by Jason Bodner
November 18, 2025
The quietest place on Earth is Minnesota’s Orfield Labs. Sit inside long enough and you can hear your own heart-beat and even blood flowing. When external noise gets turned down, internal signals get louder.
Orfield’s anechoic-chamber is a room designed to completely absorb sound and electromagnetic-waves, eliminating echoes and external noise. This is achieved by lining the walls, floor, and ceiling with sound-absorbing materials like large foam wedges that will trap and dissipate sound waves.
Markets work the same way. When things get loud, turn out the noise and focus on underlying signals.
A little context to the latest sell-off: November volatility is unusual, but Thursday’s technology-heavy equity dump was pretty loud. Since 1990, 26 of 35 (74.3%) Novembers were positive, with the S&P 500 averaging +2.45-percent and NASDAQ +3.17-percent, with the Dow up 2.85% and Russell 2000 +3.3%.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
At the mid-way point, through last Friday, this November looks off script, but the second-half may revert to form. Seasonally, September should have been ugly, and October should have been choppier, so maybe November’s turbulence is also fighting the script. With many calling this market over-heated, a pull-back is healthy. If it deepens, I view it as a chance to buy excellent companies with superior fundamentals.
For perspective, last Thursday’s -2.04% drop in QQQ was one of only 590-sessions out of 9,008-sessions in which it fell by 2% or more. That’s one out of 15-sessions (6.55%). Not enjoyable, not frequent, but in the range of normal. Better yet, forward returns after drops like this have historically been solid. One-week and one-month forward returns tend to be modest but positive, and the curve strengthens from there.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
Many pundits keep comparing today’s AI run to the late 1990s. I don’t buy that comparison. Back then, investors shoveled money into companies with no sales, no earnings, and no profits. Many stocks traded at infinite multiples. By contrast, today’s technology surge is dominated by real revenue growth, real earnings growth, and expanding profit margins. FactSet data backs this up. For Q3 2025, with 91% of the S&P 500 reporting, 82% beat earnings estimates and 77% beat revenue. The blended earnings growth rate is 13%. If that number holds, it will mark the fourth-straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth.
This brings us back to QQQ. Because this isn’t a 1999 internet bubble, let’s exclude the late 1990s and early 2000. For the last two-decades, forward returns after drops like yesterday look even stronger.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
That is why I suggest that you don’t subscribe to the fear that will inevitably spread. Instead, buy into it.
Next, let’s address a factor not being talked about… crypto-currency is under real pressure. A spike in volatility, cooling institutional flows, and a stronger dollar are squeezing a market already stuffed with leverage. When big moves hit, especially sudden draw-downs like we have seen recently, forced liquidations rip through the system. Here is the part most people miss: Those margin calls never stay contained in crypto-currency. Traders facing levered losses raise cash wherever they can, fast, and the most liquid pockets of their portfolios are large-cap technology and other high-flying equities. So, any weakness in crypto-currency spills into stocks not because fundamentals change, but because traders hunt for liquidity. It has a domino effect. A levered unwind in one corner of the market triggers selling in the strongest, most easily sold names in another.
If you want confirmation, look at this sampling of last Thursday’s unusually high ETF outflows:
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
Notice anything? Crypto-currency outflows dominated. This same pattern showed up earlier this month, too.
Looking at the three-elevated outflow days in ETFs – namely, November 3rd, 4th and 13th, about 40% of ETF outflows were related to Bitcoin and Ethereum, the leading crypto-currencies.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
Getting back to equities, the Big Money Index (BMI) gave us a head fake on November 11th. It looked like it would rally at first, but the trend is clearly down. Now just above 50%, it is well off mid-September’s peak of 77%. At first, heavy outflows were not a factor in dragging it down, just fading inflows. Lately the narrative shifted toward more outflows than inflows, which accelerated the BMI drop.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
Outflows have been especially heavy in technology. On 11/13, 26% of all outflows were technology shares. Digging into the details, many high-ranking fundamental names were seeing distribution.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
Despite recent pressure, technology still sits as our second-highest ranked sector.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
That is encouraging, but what bothers me is that Industrials, Financials, and Discretionary have slipped in the rankings. When those three rise with technology, they are engines for a broad bull-market. Lately we have seen outflow spikes in Technology, Energy, Health Care, Industrials, Materials, Discretionary, Staples, Communications, and Real Estate.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
This prompts some concerns: Are we near a sudden death of the bull-market? Is a new bear-market coming soon? No one knows for certain, but I see a pull-back, not a bear-market. Maybe this pull-back turns into a broader correction, but we should not forget the run we had. From April lows, SPY climbed 39% and QQQ surged 5%. After such a stretch, a moderate pull-back is completely understandable.
Earnings remain stellar. Other tail-winds are still in place, despite softening sentiment. Rates are falling, with more cuts on the horizon. Lower rates and lower taxes are powerful boosts to business profits, even without sales and earnings growth, yet we also have some of the strongest earnings results in four-years.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
A six-week government shutdown is behind us. Now the uncertainty shifts to its impact. Meanwhile, new political scandals fill the headlines. It is the same cycle every time. Wall Street always climbs a wall of worry, yet when you look under the hood, the core metrics remain solid. The climate is not perfect, but from an earnings and growth stand-point, it does not get much better. When market noise intensifies, I get to a quiet place and listen to the internal signals. And that brings me back to the anechoic-chamber. When everything around you gets louder, clarity often comes from tuning into the quiet, steady inner-strength.
As Seneca wrote, “True tranquility comes not from the silence around us, but from the calm within us.”
All content above represents the opinion of Jason Bodner of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
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Jason Bodner
MARKETMAIL EDITOR FOR SECTOR SPOTLIGHT
Jason Bodner writes Sector Spotlight in the weekly Marketmail publication and has authored several white papers for the company. He is also Co-Founder of Macro Analytics for Professionals which produces proprietary equity accumulation and distribution research for its clients. Previously, Mr. Bodner served as Director of European Equity Derivatives for Cantor Fitzgerald Europe in London, then moved to the role of Head of Equity Derivatives North America for the same company in New York. He also served as S.V.P. Equity Derivatives for Jefferies, LLC. He received a B.S. in business administration in 1996, with honors, from Skidmore College as a member of the Periclean Honors Society. All content of “Sector Spotlight” represents the opinion of Jason Bodner
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