines in colors like green, red, and blue depict past recoveries. Text overlays include "S&P 500 From Major Bear Market Bottoms to Next 8% Correction" and a list of dates for past recoveries, such as 1957-03-22 to 1959-07-17. A watermark from 3Fourteen Research is visible.

This data confirms what we are all feeling…the current bull market is very rare. The tariff fears earlier this year created an artificial suppression of stocks, which laid the groundwork for the historic market recovery we are now witnessing.

There are many people arguing the recent price appreciation is unsustainable. They’ll point to numerous data points suggesting stocks are overvalued. You will hear them say a reversion to the mean is essentially guaranteed.

But what if they are wrong? What if the exact opposite is true?

I want to challenge each of you to ask yourself, what does the future look like if the bull market is just beginning? What if everything goes right for investors?

These questions are not rooted in some fantasy world though. Carson Group’s Ryan Detrick shows “Q4 is the best quarter of the year historically and it isn’t even really close.”

A bar chart displaying the S&P 500 Index average quarterly returns from 1950 to 2024. Four vertical blue bars represent quarters 1 to 4, with values of 2.5%, 2.0%, 0.7%, and 5.0% respectively. Black dots above each bar show the percentage of time each quarter was higher, with values of 64.0%, 62.7%, 61.3%, and 80.0%. Text at the top reads "The Fourth Quarter Is Here" and "S&P 500 Index Average Quarterly Returns (1950-2024)". A watermark from Carson is visible at the bottom right.

The last quarter of the year has an average return that is nearly twice as strong as any other quarter of the year. Ryan goes on to explain that Q4 has a positive return 14 out of the last 15 times that the S&P 500 was up 10% or more going into the final 3 months of the year.

A table displaying S&P 500 index returns. Columns include Year, YTD Return End Of September, October Return, and Q4 Return. Data spans from 1950 to 2024, showing percentages for each year. The table includes averages and medians for specific periods.

Still not convinced? Well, we can see 2025 is following a similar path to 1999. Revere Asset Management’s Connor Bates shows it perfectly in this chart comparing the 1996 - 2001 timeframe with 2023 to present day:

A line graph of the Nasdaq Composite Index from June 1996 to January 2001 in blue, overlaid with data from January 2023 to present in red. The x-axis spans from 1996 to 2000, and the y-axis shows values from 0 to 5,000 for the blue line and -40,000 to 0 for the red line. A watermark reads "Alpine Macro 2025" at the bottom center.

I doubt I have 20/20 vision, but those two markets look visually similar to me. Given the trend, this comparison would suggest there is still significant appreciation left in this bull market under the 1999 repeat market scenario.

And remember, all of this analysis and stock market performance is happening with the backdrop of the Fed’s recent interest rate cuts. The US central bank is reducing the cost of capital at the same time that stocks are hitting all-time highs. That development is hardly bearish and instead suggests equities will keep setting new record highs through the end of the year.

That will be great for equity investors, but there is another asset that is sounding an alarm bell that can’t be ignored. That asset is gold.

Mike Zaccardi shows central banks globally have been buying up gold in droves:

A bar chart displaying central bank gold holdings from 1999 to 2023. The chart shows net sales in dark blue bars and net purchases in light blue bars, with values ranging from -800 to 1200 tonnes. The x-axis lists years, and the y-axis indicates tonnes. Text at the top reads "1.3 Central bank gold holdings today" and "Figure 4: Central bank gold sales vs. purchases (tonnes)." A source note at the bottom cites Deutsche Bank Research, World Gold Council.

This is just an insane amount of demand for the precious metal. Analyst Marko Papic highlights this central bank activity is about to help gold flip US treasuries as the most popular reserve asset around the world.

A line graph showing the share of total official reserve assets from 1980 to 2025. Two lines represent gold market prices and US Treasury securities, with gold declining sharply from the 1980s to the 2000s, then stabilizing, and US Treasury securities rising and fluctuating. The y-axis ranges from 0% to 80%, and the x-axis spans from 1980 to 2025. A watermark from BICO Research 2025 is visible.

This milestone has seemed impossible for more than 25 years. The sound money regime was dominant until 1971. We watched the explosion of fiat happen as soon as the US went off the gold standard and it seemed like sound money would be a forgotten foot note of history. But now we are seeing a return to sound money properties through gold and bitcoin.

The team at Blokland shows gold’s dominance priced in US treasuries. The trend is clear and the reasoning could not be more obvious.

A line graph comparing gold and global treasuries performance over time. The x-axis shows years from Jan-09 to Jan-25, marked at yearly intervals. The y-axis ranges from 80 to 440. A yellow line tracks gold performance with fluctuations, rising sharply from 2020. A pink dashed line with an upward arrow highlights the recent gold rally. The BLOKLAND logo and text "GOLD VS. TREASURIES" appear at the top. Source text "Source: Blokland Smart Multi-Asset Fund, Bloomberg" is visible at the bottom.

Simply, central banks have abused the opportunity given to them by citizens. They printed too much money. They destroyed the purchasing power of the people. Citizens are choosing to vote with their dollars and move from fiat-based assets into sound money assets. These same citizens are also using stocks as a way to benefit from the insane currency debasement happening across markets.

Stocks, gold, and bitcoin. Those three assets will allow you to benefit from the ridiculous, undisciplined behavior coming from central banks. Buy them and chill.

They are all going higher. The bull market is not over because cheap money is coming and the world needs new technology to navigate the next two decades. I hope that each of you is able to ignore the bears. Don’t get sucked into their intellectual nonsense. They are wrong. They don’t understand the market or the economy. These individuals are stuck in the past.

The optimists are going to win. Quite literally, I am betting my portfolio on it.

Have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.

- Anthony Pompliano

Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management


Jordi Visser Explains Why Bitcoin & Artificial Intelligence Will Drive The Bull Market

Jordi Visser (‪@JordiVisserLabs‬) is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos.

In this conversation we discuss bitcoin outlook for rest of the year, interest rate cuts, how to evaluate AI acceleration, Nvidia’s $100 billion deal with OpenAI, and what metrics investors should keep an eye on.

Enjoy!


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