Thomas Peterffy, the brilliant founder of Interactive Brokers, is a man of few words, but one to whom we listen. His unique window on financial markets and investor behavior gives him a valuable perspective after all. See Interactive Brokers Group, Inc: A natural candidate for economies of scale.

Yesterday, at Goldman Sachs' major annual conference for financial services players, his speech was peppered with two chilling comments. Firstly, "the Magnificent 7" - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla - account for 70% of trading volumes.

The public's and investors' massive lack of interest in other segments of the equity markets, particularly those linked to industry, pharmaceuticals, financial services or raw materials, is staggering.

For example, as we wrote yesterday, Exxon intends to distribute $165 billion to its shareholders over the next five years, in addition to its regular dividends, without seeming to excite many people. See Exxon Mobil Corporation: Babylonian Prospects.

Peterffy then pointed out - with a grimace - that margin lending at Interactive Brokers was up 16% over the last three months. This at a time when, by his own admission, equity market valuations are overheated - "overextended" in the original version.

Such a sharp and rapid rise in margin lending volume is unusual. It smacks of the last burst of euphoria at the height of the bubble, and Peterffy was quick to point out, with his usual frankness, that if share prices fell too precipitously, the broker might find himself bearing the losses of clients unable to meet their margin calls.

It's a safe bet that Interactive Brokers, with its reputation for paranoid risk control, has long since made provision for this worst-case scenario. As for our friends and traders and investors who are up to their necks in it - many of whom have opened up to us about it in readers' letters - we'd be tempted to invite them to reconsider their position, and reduce their exposure.

Crypto-currencies took up a lot of space the day before yesterday, of course - even at Goldman Sachs, once again a sign of speculative euphoria that some will interpret as heralding a turnaround. Consider, for example, that the "meme coin" par excellence, Doge Coin, commands a "market value" of almost $60 billion.

Pepe", the little frog crypto, commands a market value of $10 billion, while "Apecoin", the little monkey crypto, commands a market value of $1 billion.

As for "fartcoin", it's worth more than the majority of small caps - real, well-managed, profitable, industrial companies that create jobs, that create value for their shareholders, employees and society at large, yet remain superbly ignored and excluded from the flow of capital.