The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) slipped another 0.1% in May. That makes six straight months of decline—37 drops in the last 39 months. The LEI is now 16% below its peak, stuck at a 9-year low, blinking louder than a dashboard warning light.
Historically, this kind of sustained drop has signaled every recession since 1960. The problem? The LEI leans heavily on manufacturing metrics—four of its ten components, in fact.
Services, as we know, make up 70% of GDP and barely register in the index. It’s like predicting a kitchen fire from the garage.
Still, recessions don’t ask for permission. They just show up when no one’s looking. Policy by social media post only makes interpreting the data more difficult… and less effective. To whit…
EVs Get The Guillotine
President Trump has turned trade policy into an interpretive dance. Suppliers who bet big on electric vehicles under previous clean energy incentives are now stuck with sunk costs, whiplashed by a return to tariffs and anti-EV rhetoric.
Some are pausing investments. Others are cutting jobs. A few are packing up entirely and looking for friendlier policy climates outside North America.
Trump believes this volatility will produce jobs in the long run. But EV investors, already allergic to uncertainty, are hedging their bets with one foot out the door.
As Elon Musk has been retweeting on a fairly regular basis, the Chinese are accelerating their manufacturing of EVs… their inclusion of solar in the power grid… and their advances in AI are all outpacing the US.
Regarding his recent tumultuous departure from the Trump-Musk bromance, Musk retweeted this:
Buy Now, Pay Later… Get Dinged Forever
Your credit score just got another data point. FICO will start including Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) loans in its credit scoring models this fall. For consumers who’ve been paying responsibly, this could mean a long-overdue boost.
But for the growing crowd who missed a payment on that designer candle or limited-edition anime figurine, their credit scores may soon reflect it. BNPL defaults are already rising—Klarna says delinquencies inched up from 0.51% to 0.54%.
It’s not catastrophic yet, but we’re seeing the quiet emergence of shadow debt, stacked one “four-easy-payments” purchase at a time. And with most lenders still using FICO models that haven’t been updated since the second Bush administration, it may be years before the full scope of this debt even shows up in the system.
The Day the Dollar Dies:
Musk’s Warning Explained
Elon Musk says America is on a collision course with economic ruin.
And Addison Wiggin believes he knows the exact chart that proves it.
The dollar’s collapse may have already begun…
Click here to see what comes next.
Iran, Israel, and Trump’s Twitter Diplomacy
The U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Iran responded with a precisely imprecise missile barrage aimed at a U.S. base in Qatar—an attack telegraphed in advance, which caused no casualties.
Trump called the response “weak,” thanked Iran for the heads-up, and immediately declared peace. Then he tweeted about a ceasefire between Israel and Iran that neither side had agreed to.
By Monday evening, the ceasefire was toast—reportedly due to confusion over time zones. The missiles, apparently, aren’t subscribed to Truth Social.
Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear chief assured the public that production hadn’t skipped a beat.
Should things escalate, Iran could shut down the Strait of Hormuz, bottlenecking 20% of global oil flow. That’s one lever they still have… assuming they’re still in the mood to push it. Most of that oil is bound for China, anyway, so it might not matter as much to the price of gasoline in your gas tank as it did prior the the Russian invasion of “the Ukraine”.
America’s New Atomic Age (With AI Watching Closely)
Governor Kathy Hochul announced that New York will build the first new U.S. nuclear power plant in 15 years—a 1-gigawatt reactor, enough to power a million homes, or maybe just one West Coast AI server farm.
The announcement comes amid growing consensus—even among Trump-era deregulators—that nuclear energy is back in vogue.
After decades of “not in my backyard,” suddenly everyone wants a clean, steady power source that doesn’t depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing. We’ll see if the permitting process moves faster than the half-life of uranium.
Markets: Don’t Mind the War, Buy the Dip
Markets climbed Monday on falling oil prices and what investors interpreted as limited retaliation from Iran.
Tesla shares surged on early enthusiasm for its robotaxi pilot in Austin.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is selling up to $865 million worth of stock through the end of the year, which may not be a red flag—but it’s certainly a signal.
Starbucks denied rumors it’s selling off its China business, and Northern Trust politely declined a merger overture from BNY Mellon.
In short, the grown-ups at the table are getting their affairs in order.
Powell on the Hot Seat
Fed Chair Jerome Powell appears before Congress today to explain why he’s not cutting rates until at least September. Trump, never one for subtlety, suggested lawmakers should “really work him over.”
Powell’s insistence on data dependence sounds quaint in a political climate where “three points lower” is shouted like a magic spell. With the passage of the GENIUS act through the Senate last week, setting the Fed funds rate just doesn’t seem as influential as it used to when, say, Greenspan was leading the bank. That said, the act still has to presented in the House, reconciled by committee and shipped down the street to the Oval office before we start seeing the true benefits of “DeFi”.
More, much more, on this topic with our colleague Ian King in Grey Swan Live! this Thursday, June 26 at 11am. Stay tuned…
NATO Talks Unity, While Russia Readies Its Troops…
NATO leaders gather today in The Hague under a cloud of uncertainty. Spain is wavering on its defense spending target. Trump continues to pressure allies to spend more.
Putin and the oligarchs in Russia? Quietly observing. A growing number of defense analysts believe Moscow could test NATO’s resolve within five years. The alliance has seen plenty of squabbles before. But few in the era of live-fire wars and AI-assisted battlefield logistics.
Galaxy Brain: Rubin Observatory Begins Cosmic Survey
If you need a break from geopolitics and credit scores, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory just released images from the largest digital camera ever constructed.
Millions of galaxies, thousands of asteroids, and several previously unknown existential crises are now catalogued in glorious high-resolution. The observatory plans to rephotograph the entire southern sky every few nights for the next decade.
Meanwhile, we still can’t get a speed bump installed or new trees planted on the boulevard in front of our Baltimore house.
If You’re Paying Attention, You’re Not Crazy
The recession signal is flashing. Credit scores are about to get a surprise BNPL adjustment. Trade policy is a rollercoaster. The Middle East is balancing on a Twitter thread. And somewhere in upstate New York, we’re restarting our nuclear future to power the server farms that make AI generate pictures of cats on surfboards.
A quick review of what’s shakin’ these days would make Albert Camus proud. The news cycle is absurd, but it’s real. And knowing that may be your greatest advantage as an investor… and in life in general. Best not to take things to seriously.
~ Addison
p.s. Grey Swan Live! [this week with Ian King]
Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
