Bubble Babble: Why S&P 500 Earnings Growth Still Rules This Bull Market
Earnings bubble? Or earnings boom? Wall Street is suddenly worried that profit forecasts are getting too hot, too fast. Lou Basenese has a different take: stock prices follow earnings, and if profits are accelerating, investors should stop whining about “bubble babble” and start looking for the fastest growers.
In this episode of The Big Skinny, Lou reunites with the guests from the January stock-picking special — Thomas Hayes, Kenny Polcari, Mike Lee, Adam Johnson, and Kevin Mahn to share their top ideas for 2026 — but with a fresh lens: which names still have the earnings power to keep working in the second half?
From the S&P 500’s profit setup to the original 2026 stock picks, Lou cuts through the noise and focuses on what actually matters: growth, revisions, fundamentals, and whether the thesis is still intact.
10 Jul 2026
Did We Nail It? Revisiting Our Top 6 Stock Predictions for 2026
Oil, small caps, biotech, AI, IPOs, prediction markets and the “there’s always a bull market somewhere” thesis are back on trial. In this episode, Lou Basenese and Dodd revisit The Big Skinny’s Top 6 Predictions for 2026 at the halfway mark to see what’s already working, what still needs time, and what investors should do next.
From energy’s asymmetric setup and the small-cap earnings breakout to biotech’s next expansion phase, the AI power bottleneck, and the star-studded but doomed IPO class of 2026, Lou grades each call in plain English: nailed it, too early, or dead wrong.
And this time, the audience gets a vote. Drop your score in the comments: which prediction will be the biggest winner by year-end — and which one is most at risk of blowing up?
No fluff. No fear-mongering. Just a data-driven midyear checkup on where opportunity is emerging, where risk still lurks, and how to position for what comes next.
2 Jul 2026
Every Breadth You Take: Why Mag 7 Lag Is Bullish For Stocks
Mag 7 lag, Meta’s AI cloud questions, biotech breakout signals, and the return of broader market leadership — that’s the point of this episode of The Big Skinny.
Lou Basenese explains why investors shouldn’t bemoan the fact that the Mag 7 are lagging. They should embrace it. Why? Because a healthy bull market eventually broadens beyond a handful of mega-cap winners, and that’s exactly what appears to be happening now. Lou breaks down why not every mega-cap tech stock deserves your money right now and where the bigger profit opportunities reside as earnings growth and market breadth improve.
Then Barron’s Josh Schafer joins to dig into Meta’s AI cloud ambitions, the risks behind selling “excess compute,” and why Progress Software (PRGS) may be a smarter AI-adjacent opportunity than investors realize.
No fluff. No Mag 7 panic. Just a sharper look at why this bull market may be stronger because leadership is broadening.
Inside a recent episode
From Oil Windfalls to UFO ETFs: Finding Opportunity in Market Chaos
Published 20 Mar 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] You look at the inventory that's available here. If you've watched Landman, you understand this at least I'll give Hollywood credit. They're getting it right and understanding and explaining the economics of oil. So you need above $60 a barrel. You get there and you get multiple years of inventory. You get below $60 a barrel and you're seeing less than two years of inventory to drill where it's economical. You get below 50 or close to 50. You have less than one year in the in the premium basin. They're drilling an average of about 4 ,000 wells per year. So what is the real cost? There's been a plenty of pundits now pining in the on the news lately that it's the extraction costs are only $37 a barrel so we can easily get to the president's goal of down by 50. […]
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