The Great Taking
May 15, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A $36 trillion dollar bombshell has just been dropped. You need to prepare now to protect your wealth and save your future.
BREAKING NEWS
July 10, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
In 1969, Americans tuned in to watch a rocket land on the moon.
In 2025, we watched a chipmaker eclipse Exxon, Apple, and the Bank of England combined — and a copper tariff threaten to derail the next phase of the digital economy.
And a digital currency backed by energy sucking algos is challenging the once almighty dollar.
It’s a hell of a time to be an investor. Or a plumber.
July 9, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
July 8, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
With copper imports soaring going into the news, it’s a sign that prices may be rising on pre-tariff demand. Much like how Apple filled airplanes full of iPhones from China before Trump kicked up tariff rates on Chinese goods.
For now, it’s another sign of the economic distortions being caused by President Trump’s Great Reset plan.
While copper prices may continue to rise, it’s going to be a wild ride with many pullbacks along the way. And this is your economy on tariffs – where even the trusted doctor is uncertainty stumbling along
July 8, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
July 7, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
July 9, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Even if you’re starting with just $100, you now have more ways than ever to access private markets.
Yes, risks are higher.
Yes, due diligence is incredibly important.
But for investors willing to look beyond the traditional 60/40 portfolio, the rewards can be well worth it.
July 8, 2025 • Addison 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.
July 7, 2025 • Joel 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.
July 7, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
From tax-law turnarounds to tariff theater, corporate spats, and labor dysfunction — all under the gaze of election season — this is a high-stakes narrative in real time. Trump, acting as hero and provocateur, has unleashed a ready-made script for midterm dominance — one that deeply impacts your investment blueprint.
If you’re going to win in this second half, you’ll need to align your portfolio with Trump’s moves, anticipate his counter-narratives, and hedge against the downside with tools like gold, and, yes, bitcoin.
But we’ll want to keep checking in with the plotline. Because in 2025, being on stage is the way to shape your results, not sitting in the audience.
July 3, 2025 • Addison 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.
July 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
For now, the mixed economic data means stocks will likely trend higher, until there’s a crisis. And when there is a crisis, the Fed will finally make its move and aggressively cut rates.
And, for now, bond yields are still near their highest level in 15 years. Bond yields, even on U.S. Treasury bonds, are over the rate of inflation.
In short, it’s not a bad time to lock in bond yields now – which will go lower during a crisis, pushing bond prices higher. And in a crisis, today’s high-flying stocks, driven by retail investors with a fear of missing out – could easily get crushed.
July 3, 2025 • Addison 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.
July 2, 2025 • Andrew 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.
July 2, 2025 • Addison 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.
July 2, 2025 • Addison 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.
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
