He spent the next ten years on the outside, far from the spotlight, building other things. He built NeXT. He bought Pixar. He learned what he needed to learn. Then he came back and changed the world.

He came back and turned Apple into the most valuable company on Earth.

The best returns in life often come from the moments that feel the worst.

This week felt bad. The Nasdaq fell four days straight. The chip index dropped 8%. Bitcoin hit a 20-month low. And the Fear & Greed Index sank to 25, deep in extreme fear.

I’ve felt this exact feeling before. In 2020, the market crashed 34% in a single month. The Fear & Greed Index hit 2, about as scared as the market ever gets. I bought index funds while everyone around me sold. Two years later, those buys had doubled. Every fear spike is a little different, and this one has its own causes. But the math of fear works the same way every time. When everyone agrees things are awful, most of the selling is already done. The hard part is buying while your stomach churns.

So while the crowd panics, look at what’s quietly forming.

Back in 1998, Pfizer launched Viagra expecting modest sales. It became a $2 billion drug almost overnight. The reason was simple. It solved a problem people were too embarrassed to talk about, but almost everyone had.

In July, the $3 billion black market is about to go legal, and the setup looks the same. The product is peptides. The problem is aging, weight, and health. The opportunity is huge.

The FDA holds a panel in July. They’ll vote on whether seven peptides can be legally made and sold. If they say yes, a $3 billion underground economy becomes a real, investable market almost overnight. Hims & Hers $HIMS could capture around $440 million of it. LifeMD $LFMD is positioning for the same wave. The Precision Peptide Company $PNGAF is already marketing through MMA partnerships.

I’ve watched this exact pattern play out before. Cannabis went from illegal to legal, state by state, and the early investors in the right companies made 10x their money. The peptide story has the same structure. A friendly White House. A health secretary who supports access. And a crowd of consumers who already proved the demand by buying it on the black market. The only real question left is which companies win once it’s legal.

This week we break down why peptides could become the next big healthcare investing theme, how Micron replaced Nvidia as the new AI king, and what Nancy Pelosi is buying behind the scenes.

📬 Here’s what’s in today’s issue!

Part I — Big Picture (Markets & Economy)

1) Market Breakdown (And What’s Important)

2) 3 Things You Need To Understand

Part II — What The Market Is Telling Us

3) Market Psychology & What Comes Next

4) Interest Rate Forecast & Real Estate Outlook

Part III — Investment Research & Analysis

5) Insider Trading Alerts (Follow the Smart Money)

6) Stocks Beating the Market

7) The Smartest Trades I See Right Now

Part IV — What You Should Do

8) Practical Advice & What to Do Next

9) Lessons I Wish I Learned Sooner

10) Ask Me Anything (Subscriber Questions Answered)

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(1) Market Breakdown (And What’s Important)

What happened, why it happened, and what’s next.

1. Inflation ran hot. May PCE hit 4.1% headline (a three-year high) and 3.4% core, with AI data centers now a main driver of rising prices.

2. The Fed under new Chair Kevin Warsh turned hawkish. Traders now bet on a rate hike by September or December 2026.

3. The Nasdaq fell for four straight days, closing out one of the ugliest tech weeks of the year.

   1. Fear is in control. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 25 (extreme fear), down from 60 a month ago.

   2. Tuesday was the worst of it. The Nasdaq dropped 2.2%, the S&P 500 fell 1.4%, and the Dow held roughly flat. The chip index sank close to 8%.

   3. The selloff started overseas. South Korea’s KOSPI plunged 10%, Samsung and SK Hynix each fell more than 12%, and Hong Kong stocks entered a bear market.

   4. Memory chips led the damage, then turned around. Micron crushed earnings Wednesday night and jumped 15%, with revenue up over 400%.

   5. Apple had its worst day in over a year, down 6%, after raising MacBook and iPad prices on soaring memory costs. Microsoft hiked Xbox prices hours later.

4. The quiet winners held firm. The Russell 2000 hit a record Tuesday, and the Dow is on pace for its best quarter since 2023.

5. Bitcoin fell to a 20-month low near $59,400, down about 35% this year, as the dollar hit a 13-month high.

6. Overseas, the records kept coming. Japan’s Nikkei and Europe’s Stoxx 600 both hit fresh all-time highs even as Asia’s chip names cracked.

7. Tech layoffs passed 100,000 for 2026, with AI named as the top reason. Meta, Cisco, Intuit, and PayPal led the cuts.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis:

For two years, AI spending pushed this market straight up. This week it started pushing prices up too. The same boom that made investors rich is now making your laptop, your groceries, and your mortgage cost more. The thing that lifted stocks is now the thing splitting the market in two.

Here’s what most people missed this week. AI didn’t just hit tech stocks. It hit your wallet. May PCE inflation came in at 4.1%, the hottest in three years, and this time oil and tariffs weren’t the cause. Chips were. Demand for AI memory drove computer and accessory prices up 14.5% from last year. Five companies are doing most of this spending. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Oracle plan to pour about $741 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026, up nearly 75% from last year. All that money soaks up the world’s supply of memory and power, and when supply runs short, prices rise for everyone. Apple said it plainly when it raised prices. The cost of memory had more than quadrupled since late last year, and the company stopped absorbing it. So now you pay.

These pieces all connect. Hot inflation forces the Fed to act. Warsh shut down talk of rate cuts and put a hike back on the table. Higher rates make safe bonds more attractive and squeeze the future profits that expensive tech stocks depend on. So money rushed out of the stocks everyone had piled into. That’s why 17 of the biggest tech names already sit deep in a bear market from their highs, with Coinbase down 69%, Salesforce and Oracle down 57%, and even Microsoft down 37%. The S&P 500 won’t show you that, because a few big winners cover up how much damage is sitting underneath.

I spent two decades in finance, and I’ve seen this happen before. When a whole sector decides there’s only one trade worth making, the fall comes faster than the rise did. So watch what the companies themselves do, because that’s the clearest warning sign. When companies stop buying back their own stock and start selling new stock to the public instead, smart money is taking your money. We saw a wave of it this week. SpaceX sold stock and bonds. Google raised a record amount. OpenAI is reportedly leaning toward delaying its IPO to 2027 because it worries nobody will show up. When the people closest to the boom rush to sell shares to you, that’s worth noticing.

The panic told only half the story. While everyone watched chip stocks fall, money quietly moved across the market. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller companies, hit a record. The Dow is heading for its best quarter since 2023. Investors bought safer sectors like consumer staples and healthcare. Companies in emerging markets beat earnings estimates for the first time since 2022. Stocks in Japan and Europe hit new highs. This is rotation, which means money leaving one part of the market and moving into another. Rotation is healthy. The market isn’t falling apart. It’s spreading out.

So here’s what to actually do. First, check how much of your money sits in one type of stock. If your portfolio is really just five AI stocks that all move the same way, you don’t own a portfolio. You own one bet. Add up how much of your money is in big tech. If it’s more than 80%, you’re not spread out. You’re exposed.

Second, use the fear. A reading of 25 on the Fear & Greed Index has, in the past, been closer to a buy signal than a sell signal for long-term investors. The best returns often get made when it feels worst. I’m not telling you to throw all your cash in at once. I’m telling you to keep buying on your normal schedule and stop checking your account every hour.

Third, own the boring stuff again. Value and small companies led this week for a reason. When everyone sells the popular stocks, the unpopular ones get cheap. A broad index fund spreads your money across hundreds of companies in one buy, so you catch the rotation without having to guess the winner. An S&P 500 index fund like VOO, or a total market fund like VTI, does this for you.

The bull case is real. AI may be big enough to keep paying off. The bear case is real too. All this spending may never earn its money back. You don’t have to pick a side. You just have to stay spread out enough that being wrong doesn’t wreck you. Keep your money in more than one place, and weeks like this one stop scaring you.

👉 For daily insights follow me on X /Twitter; Instagram Threads; Facebook; or BlueSky (and turn on notifications)

(2) 3 Things You Need To Understand

The biggest ideas & trends to pay attention to, and where they’re heading next.

📬 Today we’ll discuss:

⚡Micron Is the New Nvidia

📉 SpaceX Losing $600 Billion in 3 Days Is Just the Start

💊 The Peptide Boom Is Here

🤔 But first — Which trend would you rather invest in right now?

⚡Micron Is the New Nvidia

Memory-chip maker Micron has taken Nvidia’s title as the single biggest winner of the AI spending boom. The numbers back it up. Micron quadrupled revenue to $41.5 billion, posted an 85% gross margin, and predicted next quarter’s sales would hit $50 billion, far above what Wall Street expected. The stock jumped 15% and has more than tripled this year. These are the kind of figures that used to belong only to Nvidia.

What changed is supply. AI data centers need enormous amounts of memory, and the world can’t make it fast enough. That shortage lets Micron charge much higher prices, which turned a boring, low-profit business into one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street. Where big tech companies once paid an “Nvidia tax” on processors, they now pay a “Micron tax” on memory. Micron says the shortage lasts at least another 18 months, and it has locked in 16 long-term supply deals with fixed prices and cash deposits to keep those profits coming.

There’s a reason this matters beyond one stock. Memory chips went from a boring, up-and-down business to the most important part of the AI trade. So when Apple and Microsoft raise prices on you, a chunk of that money ends up as profit for Micron. SK Hynix, a Micron rival, plans to list in the U.S. next month, which gives American investors another way to invest in the same trend.

Now the warning. Nvidia is the cautionary tale here. It still leads in AI chips, but its stock has fallen behind this year because competition showed up. A flood of new processors broke its near-monopoly. The same threat now faces memory chips. Big tech hates paying anyone an 85% profit margin, and companies like Microsoft and Google are under heavy pressure to cut AI spending. They will find ways to pay Micron less. Chinese competition is coming too.

My read after years watching chip cycles is simple. Micron is winning big right now, and the next 12 to 18 months look strong on paper. The risk is that today’s record profits are as good as they’ll ever get. Memory chips have always gone through big booms and big busts, and the booms never last forever. If you own it, enjoy the ride but know what you’re holding. Micron is the king of AI right now, and being the king means everyone is coming to take a piece.

📉 SpaceX Losing $600 Billion in 3 Days Is Just the Start

A two-day selloff in AI and chip stocks spread across the world, erasing more than $1 trillion in value and scaring investors who had crowded into the most popular trade on the planet. SpaceX got the headlines, losing over $400 billion in value in a single Monday, but the company was just the most visible sign of a much bigger problem. Investors no longer agree on what these AI dreams are worth.

The selling started in South Korea. A local report suggested SK Hynix was slowing its AI memory expansion and shifting toward cheaper everyday chips. That one headline set off the selling. The KOSPI plunged 10.5% and triggered a circuit breaker that paused trading. Samsung and SK Hynix each fell more than 12%. Chinese stocks in Hong Kong dropped into a bear market. Then the selling spread to the U.S. The American chip index fell more than 7%, Micron dropped as much as 13% before its earnings, and the Nasdaq 100 sank.

The damage hit the giants too. Google had its worst single day in more than a year, down $225 billion, made worse by news that a Nobel Prize-winning scientist was leaving the company for rival Anthropic. When your best people walk out during a selloff, investors notice. The bigger fear underneath it all is spending. Tech giants are pouring a projected $650 billion into AI this year, expected to rise toward $1.1 trillion next year, and almost four years after ChatGPT launched, the actual payoff from all that cash still looks unclear.

Here’s the part that should grab your attention. When companies become net sellers of their own stock, history says the market is stretched too thin. Research from the investment firm GMO shows that when IPOs reach 5% of total market value, the S&P 500 has tended to fall around 40% over the following year. We’re seeing a flood of new stock right now, from SpaceX to Google to a packed IPO pipeline. And there’s a hidden multiplier. When investors buy into a giant IPO, they sell other stocks to pay for it, and every dollar that leaves the market can erase several dollars of total value. That’s how selloffs feed on themselves.

The bulls aren't giving up. Dan Ives of Wedbush called this a "gut check moment" and said the AI revolution is still in the third inning of a nine-inning game. Others argued the drop was technical, not a sign of broken companies. They may be right. The S&P 500 actually fell on Tuesday even though most of its stocks rose, which means the pain was stuck in a few huge names while the rest of the market quietly held up. That’s a sign of rotation, which means money moving from one part of the market to another, and that’s the healthy kind of selloff.

So here’s my honest take. This looks more like a fast, scary drop than the start of a real crash, at least for now. When the 20 hottest stocks in the index have all doubled in under six months, a pullback isn’t a surprise. It’s overdue. The real test is whether the AI spenders keep spending. The day one big player decides to spend less, things change fast. Nobody expects that yet, which is exactly why you should be ready for it.

💊 The Peptide Boom Is Here

The black-market peptide economy worth up to $3 billion is on the edge of going fully legal, and investors are racing to get ahead of it. A peptide-friendly White House and an FDA advisory panel meeting in late July could decide whether seven peptides can be legally made and sold. The whole industry is approaching its biggest turning point yet.

This boom is the sequel to the GLP-1 weight-loss craze. Once people discovered drugs like Ozempic, they went looking for more, and a giant underground market grew to meet that demand. The numbers tell the story. U.S. Customs logged $328 million in peptide ingredient imports in just the first nine months of 2025, more than double the prior year’s pace. Testing lab Janoshik Analytical saw peptide sample volumes jump 1,200% from 2023 to 2025. That demand clearly needs rules around it.

The money is lining up behind a few names. The research firm Leerink projects the telehealth peptide market could reach $2.2 billion by 2027, with Hims & Hers Health $HIMS potentially grabbing around $440 million of it. LifeMD $LFMD is positioned to benefit as legal access expands. The Precision Peptide Company $PNGAF is ramping up through a marketing partnership. The opportunity is real, and the early movers in telehealth could capture a lot of it.

The range of outcomes here is wide, and that’s the part worth respecting. In a more cautious case where doctors prescribe fewer peptides, that same forecast drops to $1.1 billion and Hims’ slice falls to around $220 million. The FDA just sent 25 warning letters to telehealth firms over misleading GLP-1 claims, proof that going legal won’t mean a free-for-all. Supply chains still lean heavily on Chinese manufacturers, and building legal, compliant sourcing takes time.

My take is that this is a real trend with real money behind it, and it deserves a spot on your watch list. It’s also early, speculative, and depends heavily on what regulators decide, which means how much you bet matters more than how sure you feel. The race has started, and the winners will be the companies that follow the rules.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis:

The crowd always rushes into the same popular stocks until they break, then runs to the next ones. You saw it in all three stories this week. Micron is today’s darling because money fled Nvidia. The global selloff happened because too much cash chased too few AI names. And peptides are heating up because the GLP-1 winners got crowded and investors went hunting for the next wave. It’s the same human behavior on repeat, just with new stock names.

The lesson for you is to think one step ahead of the crowd, not with it. By the time a trade is on every front page, the easy gains are gone and you're the one buying right before it falls. The smart play is to spot where money is moving before the crowd arrives, decide how much to put in any one bet so no single trend can wreck you, and keep enough cash to buy when fear (like this week's reading of 25) hands you a discount. Chase the headlines and you show up late. Watch where the money is quietly moving and you show up early.

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3. Market Psychology & What Comes Next

4. Interest Rate Forecast & Real Estate Outlook

(3) Market Psychology & What Comes Next

The psychology, signals, and data pointing to where the market goes next.

Fear & Greed Index — Bearish Mood, Contrarian Positive

The reading is flashing Fear at 25, which is a bearish mood signal on the surface. The Fear & Greed Index is a simple gauge that scores market emotion from 0 (extreme fear) to 100 (extreme greed), built from seven different measures of how investors are behaving. Right now it sits near the bottom, down from 60 a month ago and 63 a year ago. The crowd is scared.

The fear runs deep. Five of the seven gauges show extreme fear, including stock price breadth, the put-call ratio, safe haven demand, and junk bond demand. Money is running from risky stocks into safe bonds, and traders are buying protection. Only market volatility reads neutral, which tells us this is more of a slow grind of worry than a full panic.

Here’s why this matters for you. Extreme fear has, in the past, been closer to a buying opportunity than a selling one when you invest for the long term. When everyone is scared at the same time, most of the selling is already done. I’m not calling a bottom, because fear can always get worse. But a reading of 25 is the kind of setup that rewards you for staying calm while everyone else panics. The events behind it, the hot inflation and the AI chip selloff, are real, so this fear has a cause. It just may be overdone.

AAII Investor Sentiment — Mixed, Leaning Optimistic

This one reads Mixed, with a hopeful tilt. The AAII survey simply asks everyday investors where they think the market is headed over the next six months, and it’s been running since 1987. The latest results show optimism jumping.

Bullish sentiment leaped 8.4 points to 44.9%, climbing above its long-term average of 37.5% for the first time in six weeks. Neutral sentiment dropped to an unusually low 18.9%, and bearish sentiment slipped to 36.1%. The bull-bear spread, which is just bullish votes minus bearish votes, swung positive to +8.8%. On the surface, regular investors are feeling better, helped by easing tensions with Iran and oil sliding to a four-month low.

The picture is split though. Bearish votes are still above their long-term average for the 20th straight week, which means a big chunk of investors stay nervous even as the optimists get loud. Put this next to the Fear & Greed Index showing extreme fear, and you get a market that can’t make up its mind. Some people see a buying chance. Others see more pain coming. That kind of disagreement tends to produce back-and-forth, up-and-down action until one side wins the argument. Watch which way the bears break.

Technical Analysis — Positive, With Cracks Forming

The charts read Positive overall, but the cracks are real. The S&P 500 closed at 7,357.49 and sits in a rising trend across the short, medium, and long term. It’s holding above support near 7,270, which is a healthy sign. As long as it stays above that level, the market is more likely to keep rising.

The Nasdaq-100 closed at 29,440.32, and it’s the weak spot. It broke below the floor of its rising trend, a sign the climb is losing steam. It now has support around 28,500 and resistance near 30,500. The index still rates positive, so it isn’t broken, but the tech-heavy Nasdaq took the most damage in this week’s chip selloff. The Nasdaq’s own fear gauge, the VXN, spiked to 32 even while the broad market VIX stayed below 20, which tells you the worry is concentrated in tech.

Bitcoin closed at 59,888 and reads clearly negative. It’s in a falling trend and broke down through support at 61,000, which points to more weakness ahead. Crypto is the riskiest part of the market, and it’s falling first as the dollar gets stronger. All three move the same way. The safer, broader index looks fine, while the riskiest corners (tech and crypto) crack first. That is what usually happens late in a market cycle, when the speculative stuff starts to fall before the rest.

Economic Indicators — Mixed, Pulled in Two Directions

The economic indicators read Mixed, with hot inflation pulling one way and a still-solid economy pulling the other. On the troubling side, inflation sits at 4.17%, well above the Fed’s 2% target, and consumer sentiment is at 44.80, sitting at the very bottom of its entire historical range. People feel terrible about the economy, and prices are too high. That combination keeps the Fed hawkish and rate cuts off the table.

On the steady side, the picture looks fine. Unemployment is 4.30%, still healthy by any historical measure. GDP growth is 2.00%, right in the normal range. The VIX at 17.27 signals a calm market. The 10-year Treasury yield at 4.45% sits right in its normal range. So the hard data says the economy is holding up, even as inflation runs hot and people feel miserable about it.

That gap between how things feel and how they actually are is the whole story of this market. The jobs are there. The growth is there. But the cost of living is wearing people down, and the AI spending boom is adding fresh fuel to inflation. As long as inflation stays above 4%, the Fed stays stuck, and a stuck Fed means rates stay high for longer, which pressures stocks. Watch inflation and consumer sentiment closely. They’re the two readings most likely to decide what happens next.

The Bigger Picture — Neutral With a Cautious Lean

My overall grade is Neutral with a cautious lean. The market is sending mixed signals on purpose, because it’s at a real crossroads. Fear is extreme, which is a contrarian positive. Everyday investors are getting more hopeful, which is a good sign. The broad charts still point up. But inflation is hot, the Fed is hawkish, tech and crypto are cracking, and people feel awful about the economy. None of these signals agree, and that’s exactly what a turning point looks like.

The AI spending boom is the thread running through every signal. It’s driving inflation, which keeps the Fed hawkish, which lifts rates, which pressures the most expensive stocks, which are the AI names, which is why tech is cracking while the broad market holds. Meanwhile fear has spiked to extreme levels, which has, in the past, marked the kind of moment where being patient pays off. The events behind all this, the chip selloff, the hot inflation print, the Iran ceasefire easing oil, are real and traceable. This is a market working through a real change.

A few things could push it higher from here. Cooling inflation, a steady Fed, and the AI money spreading out into more stocks instead of just five would all help.

A few things could push it lower too. A hot inflation report, an actual rate hike, or one big AI spender cutting its budget would all hurt.

My honest outlook is back-and-forth and stuck in a range in the near term, with the broad market holding up better than the scary headlines suggest. Stay invested, stay spread out, and let the extreme fear work for you instead of against you.

👉For daily insights, follow me on X /Twitter; Instagram Threads; Facebook; or BlueSky (and turn on notifications)

(4) Interest Rate Forecast & Real Estate Outlook

What’s next for mortgages, housing, and your money.

Interest Rates — Holding Steady, With Upward Risk

I think rates stay flat over the near term, with a slightly better chance of going up than down. The 30-year fixed is stuck around 6.49%, and the 10-year Treasury keeps bumping against the same 4.42% limit it’s faced since late May. Until something breaks that range, mortgage rates won’t move much.

Two forces are pulling in opposite directions, and that standoff is why rates are stuck. On one side, oil slid to a four-month low as ships move through the Strait of Hormuz again, which took some pressure off the 10-year and nudged rates down a touch. On the other side, PCE inflation just hit 4.1%, the Fed under Warsh killed the idea of cuts and put a hike back on the table, and inflation is climbing rather than cooling. Weigh those against each other and you get rates that drift sideways in a narrow range.

For buyers, sellers, and investors, the move is the same. Stop waiting for a big rate drop, because the math says it isn’t coming soon.

If you’re buying, treat today’s mid-6% rate as the new normal and buy the home that fits your life and your budget. You can always refinance later if rates fall.

If you’re selling, price it realistically, because high rates are keeping buyers cautious.

And if you’re an investor, run your numbers at 6.5%, not at some fantasy 5%. The buyers winning right now are the ones who stopped waiting and accepted rates as they are.

Buy the home now if it’s right for you, and refinance the rate later if it drops.

Real Estate — A Rare Housing Win, Tangled in Politics

The big story is a landmark housing bill that passed Congress with overwhelming support and then hit a wall. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5 and the House 358-32, a rare bipartisan win. Then, two hours before the signing ceremony, President Trump abruptly canceled it, saying he won’t sign until a separate voter-eligibility bill passes. The bill isn’t dead though. Unless he vetoes it, it becomes law automatically in 10 days, and it has enough votes to override a veto anyway.

What’s in it matters for housing costs over time. The bill speeds up homebuilding by cutting red tape and rewarding cities that loosen zoning rules, makes cheaper manufactured and modular homes easier to build and finance, and blocks large Wall Street investors from mass-buying single-family homes. The country is short more than 4 million homes, so anything that adds supply helps. None of this lowers your mortgage overnight, but the supply measures could ease prices over the coming years.

The current data tells a calmer, more buyer-friendly story than last year. New-home sales fell to a 580,000 annual pace, down 7.3% from April, as builders turn cautious. Active inventory crossed 1.1 million homes, the most since December 2025. The median list price is down 3.1% from a year ago, though prices are basically flat in real terms. And 55% of homes are now selling below their original list price. You have more choice and more room to negotiate than buyers have had in a while.

Two things matter most here. First, the hidden costs of owning are climbing fast. Annual homeownership expenses jumped 39% since 2019, far outpacing the 26% rise in consumer prices, with emergency repair costs alone up 175%. The mortgage is only part of the bill, so budget for the rest before you buy. Second, the big institutional investors are pulling back. Mega-investors fell to just 7.5% of purchases, their smallest share since at least 2011. With Wall Street stepping back and more homes for sale, you face less competition than buyers have in years.

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5. Insider Trading Alerts (Follow the Smart Money)

6. Stocks Beating the Market

7. The Smartest Trade I See Right Now

(5) Insider Trading Alerts (Follow the Smart Money)

The latest insider trades worth paying attention to.

Nancy Pelosi Bought Intel $INTC

Reported on June 24, 2026, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) disclosed a buy of Intel $INTC through her spouse, in the $1 million to $5 million range. Pelosi’s trades get followed closely, and for good reason. Her household has one of the best long-term track records in Congress, helped by her husband Paul’s well-timed bets and her decades of access at the very top of Washington. When the Pelosis buy, people pay attention.

This buy landed right in the middle of the worst chip selloff in months, with Intel dropping alongside the rest of the group. Buying a beaten-down American chipmaker while everyone else panics is a classic value move. Intel has been the underdog of the AI era, far behind Nvidia and Micron, but Washington has made building chips in America a national priority, with funding and even ownership stakes flowing to U.S. producers. A bet on Intel is partly a bet that the government keeps propping up homegrown chip supply.

Looking ahead, the case for Intel rests on a turnaround that’s still unproven. The growth drivers are its push into making chips for other companies, government support for U.S.-made chips, and the simple fact that the world needs far more chip capacity than it has. The risk is execution, because Intel has missed before. If the turnaround works, this is a cheap way into a recovering giant. If it doesn’t, it stays the underdog. The Pelosi household is betting on the recovery.

I'm keeping Intel on my watchlist for now, not buying yet. The turnaround story is real, and the Pelosi buy is a strong political signal worth tracking, but Intel still has negative free cash flow, shrinking margins, and a heavy spending burden weighing on the business. The case rests almost entirely on a recovery that hasn't proven itself, and Intel has missed its own targets before. I want to see real customer traction in its contract chip business before I commit. The government support and the global chip shortage give it a floor, but a floor isn't a reason to buy.

Nancy Pelosi Bought Uber $UBER

Also reported on June 24, 2026, Pelosi disclosed a buy of Uber $UBER through her spouse, in the $500,000 to $1 million range. Uber has quietly become one of the great comeback stories in tech, going from a cash-burning startup into a profitable company that dominates rides and food delivery. The Pelosi household adding to it signals confidence that the profits keep growing.

Uber sits right in the path of the self-driving revolution, teaming up with robotaxi companies instead of fighting them. As driverless cars scale up, Uber’s huge network of riders becomes the obvious place to plug them in. Its total addressable market keeps expanding from rides into delivery, freight, and advertising, which gives it many ways to grow.

My read is that this is a bet on a steady, growing company, not a quick flip. The growth drivers are clear, including the shift to driverless cars, the move into new services, and steady profit growth. Uber is past the risky startup phase and into the part of the S-curve where profits scale up fast. Buying it during a broad tech selloff, when fear drags good companies down with the bad ones, is exactly when patient investors step in.

This is a buy for me. Uber has the exact combination I look for: a dominant position with real network effects, profits that are growing every quarter, several ways to expand beyond its core rides business, and a smart position in the self-driving shift where it benefits instead of competing. It's past the risky phase and into the part of its growth curve where profits scale fast. Buying it during a broad tech selloff, when fear drags good companies down with the bad ones, is exactly when patient investors step in. The Pelosi buy adds one more credibility signal on top of an already strong story.

DPC Holdings $DPC

In one of the strongest insider signals of the week, three top executives at DPC Holdings $DPC (the aerospace parts maker that does business as Doncasters) bought a combined roughly $26 million of their own stock, all filed on June 26, 2026. CEO Quinn Michael Joseph led with a $14,358,993 purchase, CFO David John Egan bought $9,086,979, and COO Jason Mays added $2,837,109. All three bought at $33, the exact price of the company’s IPO the day before, and each raised their stake by more than 999%.

When the CEO, CFO, and COO all buy together at the same time, that’s the clearest bullish signal in the insider world. People sell stock for a hundred reasons. They buy for only one. They think it’s going higher. Doncasters is a nearly 250-year-old British company that makes the high-precision “can’t fail” cast parts for the hot zones of jet engines and industrial gas turbines, serving aerospace and power markets that are both booming. After a long turnaround, the company just went public, raising over $900 million, mostly to pay down debt.

The forward case here is the aerospace boom. Airlines are buying planes at a record pace, engine demand is surging, and only a handful of companies worldwide can make these parts. That gives Doncasters a protected niche with long-term growth behind it. The whole leadership team putting up their own cash on day two of public trading tells you they believe the boom is real and the stock is cheap. For a freshly public name, that’s about as confident a vote as insiders can give.

I'm putting this at the top of my watchlist, just short of buying. The insider signal here is as strong as it gets. A combined $26 million buy from the CEO, CFO, and COO at the IPO price is extraordinary, and the protected niche in aerospace precision parts is real with durable demand behind it. The only reason I'm waiting is that this is a brand-new public company that still carries meaningful debt even after the offering, and I want to see one quarter of public results before I buy. If those numbers come in clean, this moves to a buy fast.

(6) Stocks Beating the Market

The stocks gaining momentum and what’s driving them.

1) Definium Therapeutics up +50% on 6/22

Definium Therapeutics was up +50% on 6/22 after the early-stage biotech posted positive Phase 3 results for its depression treatment. A successful late-stage trial is the single biggest catalyst a small biotech can get, because it moves the company from “maybe” to “real product” almost overnight. That’s why the stock nearly doubled in a day.

Depression is one of the largest untreated markets in all of medicine, with millions of patients poorly served by existing drugs. A new treatment that actually works in a Phase 3 trial steps into a total addressable market worth billions. The next steps are FDA review and possible approval, and each one can move the stock sharply.

The forward case is high-risk, high-reward. The growth drivers are the path to approval, the huge patient population, and the strong odds that a bigger drug company tries to buy or partner with Definium to get the treatment. The risk is regulatory, because the FDA can still say no. This is a speculative bet, so keep it small, but the upside on a successful launch is real.

2) Kymera Therapeutics $KYMR up +17% on 6/25

Kymera Therapeutics $KYMR was up +17% on 6/25 after finishing enrollment in a Phase 2 trial for its eczema treatment. Hitting an enrollment milestone keeps a drug program on schedule, which reassures investors that the upcoming milestones are still on track.

Kymera works on a cutting-edge approach called targeted protein degradation, which aims to break down disease-causing proteins instead of just blocking them. If it works, it opens the door to treating conditions older drugs can’t reach. Eczema alone affects tens of millions of people, a large and growing market.

The forward picture is promising but early. The growth drivers are its new drug platform, the large patient groups it targets, and strong interest from big pharma in protein-degradation technology. The total addressable market spans many diseases if the science holds up. This is a high-potential biotech where each trial milestone, like this one, moves the story forward.

I'm keeping Kymera on my watchlist. The platform technology is genuinely innovative and the interest from big pharma is real, but the stock jumped 17% on an enrollment update, not actual trial results. The catalyst that really matters (the data itself) is still ahead. I want to see that data before I buy. Until then, it stays on close watch.

3) Super Micro Computer $SMCI up +16% on 6/22

Super Micro Computer $SMCI was up +16% on 6/22 on the rollout of a new AI data center platform built around Nvidia’s latest Vera Rubin chips. Super Micro builds the specialized servers that house AI chips, so every wave of new Nvidia hardware creates fresh demand for its systems.

Super Micro sits at the heart of the AI buildout. When companies spend billions on AI infrastructure, much of that money flows into the servers and cooling systems Super Micro makes. Being first to market with platforms for the newest chips gives it an edge over slower rivals.

The forward case is a direct play on AI spending. The growth drivers are the nonstop building of AI data centers, Super Micro’s tight partnership with Nvidia, and its lead in liquid cooling, which the hottest new chips require. The total addressable market grows every time a tech giant announces another data center. The risk is that any slowdown in AI spending hits Super Micro fast, so it’s a riskier way to invest in the trend, because it moves more sharply in both directions.

I'm watching this closely but not buying yet. The AI infrastructure tailwind is real and the tight Nvidia partnership is valuable, but Super Micro runs on thin margins, swings hard in both directions, and has a history of accounting scrutiny that I can't ignore. It's a high-octane bet on AI spending that drops fast whenever that spending gets questioned. I want to see a few quarters of clean, consistent financials before I commit.

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(7) The Smartest Trade I See Right Now

Unusual options activity showing where big money is placing its bets.

Rayonier Advanced Materials $RYAM — Bullish Call Buying

A big options bet just showed up in Rayonier Advanced Materials $RYAM, and the ratio tells the whole story. Traders are buying calls over puts at roughly 100 to 1, an overwhelmingly bullish lean. The action centered on the September 18th $10.00 call, with volume hitting 3,019 contracts against open interest of just 171. That gap means this is fresh money placing a new bet, not traders closing old positions.

The standout piece was a single 1,009-contract block bought at the ask price of $0.40. Buying at the ask, in size, is the sign of someone in a hurry to buy, and it points to real bullish intent. With the stock trading around $7.92, that $10 strike price sits well above where the stock is now, so these traders are betting on a big move higher by September.

Rayonier Advanced Materials makes high-purity cellulose specialties, which are refined wood-based materials that end up in everyday products like food, medicine, filters, and coatings. It’s a niche industrial business, far from the AI spotlight, which is part of what makes this bet interesting. When unusual call buying shows up in a quiet, overlooked name, it often means someone expects good news the broader market hasn’t noticed yet.

Smaller industrial and materials stocks have quietly been getting bought this week as money moves out of crowded tech and into beaten-down value. RYAM fits that profile. It’s a cheap, overlooked materials company in a market that’s suddenly hunting for exactly those traits. Call buying this lopsided suggests at least one trader thinks the move out of tech isn’t over yet and RYAM is a way to invest in it.

The bull case rests on a few things. The growth drivers are rising demand for specialty cellulose across food and medicine, the company’s push into higher-profit products, and any improvement in its finances that lifts the stock off depressed levels. The total addressable market for wood-based materials keeps growing as industries look for alternatives to oil-based inputs. As a small company, RYAM can move fast on good news, which is exactly what these call buyers are positioning for.

My take is cautiously bullish on this trade. The 100-to-1 call-to-put ratio, the fresh positioning well above the current price, and the aggressive block bought at the ask all point the same direction. Someone is betting on a real move by September. The risk is that small-company options bets like this can expire worthless if the good news doesn’t show, so this is a speculative play, not a sure thing. But the size and direction of this buying is hard to ignore. When smart money buys this many calls in a forgotten name, it pays to at least watch closely.

8. Practical Advice & What to Do Next

9. Lessons I Wish I Learned Sooner

10. Ask Me Anything (Your Questions Answered)

(8) Practical Advice & What to Do Next

A guide to helping you make smarter decisions with money, investing, and life.

1. Use extreme fear as a buy signal, not a sell signal. The Fear & Greed Index at 25 has, in the past, marked buying chances for long-term investors. The best returns get made when it feels worst. Keep buying on your normal schedule and stop watching your account.

2. Focus on your earning power. You cannot control interest rates. You cannot control inflation. You can control your skills and your income. The best investment you can make is in your ability to earn more money.

3. Keep some cash on hand. The market is volatile today. Having cash gives you power. When a great stock drops for no good reason, you can buy the dip. You need dry powder to take advantage of the panic. Keep at least 10 percent of your portfolio in cash.

4. Set up automatic buys for VOO or VTI. A broad index fund like VOO or VTI spreads your money across hundreds of companies in a single buy. Pick a day of the month. Buy the same amount every single time. This removes your emotions from the process. You buy when the market is high and when it is low. Over time, this wins.

5. Separate company quality from stock price. SpaceX can be a great company and still be a risky stock at the wrong price. The same goes for any popular name. A great story can become a poor investment when the price already assumes perfection.

6. Stop waiting for perfect mortgage rates. The 30-year fixed is at 6.5%. It may go to 7% before it goes to 5%. Buy the house that fits your life and your budget. You can refinance later if rates fall. The people who bought at 7% in 2023 and refinanced at 6.5% in 2025 are already ahead. The people still renting and waiting are paying someone else's mortgage.

(9) Lessons I Wish I Learned Sooner

Financial lessons most people learn too late.

I spent two decades in finance watching these exact cycles play out. The headlines will always try to scare you. The real story always sits in the data.

Warren Buffett has a rule he’s lived by for 60 years. Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. The Fear & Greed Index is at 25. That’s fear. Real fear. The kind that makes people sell good companies at bad prices. The kind that creates the entries you’ll brag about in five years.

So step back and look at what this week actually gave you. A peptide boom forming before the crowd arrives. Micron running while money flees Nvidia. Smart insiders buying with both hands while everyone else sells. The crowd is looking down at what’s falling. The money is quietly moving toward what’s about to rise.

You don’t have to be a genius to win here. You just have to be calm when others aren’t.

(10) Ask Me Anything (Subscriber Questions Answered)

What subscribers are asking, and what you need to know too.

Q: What exactly is the peptide boom, and why now?

Peptides are small chains of amino acids that the body uses as signals. Some help with weight loss, muscle, healing, and energy. The boom is the sequel to the Ozempic craze. Once people tried GLP-1 drugs, they went looking for more, and a huge underground market grew. Late this July, an FDA panel decides whether seven peptides can be legally made and sold. That ruling could turn a $3 billion gray market into a real one.

Q: Is the AI boom over?

The AI boom is not over, but the easy money is gone. The big tech companies are spending billions on AI. The problem is the valuations got high. The market is rotating. Money is leaving the expensive tech giants and moving into the companies that supply the AI hardware. You must shift your focus to the supply chain.

Q: What is rotation and why does it matter?

Rotation is when money moves from one part of the market to another. This week, money left tech stocks and moved into small caps, healthcare, consumer staples, and international stocks. It matters because you want to own where the money is going, not where it has been. A total market index fund like VTI automatically captures rotation because it owns everything.

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Then he watched his friends get richer while he sat on the sidelines. The temptation grew too loud. So he climbed back in, near the very top, and when the bubble burst, he lost a fortune. One of the smartest humans who ever lived later said he could “calculate the motions of the stars but not the madness of men.”

I thought about Newton this week as SpaceX went public in the largest IPO ever and made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. I thought about him as inflation hit a three‑year high and the Fed quietly replaced the promised rate cut with a rate hike. And I thought about him as chip stocks, the very heart of this AI rally, cracked hard.

The biggest risk to your wealth is not the market crashing. The biggest risk is your own psychology. It is the urge…

Read more

This week, the flash was AI. Marvell up 32%. Micron crossing $1 trillion. Nvidia unveiling a new PC chip. The crowd watched the flash. Meanwhile, the bond market was pricing in a Fed rate hike. The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.2%. Mortgage rates jumped. The dollar strengthened. The cost of money went up while everyone was watching the magic trick.

Stocks fell. Bonds fell. Gold fell. Bitcoin fell. All in the same week. That almost never happens.

When everything drops at once, it’s not about any single company. It’s about the plumbing under the whole market. The price of money is going up, and that quietly resets the value of everything else. The…

Read more

Kevin Warsh was sworn in as Fed Chair last week. His inflation problem is smaller (3.8% and climbing). His political pressure is larger. And his bond market is already at 5.19% on the 30-year.

That’s a number most investors never look at. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond. Last week, it hit 5.19%. The highest since July 2007.

I want you to think about what July 2007 was. It was 12 months before Lehman Brothers collapsed and took the global economy with it. The bond market knew something was wrong long before equity markets did. It always does. Bonds are the financial system’s smoke detector. And right now, that detector is going off.

I’ve been flagging this for weeks in this newsletter (if you’v…

Read more

“The market,” he said, “is never wrong. But it’s almost always early.”

I was fresh out of school. I didn’t fully get it then. After watching cycles come and go, it makes a lot more sense.

The market doesn’t price today. It prices tomorrow. And sometimes, it gets so far ahead of itself that today’s reality becomes almost unrecognizable when you compare it to what the market is implying.

This week is one of those moments.

The S&P 500 hit an all-time high. Cerebras Systems, a company that isn’t profitable, raised $5.5 billion and surged 68% on its first day of trading. Investors priced in a future built on AI, data centers, and technological transformation.

But here’s what’s actually happening in the present.

Inflation hit 3.8% in April. Wages grew only 3.6%. For the first time since 2023, the cost of living is rising faster than the average American’s paycheck. The 30-year Treasury yield just hit …

Read more

Here’s the contradiction you need to sit with this week. The S&P 500 just hit an all-time high. Consumer sentiment just hit an all-time low. At the same time. In the same country. For the same people.

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, a survey that’s been running for 74 years, just posted its worst reading in recorded history. Worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Worse than COVID. Worse than the double-digit inflation of the 1970s. And yet your brokerage account has never looked better, as long as you own the right five tech stocks.

I’ve spent over 20 years working in banking and finance, and I’ve never seen a gap this wide between how Americans feel and what the market says. This week, I’m going to show you exactly why that gap exists, how long it can last, and what you should do before it closes.

Because it will close. It always does.

Here’s what’s happening beneath the surface. Gas just crossed $4.50 a gallon nationwide, a 50% jump since the Iran war started. Real wages just went negative for the first time in three years. Consumer debt, both credit cards and auto loans, just hit all-time highs. The spring housing market just posted its worst performance in years. And Jamie Dimon, the most powerful banker on the planet, just warned publicly that a bond crisis is coming.

And yet the market is at record highs.

This week’s newsletter is about understanding both worlds at once. The world your portfolio sees and the world your paycheck feels. Once you understand both, you’ll know exactly where to put your money and, just as importantly, where to pull it out.

This week, we break down why stocks are hitting records while consumers are cracking, why the bond market may be the real danger, and how energy shocks, AI, and solar could shape the next decade of investing.

📬 In today’s newsletter, we look at:

Part I - Market & Economy Update:

1. Analysis & Outlook

2. Important Finance News

Part II - Investing Research:

3. Insider Trading

4. Top Stocks Right Now

5. Today’s Trade

6. Market Sentiment (Fear & Greed Analysis)

7. Macro Technical Analysis

Part III - Tips & Advice:

8. Advice, Lessons & Recommendations

9. Final Thoughts

10. Your Top Questions Answered

Hope you’re enjoying this newsletter — it takes a week to research and write so please help support our journalism and:

1. Hit the LIKE button❤️ on this post and share this newsletter on social media (or with friends & family):

Share

2. 🙏Become a paid subscriber! (learn about the benefits here) (Get a free 30-day trial with this link):

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Part I - Markets & Economy Update

(1) Analysis & Outlook

📈 Everything You Need to Know (in 1 minute):

1. Inflation hit 3.8% in April, the highest in three years, beating the Wall Street forecast of 3.7%. Gas prices are up 50% since the Iran war started, and they drove most of the jump.

2. Real wages fell 0.2% year-over-year, the first drop since 2023. Workers got a 3.6% pay raise on paper, but inflation wiped it out completely. Paychecks are shrinking in real terms.

3. Consumer debt hit record territory. Auto loan and credit card delinquencies are at all-time highs. Total auto debt crossed $1.68T and credit card debt hit $1.33T.

4. Consumer sentiment hit a record low at 48.2 on the University of Michigan index, yet the S&P 500 is at all-time highs. The gap between Main Street and Wall Street has never been wider.

5. The spring housing market stalled. Sales rose just 0.2% in April versus an expected 3% jump. The national median home price hit a record $417,700 while mortgage rates climbed back above 6%.

6. Bond yields are climbing fast. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.45%, markets are pricing in zero rate cuts until late 2027, and there’s a 42% chance of a rate hike by early 2027.

7. Copper prices hit a record $6.41 per pound, up 40% year-over-year, driven by the AI data center building boom.

8. Tech and AI stocks are carrying the market. The S&P 500 hit record highs, but only because a handful of big tech names are carrying the weight. Equal-weighted returns are running at about half the headline number.

9. Semiconductors are on a historic run. Intel is up 239% year-to-date and Sandisk is up 558% year-to-date. The PHLX Semiconductor Index is up 55%+ from its March lows.

10. The Iran war is accelerating clean energy adoption. Over $3B flowed into renewable energy ETFs in April alone, the biggest monthly inflow since early 2021.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

Most people think a rising stock market means a healthy economy. Right now, that idea isn’t true.

Here’s what’s actually happening. We have two very different Americas sitting side by side. In one America, tech stocks are breaking records, AI spending is exploding, and chip companies are putting up some of the best single-year returns in stock market history. In the other America, gas is $4.50 a gallon and climbing, real wages just went negative for the first time in three years, and consumers are drowning in record debt.

This is the K-shaped economy at its most extreme. And if you’re not watching both sides of that “K,” you’re missing the full picture.

The Iran war is the thread connecting all of it.

When the Strait of Hormuz closed, it didn’t just spike oil prices. It set off a chain reaction. Higher oil meant higher gas. Higher gas meant higher inflation. Higher inflation meant the Fed couldn’t cut rates. No rate cuts meant higher mortgage rates. Higher mortgage rates froze the housing market. A frozen housing market hurt consumer confidence. And crushed confidence threatens to slow spending, the engine of roughly 70% of the US economy.

During my 20 years working in banking and finance, I watched how fast one shock could ripple through an entire economy. This is one of those moments. The energy shock has become an inflation shock, which has become a consumer shock, which now threatens to become a growth shock. The chain isn’t done yet.

Here’s the number to watch above everything else. The 10-year Treasury yield is now at 4.45%. That stat isn’t just a bond market number. It drives mortgage rates, auto loans, credit card rates, and the cost of borrowing for every business in America. The last time yields pushed to this level, it triggered the tariff pause. Markets are fragile at these levels. And the bond market tends to know before the stock market does. When bonds are stressed, stocks eventually follow.

But here’s what makes this moment so unusual. The stock market isn’t listening, at least not yet. The S&P 500 is at record highs. The Nasdaq is up nearly 17% over the past month. Why? Because AI is doing something extraordinary.

The AI supercycle is real, and it’s not hype. Chip stocks like Intel (up 239% this year) and Sandisk (up 558% this year) aren’t just riding narrative. They’re riding real revenue and real profit growth. This is not the dot-com bubble, where companies had no earnings. Micron is on pace for $77 billion in operating profit this year. Samsung just reported an 8x jump in quarterly operating profits. These are real numbers tied to real demand.

But here’s the risk that most people aren’t talking about. When one sector carries an entire index, the whole market becomes dependent on that sector continuing to deliver. Two things could derail this rally quickly. First, any sign that Big Tech is slowing its data center spending. Second, any escalation in the Iran conflict that pushes oil toward $110 or $120 per barrel and drives bond yields to dangerous new levels.

Here’s the bigger-picture connection most people are missing. Copper prices just hit a record high at $6.41 per pound, up 40% from a year ago. That’s not random. You can’t build a data center without copper wiring. The AI buildout is so massive it’s driving real commodity demand at scale, which adds to inflation pressure, which keeps the Fed from cutting, which keeps mortgage rates high, which keeps the housing market frozen. Everything is connected.

Now think about this differently. The very same war that’s crushing American consumers is also speeding up the clean energy transition. Over $3 billion flowed into renewable ETFs in April alone. South Korea doubled domestic EV sales in a single month. EU leaders are getting “more aggressive” on electrification. The energy shock is forcing every country to rethink oil dependence, and that rethinking could reshape global investment for the next decade. The Iran war may ultimately be remembered as the accelerant that pushed the world off oil faster than any climate policy ever could.

What this means for you:

First, don’t confuse a rising market with a safe market. A narrow, tech-driven rally is fragile. When five stocks do most of the heavy lifting for an entire index, there’s not a lot of cushion if one of them stumbles.

Second, watch the 10-year Treasury yield. If it pushes toward 5%, expect real pressure on rate-sensitive sectors like real estate, utilities, and consumer discretionary.

Third, clean energy exposure belongs in almost every long-term portfolio. The question isn’t whether solar and storage win the energy race. It’s how fast. The $3B+ flowing into renewable ETFs in a single month is the market telling you something.

Fourth, if you’re a worker, the math is brutal right now. With real wages negative and inflation above 3.5%, you’re losing ground every month you stay at your current pay level. Negotiating a raise or switching jobs isn’t optional advice right now. It’s survival.

The story of this market isn’t just about AI stocks hitting record highs. It’s about two worlds pulling in opposite directions. The question isn’t which one wins. The question is how long they can stay apart before they collide.

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(2) Important Finance News

📬 Today we look at:

1) What Hantavirus Means for Investors

2) How Can Stocks Be at All-Time Highs When Americans Feel Worse Than Ever?

3) Why the Bond Market Is the Most Dangerous Place in the World Right Now

4) The Best Cities for New Graduates in 2026

5) The Energy Revolution Nobody Is Talking About

🤔 But first, what do you think?

1. What Hantavirus Means for Investors

What was supposed to be a dream vacation turned into something far darker for the roughly 150 passengers aboard the MV Hondius, a Dutch cruise ship. The World Health Organization confirmed a deadly hantavirus outbreak on the vessel with three passengers dead and at least eight cases confirmed. Authorities across more than a dozen countries are now tracking down passengers who disembarked before the outbreak was identified.

The strain confirmed on the ship is the Andes variant, the only known type of hantavirus capable of spreading from person to person through close physical contact or shared utensils. Flu-like symptoms can appear anywhere from one to eight weeks after exposure, and there’s currently no approved vaccine or targeted treatment. Health authorities from South America to Europe are evacuating and quarantining passengers on government aircraft, and the Hondius is being diverted to the Canary Islands.

Health experts are moving fast to calm concerns. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated clearly that hantavirus is “not another COVID” and stressed the low overall public health risk, noting that person-to-person transmission remains rare even with the Andes strain.

The financial fallout, however, is already real. Royal Caribbean fell over 2%, Carnival dropped over 2%, Norwegian Cruise Line dipped under 1%, and Viking Holdings fell nearly 2%. The cruise industry is already fighting surging fuel costs and weaker bookings tied to the Iran war, so a deadly disease outbreak during peak summer booking season is about the worst timing possible. Norwegian recently warned that “softer travel demand and geopolitical uncertainty are weighing on bookings,” and that was before this headline hit.

On the flip side, Moderna shot up nearly 12% on day one and another 12% the following day after confirming it has been conducting early-stage hantavirus vaccine research. Analysts at Evercore pushed back, calling the move “sentiment-driven rather than fundamental” and noting that hantavirus represents a “structurally small market” with low incidence rates. Other pharma names like Inovio and Novavax also spiked, despite having no active hantavirus programs.

What this means long-term: This outbreak reveals something important about investor psychology four years after COVID. The “pandemic fear trade” has become a replicable playbook. When an outbreak headline hits, biotech names with any connection to the disease surge, and travel stocks sell off, regardless of whether the fundamental risk is high or low. Knowing this pattern gives you an edge. The next outbreak, whenever it comes, will follow the same script.

The deeper issue for cruise stocks isn’t one virus. It’s that the sector is getting hit from multiple directions simultaneously: high fuel prices, geopolitical uncertainty reducing international travel demand, and now disease headlines during peak booking season. These stocks deserve caution, not blind averaging down.

My advice: If you own cruise stocks, review your position sizing against a backdrop of sustained multiple headwinds. For pharma, never buy a biotech stock purely on outbreak headlines without confirming that the company has an actual product in development at a meaningful clinical stage. Sentiment trades on outbreak news are fast-moving and sharp in both directions.

2. How Can Stocks Be at All-Time Highs When Americans Feel Worse Than Ever?

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index just posted its second consecutive all-time low, hitting 48.2 in May, down from 49.8 in April. This is the worst reading in the survey’s 74-year history, worse than COVID-19, worse than the 2008 financial crisis, worse than any prior moment of economic upheaval captured in the data.

And yet the S&P 500 is at an all-time high.

The preliminary May reading cut across all income levels, age groups, education levels, and political affiliations. About a third of survey respondents pointed to gas prices. About 30% mentioned tariffs. What’s driving the anxiety isn’t hard to identify. Gas is above $4.50 nationally, inflation just hit its fastest pace in three years, job growth is “near zero” per Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and large-scale layoffs from companies like Oracle, Citigroup, and UPS have dominated headlines.

Corporate earnings this week put ground-level detail on those numbers. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski called the environment “challenging” and said consumer conditions may be “getting a little bit worse,” pointing to high gas prices squeezing lower-income households. Whirlpool reported a greater-than-expected quarterly loss and said the company experienced “recession-level industry decline” in the US as consumer confidence collapsed in late Q1. Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, said $100 per barrel oil is costing them roughly $500 million per month and that some of those costs are flowing to consumers. From fast food to home appliances to global freight, the message is the same. The American consumer is under serious pressure from multiple directions at once.

And yet stocks are at records.

During my time on Wall Street, I saw this kind of divergence before. Housing data was flashing red for months before the 2008 stock market caught on. The market has a historical habit of ignoring bad news until it absolutely can’t anymore. The gap between how Americans feel and what their portfolios show has never been wider. But gaps like this don’t last forever.

What this means long-term: Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70% of US GDP. When consumers pull back meaningfully, corporate revenue falls. When revenue falls, earnings follow. When earnings fall, stocks follow. The lag between sentiment and stock prices can stretch for months or even longer. But they always reconnect. The question isn’t whether this divergence closes. It’s when and how hard.

My advice: Consumer discretionary stocks, companies that sell things people want but don’t need, are the most exposed sector right now. Companies with exposure to lower-income consumers face the biggest direct headwind. Companies that serve higher-income consumers or sell essential goods and services are far better positioned. Look at your portfolio and honestly ask how much discretionary consumer exposure you’re carrying into what could be a significant spending slowdown.

3. Why the Bond Market Is the Most Dangerous Place in the World Right Now

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, speaking at a Norges Bank Investment Management conference in Oslo, warned that the world is heading for “some kind of bond crisis” unless governments address their surging debt levels. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dimon said he doesn’t understand “how the world running deficits like this isn’t inflationary” and acknowledged the damage may already be done.

The numbers behind the warning are staggering. The US government has spent $1.17T more than it has collected in fiscal 2026 alone, a fiscal year that only started in October. That deficit is running at a pace that would be alarming in a recession. We’re not in a recession. We’re doing this in a period of full employment. And every dollar of deficit spending adds to a debt load that markets are increasingly nervous about financing at current yields.

Here’s why the timing is so critical. The 10-year Treasury yield is now at 4.45% and climbing. Iranian drone strikes on UAE energy infrastructure are pushing yields higher. Markets are now pricing in zero rate cuts until late 2027 and a 42% chance of a rate hike by early 2027. If the 10-year pushes toward 5%, we’re looking at 7%+ mortgage rates and structural damage to the housing market that could last years.

The feedback loop Dimon is warning about is dangerous and well-established in economic history. Higher deficits fuel more government borrowing. More borrowing pushes yields higher. Higher yields increase the government’s interest expense, which widens the deficit further. A wider deficit requires even more borrowing. And on it goes until the market forces a reckoning, usually through a rapid spike in yields or a credit-rating downgrade.

I’ve been saying for months that the bond market is the metric to watch above all others in 2026. If you took that seriously, none of this week’s data surprised you.

What this means long-term: A bond crisis isn’t just a government balance sheet problem. It would hit every American household. It would push up the cost of mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and business borrowing. At its most extreme, a bond crisis can trigger a currency crisis, which historically leads to severe recessions and decades of reduced living standards. The countries that have experienced them, Argentina, Greece, Turkey, never fully recover their prior trajectory.

My advice: Position your portfolio for a “higher for longer” interest rate environment. That means favoring shorter-duration bonds over long-duration bonds, which get hit hardest by rising yields. Reduce exposure to dividend stocks that compete directly with bonds for income-seeking investors. Consider Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities as an inflation hedge. And if you carry variable-rate debt of any kind, lock in fixed rates wherever possible before the next potential hike. The time to prepare for a bond crisis is before it arrives, not after.

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The national debt had hit 106% of GDP. The country had just spent more money fighting World War II than anyone had ever spent on anything. Economists warned of a generational burden. Newspapers described a fiscal catastrophe. Politicians promised sacrifice.

And then something no one predicted happened.

The soldiers came home. They got married, bought houses, had children, and built careers. Factories that made tanks retooled to make washing machines and cars. The middle class expanded faster than in any era in American history. Growth and inflation together dissolved the debt burden over the next 25 years without anyone even trying. By 1970, the debt-to-GDP ratio was under 30%. By 2008, it was below 40%.

Here’s the problem.

This Thursday, the U.S. crossed that same 100% threshold again. And none of those escape hatches exist today. There are no millions of soldiers coming home to build a new economy. Manufacturing isn’t surging. The population is aging, not growing. The federal deficit isn’t a wartime emergency that ends when peace is declared. It’s structural. It’s permanent. And it’s compounding.

The government is now spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects. Interest on the debt eats one in every seven federal dollars, more than the entire defense budget. The Congressional Budget Office projects the ratio hits 120% of GDP by 2036 and 175% by 2056 without major changes in policy.

That’s the backdrop to everything else happening right now. Gas at $4.39 a gallon. Oil at $126 a barrel before pulling back. The UAE quitting OPEC for the first time in 59 years. 81,000 tech workers losing their jobs in just four months. And Big Tech pouring $725 billion into AI this year with some companies unable to explain what the return will look like.

After more than 20 years in finance, I’ve watched debt crises develop slowly, then fast. The pattern is always the same: the warning signals are quiet for a long time. Then they stop being quiet.

Imagine a child born in 1946. The war is over. The debt is massive. But that child grows up in the greatest economic boom in history. By the time they turn 30, debt has been cut in half. They buy a house. They build a career. They retire with a pension.

Now imagine a child born today. They inherit $31 trillion in debt. The government spends $1.33 for every dollar it takes in. Interest payments are bigger than the defense budget. And instead of paying it down, we keep adding to the pile.

That child will not get the same boom. They will get higher taxes, higher interest rates, and a government with no room to help in the next crisis.

This week’s newsletter gives you the full picture, including what to do about every piece of it. This week, you'll learn why debt at 100% of GDP changes everything, how to position for higher oil prices that aren't going away, and which AI stocks actually make money versus those just burning cash.

📬 In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at:

Part I - Markets & Economy Update:

1. Analysis and Outlook

2. Important Finance News

Part II - Investing Research:

3. Insider Trades

4. Top Stocks Right Now

5. Today’s Trade

6. Market Sentiment (Fear & Greed Analysis)

7. Macro Technical Analysis

Part III - Tips & Advice:

8. Advice & Recommendations

9. Final Thoughts

10. Your Questions Answered

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Part I - Markets & Economy Update

(1) Analysis and Outlook

📈 Everything You Need to Know (in 1 minute):

1. The U.S. national debt just crossed $31.27 trillion, now bigger than the entire American economy for the first time since 1946. The debt-to-GDP ratio hit 100.2%. This is the same level we saw right after World War II.

2. More than half of Americans — 55% — say their finances are getting worse. That’s the highest number since Gallup started tracking this 25 years ago. This is now the fifth straight year things have gotten worse, not better.

3. Gas prices surged to $4.39 a gallon. That sounds normal until you hear this: it was under $3 before the Iran war started on February 28. That’s a 42% jump in just two months. Diesel hit $5.64. California drivers are now paying over $6 a gallon.

4. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment reading hit 49.8 — the lowest ever recorded. Lower than the 2008 financial crisis. Lower than COVID. People are scared about what’s coming.

5. The United Arab Emirates announced it’s leaving OPEC on May 1. This is a huge deal. The UAE has been in OPEC for 59 years. Now it’s walking away because Iran keeps attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that a fifth of the world’s oil passes through.

6. Big Tech earnings came out this week, and they tell a confusing story. Alphabet crushed it — Google Cloud grew 63%, and AI demand is so strong they doubled their capital spending to $36 billion this quarter alone. Amazon’s cloud grew 28%. Apple posted record services revenue at $31 billion. But Microsoft dropped 5% because investors got nervous about its $190 billion AI spending plan. Meta said it doesn’t even have a clear plan for its AI spending.

   1. JPMorgan downgraded Meta to Neutral, cutting its price target to $725. The reason? All that AI spending with no clear payoff yet.

7. Tech layoffs are accelerating. Oracle cut 30,000 jobs (18% of its workforce). Meta is cutting 8,000 more on May 20. Amazon has cut 30,000 total. Microsoft is offering buyouts to 7% of its staff. Over 81,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2026 alone. That’s more than half of all the cuts from all of 2025.

8. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady between 3.5% and 3.75%. The vote was deeply split — four committee members dissented, which hadn’t happened since 1992. Jerome Powell’s term as Fed Chair ends May 15, but he says he’s staying on the board while Trump’s legal attacks on the Fed get resolved.

9. Airfares jumped 15% in March. Delta says fuel costs will cost it $2 billion more this quarter alone. Airlines are raising bag fees by $10 to try to cover it.

10. Spirit Airlines is shutting down. All flights canceled. A $500 million government rescue deal fell apart. The budget airline couldn’t survive years of financial trouble plus higher fuel costs.

11. Trump is raising tariffs on European Union cars from 15% to 25%, accusing the bloc of not complying with a trade deal signed last year.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

The Debt Story

The U.S. government is spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects. This fiscal year alone, we’ve borrowed $1.17 trillion more than we’ve taken in. The deficit is heading toward $2 trillion. Interest on the debt now makes up 14% of all federal spending. That means one out of every seven dollars the government sends out goes straight to paying interest on money it already borrowed.

I’ve seen debt crises develop over my 20 years in finance, and the pattern is always the same. Debt at these levels doesn’t blow up overnight. It grinds. It slowly eats away at the edges — higher interest rates on your mortgage, your car loan, your credit cards. More of your tax dollars going to bondholders instead of roads, schools, or your social safety net.

The Congressional Budget Office projects this hits 120% of debt-to-GDP by 2036 and 175% by 2056 if nothing changes. For context, Japan is at 260% and they’re still functioning, but they’re also the country that invented their currency. The U.S. controls the world’s reserve currency, which gives us more wiggle room than most countries. But that cushion isn’t unlimited.

The New Energy Reality

The Strait of Hormuz is the most important oil chokepoint on Earth. A fifth of all global oil passes through that narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. Iran has been attacking ships there since the war started. The result? Oil spiked to $126 a barrel this week. Goldman Sachs now forecasts $90 oil by year-end if things normalize, but $100 or higher if they don’t.

UAE leaving OPEC is the biggest energy story in decades. OPEC just lost its third-largest producer because the group couldn’t protect that producer from attacks. This breaks the cartel’s unity in a way that can’t be undone. UAE now has freedom to pump as much oil as it wants, no more quotas, no more waiting for Saudi Arabia’s permission.

The energy shock is rippling everywhere. Toymakers are seeing material costs surge 15% within three weeks of the conflict starting. Airfares jumped 15% in March alone. Diesel hit $5.64. The average American family is now spending an extra $200 to $300 a month on energy costs compared to before the war.

But here’s the twist: the same shock that’s crushing consumers is speeding up clean energy adoption faster than any policy could. Why? Because $100 oil makes solar and wind economically obvious. When energy gets expensive enough, alternatives become cheap by comparison. The UK Energy Secretary put it well: “The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age.”

An AI Bubble Question

Big Tech earnings reveal something critical. Alphabet and Amazon are printing money from AI because they sell AI infrastructure — cloud computing, chips, models. Google Cloud grew 63% year-over-year. They have a $462 billion backlog of cloud business waiting to be delivered.

Meta and Microsoft are burning cash on AI without the same business model justification. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in the earnings call he “doesn’t have a very precise plan” for the AI spending — just “a sense of the shape.” That’s not confidence, that’s guessing. JPMorgan downgraded Meta because the spending is accelerating without clear returns.

This is the tell. When I look at $725 billion in combined AI spending across Big Tech this year, I see two different bets. Companies with vertical integration — making chips, models, and cloud services all in-house — are winning. Companies just building data centers and hoping demand shows up are on thinner ice.

The tech layoffs tie directly into this. Oracle cut 30,000 people to free up $8 to $10 billion for AI. Microsoft is cutting to fund $190 billion in AI capex. These aren’t random reorganizations. They’re reallocation of capital from human workers into machine workers. The question is whether the machines will generate enough return to justify the switch.

The Consumer Split

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Americans are split in half right now. Half are getting crushed — 55% say their finances are worsening, the highest ever recorded. Energy costs are up 10 percentage points. Gas prices are the main driver.

But the other half? They’re still spending. Delta Air Lines CEO said premium consumers are “growing immune to the headlines and not putting off their plans.” Apple’s services revenue hit a record $31 billion. People who own stocks and real estate are doing fine. People who just work for a living are hurting.

This is the political reality. 55% feeling worse off is a number that has consequences at the ballot box. The cost of living is now the #1 financial concern for 31% of Americans. That hasn’t happened by accident.

What This Means for You

Three things stand out from all this data.

First, energy infrastructure and commodities are where the money is right now. BP more than doubled its profit. Shell announced its largest deal in over a decade. Caterpillar raised its full-year forecast because AI is driving demand for power equipment. The energy shock isn’t going away soon.

Second, AI infrastructure (specifically cloud and semiconductors) is still the place to be, but pick your spots carefully. Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Nvidia are printing money. Meta and pure-play AI companies without clear revenue models are more precarious.

Third, watch the consumer carefully. If gas prices stay elevated, if airfares keep climbing, if energy costs keep eating into paychecks, the spending boom that has held this economy up will eventually crack. The S&P 500 is at record highs while 55% of Americans feel worse off. That disconnect can’t last forever.

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(2) Important Finance News

📬 Today we’ll look at:

1) U.S. Debt Just Became Larger Than the Economy

2) 55% of Americans Say Their Finances Are Getting Worse — Highest in 25 Years

3) The AI Bubble Enters Its Next Phase

4) Tech Layoffs Hit 81,000 So Far in 2026

5) Gas Will Stay Above $4 for a Long Time

🤔 But first, are you worried about U.S. debt hitting 100% of GDP?

1. U.S. Debt Just Became Larger Than the Economy

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget confirmed this Thursday that U.S. debt held by the public officially crossed 100% of GDP as of March 31, reaching $31.27 trillion against an economy generating $31.22 trillion in annual output, the first time this threshold has been crossed since the end of World War II.

The last time America was here was 1946. But here’s what most people don’t know. That post-WWII debt got resolved fast. Military spending collapsed when the war ended. The economy boomed. Growth and inflation together pushed the debt-to-GDP ratio from 106% back under 50% in just over a decade. By 2008, it was below 40%.

None of those escape hatches exist today. The government is spending $1.33 for every $1 it collects, running a nearly $2 trillion annual deficit. Interest on the debt consumes one in every seven federal dollars, more than the entire defense budget. The Congressional Budget Office projects the ratio hits 120% of GDP by 2036 and 175% by 2056 without major policy changes.

Why it matters for you: Higher government debt pushes borrowing costs up for everyone over time. As Washington competes with businesses and households for available capital, mortgage rates, car loans, and credit card rates all get pulled higher. And every interest rate increase makes the government’s debt burden heavier, creating a feedback loop that becomes harder to break the longer it runs. The CBO estimates that a 0.1 percentage-point rate increase costs $379 billion over 10 years.

The U.S. still holds the world’s reserve currency, giving it far more runway than Greece or Italy ever had. But that cushion isn’t unlimited, and economists at MIT and Brookings have begun saying clearly that the long-term trajectory for borrowing costs is up.

My advice: Think of government debt as a slow tide that raises the cost of everything in the economy. You don’t need to panic, but you do need to adapt. Hold assets that benefit from or protect against higher rates (TIPS, real assets, commodities). Reduce variable-rate debt (credit cards, adjustable mortgages) where possible. And understand that the fiscal math of the United States is going to affect your cost of living and your investment returns for the rest of your life.

2. 55% of Americans Say Their Finances Are Getting Worse — The Highest in 25 Years

Gallup released data showing that 55% of Americans say their financial situation is getting worse, the highest share recorded in 25 years of tracking this question, surpassing both the 2008-09 financial crisis and the COVID-19 recession.

Five consecutive years. That’s how long more Americans have reported worsening finances than improving ones. This isn’t a blip. It’s a trend.

The top financial concern, cited by 31% of respondents, is the cost of living. Energy costs are now the top concern for 13% of households (up 10 percentage points from last year, the highest since 2008). Gas hit $4.11/gallon by the time of the poll and has climbed to $4.39 since. Before the Iran war started February 28, gas was under $3 a gallon. The University of Michigan’s final April Consumer Sentiment reading came in at 49.8, a record low. One-year inflation expectations jumped to 4.7%, the sharpest monthly rise since the April 2025 tariff shock.

Here’s what this actually means for the economy: Consumer spending drives roughly 70% of U.S. GDP. When 55% of the country feels financially squeezed, they pull back. They eat out less. They delay big purchases. They cancel vacations. That shows up in Q1 GDP data, where consumer spending already slowed even as business investment (AI-driven) carried the growth number. The gas price impact hasn’t fully worked through the system yet. Diesel at $5.64 hurts truckers and supply chains. Petrochemical prices are rising, meaning the cost of plastic, medicine, and consumer goods will follow.

My advice: Build your cash reserves now, before conditions deteriorate further. A 3-6 month emergency fund isn’t just prudent personal finance right now. It’s a hedge against a worsening economic environment. Pay down variable-rate debt aggressively. Review your budget and identify the 2-3 largest discretionary expenses you can trim. And if you’re investing, rotate toward defensive, income-producing assets (consumer staples, utilities, healthcare, dividend payers) and away from consumer discretionary names that get hit hardest when household budgets tighten.

3. The AI Bubble Enters Its Next Phase

Despite record capital spending, AI’s biggest players are seeing revenue growth lag the pace of investment, raising questions about timing and returns that the market has been reluctant to ask out loud.

JPMorgan estimates roughly $5 trillion will flow into AI infrastructure by 2030. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft alone plan about $670 billion in 2026. Add other players and total AI capex runs near $725 billion for the year. That investment level, relative to GDP, exceeds nearly every major capital cycle in American history.

And yet, Alphabet reported 63% year-over-year cloud growth this week. Amazon cloud rose 28%. Both beat estimates handily. So the bull case isn’t wrong. AI demand is real and growing. The problem is the gap between what’s being spent and what’s being earned, which is still wide. Meta raised full-year capex to $145 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts he doesn’t have “a precise plan” for how spending generates returns. Microsoft announced $190 billion in AI capex and fell 5% despite beating estimates. JPMorgan downgraded Meta to Neutral, citing accelerating spending with unclear payoff timelines.

Here’s the historical parallel I keep coming back to. In the late 1990s, telecom companies laid thousands of miles of fiber optic cable. Internet demand was real. But spending ran so far ahead of actual demand that most companies went bankrupt before the payoff arrived. The fiber was eventually used, years later, by a different set of companies. The parallel isn’t perfect (AI demand is more immediate than late-90s internet), but the financing structure is worth watching closely. The AI buildout is being funded through corporate bonds, private credit, and junk debt that ultimately tie back to retirement accounts and pension funds. That exposure looks manageable today. If returns take longer than expected, it starts to look different.

The Magnificent Seven now make up over 30% of the S&P 500. That means the performance of 7 companies increasingly drives the retirement accounts of millions of Americans. That’s a risk most people haven’t fully absorbed.

My advice: Don’t abandon tech, but be selective. Favor companies where AI generates direct, measurable revenue today (Alphabet and Amazon in cloud, Nvidia in chips) over those still building toward a future payoff. And maintain real diversification outside tech in energy, healthcare, financials, and international markets. Thirty percent concentration in 7 stocks is not a portfolio. It’s a bet.

4. Tech Layoffs Hit 81,000 So Far in 2026

81,272 tech workers lost their jobs in the first four months of 2026, more than half of the 124,201 cuts logged in all of 2025, and it’s only early May.

The individual company numbers are striking. Oracle cut 30,000 employees (18% of its global workforce) in March to free up $8-$10 billion annually for its $50 billion AI investment plan. Amazon cut 30,000 across multiple rounds, its largest workforce reduction ever. Meta is cutting 8,000 more on May 20, on top of 1,500 from its VR division in January. Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts targeting 7% of its staff. Snap cut 16% of its workforce in April.

The pattern is unmistakable. These companies are trading people for AI infrastructure. They’re spending tens of billions on data centers, chips, and models, and cutting headcount to protect margins and fund the buildout. Forrester Research estimates only 6% of positions will be automated by 2030, so this isn’t the apocalyptic AI-replaces-everyone story many fear. It’s a capital reallocation story. The employees paying the price aren’t being replaced by robots. They’re being cut to fund a bet that AI will make the remaining workforce more productive.

My advice depends on which side of it you’re on:

If you work in tech, my honest advice is to build skills at the intersection of AI and your specific domain. The workers being retained are those who can leverage AI tools to do more. The ones being cut are those whose roles are being restructured away. Start positioning yourself now, before the next round.

If you’re an investor, read the layoff signals carefully. Short-term markets sometimes cheer job cuts as margin improvement. But this time results are mixed. Meta and Microsoft fell despite cuts, because investors are increasingly skeptical that cutting jobs solves the core question of whether AI spending will ever pay for itself. 81,000 high-income job losses in four months also ripple through housing markets and local economies in ways that don’t show up immediately in GDP data.

5. Gas Will Stay Above $4 for a Very Long Time

The Iran war isn’t just a temporary supply disruption. It’s a permanent restructuring of global energy markets, and investors are only beginning to price it in.

Brent crude briefly topped $126/barrel on Thursday before pulling back to $117, as President Trump rejected Iran’s peace proposal and reinforced the naval blockade. WTI is trading around $105. Goldman Sachs raised its Q4 Brent forecast to $90/barrel as the base case, $100 if the Strait of Hormuz stays blocked through July, and $120 in the worst case. Citigroup warned Brent could hit $150 if the blockade runs through June. ING strategists called the UAE’s OPEC exit “a significant setback for the cartel.”

The most significant development this week wasn’t the price move. It was the UAE quitting OPEC.

The UAE announced Tuesday it’s leaving OPEC and OPEC+ on May 1, ending a 59-year membership. The reason is simple. The Iran war has exposed how dangerous dependence on the Strait of Hormuz actually is. The UAE has been under Iranian attack. Its shipping has been threatened. Being inside OPEC with production quotas made sense when you could ship oil freely through the Gulf. When you can’t, the quotas become constraints without benefits.

This is the biggest fracture in OPEC’s history. OPEC’s share of global oil output fell from 48% to 44% in two months. With the UAE gone, it falls further. The cartel’s ability to manage prices is weakening at exactly the moment the world needs supply stability most.

The winners in this new energy order are clear. Oil majors outside the Gulf, South American producers, LNG exporters, and pipeline infrastructure companies are all positioned to benefit. BP more than doubled its profits year over year. Shell made its largest acquisition in over a decade to buy Canadian oil assets. South American drillers could unlock 2 million more barrels/day at sustained $100/barrel prices, per Rystad. U.S. LNG exports are near record levels.

And here’s the long-term angle most people miss. This war is the most powerful clean energy accelerant in history. Pain at the pump creates political and economic momentum for alternatives that decades of policy couldn’t generate. In 2025, renewables outpaced electricity demand growth for the first time, triggering the first drop in fossil fuel generation since 2020. The Iran war may end. The lesson it’s teaching, that concentrated supply chains around a single chokepoint are an existential risk, will reshape global energy investment for decades.

My advice: Own the near-term energy shock (oil majors, LNG, pipeline infrastructure). And position for the long-term transition (renewables, energy storage, grid infrastructure). Both sides of this trade have multi-year legs.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

America is being squeezed from five directions at once, and each squeeze is making the others worse.

The Iran war drove oil prices up, which drove inflation higher, which hammered consumer sentiment to record lows. That same inflation makes the Fed’s job impossible, keeping rates elevated and limiting the government’s ability to stimulate a slowing economy. The national debt crossed 100% of GDP, meaning every dollar of deficit spending and every point of higher interest rates deepens the fiscal hole faster. And Big Tech, sensing AI is the only growth engine left, is pouring hundreds of billions into infrastructure by cutting tens of thousands of workers, a reallocation bet the market is increasingly uncertain about.

This is structural stress, not cyclical stress. Cyclical problems (a temporary recession, a one-time shock) resolve themselves. Structural problems (debt at 100% of GDP, permanently disrupted energy supply chains, AI not yet paying for its own buildout) require deliberate action to fix. And the political will to take that action is absent.

The investor’s playbook for structural stress is different from the playbook for cyclical stress. Don’t wait for things to “return to normal.” Normal has changed. Position your portfolio for a higher-oil, higher-debt, higher-rate, AI-driven economy. Hold energy. Be selective in tech. Reduce consumer discretionary exposure. Build cash reserves. And invest in skills at the AI frontier in your professional life, because the workforce is being permanently restructured.

Normal has changed. Position for the new normal.

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Part II - Investing Research

3. Insider Trades

4. Top Stocks Right Now

5. Today’s Trade

6. Market Sentiment (Fear & Greed Analysis)

7. Macro Technical Analysis & Predictions

(3) Insider Trades (from Billionaires, Politicians, and CEOs):

When people with deep knowledge, such as politicians who set policy, executives who run the company, or legendary investors, put their own money on the line, pay attention.

1) Iperionx

Iperionx $IPX is a U.S.-based advanced materials company developing a patented, lower-cost, lower-emission process for producing titanium, one of the most critical materials in aerospace, defense, medical devices, and clean energy. Most global titanium supply has historically come from Russia and China.

On April 29, 2026, Todd Hannigan (Executive Chairman) purchased 480,000 shares at $4.33/share for a total of $2,077,784. He now owns 26,562,798 shares, a 2% increase in an already massive personal position.

This is the largest of the two insider trades by dollar value. And for a small company trading at $4.33/share, a $2+ million open-market purchase from the Executive Chairman is a powerful statement.

The thesis is straightforward and timely. The Iran war, rising U.S.-China tensions, and a government-driven push to reshore critical manufacturing are all creating urgent demand for domestic titanium. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and SpaceX consume large quantities. The U.S. defense and aerospace industries cannot afford to depend on adversary nations for this material. Iperionx’s process reportedly produces commercial-grade titanium at lower cost and lower carbon emissions than traditional methods, two selling points that matter to both cost-conscious defense buyers and emissions-conscious energy customers.

Looking ahead, the key catalysts are customer offtake agreements with major aerospace and defense buyers, government contracts, and successful scaling of the production process. If even one of those materializes at scale within 12-24 months, the stock at $4 could look very different. The tailwinds of defense spending, critical minerals reshoring, and supply chain security are all pointing in the same direction.

2) Zenas Biopharma $ZBIO

Zenas Biopharma $ZBIO is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing antibody therapies for immunology and rare diseases. As a pipeline-stage company, its value is entirely in what its drug candidates can become.

On April 29, 2026, Leon O. Moulder Jr. (CEO) purchased 60,000 shares at $17.79/share for a total of $1,067,200. He now owns 2,246,122 shares, a 3% increase.

Here’s why this trade demands attention. Moulder isn’t just any biotech CEO. He’s the executive who built Tesaro, the oncology company that GlaxoSmithKline acquired for $5.1 billion in 2019. He has a proven track record of building clinical-stage companies into major exits. When someone with that record puts over $1 million of personal money into the company he leads, the signal is hard to ignore.

Clinical-stage biotech is high-risk by definition. These companies live and die by trial results and FDA timelines. But CEO insider buys at this scale in biotech carry one of the strongest predictive signals in all of investing, because the CEO knows the pipeline better than any Wall Street analyst. What might Moulder know? Upcoming clinical data, regulatory progress, or interest from larger pharma companies. Any of those could move a $17/share stock significantly.

Looking ahead, if Zenas’s lead immunology programs generate positive trial data, the stock at current levels could look very cheap in retrospect. Immunology and rare disease drugs command premium pricing and strong market positions once approved. And given Moulder’s background, the longer-term scenario many investors are watching is a potential acquisition by a larger pharmaceutical company looking to expand its immunology pipeline, much like Tesaro was for GSK.

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(4) Top Stocks Right Now

1) Atlassian $TEAM up +29.6% on Friday 5/1

Atlassian $TEAM surged +29.6% yesterday after delivering a strong earnings and revenue beat driven by accelerating cloud and data center growth, its best single-day move in months and a clear signal that the AI era is creating new tailwinds for enterprise software companies.

Atlassian makes the tools that engineering and product teams run on daily, Jira for project tracking, Confluence for documentation, and a growing suite of AI-powered collaboration products. When companies deploy AI across their organizations, they need better infrastructure to manage the resulting complexity and coordination. That’s Atlassian’s exact value proposition, and it showed up clearly in this quarter’s numbers.

The cloud migration story is paying off. As customers upgrade from server-based Atlassian products to cloud plans, they pay higher recurring fees, driving revenue growth and margin expansion. Data center growth was a standout this quarter, showing even large enterprise customers who haven’t moved to the cloud yet are willing to pay up for Atlassian’s on-premise solutions.

Looking ahead, Atlassian’s total addressable market runs into the hundreds of billions as AI agents and workflow automation create new demand for project coordination software. The company is embedding AI (Atlassian Intelligence) directly into existing products, which deepens customer lock-in and supports premium pricing. If enterprise AI adoption keeps accelerating through 2026 and beyond, Atlassian stands out as one of the clearest software infrastructure beneficiaries.

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In the months before Pearl Harbor, the stock market rallied. Investors told themselves the war would stay overseas.

In the weeks before the 2008 crash, everyone laughed at the idea of a housing collapse.

Humans confuse calm surfaces with safe waters.

Right now, the surface looks calm. Stocks are up. AI stocks are booming. But underneath, the data tells a different story. Consumer sentiment hit an all-time low. Inflation is speeding up. A war in Iran is disrupting global energy. And Michael Burry just found a $1.7 trillion accounting illusion hiding in your 401k. This issue connects every dot.

Most people think the biggest risk right now is a crash. They’re wrong.

The biggest risk is believing everything is fine.

Because when markets go up during rising inflation, falling confidence, and increasing layoffs… it doesn’t mean the economy is strong.

It means something is out of balance.

And imbalances don’t last.

In this issue, I break down why inflation is likely to get worse before it gets better, expose the $1.7 trillion earnings illusion hiding in your 401(k), explain why the housing crisis just deepened, show you where the smart money is moving, and give you the exact steps to protect and grow your wealth through the chaos.

📬 In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at:

Part I - Markets & Economy:

1. Update, Analysis, and Outlook

2. Important Finance News

3. Chart of the Day

Part II - Investing Research:

4. Insider Trades

5. Top Stocks Right Now

6. Today’s Trade

7. Market Sentiment (Fear & Greed Analysis)

8. Macro Technical Analysis

Part III - Tips & Advice:

9. Advice & Recommendations

10. Final Thoughts

11. Your Questions Answered

We hope you’re enjoying this newsletter — it takes a week to research and write so please help support our journalism and:

1. Hit the LIKE button❤️ on this post and share this newsletter on social media (or with friends & family):

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2. 🙏Become a paid subscriber! (learn about the benefits here) (Get a free 30-day trial with this link):

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Part I - Markets & Economy

(1) Update, Analysis, and Outlook

📈 Everything You Need to Know (in 1 minute):

1. Inflation re-accelerated to 3.3% in March — gasoline prices surged a record 21.2% in a single month, the biggest one-month spike since the 1960s. The Iran war is the root cause. That one category accounted for nearly three-quarters of the entire March inflation reading.

2. The Iran war has removed roughly 500 million barrels from global markets in ~50 days — about $50 billion in lost oil production. That’s equal to all the fuel the world’s international shipping industry burns in 4 months. Peace talks collapsed this weekend, and the U.S. Navy has now begun enforcing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest level in recorded history. The University of Michigan survey has never been this low. 65% of Americans say rising prices are outpacing their income. 39% are now using credit cards to buy groceries.

4. March home sales fell 3.6% to 3.98 million (annualized) — the worst number since mid-2025. The spring selling season got off to its worst start in recent memory as high costs and war-driven uncertainty froze buyers out.

5. Airfares jumped 15% year-over-year in March. Delta, United, American, and Southwest all raised checked bag fees by $10. Delta alone faces over $2 billion in added fuel costs just this quarter.

6. Tech layoffs are accelerating fast. Meta is cutting ~8,000 employees in May (10% of workforce), with more cuts planned later this year. Snap cut 16% this week. Block cut 40%, with CEO Jack Dorsey saying AI is “doing a lot of these jobs better and less expensively than humans.”

7. Michael Burry found a $1.7 trillion “earnings illusion” hiding in tech stocks. After reviewing over 1,000 annual reports, he says tech earnings are overstated by 42% due to improper accounting for stock-based compensation. Companies flagged include Meta, Palantir, Shopify, CrowdStrike, and Workday.

8. AI chip demand keeps accelerating — and supply can’t keep up. TSMC posted profits up 58% year-over-year, raised its full-year forecast, and confirmed AI demand is “extremely robust.” ASML said demand is outpacing supply. Cloud providers are committing $600B+ to data centers this year alone.

9. Apple named a new CEO. Hardware chief John Ternus takes over September 1. Tim Cook becomes executive chairman after growing Apple from ~$330 billion to $4 trillion — a 12x increase over his tenure.

10. Psychedelic drug stocks surged 17-42% after Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking FDA review timelines for LSD, psilocybin, and ibogaine treatments. $50 million in federal research funding is attached.

11. China’s solid-state EV batteries are entering mass production in 2026. Greater Bay Technology just moved these cells off the lab bench and onto the production line — with 2x+ the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries and a potential driving range over 620 miles per charge.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

The most dangerous thing you can do right now is assume things are fine.

Global uncertainty just hit its highest level in recorded history. Not during 9/11. Not during the 2008 financial crash. Not even during COVID. Right now. And yet, the S&P 500 is near all-time highs. Consumer sentiment just hit an all-time low. The gap between what markets are saying and what people are feeling is the most important financial story of 2026.

I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. Through my time at Wall Street banks — through war cycles, credit crises, and irrational exuberance — I’ve learned that the moments that feel the most stable on the surface are often the most fragile underneath. Here’s how to read what’s really happening right now.

One War. Every Problem.

The Iran war, now entering its 8th week, is the engine behind almost every major economic problem on this list. Follow the chain reaction that most people aren’t tracking.

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil and LNG supply. Iran’s disruption of that shipping lane removed 500 million barrels from global markets in 50 days. That’s $50 billion in lost oil production. As a result, gasoline prices surged 21.2% in March alone — the biggest single-month spike since the 1960s. That one number drove nearly three-quarters of the entire March inflation reading.

But here’s what most people miss: energy is an input cost for everything. Airlines pay more for jet fuel (Delta’s fuel bill jumps $2 billion this quarter). Construction crews burn diesel, which means PVC pipes cost 50% more and homebuilding stalls. Trucks carrying groceries burn more fuel, which creeps into every price on every shelf. The downstream effects on food, shipping, and agriculture haven’t fully hit yet. What we’ve seen is just the opening act.

Harvard’s Linda Bilmes estimates the total war tab could reach $1 trillion over the next decade. The Pentagon’s current bill is already understated. And the real costs — veteran care, rebuilding, compounding debt — arrive later. These are costs being handed directly to the next generation.

Real Wages Are Losing. Here’s What That Actually Means.

Since January 2021, cumulative consumer prices are up about 26%. Real hourly wages, after adjusting for inflation, grew only about 1.4% over the past year. That gap is the economic reality that 65% of Americans are expressing when they say rising prices are outpacing their income.

When 39% of Americans use credit cards to buy groceries, that tells you something critical. Savings are depleted. Debt is rising. The consumer spending that keeps the economy running is now running on borrowed time — literally. If real wages don’t outpace inflation and grow more quickly, this isn’t just an uncomfortable stretch. It becomes a spending contraction that hits corporate earnings hard down the road.

The AI Boom Is Real. So Is Its Dark Side.

While inflation erodes purchasing power for most Americans, something remarkable is happening on a parallel track. The AI spending boom is not slowing down — it’s accelerating.

TSMC posted profits up 58% year-over-year and raised its full-year forecast. The shift from generative AI (which answers questions) to agentic AI (which takes actions and completes tasks) is pushing chip demand to levels where supply can’t keep up. Cloud providers are collectively spending $600B+ on data centers this year alone. In my two decades in finance, the rule of thumb was always simple: follow the capital. And right now, capital is flooding into AI infrastructure at a pace we’ve never seen.

But here’s the uncomfortable flip side. Michael Burry — the investor who shorted the housing market before 2008 — just dropped a bombshell on tech investing. After reviewing over 1,000 annual reports going back a decade, he found a $1.7 trillion “earnings illusion” in Nasdaq 100 stocks. The cause? Tech companies give employees stock as pay — a very real cost — but many haven’t been fully accounting for it in their reported earnings. Of every dollar of GAAP-blessed earnings per share, shareholders actually receive only about 83 cents of real value. Companies flagged include Meta, Palantir, Shopify, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Workday.

If Burry is even half right, the stocks sitting inside millions of 401(k)s and index funds are worth less than their price tags suggest. This isn’t a reason to panic. It is a reason to think carefully about what you own and why.

Apple’s Leadership Transition Is More Significant Than It Looks

Tim Cook handing the CEO role to hardware chief John Ternus on September 1 isn’t a routine transition. It’s a strategic bet on where the next era of tech gets won.

Cook grew Apple from a $330 billion company to a $4 trillion one — a 12x increase. But the company has stumbled into AI, failed to break into new hardware categories (the car project was quietly abandoned, Vision Pro has found few buyers), and has repeatedly delayed its most ambitious Apple Intelligence features. Ternus — the man responsible for the M-series chips and the physical design of every Apple product — is taking over at a moment when hardware plus AI, not software alone, may define the next competitive moat.

If Apple can position itself as the device layer that runs AI privately and securely — something no competitor is doing at scale — it could define the next decade of consumer technology. That’s the bet. It’s not guaranteed. But it’s worth watching closely.

China Just Changed the Future of Transportation

Greater Bay Technology, backed by China’s GAC Group, just moved all-solid-state EV batteries from the laboratory to mass production — targeting GWh-level output in 2026. These batteries carry 2x+ the energy density of current lithium-ion cells, a potential driving range over 620 miles per charge, faster charging, and dramatically improved safety. They don’t catch fire under stress tests.

When economies of scale kick in over the next 3-5 years, these batteries make internal combustion engines look like dial-up internet in a fiber-optic world. China already produces solid EVs in the $10,000-$15,000 range. Add this battery technology, and you’re looking at a global disruption of the $3 trillion automobile industry that’s moving faster than most investors have priced in. The companies positioned early in rare earth supply, battery materials, and EV infrastructure are going to benefit enormously.

My Advice

The right move isn’t “all in” or “all out.” It’s knowing what risks you’re running and positioning with intention.

First, protect against inflation. Cumulative 26% price increases since 2021 have already eroded significant purchasing power. Cash sitting in a low-yield account is losing real value every day. High-yield savings accounts paying 4-5%, Treasury bills, TIPS, and energy ETFs all provide inflation protection that most people are ignoring.

Second, stay in AI infrastructure selectively. Distinguish between the picks-and-shovels plays — TSMC, ASML, memory chip makers, data center power providers — and the AI-branded companies with more press releases than revenue. The former are benefiting from a real, structural capex cycle. The latter carry much higher valuation risk.

Third, audit your tech concentration. If your index fund or 401(k) is 80-100% in big tech, run Burry’s question on it: are those earnings real, or are they adjusted figures that overstate actual value? A little international exposure, some value stocks, and dividend payers can meaningfully reduce your risk without sacrificing long-term growth.

Fourth, watch housing as a leading indicator. When housing prices crack, consumer confidence typically follows. March’s home sales at their worst level since mid-2025 is a warning sign. A crack in housing would hit bank stocks, consumer spending, and the broader economy faster than most people expect.

Fifth, think in decades on EVs and rare earths. The solid-state battery breakthrough isn’t a 2026 story — it’s a 2028 to 2033 story. The companies building that infrastructure right now — rare earth producers, battery material suppliers, EV charging networks — are early in a decade-long trend with government-backed tailwinds.

Final thought: Uncertainty is at a record high. Markets are near all-time highs. That paradox is both the defining risk and the defining opportunity of this moment. The investors who understand both sides of that equation, and act deliberately, are the ones who build real wealth through chaos.

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(2) Important Finance News

📬 Today we’ll look at:

1) Inflation Is Back — and the Worst Is Still Ahead

2) The Iran War Is Making America's Housing Crisis Even Worse

3) The Stock Market Is at All-Time Highs. Consumer Sentiment Is at All-Time Lows. Who's Right?

4) AI Adoption Is Real, and So Are the Layoffs

5) The Ticking Time Bomb in Your Retirement Accounts

🤔 But first, Do you trust the current stock market rally?

1. Inflation Is Back — and the Worst Is Still Ahead

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that the March Consumer Price Index came in at 3.3% year-over-year — the highest reading in nearly two years, and well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target that hasn’t been met since February 2021.

The single biggest driver was gasoline. Gas prices surged 21.2% in March alone — the largest single-month percentage increase in records dating back to the 1960s. That one category accounted for nearly three-quarters of the entire March inflation reading. And it’s almost entirely a product of the Iran war disrupting the world’s most critical oil shipping lane.

The part that should concern you most is what hasn’t happened yet. When energy costs spike, they take weeks or months to bleed into food prices, trucking costs, manufacturing, and retail. The 3.3% reading may actually be the low point before things get harder. Even before March’s surge, a separate Fed-favored inflation gauge showed a 4.1% annual rate over the three months ending in February. The pipeline of inflation is still filling up.

Cumulatively, prices are up about 26% since January 2021. Real hourly wages, after adjusting for inflation, grew only about 1.4% over the past year. That gap — 26% price growth versus 1.4% real wage growth — explains why 65% of Americans say rising prices are outpacing their income, and why 39% are using credit cards to pay for groceries. When people use credit to buy food, it signals savings are depleted and spending is running on borrowed money.

The Fed’s situation is difficult. It needs high rates to fight inflation — but high rates slow economic growth, crush housing affordability, and squeeze borrowers at exactly the moment they can least afford it. There’s no clean exit from this corner.

My advice: Treat inflation as a permanent feature of your financial planning, not a temporary inconvenience. Assets that have historically outpaced inflation — stocks (selectively), real estate, commodities, and inflation-protected securities — deserve a larger share of your portfolio. If you’re holding cash earning below the inflation rate, you’re losing purchasing power every single day without making a single bad decision.

2. The Iran War Is Making America’s Housing Crisis Even Worse

The Iran conflict is worsening one of America’s most severe housing shortfalls, driving up costs across virtually every building category at a moment when the market was already under extreme pressure.

PVC pipe prices have surged over 50% since the conflict began. Aluminum is spiking after Iranian strikes in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain disrupted Gulf-region supply chains. These materials show up in nearly every residential and commercial project — in plumbing, window frames, HVAC systems, and electrical conduit. When input costs jump like this, developers face three choices: absorb the loss, raise prices, or stop building. Most are choosing the last two.

Projects that were already strained by labor shortages and tight financing are stalling or getting cancelled outright. The only construction segment holding up right now is data centers — where AI demand creates enough urgency and profit margin to absorb higher costs. Every other sector is taking a hit.

Billionaire developer Stephen Ross, the man behind Hudson Yards, called housing affordability “the biggest issue going forward” this week. He acknowledged that Trump’s $200 billion mortgage bond initiative is a step — but said it’s “not enough” to fix a problem this structural. The housing shortage in America — already estimated at 4 to 7 million units before this war began — is getting worse, not better.

March existing home sales came in at 3.98 million annualized — the worst reading since mid-2025. The spring selling season, which is typically the strongest of the year, got off to its worst start in recent memory. With 30-year mortgage rates still hovering around 7%, first-time buyers are locked out. With construction costs rising and financing tight, builders aren’t filling the gap fast enough.

My advice: If you’re waiting for housing prices to fall sharply, the math isn’t working in your favor. The supply shortage is structural and getting worse — not better. For investors, residential REITs and single-family rental operators continue to benefit as millions of would-be buyers remain permanently sidelined in the rental market. For renters planning to buy eventually, extend your timeline and build savings aggressively in a high-yield account while rates stay elevated.

3. The Stock Market Is at All-Time Highs. Consumer Sentiment Is at All-Time Lows. Who’s Right?

The stock market’s strong performance may be built on shakier ground than most investors realize — a concern that crystallized around bombshell analysis published by Michael Burry, the investor who famously shorted the 2008 housing bubble.

Burry published findings this week showing that Nasdaq 100 tech earnings have been overstated by 42% over the past decade. After reviewing more than 1,000 annual reports from the period ending fiscal 2025, he identified a $1.7 trillion “earnings illusion” tied to improper treatment of stock-based compensation. Companies pay employees partially in stock — a real cost — but many tech firms haven’t been fully counting that cost when reporting their adjusted earnings. “Of every dollar of earnings per share that GAAP blesses, shareholders see only 83.49 cents,” Burry wrote. Companies he flagged include Meta, Palantir, Shopify, Datadog, Workday, CrowdStrike, and Zscaler.

This comes on top of a market that’s already running hot on two forces that may not last. First, AI chip demand has caused Micron’s 2027 earnings estimates to surge from $19 to $101 per share since last October. Second, the Iran war has boosted energy company earnings forecasts by roughly one-third since late February. Both forces could fade — and if they do, valuations that look reasonable today could start looking stretched fast.

The contrast with how ordinary Americans feel is stark. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index just fell to its lowest reading in the survey’s history — a survey that dates back over 70 years. A CBS News poll found 63% of Americans say the economy is “bad” — even with unemployment at 4.3%. Markets and consumers are telling completely opposite stories about the state of the economy. One of them will be proven right.

My advice: Don’t over-concentrate in any single sector. If your portfolio is 80% or more in big tech, rebalancing toward value stocks, dividend payers, and international markets reduces risk without sacrificing long-term growth potential. More importantly, understand what you actually own. The S&P 500 today is heavily weighted toward a handful of AI and tech names. Know what’s inside your index fund

.

4. AI Adoption Is Real, and So Are the Layoffs

Artificial intelligence has become the leading stated reason for corporate layoffs in 2026 — a dramatic escalation from where things stood just a year ago.

AI accounted for 25% of all tracked U.S. layoffs in March — up from just 5% throughout all of 2025 — according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Snap is cutting 16% of its full-time workforce, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI-enabled streamlining. Meta is cutting roughly 8,000 employees in May, with more cuts later in the year, as the company’s Metaverse bet unwinds into an AI pivot. Block cut 40% of its workforce, with CEO Jack Dorsey saying AI is doing many jobs “better and less expensively than humans.” Salesforce, Oracle, Atlassian, and Pinterest made similar announcements with similar language.

At the same time — and this nuance matters — AI is genuinely delivering real results. A Morgan Stanley report published this week found that one-quarter of all S&P 500 companies reported at least one quantifiable AI impact in Q1, up from 13% a year ago. Bank of America says AI saves them the equivalent of 2,000 software engineers. Hasbro cut concept-to-prototype time by 80%. Altria reduced marketing content creation time by 50%.

Both things are true simultaneously. AI is replacing real tasks. And some companies are using “AI” as convenient cover for restructuring they planned anyway. Whether the reason is genuine or strategic may not matter to someone who just lost their job.

For workers, the message from engineering professor Ahmad Banafa is blunt: “It’s not gonna stop. This is just the beginning.” The window to build AI skills is open right now — but it won’t stay that way.

My advice: If your role involves writing, coding, analysis, customer service, or any language-based, repetitive process — build AI fluency now, not later. The workers who learn to work with AI will have far more leverage than those competing against it. Get certifications. Use AI tools daily. For investors, companies successfully deploying AI to reduce headcount have a direct path to expanding profit margins — watch for operating leverage improvements across finance, tech, and communications sectors in the next few earnings seasons.

5. The Ticking Time Bomb in Your Retirement Accounts

Multiple economists and investment managers are warning about a brewing risk at the intersection of private credit markets and the life insurance industry — a risk that could directly affect millions of Americans through their retirement savings.

Private credit — lending done by private funds rather than traditional banks — has grown into a nearly $1.8 trillion market. Life insurance companies became some of its biggest participants, pouring roughly $849 billion into private credit funds by 2024, according to Federal Reserve researchers. That’s more than double what it was in 2014. They did this to earn enough return to fund the annuity payments — steady retirement income — promised to their policyholders.

That setup worked when markets were calm. Now, stress is building. More investors are trying to exit private credit funds than are entering. Redemption requests at business development companies are rising. And because private credit is, by design, opaque — you can’t assess these holdings the way you can with a public stock or bond — it’s genuinely hard to know how bad the exposure is.

Andrew Milgram of Marblegate Asset Management warns of a potential “doom loop.” If enough retirees surrender their annuities out of fear, insurance companies must sell private credit assets into a weak market, pushing prices lower, creating more fear, triggering more surrenders — the same amplification mechanism that deepened the 2008 mortgage crisis. Economist Eileen Appelbaum put it plainly: “The lack of transparency surrounding private credit funds makes it impossible to evaluate just how vulnerable they are.”

The industry pushes back, noting that insurers primarily hold investment-grade private credit, not speculative loans. JPMorgan’s Aaron Mulvihill called the current selling “driven by fear, rather than fundamentals.” Both assessments can be true at once.

My advice: If you have an annuity or plan to buy one, ask your advisor specifically what assets are backing it and whether the insurer has meaningful private credit exposure. Any investment product labeled “private” or “alternative” carries less transparency and more liquidity risk than public market equivalents. Know what you own. If you’re nearing retirement and reliant on annuity income, this is exactly the kind of question a qualified financial advisor should help you answer before a stress event forces the issue.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

The Iran war drives energy costs up, which re-accelerates inflation, which erodes purchasing power, which pushes consumers toward credit — and stressed borrowers increase default risk in private credit markets. That same war drives up construction costs, deepening the housing shortage. The market sits near all-time highs on earnings that may be partially inflated, driven by forces (AI chip demand and war-driven energy profits) that could prove temporary. And companies are using AI to cut costs and workers at exactly the moment when consumer income is under its most pressure in years.

Five separate stories. One economic reality. The widening gap between what Wall Street is reporting and what Main Street is experiencing is the defining financial story of 2026.

My advice:

• Move idle cash to a high-yield savings account or short-term Treasuries earning 4-5%.

• Check whether your index fund is more than 50% concentrated in tech stocks.

• Ask your financial advisor about your annuity’s underlying asset exposure.

• Start building AI skills now — certifications, tools, daily practice.

• Prepare for summer travel costs to run 15%+ higher than last year and budget accordingly.

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(3) Chart of the Day and Deep Dive

The Chart That Shows Chaos Is Here to Stay

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

Stop and really look at this chart.

The World Uncertainty Index — a GDP-weighted measure tracking global economic and geopolitical uncertainty across more than 140 countries — just hit 105,000. Not 40,000, where it was during 9/11 and the Iraq War. Not 60,000, where COVID briefly pushed it. One hundred and five thousand. We are in territory this index has never seen before.

And yet, the stock market is near all-time highs. That’s the paradox you need to understand.

What this chart is actually measuring: Sourced from Ahir, Bloom, and Furceri and distributed through the Federal Reserve’s FRED database, this index tracks how often the word “uncertainty” and related terms appear in quarterly economic reports from the International Monetary Fund — across every major economy, weighted by their share of global GDP. When the number rises, it means the most senior economic decision-makers in the world are explicitly saying they don’t know what comes next. At 105,000, they’re saying it at a volume never recorded in the index’s 30-year history.

Reading the timeline: 9/11 and the Iraq War pushed the index to roughly 40,000 in the early 2000s. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis kept it elevated but never beyond that level. COVID spiked it to around 60,000. The current reading is nearly double the COVID peak and more than double any previous reading in history. Something genuinely different is happening.

What’s driving the spike: Three forces are compounding at the same time. The Iran war has disrupted global energy markets at a scale the International Energy Agency called “the greatest global energy security threat in history.” AI is accelerating economic disruption faster than governments and policymakers can track or respond to. And geopolitical fragmentation — countries building separate trade networks, technology ecosystems, and financial systems — is eliminating the predictable rules-based global order that gave investors a stable framework for decades.

The historical pattern: When uncertainty spikes sharply, three things tend to follow. Businesses delay capital investment — they wait to see what happens before committing to hiring or expansion. Consumers pull back on big purchases like homes, cars, and travel — exactly what March’s housing data confirmed. And markets eventually price in the uncertainty through volatility, typically after a period of denial that can last months.

Based on the Fear & Greed Index sitting at 68 (Greed) and markets near all-time highs, we appear to be in that denial phase right now. The surface looks calm. Underneath, individual investor sentiment surveys show nine straight weeks of more bears than bulls. Short interest across the Russell 3000 is at a 15-year high. The market’s surface and its internals are telling very different stories.

The long-term lesson this chart teaches: Every previous spike in the uncertainty index — 9/11, 2008, COVID — eventually resolved. Markets set new highs after each one. The investors who held through those periods, or added to positions during them, captured the best long-term returns. Uncertainty is the price of entry for the best buying opportunities. The chart doesn’t predict a crash. It predicts volatility — and volatility, managed with discipline, is how wealth gets built.

My advice:

Hold some defensive assets. Gold, short-term Treasuries, and money market funds act as shock absorbers in high-uncertainty environments. Even a 10-15% allocation reduces portfolio volatility meaningfully when conditions get rough.

Diversify globally. No single country is immune to consequences at this scale of uncertainty. International developed markets and select emerging markets offer both relative value and exposure that’s uncorrelated with U.S.-specific risks.

Don’t try to time the market. The paradox of peak uncertainty is that markets move in counterintuitive ways. The single best action for most long-term investors is maintaining a diversified portfolio while avoiding panic-driven decisions triggered by headlines.

Think in decades, not quarters. The chart has been running for 30 years. Every spike resolved. The people who positioned for that resolution — patiently, deliberately — won. The people who let fear drive their decisions during the spike often missed the recovery entirely. That’s the timeless lesson hiding inside the most alarming chart in finance right now.

I hope you’re enjoying this newsletter — it takes a week to research and write, so please help support our journalism and:

1. Hit the LIKE button on this post and share this newsletter on social media or with friends & family:

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Part II - Investing Research

4. Insider Trades

5. Top Stocks Right Now

6. Today’s Trade

7. Market Sentiment (Fear & Greed Analysis)

8. Macro Technical Analysis & Predictions

(4) Insider Trades (from Billionaires, Politicians, and CEOs):

When people with deep knowledge, such as politicians who set policy, executives who run the company, or legendary investors, put their own money on the line, pay attention.

Read more

This week tested every ounce of patience you have.

Inflation jumped to 3.3%. GDP nearly flatlined at 0.5%. The Fed is suddenly talking about raising rates again. And over 60,000 Americans lost their jobs in March.

If you’re feeling confused, you’re not alone.

But here’s what most people miss: the loudest headlines almost always hide the clearest opportunities.

During my years on Wall Street, I learned that markets don’t reward those who react fastest. They reward those who understand what’s actually happening beneath the noise.

This newsletter cuts through the fear. You’ll learn exactly what this week’s data means.

This week's issue is one of the most important I've written: we cover the hottest inflation reading in two years, the Fed's surprise shift toward rate hikes, the GDP collapse to 0.5%, 60,000+ job cuts driven by AI, and why Q1 earnings could flip the script on everything …

Read more

Most investors alive today have never lived through a real stagflation cycle. They’ve read about it. They’ve studied it. But they’ve never felt it.

They’re about to.

The Iran war started in late February. Oil has jumped 40% since. Gas crossed $4 a gallon. Inflation is headed to 4.2% — the highest in the G7. The hiring rate just hit its lowest point in 15 years. And the Fed — stuck between fighting inflation and protecting growth — may be about to raise rates for the first time in years.

Your grocery bill is about to get worse. So is your gas tank. And your mortgage. And your job security.

I warned you about this three weeks ago.

If you're scared, you're not alone. The data says almost everyone is.

Right now, the Fear and Greed Index sits at 19. Extreme Fear.

The S&P 500 just posted five straight weeks of losses. Oil is above $111. Recession odds are approaching 50%. The Mag 7 — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla — just had their worst quarter in years.

Nothing feels fine right now.

This is the part of the cycle where people make emotional decisions and call them rational.

Do not do that.

This isn’t just a bad quarter. It’s a regime change. It is a repricing of the world around higher energy costs, weaker hiring, tighter money, and rising geopolitical risk. And the investors who understand that early will have an edge that most people will not.

And those who understand what’s happening — and act on it — will be in a very different financial position one year from now than the ones who wait for the news to get better.

This newsletter isn't about fear. It's about clarity. This issue breaks down exactly what's happening, why it matters, and — most importantly — what you should do about it right now.

I cover why the US economy may be entering its first real stagflation cycle in decades, what a 19 Fear and Greed reading means for you, which sectors win and which lose in this environment, and the exact moves that give you the best shot at building wealth.

📬 In today’s issue:

Part I - Markets & Economy:

1. Update, Analysis, and Outlook

2. Important Financial News

3. Chart of the Day [Deep Dive]

Part II - Investing Research:

4. Insider Trades

5. Top Stocks Right Now

6. Today’s Trade

7. Fear & Greed Analysis (Market Sentiment)

8. Macro Technical Analysis & Predictions

Part III - My Tips & Advice:

9. Actionable Advice & Recommendations

10. Final Thoughts & Lessons

11. Your Questions Answered

This newsletter takes a week to research & write so please help me and:

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Part I - Markets & Economy

(1) Update, Analysis, and Outlook

📈 Everything You Need to Know (in 1 minute):

1. The S&P 500 fell for a fifth straight week — its longest losing streak since 2022 — closing Q1 2026 as the worst quarter since Q2 2022. The Nasdaq fell ~7%, the S&P 500 fell ~5%, and the Dow fell ~4% for the quarter.

2. The hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February — the lowest since April 2020. Job openings dropped to 6.9 million. US companies announced 60,620 layoffs in March, up 25% from February, with employers mostly blaming AI.

3. The OECD raised US inflation to 4.2% for 2026 — the highest in the G7. Global growth is projected to slow from 3.3% in 2025 to 2.9% in 2026.

4. Iran rejected all US ceasefire terms and set five conditions, including international recognition of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

5. Oil surged past $111/barrel on Thursday after Trump’s speech signaled weeks more of Iran conflict, marking an 11%+ single-day jump — oil’s biggest single-day spike since April 2020. Oil is now up ~40% since the war began in late February.

6. Gas hit $4.08/gallon nationally this week — the first time since August 2022. That’s a ~35% spike in a single month.

7. The Dow entered correction territory (down ~10% from its February ATH). The Nasdaq is down ~13% from its October peak. The MSCI All Country World Index dropped 9% this month alone.

8. Mag 7 tech stocks are down ~8% as a group since October. Microsoft had its worst Q1 since the 2008 financial crisis (down 25%). Meta is down 29%. Nvidia is down nearly 20%.

9. Visa, Mastercard, and Amex each fell ~20% in synchronized selling pressure. Eli Lilly shed 17% on pharma tariff concerns.

   1. Europe is breaking away from Visa, Mastercard, and US financial infrastructure, fast-tracking a Digital Euro and building alternatives to Microsoft Office.

10. Iran struck two major aluminum producers over the weekend — Emirates Global Aluminium and Aluminium Bahrain — sending aluminum to a 4-year high. Alcoa soared 8% and Century Aluminum jumped 7%.

11. Helium prices doubled in a month as Qatar’s LNG exports halted through the Strait. Helium cools AI chip-making equipment. South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix are running critically low on reserves.

12. Recession odds are rising fast. Goldman Sachs put them at 30%. EY Parthenon at 40%. Wilmington Trust at 45%. Moody’s Analytics at 48.6%.

13. Mortgage rates climbed to 6.62%, up from 5.99% in February, pushing homeownership further out of reach.

14. SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation — potentially the largest public offering in history, raising up to $80 billion.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

This isn’t just a bad week. This is a regime change.

After 20+ years in finance, I’ve seen corrections, crashes, panics, and recoveries. And I’ll tell you this: the most dangerous market moments aren’t the ones that feel catastrophic. They’re the ones that feel slow. Uncertain. Dragged out. This is one of those moments.

The War Is Rewriting Every Assumption

When the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February, Wall Street analysts told you not to worry. “Geopolitical shocks are short-lived,” they said. That was over a month ago. Today, oil sits above $111/barrel. Gas crossed $4/gallon for the first time since 2022. And Tuesday’s brief market rally on peace talk rumors got crushed the very next day when Trump’s prime-time address Wednesday night made clear there’s no clean exit in sight.

The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s energy chokepoint. About 20% of global oil and LNG flows through it. It’s been closed since the war started. And that single fact is rippling through every corner of the global economy — like a slow shockwave.

Here’s what most people don’t appreciate: the shockwave moves from east to west. JPMorgan’s head of global commodities research compared this to COVID-19, unfolding sequentially. Oil tankers from the Persian Gulf reach Asia in 10-20 days. Europe hits the wall in 20-35 days. The US is last in line, 35-45 days away. Asia is already rationing fuel and canceling flights. Europe hits full impact by mid-April. The US hasn’t felt the full force yet.

Tech’s Slide Is About More Than the War

Let’s be honest, tech was already expensive before a single bomb dropped on Tehran. Near-record valuations. Soaring AI spending. A market questioning whether that spending would ever translate into proportional profits. Then the war started. Oil above $110/barrel means the biggest tech companies, set to spend over $650 billion this year on energy-hungry data centers, suddenly face a major cost problem. Microsoft is down 25% for the quarter (its worst since 2008). Meta is down 29%. Nvidia is down nearly 20% from its October peak.

But here’s what the crowd is getting wrong, this doesn’t mean tech is dead. It means tech was overpriced and is now getting repriced. That’s actually healthy. And as the Chart of the Day shows this week, the Mag 7’s P/E premium versus the rest of the S&P 500 has collapsed from 100%+ at its peak to just 30% — a 10-year low. Great companies getting cheap isn’t a tragedy. It’s an opportunity — for those patient enough to wait for the right moment.

The “Buy the Dip” Reflex Just Got Burned

For three years, investors were trained like Pavlov’s dogs: market dips, you buy, you win. That reflex is getting punished now. This selloff is more drawn out and less dramatic than the quick crashes investors have grown accustomed to. Kevin Gordon at Charles Schwab captured it well this week: “Ironically, that’s keeping people from feeling they can buy the dip.”

And that hesitation is costing money. The investors who wait for certainty always arrive too late.

But the uncomfortable truth is this: more pain could still be ahead. Iran rejected all US ceasefire terms this week. Société Générale’s Michael Haigh warns that if the disruption lasts a few more weeks, global oil inventories could fall to historic lows — and Brent crude could hit $200/barrel. At $200 oil, we’re not talking recession risk. We’re talking recession certainty.

The Hidden Casualties: Aluminum and Helium

Oil isn’t the only commodity in crisis. Iran’s attacks on Emirates Global Aluminium in Abu Dhabi and Aluminium Bahrain over the weekend knocked out two of the Middle East’s largest producers. Aluminum surged to a 4-year high — up 12% in its biggest monthly gain in eight years. Aluminum goes into cars, homes, packaging, and electronics. Higher aluminum costs feed into inflation in places you’d never expect.

Then there’s helium — the story almost nobody is talking about. Qatar supplies roughly a third of the world’s helium. Helium is the critical coolant for AI chip manufacturing. With Qatar’s LNG exports halted, helium prices have doubled in a month. South Korea (home to Samsung and SK Hynix, the world’s two largest memory chipmakers) is running low, with reserves potentially drying up by June. If helium runs out, AI chip production slows, AI hardware gets scarce, and every AI valuation story gets repriced downward. Pull one thread. The whole sweater unravels.

The Consumer Squeeze Is Just Getting Started

Gas at $4.08/gallon isn’t just an inconvenience. JPMorgan calculates that if gas stays near $4 through year-end, it will drain roughly $100 billion from consumer purchasing power. That money comes from somewhere. Either you cut spending elsewhere, or you dip into savings. Both outcomes are bad for the economy.

Diesel is even worse — up 44% since the war began, now at $5.42/gallon. That hits truckers. Truckers hit retailers. Retailers hit you. The inflation you feel at the grocery store in May started with a tanker that couldn’t get through the Strait of Hormuz today.

The OECD raised its US inflation forecast to 4.2% this week. The USDA projects food prices to rise 3.6% this year. Beef, fish, vegetables, and baked goods are all headed higher. Fertilizer, which largely ships through the Strait of Hormuz, is getting scarce, threatening crop costs for months ahead. The squeeze is real, and it’s barely getting started.

The Hiring Reality Check

The job market served up its worst reading in 15 years — and this data was collected before the Iran war had time to fully filter through. The hiring rate dropped to 3.1% in February, the lowest since April 2020. Job openings fell to 6.9 million. Layoffs jumped 25% in March. Powell told Harvard students this week: “There’s no denying that it’s a challenging time to enter the labor market.”

This is stagflation’s defining characteristic: a weak labor market that the Fed can’t rescue with rate cuts because inflation is running too hot. The two standard tools work against each other. That’s what makes this era genuinely difficult.

Europe’s Quiet Breakup With US Financial Infrastructure

One underreported story this week: Europe is accelerating its break from US payment networks and financial systems. What was a deliberate 2030 target for the Digital Euro is now moving faster. As of February, 130 million users across 13 European national payment systems are already linked in a cross-border network charging fees far below Visa and Mastercard. Europe is also building its own alternative to Microsoft Office. This is long-term structural pressure on US payment giants whose international transaction revenue depends on a fragmented, US-centric global financial system.

The SpaceX IPO

Amid all the gloom, one story stands apart. SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and up to $80 billion in capital — the largest public offering in history if it hits those numbers. Saudi Aramco’s record 2019 IPO raised $29 billion. Last year, the entire US IPO market raised $44 billion from 202 companies combined. SpaceX wants to beat both.

Up to 30% of IPO shares may be reserved for individual investors — triple the typical allocation. If you’ve ever wanted to own a piece of the space economy before it fully takes off, the June listing window could be your moment.

My advice:

Defense (protect wealth now):

• Own energy. The only S&P 500 sector up in 2026 — up 39% this quarter. Oil stocks, LNG players, and natural gas companies are the direct beneficiaries.

• Rotate into defensives. Utilities, consumer staples, and healthcare hold up in stagflationary environments. Not exciting — but they protect what you’ve built.

• Pay down variable-rate debt now. With a 52% chance of a rate hike by year-end (futures markets this week), every floating-rate obligation gets more expensive. Act before the Fed does.

Offense (position for the recovery):

• Build your Mag 7 watchlist. The P/E premium is at a 10-year low. Dollar-cost average in — don’t try to time the exact bottom.

• Stay selective, not heroic. Do not buy everything just because prices are down. Buy only what you would be happy to own for years.

• Watch the ceasefire signals. Any credible peace move sends oil lower and stocks sharply higher. Have your shopping list ready. Speed will matter.

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(2) Important Financial News

📬 Today we analyze the impacts of:

1) Trump's $2.2 Trillion Budget

2) The Uncertainty Loop Paralyzing Our Economy

3) The Only Two Catalysts Moving Stocks

4) Winners and Losers From the Iran War

5) America’s Inflation Problem Just Got Worse

6) The Fed Might Raise Rates for the First Time in Years

7) The Job Market Is the Worst It's Been in 15 Years

🤔 But first, the Iran war has been running for over a month now, how long do you think it will last?

1. Trump’s $2.2 Trillion Budget

The White House released its proposed 2027 federal budget this week, and the numbers are historic. The proposal calls for $1.5 trillion in total defense spending — a 42% jump from current levels and the largest single-year increase in military spending since World War II. The full budget totals $2.2 trillion, with $1.1 trillion for the Pentagon and another $350 billion for munitions stockpiling and defense industrial expansion.

To fund the buildup, non-defense discretionary spending gets cut by 10%, roughly $73 billion. The hits are deep and broad. The Small Business Administration loses 67% of its funding. The EPA drops 52%. NASA is cut 23%. Public schools lose $8.5 billion. Affordable housing construction grants ($1.3 billion) get eliminated entirely. Job training for at-risk youth, broadband access programs, community disaster preparedness grants, scientific research funding, rural small business loans — all on the chopping block.

Important context: This is a proposal, not law. Congress controls the budget, and lawmakers have historically rejected Trump’s deepest domestic cuts while approving military increases. Think of it as a window into White House priorities — not a confirmed roadmap.

Why this matters long-term: The US already carries $39 trillion in federal debt. This budget assumes 3.5% GDP growth this year — the Congressional Budget Office projects under 2%. It also assumes 10-year Treasury yields fall to 3.5% by 2027. They sit at 4.35% today. If those assumptions miss, the fiscal math collapses and the debt load grows heavier.

The signal is clear regardless of what Congress passes. Defense spending is going up. We haven’t seen military buildup on this scale since WWII. Companies that supply the military — weapons systems, munitions, ships, missile defense, cybersecurity — are in a multi-year structural tailwind. Cuts to clean energy, education, broadband, and science funding, meanwhile, are long-term headwinds for those sectors.

My advice: Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin $LMT, RTX $RTX, Northrop Grumman $NOC, and General Dynamics $GD build the exact weapons systems, missiles, and ships this budget prioritizes. During the post-9/11 defense buildup, these stocks were among the decade’s top performers. History may be rhyming.

2. The Uncertainty Loop Paralyzing Our Economy

Here’s the core problem facing the US economy right now: nobody can make a decision because nobody knows how this ends. And when nobody decides, nobody invests, nobody hires, and nobody grows. That’s the loop.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Société Générale’s Michael Haigh warned that if the Hormuz disruption lasts another couple of weeks, global oil inventories could fall to historic lows. Morgan Stanley noted that “the whole ecosystem is more capital constrained than people think it is,” with energy and shipping constraints making AI data center construction harder and more expensive.

There are thin green shoots. Trump said Tuesday that Iran had reached out for a ceasefire. Iran’s president issued a rare open letter calling the war “costly and futile.” The UAE is reportedly weighing direct involvement to help reopen the Strait with UN backing. Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius suggests that if the Strait reopens by mid-April, the US might see only a 0.4% economic contraction — slow growth, not a full recession.

But the fork in the road is razor-thin. Haigh warns Brent could hit $200 if disruptions spread further. Private credit is under strain. AI investment is showing early cracks. Higher energy costs are just starting to reach consumers. Deloitte’s downside scenario sees AI investment actually falling in 2027-28, unemployment hitting 6.5%, and GDP contracting in back-to-back years.

During my years in banking, we had a saying: uncertainty is the enemy of capital. Capital doesn’t disappear — it hides. It waits for clarity. When clarity arrives, it moves fast. The investors who prepare during uncertainty are the ones who win when resolution comes.

My advice: Think in scenarios, not predictions.

Scenario A (war ends soon): oil falls, stocks rally hard, tech leads the bounce — have your watchlist ready.

Scenario B (war drags on): oil climbs further, inflation accelerates, recession becomes reality — double down on energy, defensives, and cash.

Hedge both with some energy exposure and some defensive positioning. That’s the play right now.

3. The Only Two Catalysts Moving Stocks

Right now, the stock market is essentially controlled by two things: AI anxiety and Trump’s social media posts. Not earnings. Not GDP. Not Fed meetings. A Truth Social update or an Anthropic blog post can move the entire market in minutes.

One boutique hedge fund — Anaconda — told Bloomberg this week it has given up trying to trade around Trump’s announcements. CEO Renaud Saleur said Trump “changes opinion 10 times a day” and the implications are “not manageable.” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld wrote in Fortune that one prominent investor called it “impossible to trade in financial markets without getting into the mind of Trump” — more important than any macroeconomic indicator.

Last week, cybersecurity stocks dropped after a report that Anthropic’s new model poses “unprecedented cybersecurity risks.” Oil futures moved sharply on a Trump post Monday. This is not normal market behavior.

The TACO trade is losing its power. For the past year, every time the market feared escalation, Trump would back down — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — and investors learned to buy the dip on every Trump threat. But Thursday, when Trump extended the Iran ceasefire deadline by 10 days, markets didn’t rally. Oil surged to $110/barrel instead. Israel threatened escalation. Iran rejected talks. The market finally stopped believing the bluff.

My 20 years in finance taught me that the investors who trade on headlines consistently lose to the investors who trade on fundamentals. Headlines create short-term noise. Fundamentals determine long-term direction.

My three rules for navigating this market right now:

1. Write your investment thesis before the news arrives. Know why you own what you own. When a post contradicts your thesis, you’ll have a framework to evaluate it instead of panic-selling.

2. Size positions for volatility. If a 10% drop in a position keeps you up at night, you own too much of it.

3. Keep a shopping list ready. The best buying opportunities come when the news is scariest. The investors who bought during the 2020 COVID crash or the 2022 rate-hike selloff made fortunes. The next opportunity is being built right now.

4. Winners and Losers From the Iran War

Everyone knows the obvious moves — energy up, airlines down, defense up, tech down. The real edge in investing comes from finding the non-obvious winners and losers hiding behind the headlines.

The hidden loser nobody’s talking about: helium. Qatar supplies roughly a third of the world’s helium, and helium cools the machines that make AI chips. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and Qatari energy exports halted, helium prices have doubled in a month. South Korea — home to Samsung and SK Hynix, the world’s two largest memory chipmakers — is running critically low, with reserves potentially drying up by June. If that happens, chip production slows, AI hardware gets scarce, and semiconductor stocks face a supply-driven hit that has nothing to do with earnings or AI sentiment. This is a supply chain crisis hiding inside a geopolitical crisis.

The sneaky inflation driver: plastic. Plastic is made from petroleum. Oil is up 40%+. That means water bottles, packaging, medical supplies, garbage bags, car parts — all getting more expensive. Since plastic packaging touches nearly every consumer product, you’ll feel it at the grocery store before you understand why.

The surprise winners: off-price retailers. This is one of my favorite recession playbook trades, and it’s playing out in real time. Higher shipping costs and supply chain chaos are causing big retailers to receive inventory too late to sell it profitably — so they’re dumping it cheap. TJ Maxx, Ross Stores, and Burlington scoop that inventory at steep discounts and sell it to bargain-conscious consumers pulling back on spending. Burlington jumped 4.1% this week. Ross popped 3.75%. TJX climbed 2.5%.

The aluminum miners. Alcoa $AA and Century Aluminum $CENX surged after Iran struck the Middle East’s two largest aluminum smelters. The supply crunch was already severe from tariffs and the Strait closure. These attacks made it worse. Near-term, aluminum producers have a genuine tailwind. Long-term, watch China — the world’s largest aluminum producer — which could flood the market if prices rise too high.

The timeless lesson: In every economic downturn, consumers trade down. Restaurants to groceries. Groceries to store brands. Department stores to discount chains. That pattern is as reliable as gravity. TJX $TJX, Dollar General $DG, and Costco $COST historically outperform in downturns — and this one is no different. Know which direction the money flows before it happens, not after.

5. America’s Inflation Problem Just Got Worse

The OECD issued its starkest warning yet this week: the US is on track to have the highest inflation in the G7 in 2026, projected at 4.2%. That’s up from 2.6% last year and nearly double the Fed’s 2% target.

For context, the OECD’s projected 2026 inflation rates for other G7 members are: UK at 4%, Germany at 2.9%, Canada at 2.4%, Italy at 2.4%, Japan at 2.4%, and France at 1.8%. The US leads them all — by a meaningful margin.

Two compounding forces are driving this: the Iran war’s energy shock and Trump’s tariff policy. The effective US tariff rate sits at roughly 10.5% — the highest since World War II — meaning imported cars, electronics, and clothing are already more expensive before you factor in energy costs.

The downstream impact is everywhere. The USDA projects food prices to rise 3.6% this year, with groceries up 3.1%. Beef, fish, vegetables, and baked goods are all headed higher. Fertilizer — much of which ships through the Strait — is getting scarce, threatening crop costs further down the road. Gas is already up 35% in one month. And even if the war ends tomorrow, energy infrastructure damaged across the Middle East could keep prices elevated for months.

What 4.2% inflation actually means for your wallet: Your dollar buys 4.2% less every year. Wages need to rise 4%+ just to stay in place. Fixed incomes (bonds, pensions, savings accounts) quietly lose real value every single month. And the Fed is stuck — unable to cut rates to support a slowing economy without risking an inflation spiral.

My inflation survival playbook:

• Commodities: Oil, metals, and agricultural commodities rise with inflation. Energy ETFs give you diversified exposure without picking individual stocks.

• Real assets: Hard assets hold value during inflationary periods better than financial assets. Industrial and residential REITs are worth watching.

• TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities): Bonds that adjust with inflation, so your return keeps pace with rising prices.

• Avoid long-duration bonds: Fixed coupon payments lose real value as inflation rises. Short-term Treasuries and money market funds offer far better protection right now.

6. The Fed Might Raise Rates for the First Time in Years

A month ago, the futures market priced in a 96% chance of one or more Fed rate cuts by September. This week, CNBC reported that flipped: traders now see a 52% chance of a rate hike by year-end — the first time that probability has crossed 50%.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said this week: “I could see circumstances where we would need to raise rates.” That’s significant coming from a historically dovish official. Governor Christopher Waller — one of the strongest advocates for cuts just months ago — said the Iran war’s inflation risks swayed him to hold steady in March. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly warned that even the March dot plot (showing one more cut expected this year) might be misleading, saying it “risks conveying a false sense of certainty.”

The core dilemma is brutal. The Fed has already cut rates by nearly 2 percentage points since September 2024, bringing the target range to 3.5%-3.75%. A growing number of officials now believe they’ve hit “neutral” — the rate that neither stimulates nor restricts the economy. Cutting further from neutral while inflation runs above 4% would be like pouring gas on a fire.

Three paths and none of them are clean. Raise rates: fight inflation but risk tipping a weakening economy into recession. Hold rates: hope inflation cools on its own while the labor market deteriorates. Cut rates: support growth but risk an inflation spiral back to 2022 levels. That’s stagflation’s defining cruelty — every option has a cost.

What this means for you:

• Variable-rate debt is now a liability. Pay down credit cards, HELOCs, and adjustable mortgages before the Fed moves. Every month you wait could cost you more.

• Short-duration Treasuries and money market funds are paying real yields. Lock in competitive returns without taking duration risk.

• Banks benefit from higher rates. Net interest margins widen when rates rise — regional bank stocks tend to outperform in rate-hike cycles.

7. The Job Market Is the Worst It’s Been in 15 Years

The Labor Department reported this week that the hiring rate dropped to 3.1% in February — the lowest since April 2020. Excluding the pandemic’s worst months, it’s the weakest reading in more than 15 years. Job openings fell to 6.9 million. And employers announced 60,620 layoffs in March — up 25% from February — with most companies citing AI as the driver.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Harvard students this week: “There’s no denying that it’s a challenging time to enter the labor market.” That might be the understatement of the year.

Gallup found that just 19% of college graduates believe it’s a good time to land a quality job — down from over 70% in 2022. University of Michigan surveys show grads are more pessimistic today than at any point in the past four years. Over 40% of recent grads now view socialism positively — roughly double the rate from the 2010s. That’s not just politics. That’s the sound of an economic promise breaking.

Here’s the long-term reality most people aren’t ready to hear: white-collar hiring is set to stay weak through 2026, and AI is accelerating the erosion of entry-level roles. Data entry, basic research, customer service, administrative work — these were the stepping-stone jobs for new graduates. AI is eating them first, and eating them fast.

My advice:

• If you’re employed: Build skills AI can’t easily replicate — leadership, creative strategy, complex judgment, relationship management. People who work with AI tools will outlast people who compete against them.

• If you’re job-hunting: Niche down. A specialist in a specific domain always outlasts a generalist in a tough market.

• If you’re investing: A weakening labor market is a leading indicator that consumer spending is next to drop. Rotate away from discretionary spending stocks (restaurants, retail, entertainment) toward consumer staples and essential services.

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

All 7 stories point to the same core truth. The U.S. economy is entering a period where war risk, inflation risk, policy risk, and labor market weakness are feeding each other.

We are entering an era of stagflation. High prices and low growth. Energy shocks feed inflation. Inflation forces the Fed to hike rates. High rates kill job growth. This is a classic economic trap. Do not panic. Wealth is built during recessions. Build cash reserves. Avoid bad debt. Buy high quality assets when others sell in fear.

This is not just a bad-news cycle. It is a regime shift. A world that was priced for falling inflation, friendly Fed moves, and AI-fueled growth is being repriced for scarcity, conflict, caution, and tighter money.

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(3) Chart of the Day [Deep Dive]

The Greatest Valuation Reset In A Decade

💡 Andrew’s Analysis & Advice:

This week’s chart is one of the most important visuals you’ll see this year.

It tracks the Magnificent 7’s price-to-earnings (P/E) premium relative to the remaining 493 companies in the S&P 500. In plain English: how much more expensive the biggest tech stocks are compared to everything else in the market.

Here’s what the chart tells you at a glance.

At the peak in 2021, the Mag 7 traded at a roughly 100% P/E premium to the rest of the market. Investors were willing to pay double. The AI boom, pandemic-era hypergrowth, and near-zero interest rates created a combination that pushed valuations to near-record territory. The market was essentially saying: “These companies are so much better than everything else that they deserve to cost twice as much.”

Today, that premium has collapsed to just 30% — the lowest point on this chart’s 10-year history.

And that’s a number worth stopping on.

Why this happened is important context. The Mag 7 weren’t just caught in the Iran war crossfire. They were genuinely overvalued entering 2026. The war added two structural headwinds that are specifically tech-negative: rising energy costs (data centers are enormous energy consumers, and oil above $110/barrel makes running them significantly more expensive) and a broad risk-off rotation that pushed capital toward defensives. Microsoft had its worst quarter since 2008. Meta dropped 29%. Nvidia fell 20% from its October peak.

The valuation compression was inevitable. The war just accelerated the timeline.

Here’s what most investors are getting wrong about this chart. They’re either panicking out of tech (and selling at the worst time) or assuming 30% is the floor (and buying too early). The chart doesn’t tell you where the bottom is. What it does tell you is that the margin of safety in big tech has improved dramatically. A 30% premium is far more defensible than a 100% premium.

In 20+ years of investing, I’ve watched this pattern repeat: great companies fall out of favor, valuations compress, and eventually the fundamentals reassert themselves. The investors who bought Apple in 2013, Amazon in 2016, or Nvidia in 2019 bought when the crowd had given up on the story. That’s always when the best entries appear.

The long-term AI thesis remains intact. AI is still going to reshape every industry. The Mag 7 companies are still going to be at the center of it. The debate isn’t if — it’s when the market recaptures that.

My advice:

Think in time horizons.

6-month horizon: Be cautious. The short-term technical picture is still negative (more on that in Section 8). More pain is possible if oil climbs further or the war escalates.

3-5 year horizon: These valuations are starting to look genuinely compelling. The entry point you have today would have been unimaginable 18 months ago.

The strategy for this environment is dollar-cost averaging — investing a fixed amount at regular intervals rather than trying to call the exact bottom. You don’t need to catch the lowest price. You just need to be buying near it, consistently, while the crowd is still scared.

The bottom line: the Mag 7 are at their cheapest relative valuation in over a decade. That’s not a “buy everything today” signal. It’s a “start watching, start planning, and start building a position gradually” signal. When the tide turns, it turns fast. You want to already be in the water.

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Part II - Investing Research

4. Insider Trades

5. Top Stocks Right Now

6. Today’s Trade

7. Fear & Greed Analysis (Market Sentiment)

8. Macro Technical Analysis & Predictions

(4) Insider Trades (from Billionaires, Politicians, and CEOs):

When people with deep knowledge, such as politicians who set policy, executives who run the company, or legendary investors, put their own money on the line, pay attention.

1) Palo Alto Networks $PANW

CEO Nikesh Arora bought $9,999,977 of stock on 03/27/2026.

Palo Alto Networks $PANW provides AI-powered threat detection, cloud security, and network protection to enterprises worldwide. Arora knows the company’s pipeline, win rates, upcoming contract renewals, and competitive position better than any analyst on Wall Street. He’s not doing this for a tax benefit. He’s betting nearly $10 million of his own money because he believes the stock is undervalued right now.

The macro backdrop also supports this trade. The Iran war has dramatically increased cyber-threat activity across critical infrastructure globally. Anthropic’s new AI model generated fresh cybersecurity concerns just this week. As AI becomes more capable and more embedded in enterprise systems, the attack surface expands — and the demand for Palo Alto’s platforms grows with it.

Arora is also executing a “platformization” strategy — consolidating multiple security tools into one subscription model — which drives high switching costs and recurring revenue. Once a company is fully on the Palo Alto platform, leaving is enormously disruptive. That’s a durable competitive moat.

Long-term outlook for $PANW: The global cybersecurity market is projected to exceed $500 billion by decade-end. The AI agent economy creates entirely new categories of cyber risk and entirely new demand for enterprise security. CEO buying $10 million of his own stock during a market downturn is a conviction signal that’s historically among the most reliable in investing. Arora’s $10 million bet says the dip is a gift. Hard to argue with.

2) Iperionx Ltd $IPX

CEO Anastasios Arima bought $1,793,110 of stock on 03/30/2026.

Iperionx $IPX is a critical minerals company focused on domestic titanium production — a strategic metal that goes into military aircraft, missiles, submarines, medical devices, and advanced manufacturing. CEO Anastasios Arima bought $1,793,110 worth of shares on March 27, 2026, increasing his ownership by 4% to nearly 13 million shares.

The timing is extraordinary. Trump’s proposed budget calls for the largest US military buildup since World War II. Every fighter jet, missile system, and naval vessel depends heavily on titanium. The US has historically imported most of its titanium supply — a vulnerability that the Iran war has made glaring. Domestic production of critical metals is now a matter of national security, not just economics.

Arima buying $1.8 million of Iperionx shares while the Pentagon requests a $1.5 trillion budget is a calculated bet: defense spending will flow to companies that can supply critical domestic materials. That’s a powerful thesis with a long tailwind behind it.

Long-term outlook for $IPX: The domestic critical minerals story is one of the most compelling multi-decade investment themes of this era. Geopolitical fragmentation — accelerated by the Iran war — is forcing every major economy to onshore supply chains for materials that matter militarily. Companies that can produce titanium, lithium, and rare earth elements domestically have years of demand growth ahead. High risk given the company’s size, but the macro tailwind is powerful and the CEO’s conviction is evident.

3) Zenas Biopharma, Inc. $ZBIO

CEO Leon O Moulder Jr bought $1,021,140 of stock on 03/31/2026.

Zenas Biopharma $ZBIO is a clinical-stage biotech company focused on immunology and inflammation — conditions with massive unmet medical need and proven commercial potential. CEO Leon O. Moulder Jr. filed a purchase of $1,021,140 worth of shares on March 31, 2026, a 3% increase, bringing his total to over 2.1 million shares.

In clinical-stage biotech, a CEO buying over $1 million of his own stock is one of the strongest signals available. Moulder knows the pipeline, the upcoming data readouts, and the regulatory landscape better than any outside analyst. He’s not making a routine purchase. He’s making a conviction call with his personal capital.

The immunology and inflammation space has produced some of the most commercially successful drugs in pharma history. Humira generated over $200 billion in lifetime sales. Dupixent is still growing at $14+ billion annually. A successful drug in this category could be transformative for a company Zenas Biopharma’s size.

Long-term outlook for $ZBIO: Clinical-stage biotech is high-risk by nature — most drugs fail before reaching market. But when CEOs buy $1M+ at these price levels, it often precedes positive clinical data or regulatory milestones. Watch upcoming pipeline readouts closely. The immunology TAM is massive and the CEO’s money is on the table.

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(5) Top Stocks Right Now

1) Kodiak Sciences $KOD up +74.8% on Thu 3/26

Kodiak Sciences $KOD surged +74.8% last Thursday after revealing strong clinical trial data for its treatment of diabetic retinopathy — a leading cause of blindness in adults with diabetes. The results confirmed the company’s approach can produce meaningful improvements in patient outcomes, a major milestone for a biotech working in one of the most underserved areas of ophthalmology.

Diabetic retinopathy affects tens of millions of people worldwide. Current treatments require frequent, painful injections directly into the eye — a compliance challenge that leaves many patients undertreated. Kodiak’s pipeline is targeting extended dosing intervals without sacrificing effectiveness. Strong trial data in this space can move a small biotech dramatically, and that’s exactly what happened here.

Long-term outlook for $KOD: The global diabetic eye disease treatment market is projected to exceed $15 billion by the early 2030s. An aging global population and rising diabetes rates ensure a growing patient base. If Kodiak’s results hold through later-stage trials and reach regulatory approval, the upside from today’s price could still be significant. High risk given the clinical stage, but the data is a genuine catalyst worth monitoring.

2) Navan $NVAN up +43.3% on Thu 3/26

Navan $NVAN, the AI-powered business travel and expense management platform (formerly TripActions), jumped +43.3% last Thursday after reporting strong earnings and upbeat 2027 revenue guidance. The company beat Q4 expectations and gave investors a confident forward outlook — a rare bright spot in an otherwise difficult environment for technology stocks.

Navan helps companies manage employee travel and spending through an intelligent platform that automates booking, expense reporting, and policy compliance. With businesses looking to cut costs without eliminating travel entirely, an AI-driven platform that finds savings automatically while reducing admin work is exactly what CFOs want right now.

Long-term outlook for $NVAN: Corporate travel and expense management is a large and growing market, estimated at $50+ billion globally. As companies increasingly demand proof of ROI on every dollar spent, tools that provide real-time visibility into travel and expense data become non-negotiable. Navan’s strong guidance signals confidence in winning more enterprise contracts. Worth watching as a long-term AI-plus-SaaS growth story.

3) Argan $AGX up +37.9% on Fri 3/27

Construction company Argan $AGX surged +37.9% last Friday on a fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat, with guidance topping expectations by a wide margin. Argan builds power generation facilities — natural gas plants, renewable energy projects, and industrial infrastructure.

In a world where AI data centers are consuming unprecedented amounts of electricity, and where the Iran war has made domestic energy infrastructure a national priority, a company that builds power generation capacity is exactly what the market is rewarding. Argan’s backlog of projects reflects real demand, not speculation.

Long-term outlook for $AGX: The energy infrastructure buildout is one of the decade’s biggest investment themes. AI data centers require massive, reliable power — and the US grid simply isn’t built for the demand that’s coming. Companies that build power generation facilities quickly and at scale have years of contracted backlog ahead. Argan’s guidance beat signals the pipeline is healthy and growing. Power generation construction is set to be one of the most in-demand services in the US economy for the next 5-10 years.

4) Penguin Solutions $PENG up +13.4% on Thu 4/2

AI infrastructure company Penguin Solutions $PENG rose +13.4% yesterday after beating Q1 expectations and raising its full-year outlook — impressive performance in a market where tech is broadly under pressure. Penguin Solutions provides high-performance computing infrastructure, including the complex systems that power AI training and inference workloads.

The company’s raised guidance is the key signal. It means demand for AI compute isn’t slowing — it’s accelerating. Even as investors question the ROI of AI spending broadly, the companies building the infrastructure layer continue to win contracts and grow revenue.

Long-term outlook for $PENG: AI infrastructure is one of the most durable multi-year investment themes in tech. Every large language model trained, every AI agent deployed, every enterprise adopting AI tools runs on infrastructure like what Penguin Solutions provides. As AI moves from experimental to embedded, the infrastructure layer becomes critical and recurring. The company’s raised guidance says the demand environment is real, not speculative.

5) United Therapeutics $UTHR up +12.5% on Mon 3/30

United Therapeutics $UTHR rose +12.5% last Monday after a nebulized (inhaled) version of its blockbuster drug Tyvaso delivered improved results in a second Phase 3 clinical trial. Tyvaso treats pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) — a serious and often fatal condition affecting blood flow through the lungs.

United Therapeutics has built one of the most durable franchises in rare disease. Tyvaso is already a multi-billion dollar drug. A new delivery format (nebulized vs. inhaled powder) that shows better clinical outcomes expands the addressable market and extends the drug’s commercial life — both powerful long-term value drivers.

Long-term outlook for $UTHR: Rare disease is one of the most attractive niches in biotech — pricing power is high, competition is limited, and patients are loyal to treatments that genuinely work. United Therapeutics also carries a long-term moonshot: xenotransplantation (genetically engineered pig organs for human transplant), which could eventually open an entirely new multi-billion dollar market if regulatory and clinical hurdles are cleared. The Tyvaso trial data this week is near-term validation of a company executing well across multiple fronts.

6) Symbotic $SYM up +12.2% on Tue 3/31

Symbotic $SYM surged +12.2% last Tuesday on a new warehouse automation partnership with Associated Wholesale Grocers — one of the largest wholesale grocery cooperatives in the US, supplying thousands of independent grocery stores across the country.

Symbotic builds AI-powered robotic systems for warehouse automation. Its systems move and sort inventory at speeds no human workforce can match, at a fraction of long-term operating cost. As inflation raises labor expenses and supply chain disruptions create a premium on operational efficiency, warehouse automation moves from competitive advantage to business necessity.

Long-term outlook for $SYM: Warehouse automation is a massive, secular growth market projected to exceed $80 billion globally by 2030. The grocery sector — high volume, razor-thin margins, constant pressure to reduce costs — is exactly where automation ROI is most compelling. Symbotic’s Associated Wholesale Grocers partnership deepens its footprint in a category where adoption can cascade quickly once competitors see the efficiency gains. The long-term pipeline for $SYM is one of the most compelling in the robotics space.

7) CoreWeave $CRWV up +12.0% on Tue 3/31

CoreWeave $CRWV climbed +12.0% last Tuesday after securing an $8.5 billion investment-grade term loan backed by its compute hardware — an industry first. CoreWeave provides GPU cloud computing infrastructure specifically designed for AI training and large-scale model inference.

Getting an $8.5 billion investment-grade term loan backed by hardware as collateral is a landmark moment for the AI infrastructure sector. It signals that capital markets are now comfortable treating AI compute infrastructure as a real, financeable asset class — not just a speculative technology bet. For CoreWeave, it means access to growth capital at better terms than most AI-adjacent companies can achieve.

Long-term outlook for $CRWV: CoreWeave is positioned as a GPU-focused alternative to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud for AI compute workloads. Its specialization gives it a performance and cost advantage for AI training specifically. As AI demand grows and hyperscalers struggle to keep pace, specialized GPU clouds fill the gap. The $8.5 billion loan extends its competitive runway significantly. Long-term, the question is whether it can scale fast enough to defend against trillion-dollar cloud providers. Near-term, the demand environment is strongly in its favor.

💡 Andrew’s Advice:

AI infrastructure keeps winning regardless of market sentiment. CoreWeave and Penguin Solutions both rose on earnings beats and raised guidance — proving that demand for AI compute is real and growing even as the broader tech sector struggles. These are the "picks and shovels" plays: while investors debate which AI company ultimately wins, the companies building the infrastructure they all need are compounding their businesses.

Efficiency and automation are the playbook for a high-cost, inflationary environment. Symbotic's warehouse automation win is a direct response to rising labor costs. Companies that help other companies do more with less are structurally advantaged when margins are under pressure everywhere.

The war creates second-order winners that most investors miss. Argan's construction surge — driven by energy infrastructure demand — both trace back to the same macro backdrop. In every major geopolitical shift, the best trades are often two steps removed from the headline. Train yourself to look there first.

Healthcare and biotech are becoming the new safe haven. Kodiak Sciences, United Therapeutics, and ongoing acquisition activity across the sector all reflect a rotation toward recession-resistant, non-correlated growth. When the macro gets ugly, healthcare keeps delivering — because people don't stop needing treatment because the stock market is down.

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(6) Today’s Trade

The options market is where the smartest traders place their biggest bets. I monitor options flow activity daily.

Virgin Galactic Holdings $SPCE

Virgin Galactic Holdings $SPCE is a commercial space company working toward bringing paying passengers to the edge of space on suborbital flights. After years of development delays, funding challenges, and intense competition from Blue Origin, the company is trading just above its 52-week low of $2.13.

This week, something interesting caught my attention in the options market. Call volume in $SPCE hit 33,654 contracts — 7x the average daily volume and, more strikingly, 40x put volume. Traders are focused on two expiration months: May 15, 2026 (targeting the 3.50 strike call) and July 17, 2026 (targeting the 2.50 strike call, with most July activity appearing to be buys, while some traders close short call positions at the 2.50 strike based on open interest analysis). Both Jefferies and Susquehanna downgraded the stock on consecutive days this week — making the scale of bullish call activity even more unusual.

Call-to-put ratio: 40 to 1. This is an extreme skew toward upside bets. At this ratio, someone sees a catalyst that the stock’s beaten-down price doesn’t reflect. Whether that’s a partnership announcement, a funding development, or simply speculative positioning ahead of news — the options market is sending a signal worth noting.

My take: I’m cautiously bullish on this options play — not because $SPCE’s fundamentals are strong (they’re not), but because 52-week low prices plus a 40-to-1 call-to-put ratio plus unusually high volume equals a setup where a small positive catalyst could create outsized short-term upside. This is a speculative, high-risk, short-duration trade. Size it as a small, defined-risk position. Don’t let the call volume size convince you to overcommit.

Long-term outlook for $SPCE: Commercial space tourism is a real market, but Virgin Galactic faces intense competition from Blue Origin and operates in an environment where SpaceX — about to launch the world’s largest IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation — is the dominant force. Long-term, $SPCE needs a meaningful improvement in its financial position and a clear path to recurring revenue before it becomes a compelling long-term investment.

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(7) Fear & Greed Analysis (Market Sentiment)

How do you cut through the noise and understand what’s really happening? The secret is to look at the feelings people, the actions of investors, and the facts about the economy.

Current Reading: 19 — Extreme Fear.

This is a negative/bearish short-term signal, but also a historically important contrarian indicator for long-term investors.

A reading of 19 means almost every major sentiment indicator is flashing red at the same time. The S&P 500 is trading below its 125-day moving average (negative momentum). The NYSE is generating far more 52-week lows than highs (negative price strength). Market breadth is weak — far more volume flowing into falling stocks than rising ones (extreme fear). The put/call ratio is elevated — investors are buying protection at a high rate (extreme fear). Safe haven demand is high — money is flowing into bonds over stocks (fear). Junk bond spreads are widening — investors are fleeing risk (extreme fear).

The macro backdrop explains every single indicator. The Iran war, oil above $110/barrel, inflation heading to 4.2%, rising recession odds, and a weakening labor market have all hit the market simultaneously. That’s an unusually high concentration of fear catalysts in a short period.

But here’s the insight that separates smart investors from the crowd: Extreme Fear is historically one of the best times to start building positions. Warren Buffett famously said: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” The principle is right, but the timing matters.

In my 20+ years in banking and investing, I watched this pattern repeat: the moments of maximum fear — September 2022, March 2020, December 2018, February 2016 — were the best entry points of each cycle. Not because the bad news suddenly disappeared. Because the bad news was already priced in. Nearly everyone who was going to sell had already sold. That’s called exhausted selling. And exhausted selling tends to precede recoveries.

A reading of 19 is not a “buy everything today” signal. It’s a “start planning and building your shopping list” signal. The war could escalate. Oil could push to $150. Or a ceasefire could come this weekend. You don’t know. But what history tells you clearly is that markets at Extreme Fear levels are statistically closer to bottoms than tops.

One year ago, the index was at 12 — even deeper fear than today. Investors who bought there significantly outperformed. The same opportunity may be building now.

My advice:

• Fear & Greed below 15: Consider that a “maximum fear” zone where deploying cash methodically is historically rewarded.

• Fear & Greed recovering toward 25: An early signal that the worst selling pressure has passed.

• Fear & Greed recovering toward 50 (Neutral): Recovery is underway. You should already be invested, not trying to buy the exact bottom.

Current events and macro align perfectly with this reading. The Iran war, rate hike fears, and layoff news are all contributors. When — not if — those fears begin to ease, this index will recover. And it tends to move faster than most investors expect. The time to prepare is now, not when the news gets better.

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(8) Macro Technical Analysis

Technical levels matter because they’re where millions of traders have programmed their buy and sell orders. When key levels break, algorithms kick in and magnify moves.

1) S&P 500

Short-term trend: Negative.

The S&P 500 is showing a negative technical picture in the near term, though there are early signs that the pace of decline is beginning to slow.

The index has broken upward through the ceiling of its short-term falling trend channel — which counterintuitively means the rate of decline is slowing, not that the index is surging. However, the recent double top formation at around 6,797 broke cleanly through support, and the downside target of 6,620 has now been met. The formation signals further potential downside before any meaningful recovery.

Support sits at approximately 6,340. Resistance sits at approximately 6,720. The index is currently caught between these two levels, neither breaking out convincingly nor collapsing further. Medium-term is Positive. Long-term is Positive.

In plain English: the worst of the selling pressure may be starting to exhaust itself in the short term, but the chart hasn’t turned bullish yet.

2) Tech Stocks

Short-term trend: Negative.

The Nasdaq-100 is in the clearest and most bearish technical position of the three assets analyzed this week. The index is in a confirmed falling trend channel — meaning investors have been selling at progressively lower prices over time, a textbook negative signal.

The Nasdaq broke down from a head and shoulders formation at around 24,736 — one of the most reliable bearish formations in technical analysis — triggering a sell signal. The downside target of 24,126 has been met, but the formation signals further downside potential. Support sits at 23,000. Resistance sits at 24,700.

Medium-term is Hold. Long-term is Positive.

Don’t try to catch this falling knife yet. The head and shoulders breakdown in the Nasdaq is a serious signal. Respect it. The medium-term “hold” rating suggests the worst of the decline may pass before getting dramatically worse — but near-term, the path of least resistance is still lower.

3) Bitcoin $BTC

Short-term trend: Neutral.

Bitcoin is at a critical technical decision point. It has broken through the floor of its short-term rising trend channel and marginally breached support at 67,300. An established break below that level would signal further downside. However, volume was high at prior price tops and low at prior price bottoms — a pattern that slightly weakens the bearish signal and suggests the breakdown may not be confirmed.

The overall near-term assessment: neutral/hold.

The key number to watch is $67,300. If Bitcoin holds above that level, it may stabilize near current prices. A clean break below $67,000 opens the technical door toward $64,000 and potentially lower. Given the macro backdrop — risk-off sentiment, Extreme Fear reading of 19, and stock market weakness — Bitcoin faces correlation risk with equities in the near term.

4) Macro Analysis (what this means for you)

The near-term picture is negative across the board. The mid-term picture is improving.

All three assets this week tell a consistent story. The Nasdaq is in the worst shape — confirmed falling trend, head and shoulders breakdown, no near-term reversal signal. The S&P 500 is marginally better — still negative, with some early deceleration of selling pressure. Bitcoin is in neutral territory — not confirming a recovery, but not collapsing further either.

These technical readings align directly with the Fear & Greed Index sitting at 19 (Extreme Fear). Markets that have been sold aggressively for five consecutive weeks tend to show exactly these patterns: falling trend channels, oversold momentum indicators, and broken support levels. The question is always the same: is this the exhaustion phase, or is there another leg lower?

The macro overlay is the missing variable no chart can capture. The Iran war and its impact on oil prices, inflation expectations, and risk appetite is the single driver behind all of these technical moves. No head and shoulders pattern can tell you when the Strait of Hormuz reopens. But charts do tell you where prices are relative to key levels — and right now, we’re in oversold, extreme-fear territory where the risk/reward for patient, long-term investors is starting to improve.

The interconnected signal: The Fear & Greed Index at 19 plus the Nasdaq’s head and shoulders breakdown plus the S&P’s decelerating trend channel plus Bitcoin holding (so far) at 67,300 all point to the same conclusion. We’re likely closer to a short-term floor than a continued freefall — but confirmation hasn’t arrived yet.

My plan: Stay patient, stay informed, stay positioned defensively in the near term — and keep your shopping list updated. When the technicals turn and the sentiment shifts, the move will be fast. You want to be ready before it happens, not scrambling after it starts.

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Part III - My Tips & Advice

9. Advice & Recommendations

10. Final Thoughts & Lessons

11. Your Questions Answered

(9) My Advice & Recommendations:

1. Uncertainty is the real enemy. When no one knows how the war ends, capital hides. When you can't predict the outcome, focus on positioning. Build cash reserves. Avoid bad debt. Own assets that thrive in multiple scenarios.

2. Energy is the only S&P 500 sector in positive territory in 2026 — up 39% this quarter. Oil stocks, LNG players, and natural gas companies are the direct beneficiaries of the Iran war's supply shock. If you have zero energy exposure right now, that's a gap to close.

3. Own the second-order winners, not just oil. The crowd buys energy stocks. Smart money buys helium and aluminum. Helium prices have doubled. Aluminum hit a 4-year high after Iran’s attacks. Buy ETFs like $HEL (helium) or stocks like $AA (Alcoa) and $CENX (Century Aluminum). These are the hidden supply chain bottlenecks that will keep inflating for months.

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A war hits oil. Oil hits inflation. Inflation traps the Fed. Higher rates hit borrowers. Weak borrowers expose bad lending. Then people wake up and call it a recession.

That is the real story right now.

A lot of people still think this is just another bad news week.

It is not.

This is what it looks like when a geopolitical shock turns into an economic shock, then starts leaking into markets, rates, housing, and credit. The danger is not just oil at $100 plus. The danger is what high oil does next.

It raises costs. It revives inflation. It freezes central banks. It pressures weak balance sheets. It reveals what was fragile all along.

In this issue, I'm breaking down exactly what's happening, why it matters, and what you should do about it. I’ll show you how the Iran War just became an economic world war, why oil may stay high for years, why recession fears just hit 48%, and the private credit cracks that echo 2…

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That’s how much market value has disappeared in the past month alone.

And Oil topped $100. GDP growth got revised down to 0.7%. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 20. Extreme fear.

Markets do not crash because of one headline. They crack when several weak spots collide at once.

That is what is happening now.

But what if the biggest risk right now is not the market drop?

What if the bigger risk is that most people still do not understand why the market is dropping?

The real story is not just that stocks fell and $2 trillion of market cap that vanished. The real story is that the economy grew at half the pace we thought, inflation is still running hot, and America is borrowing at a pace that should scare anyone who cares about rates, debt, or the future of the dollar.

Most people think this is just another bad week. It may be the start of a much harder decade.

Slowing growth. Rising inflation. A war disrupting energy and food supplies. The consumer is tapped out. The government i…

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This week, something eerily similar began unfolding.

Oil just posted its biggest weekly gain in the entire history of futures trading. Thirty-five percent. In one week. At the same time, the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs. Wages rose while employment fell. The Fed is frozen. Stagflation, the economic nightmare that defined the 1970s, is back on the table.

Stagflation happens when prices rise while the economy stalls.

We haven’t seen it in a generation. But this week, the ingredients came together perfectly. Oil up 35%. Jobs down 92,000. The Fed stuck between fighting inflation and helping growth.

Meanwhile, Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, published new research this week showing that AI can theoretically handle 96% of tasks in Computer & Ma…

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Fast forward to this past Saturday. The U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury. Iran’s Supreme Leader is dead. The Strait of Hormuz—the world’s most important oil chokepoint—is effectively closed. It feels like we’re watching a history documentary in real-time.

But here’s the thing most people get wrong: panicking is the only guaranteed way to lose money.

The question isn’t “Is this 1973 all over again?” The question is, “What do I do with my money right now?”

Warren Buffett always says to be greedy when others are fearful. Right now, Wall Street is terrified. The conflict in the Middle East has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices are spiking. Tech stocks are bleeding out. People are running for the exits. But if you listened to me a few weeks ago, you already knew this was c…

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Then the gasoline tractor arrived.

Within a single decade, the horse-powered economy collapsed completely. The horses didn’t fail. They didn’t make mistakes. They simply became obsolete — overnight, at a scale nobody predicted, and with a speed nobody was ready for.

Fast forward to 2010. Blockbuster had 9,000 stores and $6 billion in revenue. They charged massive late fees because their customers had no other choice. Then Netflix offered a better way. Blockbuster couldn’t adapt without killing their own profits. By 2010, they were bankrupt.

In 2007, Nokia controlled 40% of the global smartphone market. By 2012, it was nearly worthless.

That’s not a cautionary tale about bad management. Nokia had great engineers and billions in R&D. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when the ground shifts beneath a company and they c…

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The stock market is near all-time highs, but the job market is at recession levels. The Fed says inflation is cooling, but the dollar is at four-year lows. Tech companies are spending $700 billion on AI, but their stocks are crashing.

Welcome to the Great Contradiction of 2026.

This week, the data got too loud to ignore. GDP missed badly. The trade deficit hit $901 billion, one of the largest since 1960. Job openings collapsed to 6.5 million, the lowest since September 2020. And 1 in 4 unemployed Americans have been searching for work for over six months.

The uncomfortable truth? The jobs data is lying—real unemployment is much worse than reported.

The official numbers say 4.3% unemployment. The real story is in the 242 applications per job opening. It’s in the 35% drop in entry-level postings. It’s in the long-term unemployment that keeps rising three years after the pandemic “ended.”

Most investors are looking at the wrong metrics.…

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In 2007, housing prices had gone up for so long that most people genuinely couldn’t imagine them falling. In 2000, internet stocks had climbed for so long that most people couldn’t imagine a crash. And in 2024, AI stocks had surged so long that most investors couldn’t imagine a world where the AI trade becomes a liability.

This month, the market started to imagine it.

The S&P 500 flipped negative for the year. The Nasdaq has bled for four straight weeks. A single startup’s press release wiped billions off wealth management stocks. The government admitted 2 million jobs never really existed. And the US national debt is on a path to hit $64 trillion within a decade.

This isn’t a correction. This is a reset. The rules of the last two years are changing. And the investors who recognize that early will be the ones b…

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This week felt like that moment all over again.

AI just went from Wall Street’s golden child to its biggest headache. Software stocks lost $1 trillion in a single week. Silver had its worst day since 1980. Bitcoin erased every gain since Trump’s election. And 108,000 Americans lost their jobs in January alone.

But here’s the part nobody’s talking about: inside the chaos, a massive transfer of wealth is happening. Money is moving from one side of the market to the other. And if you understand where it’s going, this week could be the best thing that ever happened to your portfolio.

Let me show you exactly what’s happening and what to do about it.

📬 Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:

Part …

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My goal is simple: Make it easier for you to connect the dots on the economy, markets, and investing in 15 minutes or less!

📬 In today’s issue:

Part I - Markets:
1. Market Update & Analysis (and how it impacts YOU)
2. Most Important Finance News Right Now (and what it means for you)
3. Chart of the Day (and why it’s important)

Part II - Investing:
4. Insider Trades
5. Top Stocks Right Now
6. Today's Trade
7. Fear & Greed Analysis
8. Technical Analysis

Each issue takes a few hours to research and so please help us and:

1. Hit the LIKE button❤️ on this post & share this newsletter with a friend or family🙏

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2. Become a paid subscriber to support our writing & research! (Get a free 30-day trial with this link)

   Subscribe now

Read more

📬 In today's issue:

Part I - Markets:
1. Market Update & Analysis
2. Important Finance News 
3. Chart of the Day

Part II - Investing:
4. Insider Trades
5. Top Stocks
6. Today's Trade
7. Fear & Greed Analysis
8. Technical Analysis

Each issue takes a few hours to research and so please help us and:

1. Hit the LIKE button on this post & share this newsletter with a friend or family!

   Share

2. Become a paid subscriber to support our writing & research! (Get a free 30-day trial with this link)

   Subscribe now

Read more