📈 TKer by Sam Ro
The stock market usually goes up. News, data, and insights without the noise. For long-term investors with limited free time.
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- Subscribers
- 36K
- Paid subscribers
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- Bestseller 100
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- Recommends
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Growth history
Subscribers (thousands, nightly)
35K on Sep 10, 2026 → 36K on Oct 21, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #93 today · #88 a week ago · #116 a month ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 42 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 18%
- Best rank seen
- #85
- Rank, 7 days
- −5 places
- Rank, 30 days
- +23 places
- Subscribers added
- +1.0K
- Followers added
- +1.4K
- Posts
- 7
- Reactions per post
- 33
- Reactions tracked
- 734
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Oct 8, 2026
since tracking began
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 22 posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: 4 cynical things I think that are arguably bullish for stocks😞 — 62 reactions on Jul 26, 2026.
Recent posts
- The 1987 and 2020 stock market stats that continue to surprise me 🤯
I wasn’t aware of what was happening on Black Monday, October 19, 1987. I was 5 years old then. But the more I learn about the stock market, the more I think about how I might’ve behaved if I’d had money on the line. And I still struggle to imagine a realistic scenario where I would’ve traded that period in a way that would’ve left me better off than simply holding or dollar-cost averaging through the ups and downs. That’s because amid all the turmoil was a surprisingly bullish stat that continues to remind me of the perils of trying to time the market .
- SPECIAL EDITION: TKer’s 5th year taught us you could be right about valuations but wrong about prices 🔀
TKer was on the Nasdaq tower screen overlooking Times Square! (Source: Nasdaq) Five years ago, on October 14 , I launched TKer, the newsletter that tells the story of how the stock market usually goes up . 📉 That first year was highlighted by a bear market as the Federal Reserve went to war against inflation . The S&P 500 fell 19%. 📈 Year two brought an impressive stock market rebound. It began two days after the current bull market started. That year, the S&P ended up 21% higher despite lingering uncertainty . 📈 Year three extended the rally , with the S&P surging an incredible 35%…
- The stock market ≠ the economy ✋
Sure, the stock market is more like the economy than it’s like… a banana. But in the context of a nuanced discussion of finance and macroeconomics, the stock market is not the economy. Ritholtz Wealth Management’s Ben Carlson shared this helpful visual on Tuesday’s Animal Spirits podcast . The chart, published by JPMorgan Asset Management, shows a sector breakdown of GDP, employment, and the S&P 500 (which covers 80% of the U.S. stock market). (Source: JPMorgan ) I have four observations about this discrepancy: Government : The S&P consists exclusively of publicly traded corporations. GDP and…
- A bear-case scenario for the long-term, diversified stock market investor 📉
Nobody likes to see the price of a stock they own go down. But some of the most encouraging stock market stats involve what happens when things go wrong. After Berkshire Hathaway announced Warren Buffett’s retirement, Meb Faber shared this mind-blowing stat. “If Berkshire declined 99% today on the news of Buffett’s retirement, Berkshire would still have outperformed the S&P 500 since 1965,” Faber wrote . (Buffett took over Berkshire in 1965.) Morningstar’s Danny Noonan illustrated this in a log-scaled chart. (Source: Danny Noonan ) Being able to lose 99% and remain up speaks to the asymmetry…
- Fortunately, it’s not all bad news 📰
Interest rates have been rising this year. The 10-year Treasury yield hit a 24-year high this week. The average 30-year mortgage rate recently crossed above 7%. Energy prices have also trended higher. The average price of a gallon of gasoline is at record levels for this time of year . Inflation got hot enough that the Federal Reserve recently hiked its benchmark short-term interest rate in an effort to rein in prices. Consumers are very much aware of all this, as reflected by poor consumer sentiment surveys. Hearing all this, you might conclude the economy should be deteriorating and the…
- The AI earnings headwind and accounting headache that’s set to intensify 🌬️
Is the massive and growing investment in AI infrastructure worth it? It’s a loaded question that yields different answers — depending on who you ask. One of the sloppier answers I often hear goes something like this: “Every quarter, mega-cap tech companies announce new huge investments in AI. But even after spending all that money, they’ve been reporting huge quarterly profits.” This view isn’t technically wrong, but it obfuscates how companies account for the investments in their financial statements. While it is true that companies are spending massive amounts of cash on AI (as reported on…
- A timely stock market lesson from the 1960s 📖
The world has changed in many ways over the years. This includes the makeup of the stock market and the macro environment in which its underlying companies operate. One thing that hasn’t changed is the principle that stocks are tied to fundamentals. More specifically, earnings drive stock prices . That helps explain why the stock market is up this year, despite a heated geopolitical backdrop . And history offers plenty of examples of this dynamic.
- ‘Exposure therapy’ for investors 🕷️
The stock market falls almost every other day . Often, you’ll see the market slide a percent or two in a given week. Sometimes, those modest declines turn into 5% pullbacks . Occasionally, those pullbacks will morph into a 10% correction. And suddenly you’re rattled, and you’re once again wondering if this is the beginning of a bear market or market crash. After all, all of history’s worst downturns by definition started as 10% declines. If you think harder about it, they all began as 1% declines before that. For the uninitiated or the forgetful, this is where you can make a mistake, like…
- Most stock-picking pros have been underperforming this year's rollercoaster ride higher 🫤
(Source: SPDJI) It remains tough to generate stock market returns that beat (or outperform) a passively managed fund tracking the S&P 500. According to new data from S&P Dow Jones Indices (SPDJI), just a third of U.S. large-cap equity fund managers outperformed the S&P 500’s 10% gain in the first half of 2026. “Compared with recent years, active managers faced a more supportive market backdrop, characterized by broader participation and stronger performance outside the largest stocks,” SPDJI analysts led by Anu Ganti wrote . “In our largest and most closely watched comparison, 67% of all…
- Is a higher earnings bar really harder to clear? 📏
Ahead of quarterly earnings season, analysts have typically revised their earnings estimates lower . Why does that happen? The theory goes something like this : Analysts initially publish estimates that are a bit rosy, which is consistent with the fact that most stock ratings are “buy.” As the quarter progresses, reality almost always feels less robust as economic data, industry reports, and management comments trickle in. Perhaps executives are even guiding analysts in a way that lowers the bar. Then, to analysts’ “surprise,” most companies ultimately report quarterly earnings that beat…
- Why the interest rate ‘bark’ has been worse than its ‘bite’ 🐶
Broadly speaking, rising long-term interest rates are a headwind for borrowers, including most households, businesses, and governments. So then why hasn’t this year’s interest rate rally led to job cuts , weaker spending , and disappointing earnings ? Why is the S&P 500 down less than 3% from its all-time high? As we’ve been discussing, it’s more complicated than “higher interest rates are bad.”
- The first question to ask when someone tells you where stocks are headed 🙋🏻♂️
Things are a bit quiet today with U.S. stock markets closed for the Labor Day holiday. If you’re looking for something to pass the time, check out 12 stock market charts that caught my attention 📊📈 and 24 quick thoughts on the markets and the economy 📋. I also recommend reading Liz Ann Sonders’ compilation of investing quotes , which she reshared last week. One of the older quotes on her list explains simply why long-term investors sometimes make costly mistakes in the short-term. I found that it also explains why investors should be wary when a markets pundit goes on TV and predicts that…
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Data: Substack public leaderboards and publication archives, refreshed nightly, plus public beehiiv sitemaps and recommendation pages, refreshed weekly. Source for this page: 📈 TKer by Sam Ro. Subscriber counts are Substack’s own rounded public figures, so week-on-week changes move in steps. beehiiv audience sizes are self-reported by the publisher and are not verified. Last snapshot: Oct 21, 2026.