Alt Data/ Bull Market Duration/ Game Changing Deal/ Private Equity/ Interesting Charts

Alternative Data

The Government shut down has led to quite a scramble for alternative data recently. Investors are giving certain metrics a greater level of relevancy than they previously have. One such report that was released this week is one from the Carlyle Group.https://www.carlyle.com/media-room/news-release-archive/carlyle-releases-proprietary-us-economic-indicators-government-shutdown

Carlyle’s proprietary indicators are based on operational data from its portfolio spanning technology, infrastructure, energy, healthcare, consumer, and industrial sectors. The breadth of this portfolio, representing nearly 730,000 employees, provides policymakers, investors, and the public with a uniquely comprehensive view of the economy.

Key number above looks to be the 17k one. Hard to argue that the employment picture is healthy.

Consider that in the last few weeks the following employment measures have been released:

ADP challenging lows from early 2023.
Conf Board Labor differential suggesting conditions are worsening.
ISM Business employment been below 50 since January.

Another alternative source quantifies the health of the consumer, the BAML Institute monthly consumer trend report.

https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/economic-insights/consumer-checkpoint-september-2025.pdf

There are plenty of good insights in this report, especially breaking down the consumer trends by age, but also looking into the spread between low income and higher income.

The bifurcation continues according to this report between lower and higher income spending growth. Lower income growth up 0.3% YoY compared to 2.2% for higher income.

It’s well known that the top 10% of consumers are responsible for 50% of consumption, so as long as their income remains constant or growing, spending should remain positive.

But what if smaller employers are beginning to show cracks in employment?

According to Quickbooks small business labor is declining in 19 of the 20 states that they track. Leisure and hospitality saw fastest and largest decline of any sector.

So, it appears even without the BLS data there is evidence the employment picture is weakening, but the consumer is still holding strong, at least the higher end one is. That begs the question, what were to happen if the high-end consumer were to become overly cautious? Seems to us that the one thing that could make that happen would be a weak US equity market.

Bull Market Duration

The high-end consumer may very well not have to worry about such a thing though, at least according to the next 2 charts.

The bull market turns three this Sunday. Just a reminder that the five previous bull markets (going back the past 50 years) that made it this far kept going. Shortest was five years, the average was 8 years, and two made it to double digits.

The cyclical bull market that was born on October 13, 2022, is about to turn three years old, and is now good for a 95% gain. That puts it slightly above average in terms of both duration and magnitude (90% over 30 months). But of course, there is nothing average about this bull market.

Game changing deal

The implications of such a deal are really mind boggling. The CFTC green lighting Polymarket’s new structure could be signaling an openness to allow for Defi products in the US.

Could we be entering a new layer of “price discovery”? Crowd implied probabilities will now trade along side traditional macro, earnings, and survey inputs which will create a dual channel environment where “collective truth” move prices as quickly as policy statements could.

Bloomberg is now carrying some of these prediction markets as well, so it appears the traction is there.

A few examples:

Looks like the shut down is going at least another 10 days:

Next Fed Chair

Kalshi sees it a bit differently

Fed rate cuts

and a most interesting one.

Private Equity

Is Private Equity telling us something? We were going to run this chart last week but decided to just keep monitoring it.

During the week we noticed many more versions of it popping up, so thought we would take a deeper look, but this time using a broader look with an ETF.