Amazon appears untouchable.
It's rallied 37 percent this year, outperforming the market nearly fourfold. And a stunning quarter, reported last month, prompted nearly two dozen firms to up their price targets on the e-commerce giant; a handful of those newly minted price targets place the company north of the $1 trillion threshold.
But at this juncture, I suspect a black swan has taken flight. Just consider the stock's presence in so many passive vehicles.
Amazon is a top holding in over 140 exchange-traded funds. A liquidity event for Amazon shares — perhaps triggered by issues related to the Trump administration's ordered review of the company's impact on the U.S. Postal Service — would create uncontrollable selling, in our view.
Zooming in further, around 40 ETFs hold Amazon within the top 5 percent. Look out below: This is a colossal failure of common sense.
Investors have been stuffing themselves on a Thanksgiving feast full of technology stocks. Today, tech sector equities comprise nearly 30 percent of all large-cap mutual fund portfolios; this is an accident waiting to happen.
This represents the largest "overweight" relative to traditional benchmarks, relative to other large-cap sectors, in two decades. This represents, too, nothing more than a passive overdose on big tech, setting up large downside risk.
This development causes me to hearken back a decade.
Of course, who could possibly forget the great gorging on the financial sector heading into the crisis? Leading into 2007, banks and insurance companies comprised nearly 24 percent of the S&P 500. Today, the tech sector's large market weighing puts it up near 26 percent of the market's total capitalization.
Jeff Saut, chief investment strategist at Capital Wealth Planning, says investors are not only cautious, but they are 'scared to death' of the bull market ending.
The first leg in the U.S. and China's long-awaited trade agreement provides a catalyst for stocks heading into next year, market professionals say.
As stocks cross into the next decade at records, one top investor sees a major market shift underway toward value and away from growth.
Oppenheimer's Ari Wald says financials stocks have some big tailwinds that could send the sector even higher.
Mona Mahajan, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones, Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco, Ben Mandel, head of portfolio strategy at Itaú Asset Management, Mark Grant, chief global market strategist at B. Riley Securities, and Peter Andersen, chief investment officer at Andersen Capital Management, discuss their expectations for stocks in 2022.
Jim Bianco of Bianco Research highlights data showing used car prices are up more than 20% in the past four months while bitcoin is up about 5%, as of Dec. 23.
Jim Bianco of Bianco Research is worried about a bubble in the used car market.
Gina Sanchez of Chantico Global says a North Korean attack, should one occur, isn't likely to cause significant long-term market impact.
Boris Schlossberg of BK Asset Management says the ISM non-manufacturing report is key to watch ahead the jobs data released Friday.
Chad Morganlander of Washington Crossing Advisors is watching the dollar this week and expects it'll begin to strengthen heading into the second half of the year.
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Michael Santoli joined CNBC in October 2015 as a Senior Markets Commentator, based at the network's Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Santoli brings his extensive markets expertise to CNBC's Business Day programming, with a regular appearance on CNBC's Closing Bell (M-F, 3PM-5PM ET). In addition, he contributes to CNBC and CNBC PRO, writing regular articles and creating original digital videos.
Previously, Santoli was a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance, where he wrote analysis and commentary on the stock market, corporate news and the economy. He also appeared on Yahoo Finance video programs, where he offered insights on the most important business stories of the day, and was a regular contributor to CNBC and other networks.
Follow Michael Santoli on Twitter @michaelsantoli
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