A little over three years ago, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology took off in the public consciousness with OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT.

That event took place in a period of relative chaos for the U.S. stock market. That period of chaos started with the S&P 500's plunge after February 2020 with the arrival of 2020's coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., which ended the period of relative order that had established itself in December 2018. The inflation phase of the bubble began after March 2020 with the passage of COVID stimulus funds, which initiated the inflation of the COVID/Biden Stimulus Bubble.

The deflation phase of that bubble began after it peaked in December 2021 and by June 2022, the level of the S&P 500 had returned to levels consistent with where stock prices would have been had the relative order that had been in place starting in December 2018 had simply continued. The following chart, which tracks the average monthly value of the S&P 500 against its underlying trailing year dividends per share shows the scale of that event in the context of the relative periods of order and chaos we've documented since December 1991.

Stock prices continued falling through September 2022 before starting to re-establish some semblance of relative order in the latter part of that year when stock prices began to recover. ChatGPT was rolled out in that environment on 30 November 2022, which helped contribute to the stock market's initial recovery phase that ran through late July 2023, then reversed through late October 2023. It wasn't until 29 December 2023 that what we define as the current period of relative order established itself.

From here, we can track the progress of the current period of relative order in the U.S. stock market on a more refined chart. Here is what that period of order looks like from 29 December 2023 through 2 December 2025:

This chart allows us to quantify what most analysts might identify as the AI bubble, but which we do not because of how we define what a bubble is. Here is our working definition:

An economic bubble exists whenever the price of an asset that may be freely exchanged in a well-established market first soars then plummets over a sustained period of time at rates that are decoupled from the rate of growth of the income that might be realized from owning or holding the asset.

Going back to our chart of the current period of relative order, we find it captures the inflation and deflation phase of the so-called "AI Bubble" that has occurred within it. The inflation phase runs from 29 December 2023 and continues until it peaks in 19 February 2025, just ahead of a market-shaking event for AI stocks. That event came in the form of China's Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research company's Friday, 21 February 2025 statement that they would release an open source version of their advanced AI system in the following week, which they followed through and did on Monday, 24 February 2025.

This event popped the proverbial AI bubble. Stock prices plunged until they started to stabilize in late March 2025, but by then, what passed for the AI bubble had all but fully deflated.

Shortly afterward, President Trump's 2 April 2025 "Liberation Day" global tariff announcement sent the S&P 500 plunging much lower, threatening to break the market's current relative period of order. It didn't because less than a week later, President Trump announced a 90-day suspension of the higher tariffs would seek to impose, which prompted a rapid recovery in stock prices that prevented order from fully breaking down.

However, it's not until late June 2025, after Nvidia (NYSE: NVDA) announced blockbuster earnings of its AI-chip systems that we see signs the AI-bubble may have begun a new inflation phase.

From our perspective, the so-called AI bubble doesn't yet deserve that designation. Although it has contributed to making the current relative period of order somewhat chaotic, stock prices remain within the range we identify has established itself during this period, for which we can used the tools of statistical analysis to quantify. The first inflation-deflation phase of the AI-bubble would at best cover 2.5 standard deviations of the variation of stock prices recorded between 29 December 2023 and 2 December 2025, or about 612 points. What passes as its new inflation phase, which we track from 20 June 2025 to the present, is similar in magnitude and is equivalent to about 9% of the current value of the S&P 500.

What would it take for us to officially recognize the AI Bubble as an actual bubble? We would need to see the 20-day moving average of the S&P 500 rise above the upper red dashed line indicated on our refined chart and stay there. For the upcoming milestone of the S&P 500's trailing year dividends reaching $79 per share, that would mean the index sustaining a level above $7,000 for at least 20 trading days to even begin to qualify. Which is to say the earliest that might happen would be early in 2026.

Celebrating Political Calculations' Anniversary

We hope you've enjoyed this analysis because we're celebrating our anniversary a little early this year! Our anniversary posts typically represent the biggest ideas and celebration of the original work we develop here each year, where we've only missed 2024 because we were tied up with other projects. Here are our landmark posts from previous years:

• A Year's Worth of Tools (2005) - we celebrated our first anniversary by listing all the tools we created in our first year. There were just 48 back then. Today, there are over 300....
• The S&P 500 At Your Fingertips (2006) - the most popular tool we've ever created, allowing users to calculate the rate of return for investments in the S&P 500, both with and without the effects of inflation, and with and without the reinvestment of dividends, between any two months since January 1871.
• The Sun, In the Center (2007) - we identify the primary driver of stock prices and describe a whole new way to visualize where they're going (especially in periods of order!)
• Acceleration, Amplification and Shifting Time (2008) - we apply elements of chaos theory to describe and predict how stock prices will change, even in periods of disorder.
• The Trigger Point for Taxes (2009) - we work out both when, and by how much, U.S. politicians are likely to change the top U.S. income tax rate. Sadly, events in recent years have proven us right.
• The Zero Deficit Line (2010) - a whole new way to find out how much federal government spending Americans can really afford and how much Americans cannot really afford!
• Can Increasing the Minimum Wage Boost GDP? (2011) - using data for teens and young adults spanning 1994 and 2010, not only do we demonstrate that increasing the minimum wage fails to increase GDP, we demonstrate that it reduces employment and increases income inequality as well!
• The Discovery of the Unseen (2012) - we go where so-called experts on income inequality fear to tread and reveal that U.S. household income inequality has increased over time mostly because more Americans live alone!

We marked our 2013 anniversary in three parts, since we were telling a story too big to be told in a single blog post! Here they are:

• The Major Trends in U.S. Income Inequality Since 1947 (2013, Part 1) - we revisit the U.S. Census Bureau's income inequality data for American individuals, families and households to see what it really tells us.
• The Widows Peak (2013, Part 2) - we identify when the dramatic increase in the number of Americans living alone really occurred and identify which Americans found themselves in that situation.
• The Men Who Weren't There (2013, Part 3) - our final anniversary post installment explores the lasting impact of the men who died in the service of their country in World War 2 and the hole in society that they left behind, which was felt decades later as the dramatic increase in income inequality for U.S. families and households.

Resuming our list of anniversary posts....

• The Toolmaker's Tool (2014) - we make the code we use for creating online tools available to all!
• Replacing GDP with the National Dividend (2015) - we explore our development of an alternative measure of economic welfare that can replace GDP.
• The Gamblers Who Invented Modern Encryption (2016) - we discover that a group of gamblers seeking to break the law in Missouri back in 1905 put together many of the elements that underlie secure electronic communications and financial transactions!
• The Isolation of El Niño (2017) - in which we advanced the development of a global economic indicator for Earth!
• Telescoping Median Household Income Back in Time (2018) - we find a way to nearly double the available supply of monthly median household income estimates with reasonable accuracy.
• Cashing Out of the S&P 500 (2019) - we develop a tool to answer the question of whether you can survive being retired if you're counting on cashing out your investment in the S&P 500!
• The Deadly Intersection of Anti-Police Protests and COVID-19 (2020) - it was the year of the coronavirus and political protests, so we combined the two in a way that only we could.
• The Birth of the Martian Economy (2021) - we don't mess around when we say we celebrate big ideas, and what's bigger idea to celebrate than the birth of an entire planet's economy?
• The S&P 500 Dividend Engine (2022) - we put the entire history of the S&P 500's cash dividends at your fingertips!
• The Origin of Ancient Alien Theory (2023) - how and when did the idea of aliens visiting Earth to do things like build pyramids get started?

Image credit: Multicolored soap bubble image by Alexa from Pixabay.

Dividend paying firms in the U.S. stock market saw more negative than positive changes in November 2025 when compared against the market of November 2024. That's disappointing because October 2025 saw dividend payers break an eight-month-long losing streak for this simple measure that indicates the relative health of the underlying U.S. economy by turning in a positive result.

Alas, there is no new winning streak taking hold. The single number that describes how dividend payers fared during the month is -22, with that many more unfavorable actions outweighing the kind of favorable actions that the owners of dividend paying stocks like to see.

Falling back into the recent pattern of the eight month-long losing streak, this net outcome was the result of a declining number of favorable changes like dividend increases and announcements of extra (or special) dividends payments for shareholders. Overall, there were 28 fewer favorable actions in November 2025 than there were in the same month a year earlier, of which, there were 19 fewer extra dividends and 9 fewer increases than had been announced in November 2024.

These unfavorable changes outweighed the favorable development of fewer companies decreasing their dividend payouts. There were just 10 such firms counted by Standard & Poor in its tally for November 2025, a decrease of 6 from the total recorded a year earlier.

The following table totals up all the favorable and unfavorable dividend actions for November 2025 and compares the figures with the values recorded for October 2025 and November 2024 to reveal how they changed month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY):

The following chart visualizes the monthly counts of dividend increases and decreases from January 2004 through November 2025.

The bottom line? While November 2025's dividend metadata contained some positive developments, they were overshadowed, resulting in a net negative outcome for dividend paying companies in the U.S. stock market.

References

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 1 December 2025.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear dressed as a hockey goalie blocking shots by a skating Wall Street bull dressed as a hockey player trying to score goals in a net that says 'FAVORABLE DIVIDEND CHANGES'".

On Thanksgiving holiday week, the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) rose 1.7% from its previous week's close, reaching 6,849.09 by the close of trading on Friday, 28 November 2025.

The index' gains was largely driven by growing expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will act to cut the Federal Funds Rate when its Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting on Tuesday, 10 December 2025, overcoming the opposition of the FOMC's biggest grumps who lost face during the year by predicting much higher inflation would result from tariffs than is supported by real world evidence. Through Friday, 28 November 2025, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool indicates an 87% probability of a quarter point rate cut on 10 December (2025-Q4), up from 71% a week earlier and from 44% the week before that.

In 2026, the FedWatch tool gives better than even odds for additional quarter point rate cuts on 29 April (2026-Q2), 29 July (2026-Q3), and 9 December (2026-Q4), which is unchanged from the previous week.

This growing expectation puts the S&P 500's trajectory will within the redzone forecast range we added to the alternative futures chart in the previous edition of the S&P 500 chaos series. Here's the latest update of the chart:

The other major story that's been driving the direction of the S&P 500 index during 2025 was relatively quiet during the Thanksgiving holiday-shortened trading week. However, what happens with firms making big AI technology-related investments continues to affect the market's direction, which in the past week meant providing the biggest boost to the markets' major indices. Here are the market-moving headlines from the week that was.

Monday, 24 November 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• No recession risk for US economy as a whole after $11 billion shutdown hit, Bessent says
• Oil prices climb as market bets on US rate cut despite Ukraine peace hopes
• Biggest Gas Pipeline Buildout Since 2008 Propels Trump Energy Push
• Companies tone down price hike talk as tariff fog clears
• US banks report 13.5% jump in profits: FDIC
• Fed minions still thinking about December rate cut:
• Fed's Waller: December cut appropriate, but January action more uncertain - Fox Business
• Bigger trouble developing in Japan, China:
• Japan can actively intervene to prop up yen, says govt panel member Aida
• China says Japan sent 'shocking' wrong signal on Taiwan
• China criticises Japan's plan to deploy missiles on island near Taiwan
• Japan fiscal experiment is lab test for Treasuries
• Chief ECB minion thinks Eurozone minions' approach to AI technology is wrong:
• EU missing the boat on AI, jeopardising its future, Lagarde warns
• Nasdaq closed higher by more than 2% to kick off the holiday-shortened week
• Wall Street ends higher on tech rebound, rising rate cut bets
• Nasdaq surges and these 10 stocks have fueled the ride higher
• Alphabet races toward $4 trillion valuation as AI-fueled gains accelerate

Tuesday, 25 November 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil dips on oversupply concerns while investors eye Ukraine talks
• OPEC+ seen keeping oil output unchanged, focus on capacity debate
• Inflation weighing on US income growth ahead of holiday season, study says
• US pending home sales increase in October amid lower mortgage rates
• US tech valuations stretched further as earnings contribute less
• New leading candidate to be next Chief Fed minion, new minion sees rising unemployment as reason for December rate cut, Treasury Secretary not happy with how Fed manages interest rates:
• Hassett emerges as frontrunner to be Trump's next Fed chair, Bloomberg News reports
• Stocks Hit Session Highs On Report Hassett Emerges As Trump's Next Fed Chair Pick
• Good chance Trump may unveil Fed pick by Christmas, Bessent says
• Fed's Miran ties rising unemployment to current setting of monetary policy - Fox Business
• US Treasury secretary takes aim at Fed's interest rate control system
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
• Germany stagnates in innovation ranking as rivals surge ahead
• Dow rallied over 650 points as Wall Street finished firmly in the green
• Wall Street ends higher as Federal Reserve rate cut bets gather momentum

Wednesday, 26 November 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US economic activity little changed ahead of next Fed meeting, report shows
• Oil edges up as investors await clarity on supply, Russia-Ukraine deal
• US drillers cut oil rigs to lowest in four years, Baker Hughes says
• US weekly jobless claims at seven-month low amid low layoffs
• BOJ minions gearing up to hike Japan's interest rates:
• Exclusive: BOJ preps markets for near-term hike as weak yen overshadows politics
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone, ECB minions say they're in no mood for more rate cuts:
• Reality check for EU: China is eating your lunch, find growth at home, ECB chief economist argues
• Euro zone banks should prepare for risk of dollar squeeze, ECB says
• ECB should cut rates only if inflation path points downward without rebound, Vujcic says
• Wall Street finished higher on fresh economic signals ahead of Thanksgiving
• Wall St ends higher on growing bets for December Fed rate cut
• Divided Fed sparks surge in rate options hedging as policy uncertainty lingers

Friday, 28 November 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Brent oil price stable, WTI also steaudy after resumption
• Big brokerages not sure which way Fed minions are going to go with cutting rates in December 2025:
• Major brokerages divided over Fed's December rate decision following jobs data
• JP Morgan shifts outlook on Fed rate cut to December
• Bigger trouble, saber-rattling developing in China:
• China's next economic shift is primed for backlash
• China's factory activity set to shrink for eighth month: Reuters poll
• China's industrial profits fall in October after two months of strong growth
• Japan will pay 'painful price' if steps out of line over Taiwan, China military says
• Bigger stimulus developing in Japan, BOJ minions expected to hike rates:
• Japan finalises $117 billion extra budget to fund stimulus, mostly via debt
• Japan government panel members call for sustainable fiscal policy
• Bank of Japan's Noguchi advocates gradual interest rate hikes
• Core inflation in Japan's capital brings BOJ closer to a rate hike
• ECB minions expected to not do anything with Eurozone interest rates anytime soon:
• ECB accounts show no hurry to cut rates, debate on declaring end of easing
• ECB's Kazaks says time is not ripe for a rate cut
• Euro zone growth, inflation on benign path, keeping rate cut bets muted
• Wall Street posts largest swing ever from red to green for the month of November
• Wall Street edges higher in thin post-holiday trade

It's hard to believe OpenAI's ChatGPT has only been around for three years!

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool projection of real GDP growth in the U.S. during the recently ended 2025-Q3 decreased from +4.2% to +3.9% as economic data reports resume being reported following the end of the Senate Democrats' government shutdown fiasco. The BEA's official estimates of GDP for 2025-Q3 will likely be delayed into December 2025, which may happen around the time the GDPNow tool gets enough data to finally shift forward to 2025-Q4.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull who is being served a Thanksgiving turkey that says 'DECEMBER RATE CUT' by a grumpy Federal Reserve official".

Would the Dogs of the Dow investing strategy work for the year's worst performing component stocks of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX)?

We're asking that question because Seeking Alpha's Jason Capul posted an article with the irresistibly clickbait title of "Thanksgiving leftovers no one wants: 10 worst S&P 500 stocks of 2025" just before the Thanksgiving holiday for the U.S. stock market. Now that it's the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, we're wondering if the S&P 500's 'thanksgiving leftovers', the ten stocks that have lost the most value during the year-to-date in 2025, might provide an opportunity to deliver better returns than the S&P 500 itself in the next year.

Which would be cool if it works, but we don't know that it does. Here's how Investopedia describes how the Dogs of the Dow investing strategy works:

The general concept is to allocate money to the 10 highest dividend-yielding, blue-chip stocks among the 30 components of the DJIA. This strategy requires rebalancing at the beginning of each calendar year.

That presents a problem for the 10 worst-performing stocks of the S&P 500, because none of these stocks would be considered blue chip companies and because seven of the ten pay no dividends. Here's the list with stock prices and Year-To-Date (YTD) stock price performance as of 28 November 2025 to make them genuine Thanksgiving leftovers!

• Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV) - $61.47 (YTD: -70.1%)
• Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) - $39.56 (YTD: -66.3%)
• Deckers Outdoor (NYSE: DECK) - $88.03 (YTD: -56.7%)
• Gartner (NYSE: IT) - $232.74 (YTD: -52.0%)
• Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) - $184.18 (YTD: -51.8%)
• Molina Healthcare (NYSE: MOH) - $148.26 (YTD: -49.1%)
• Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) - $53.67 (YTD: -45.0%)
• Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) - $34.52 (YTD: -42.8%)
• Factset Research Systems (NYSE: FDS) - $277.27 (YTD: -42.3%)
• Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW) - $23.85 (YTD: -40.6%)

The three firms that pay dividends on this list are Alexandria Real Estate Equities (a real estate investment trust that focuses on pharmaceutical and biotech facilities), Factset Research Systems (a provider of financial data and analysis for financial professionals), and Dow Inc. (a manufacturer of chemicals, with no relation to Dow Jones Industrial Average that puts the "Dow" into the "Dogs of the Dow" investing strategy).

For our Thanksgiving leftovers from the S&P 500, we're going to look two hypothetical investing scenarios. For the first, we'll invest in only the "high-yielding" members of the list of Thanksgiving leftover stocks and compare how that investment performs against the seven other stocks in the list and the S&P 500 as a whole.

For the second hypothetical scenario, we'll invest in the entire list of stocks with the size of the investments weighted by their share of the ten stocks' market capitalizations as of 28 November 2025, and see how that compares against the S&P 500.

We have no idea how any of that is going to turn out. Will reversion to the mean happen for these worst performers giving each a market-beating rate of return? Or will the troubles at the companies that caused their stock prices to plummet so much in the first place keep them falling through the floor? Will the dividend-paying firms or non-dividend paying firms deliver a better performance? Or will the S&P 500 reign supreme over all of the above?

We're excited to find out! We'll nail down the methodology and update the status of how the Thankgiving Leftover stocks are doing about once a month, with the first update coming sometime in January 2026.

Image credit: Turkey sandwich photo by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash.

Thanksgiving has a defining theme in 2025. The population of turkeys raised on U.S. farms shrank from the previous year. The size of those live turkeys also shrank. Completing the trifecta, the Farm Bureau Federation confirms the price of a Thanksgiving dinner has shrunk as well, led lower by a big drop in the price of turkeys!

That cost had peaked at $64.05 for a 10-item menu in 2022 thanks to the runaway inflation unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration. Since then, the cost has dropped each year, falling to $61.17 in 2023 and to $58.08 in 2024. This year, that cost dropped 2.9% to $55.18.

The Farm Bureau describes how a drop in the price of turkeys contributed to 2025's lower Thanksgiving dinner cost:

The centerpiece on most Thanksgiving tables – the turkey – dramatically decreased in price, which helped bring down the overall cost of dinner. The average price for a 16-pound frozen turkey is $21.50. That is $1.34 per pound, down more than 16% from last year. While the wholesale price for fresh turkey is up from 2024, grocery stores are featuring Thanksgiving deals and attempting to draw consumer demand back to turkey, leading to lower retail prices for a holiday bird....

“It’s encouraging to see some relief in the price of turkeys, as it is typically the most expensive part of the meal,” said AFBF Economist Faith Parum, Ph.D. “Farmers are still working to rebuild turkey flocks that were devastated by avian influenza, but overall demand has also fallen. The combination will help ensure turkey will remain an affordable option for families celebrating Thanksgiving.”

Here's the Farm Bureau's infographic indicating each of the menu items for their Thanksgiving dinner and the average prices they found them when they shopped for them during the first week of November 2025:

Although turkeys are much less costly for American consumers, they found both increases and decreases in the prices of several items compared to last year.

Half of the ingredients in the survey declined in price, including dinner rolls and stuffing. Low wheat prices helped bring down the cost of items requiring flour.

Items like fresh vegetables and sweet potatoes increased – a veggie tray is up more than 61% and sweet potatoes are up 37%. Natural disasters partly contributed to the increase. For example, North Carolina, which is the largest grower of the nation’s sweet potatoes, suffered hurricane damage. Additionally, fresh produce prices tend to be highly volatile, and even modest supply-chain disruptions, from weather, labor shortages, transportation delays or regional production setbacks, can trigger sharp, short-term spikes in prices. The continued shortage of farmworkers and rapidly increasing farm wages also played a role in rising produce costs. It’s important to note that fresh vegetables and potatoes are traditionally low-cost items, so an increase of just a few cents can dramatically affect the cost change percentage year-to-year.

Here are the average prices of the Farm Bureau's Thanksgiving dinner menu items with their percentage and dollar changes in cost from 2024 to 2025:

• 16-pound turkey: $21.50 or $1.34 per pound (down 16.3%, or -$4.17 for the whole turkey)
• 14-ounces of cubed stuffing mix: $3.71 (down 9%, or -$0.37)
• 2 frozen pie crusts: $3.37 (down .8%, or -$0.03)
• Half pint of whipping cream: $1.87 (up 3.2%, or +$0.06)
• 1 pound of frozen peas: $2.03 (up 17.2%, or +$0.30)
• 1 dozen dinner rolls: $3.56 (down 14.6%, or -$0.60)
• Misc. ingredients to prepare the meal: $3.61 (down 4.7%, or -$0.14)
• 30-ounce can of pumpkin pie mix: $4.16 (up .1%, or +$0.01)
• 1 gallon of whole milk: $3.73 (up 16.3%, or +$0.52)
• 3 pounds of sweet potatoes: $4.00 (up 37%, or +$1.07)
• 1-pound veggie tray (carrots & celery): $1.36 (up 61.3%, or +$0.52)
• 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries: $2.28 (down 2.8%, or -$0.07)

Overall, the $55.18 cost of a Thanksgiving dinner in 2025 is $8.87 or about 14% lower than in 2022.

References

Farm Bureau Federation. Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner Declines. [Online article]. 19 November 2025.

Farm Bureau Federation. Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner Declines – Remains Higher Than Pre-Pandemic Levels. [Online article]. 20 November 2024.