The Great Taking

May 15, 2025Addison Wiggin

A $36 trillion dollar bombshell has just been dropped. You need to prepare now to protect your wealth and save your future.

The Great Taking
A $26 trillion bombshell has just dropped...
Since the US confiscation of Russian assets in 2022, pretty much every pull back to 50-day moving average (red line) has been bought, and they continue to be bought. The average is now flattening out, as you would expect with this summer consolidation, rather as it did late last year.

We know many consumers continue to live paycheck to paycheck. After spiking higher, the drawdown in savings—cash that can be used in an emergency—is back to pre-pandemic levels. While the overall debt picture is ugly, in some ways it isn’t – and that it may take some more time for a debt crisis to reach a kitchen countertop near you.

As we knock off for the week approaching mid-summer, it strikes us how hard it is to distinguish signal from noise. Markets defying gravity gives us pause. Don’t buy in at elevated prices. Keep your asset allocation in full view. Buy cheap. Sell dear.

BREAKING NEWS

Campfire Politics in Idaho

Last week’s flash floods in Texas claimed over 100 lives and are estimated to cost $18–22 billion, per AccuWeather. Lacking alert systems in “Flash Flood Alley,” the event reopened scrutiny on Trump-era weather agency cuts.

The NFIB Small Business Optimism and Consumer Credit reports—key indicators of Main Street resilience and household debt stress. This will be a big one considering the widening gap between consumer credit and the national savings rate.


The Labor Market’s Warning Signal Now

A Bloomberg survey shows 30% of everyday Americans expect the labor market to get worse. Each jump of this magnitude in the past has preceded a recession.

Labor market data is screaming that there’s trouble in the real economy.

Except, of course, the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – the same government agency that has “revised” away over a million jobs reported as having been created during the Biden administration.


Matt Milner: Main Street’s New Gateway into Wall Street’s Playground
Matt Milner: Main Street’s New Gateway into Wall Street’s Playground

July 8, 2025Addison Wiggin

For close to one hundred years, the U.S. government made it illegal for ordinary investors to invest in pre-IPO startups — in other words, companies that weren’t public.

Unless you were a wealthy accredited investor (net worth of at least $1 million, or annual salary of $200,000), you could only invest in publicly-traded stocks and bonds.

This forced ordinary investors to miss out on big gains. According to Cambridge Associates, a financial advisor with clients including the Rockefeller Family and the Bill Gates Foundation, private startups have delivered annual returns of 55% over the last twenty-five years.

That’s five, six, seven times higher than the average returns of stocks. And it’s enough to double your money every two years or so.

Mamdani Land
Mamdani Land

July 7, 2025Joel Bowman

Universal healthcare and “free” (taxpayer-funded) education and the rest of the redistributive voter bribes are ways of spending money, not generating it. Progressive taxation is a means of redistributing wealth, not producing it. The difference is non-trivial.

Countries like Kuwait and Norway are not rich because of their respective governments’ addiction to expensive giveaway programs, whatever one thinks of the merits or alleged compassion of such redistributive policies. They are wealthy despite them.

Down at the other End of the World, meanwhile, president Javier Milei has been busy liberating Argentina’s long-suffering citizens from three-quarters of a century of politicians’ worst laid plans. We’ll have more about the goings on in our adopted home later in the week.

A Republic: Es Lo Que Es
A Republic: Es Lo Que Es

July 3, 2025Addison Wiggin

The genius of the American experiment is that it allows for course correction — but only if we remember our role. Not as subjects, but as stewards.

Your role, good sir or wise gentle lady, is to continue doing what you’ve always done: managing your affairs with clear eyes and a steady hand, educating those who’ll carry the torch, and resisting the ever-present temptation to comply just for comfort’s sake.

Yes, the government will grow. Yes, the financial world may turn inside out before breakfast — possibly before your second cup of coffee. But you still have the right to think. To choose. To invest in your own way.

2025’s Seismic Events

July 3, 2025Addison Wiggin

Markets are humming, policy dazzles, but beneath the gloss — tech booms, liquidity surges, digital currencies — the very foundations of money, governance, and investor sentiment are cracking, realigning, even smoldering.

The post-World War II Pax Americana isn’t evolving; it’s being dismantled rather quickly.

What’s emerging is accompanied by a load of distraction and showmanship. So it’s important to focus on the actual events taking place right now that are going to affect your portfolio this year.

And, we can’t overstate this, the changes that are actually happening right now to your money.

Today, digital dollars masquerade as cash, tariffs are cloaked as protection, AI layoffs spun as productivity, private assets packaged as democratized. And yet, none of it matters if the final pillar — confidence — crumbles.

When belief falters, no trumpet of “seismic event” grants you shelter.


When Decent Performance Meets High Fees, Investors Suffer

July 2, 2025Andrew Packer

Private equity tends to perform better than the stock market, provided you do so over time.

Private credit, a newer asset class but a rapidly growing one, also shows strong returns, as well as relatively high current income.

And if you have a retirement account, chances are you’re willing to think long-term.

Win-win, right? Not necessarily.

First, these new funds would also come with an incentive structure similar to investing in a hedge fund. That includes a higher fee than a market index ETF – think 2% compared to 0.1% (or less).

Plus, many of these funds have a hurdle rate attached to them as well. Once they clear 5% returns – which, with private credit, can be easily cleared by making deals with cash returns over 5% – additional incentive fees may kick in.


The Labor Market Turns Sour

July 2, 2025Addison Wiggin

Several factors are likely at play here. Rising uncertainty over Trump’s tariff and trade policies – even though he’s largely walked those back.

A bigger factor? The rise of AI.

Many big tech companies have been making layoffs this year, citing increased productivity as a reason. For instance, Microsoft just announced another 9,000 in layoffs.

Of course, when an individual company announces layoffs, it’s usually bullish for shares. That company is doing the same – or more – with a smaller headcount. That’s lower costs and higher productivity.

But in a world where every company can lay off a sizable percentage of their staff, we have more unemployed consumers, who tend to cut back on spending.

Three Charts And Kaboom!
Three Charts And Kaboom!

July 2, 2025Addison Wiggin

Every catalyst feels plausible.

Bank fragility from unrealized losses. Stubbornly high interest rates are making refinancing a pain. AI-induced job cuts are hollowing out consumer demand. Another carry trade unwind like last summer or a geopolitical flare-up.

It’s all a messy pile of possibilities — any one of which could tip the balance.

It’s the kind of setup that would make a predictive AI model salivate.

Feed it inputs like these — jobs reports, interest rates, layoffs, debt levels — and it would likely start blinking red.

James Hickman: “Zeus” Just Made the Most Predictable Crisis in History Even Worse
James Hickman: “Zeus” Just Made the Most Predictable Crisis in History Even Worse

July 1, 2025James Hickman

Over the next twelve months, roughly $9 trillion worth of existing US debt securities will mature; this was money that the government borrowed years ago… and will soon come due.

In theory the government has to pay that money back. Naturally they don’t have the funds to do so… so instead they’ll borrow new money to pay back the old loans… essentially refinancing $9 trillion worth of the national debt over the next twelve months.

So realistically they must sell ~$11 trillion in debt over the next twelve months: $9 trillion to refinance existing debt, plus another $2 trillion to cover this year’s budget deficit.

$11 trillion is an enormous amount of money… which means they’ll need every investor possible ready and willing to buy US government bonds.

And that’s a problem. Because right now, foreigners (which own a HUGE chunk of the debt) are aggressively backing away from US government bonds.

Pelosi v. The Inverse Cramer: Know Who To Avoid
Pelosi v. The Inverse Cramer: Know Who To Avoid

July 1, 2025Addison Wiggin

One way investors have found great returns is to follow in the footsteps of great investors such as Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch.

In today’s more jaded society, the focus has shifted from great investors to those with better knowledge. It’s no surprise that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been a great source of trading ideas for investors, even after belated disclosures.

A Great Market Paradox
A Great Market Paradox

July 1, 2025Addison Wiggin

We start today with a paradox. The U.S. stock market has never been larger — $63.8 trillion, by Goldman’s count. That’s double what it was just five years ago.

To put it in context: it took eight years, from 2012 to 2020, to double the last time. Now we’ve done it in five, with the S&P 500 clocking in another record just yesterday.

From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive

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