Good morning, investors. I keep up with various sentiment gauges across markets, and while they can provide a useful snapshot, the only time I study them closely is when there’s a sizable change month-over-month.

That’s exactly what just happened with the most closely-watched survey on Wall Street.

Institutional investors are buying more stocks than ever and yet they have turned more bullish on gold than the Magnificent 7, according to Bank of America’s October fund manager survey.

Forty-three percent of respondents ranked “long gold” as the most crowded trade this month, ahead of the 39% for “long Magnificent 7.”

That’s flipped since September, when 42% of respondents said “long Magnificent 7” was the most crowded trade and just 25% said the same for “long gold.”

For context, over the last four weeks:

No wonder the latest round of fund manager respondents — who together oversee $468 billion in assets — have changed tune on the most crowded trade.

The performance and survey sentiment aligns with JPMorgan’s recent report on the so-called debasement trade, which details investors’ broad rotation into hard assets like gold or bitcoin.

It also tracks with the recent uptick in chatter around an AI bubble.

In fact, according to BofA’s survey, the biggest tail risk for investors is an “AI equity bubble,” with one-third of respondents ranking that first.

In September, that wasn’t even seen as a top-three tail risk.

In a separate report published Wednesday, BofA also reported that clients bought the dip last week with the S&P 500 falling 2.4% after being net-sellers for the prior four weeks.

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🇨🇳 The US will set price floors across industries to combat China. That’s according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and he said the administration could take more equity stakes in businesses in the wake of China’s new restrictions on rare earth exports. (CNBC)

📈 Leveraged ETFs are all the rage. One in every four ETFs launched in the last six months have been a leveraged product, Strategas research shows. Leverage ETFs account for just 1% of total ETF assets, but 12% of average daily volume. (Barron’s)

🤝 Nvidia is at the center of another AI mega-deal. It joined Microsoft, xAI, and BlackRock with a consortium of investors to purchase Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion from Macquarie Asset Management. (CNBC)

I sat down with Anthony Pompliano to break down nine charts that explain the current state of financial markets.

🗓October 16, 1987: The Dow dropped 4.6% to mark the Friday ahead of the infamous Black Monday plunge, when the benchmark dropped 22.6% and eventually led to the implementation of circuit breaker trading halts.

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📰 I’m Phil Rosen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. I’ve published books, lived on three continents, and won awards for my journalism, which has appeared in Business Insider, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Inc. Magazine.

I write our flagship newsletter to prepare you for each trading day — unpacking markets, economic data and Wall Street with analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

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