Media Appearances

While Wall Street Calls It a Dip, AscalonVI's Anthony Esposito Says the Data Tells a Different Story

Anthony Esposito

— 1 min read
While Wall Street Calls It a Dip, AscalonVI's Anthony Esposito Says the Data Tells a Different Story

AscalonVI Capital CEO and Founder Anthony Esposito appeared on the program to offer a candid, data-driven assessment of where markets stand in the wake of the Iran war — and his outlook was notably more cautious than the consensus view. Drawing on AscalonVI's proprietary momentum, trend, and price-based technical model, Esposito explained that the firm had already identified clear signs of weakness in December and January across all timeframes, well before the conflict began.

Rather than viewing the war as the primary cause of market decline, Esposito characterized it as the spark that ignited a topping pattern the firm had identified months earlier. In his view, the Iran conflict is not the culmination of the selloff — it is the beginning of what AscalonVI believes could be a developing bear market, with the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 in particular yet to find their lows as markets continue to discount structural damage across energy, fertilizer, and global supply chains.

Pushed back on the widely held belief that markets will come roaring back the moment the war is resolved, Esposito was direct: that is not what AscalonVI's work shows. He pointed to a confluence of underlying pressures — elevated two, three, and ten-year rates, growing concerns in private and consumer credit markets — as forces that have not yet been fully priced in and will demand attention once the war narrative fades.

Perhaps most striking was Esposito's reference to cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratios, noting that the only two periods in the last 150 years where CAPE ratios reached current levels were 1999–2000 and 2025–2026 — both periods of significant overvaluation and market stress. For AscalonVI, the message to investors is clear: the underlying conditions that preceded this conflict have not disappeared, and the road ahead warrants serious, disciplined risk management.

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