OpenAI’s Latest Models, Bitcoin’s Recent Rally, Tech Portfolio Check 9/22/26

Markets sit near records on narrow mega-cap leadership while AI price competition intensifies and inflation risk from a $700B-$1T capex buildout grows.

• Narrow leadership stat: S&P near record highs with only ~8 stocks hitting 52-week highs vs. 30 at multi-year lows — last seen December 1999, just before the dot-com bust; Citi's Stuart Kaiser called it a 'cool stat' not yet alarming.
• AI price war intensifies: OpenAI's new GPT-5.1/o1-style models are 50% cheaper than prior generations and priced below Anthropic; Anthropic's Opus 5.5 (released same day) is 40% cheaper to run, shifting competition from capability to cost-per-token.

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