This week in the podcast, we review our latest thoughts on investor sentiment and 3Q21 earnings season. The big things you need to know: First, in terms of investor sentiment, optimism continued to build among individual investors last week, while institutional investor positioning stabilized. Second, reporting season stayed “good enough” for the stock market to keep moving up last week. Strong beat rates and company commentary that emphasized the strength of underlying demand and the ability of many (though not all) companies to manage through inflation and supply chain pressures allowed the S&P 500 to make a new high, even though the few companies that did miss lagged sharply.