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Miscellaneous

Europe is suffering from a slow-moving, self-inflicted crisis.
The disruption in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has intensified it.
Before it can even address the economic threats looming from China, Europe must first confront the reality of its huge energy trade deficit.
Last year, the European Union&rsquo;s headline goods surplus masked a crippling weakness: an energy deficit approaching &euro;300 billion.
Imported oil and natural gas offset roughly 70% of Europe&rsquo;s underlying trade strength from exports of autos and other high-value manufactured goods. This vulnerability leaves its industrial base chronically exposed to global supply chokepoints.
With the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed following the escalation of Middle Eastern conflict, roughly 20% of global oil supplies and over 17% of liquefied natural gas have been effectively paralyzed.
A prolonged disruption &ndash; plus a lengthy recovery in oil tanker traffic whenever the conflict ends &ndash; will pile up selling pressure on European stocks.
<h3 style="text-align: center;">The Self-Inflicted Energy Crisis</h3>
History shows that a country or a trading bloc cannot be a great power without sufficient, affordable energy.
Europe&rsquo;s energy weaknesses limit its industrial competitiveness, devour household purchasing power, and worsen the bloc&rsquo;s terms of trade.
Leaving aside the ongoing Iran conflict, Europe&rsquo;s structural energy deficit is the cumulative product of policy choices.
The blame falls on disconnected, elitist European Union bureaucrats and politicians who care more about the Davos crowd than their own countrymen.
As Alpine Macro recently observed, policy choices that got the EU here include:
<ul>
<li>prematurely eliminating baseload nuclear power;</li>
<li>mandating intermittent wind and solar without adequate grid and storage capacity;</li>
<li>and leaving the continent dependent on imported natural gas.</li>
</ul>
Because natural gas sets the marginal electricity price, power costs are exposed to geopolitical volatility.
The resulting disparity is glaring. As Alpine Macro illustrates below, while Europe&rsquo;s electricity production has stagnated and steadily declined over the past two decades, China&rsquo;s power generation has skyrocketed to fuel its industrial machine. EU electricity prices are now materially higher than those in both China and the U.S.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/vBI0LRqgkqWIqYmxAYGpE/c193106b8a80d39854e85916eb53dd8e/AW2-alert-061126-image1.jpg" alt="chart" width="350px" />
Early 2026 illustrated this vulnerability. A genuine economic recovery was forming, with Eurozone and German composite PMIs finally rising.
Then the Iran conflict hit, gas prices spiked, and by May, Germany and the broader Eurozone were pushed back near the contraction threshold.
This was the inevitable result of years of accumulated policy errors. Today, Eurozone industrial output sits 3% below its 2021 level. Chemicals capacity has plunged 9% since 2022.
The continent is now dealing with a contradiction: it wants electrification, artificial intelligence, reindustrialization, and rearmament, yet it maintains a cost and regulatory structure that effectively makes these goals unreachable.
And that brings us to China, the state-sponsored industrial gorilla that&rsquo;s grabbing market share by cheating on international trade rules.
<h3 style="text-align: center;">The &ldquo;China Shock 2.0&rdquo;</h3>
This self-inflicted energy diet makes Europe the perfect target for a far greater threat than energy imports.
The inferno consuming the continent&rsquo;s manufacturing base is what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph identifies as the &ldquo;<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/03/china-shock-2-destroy-europe-as-we-know-it/">China Shock 2.0</a>&rdquo; thesis.
According to Evans-Pritchard, European leaders are finally awakening to the &ldquo;terrifying danger that China could obliterate much of their industrial base within less than a decade,&rdquo; a catastrophe capable of shattering the EU project itself.
The original China Shock used government subsidies, loans, and a flood of products to deindustrialize America&rsquo;s Rust Belt.
Now that the Trump administration has fought back with trade barriers, Beijing cannot so easily dump its excess capacity on the U.S. Europe is now a softer target.
China&rsquo;s aggressive trade posture is born of its domestic economic imbalances. China&rsquo;s &ldquo;hyper-growth miracle of the past 40 years has hit a dead end,&rdquo; writes Evans-Pritchard. It was undermined by &ldquo;debt saturation, a burst property bubble, fiscal limits, and the vast wastage of malinvestments.&rdquo;
<h3 style="text-align: center;">The Splintering of a Broken Continent</h3>
China&rsquo;s predatory policies are now colliding with a fizzling European recovery. The pressure is so severe it risks splintering the EU.
Evans-Pritchard frames the conflict:
<ul>
<li>The Latin Protectionists: France, Italy, and the broader Latin bloc are clamoring for protection against what French agencies warn could be a &ldquo;rapid industrial wipe-out.&rdquo; French unemployment has climbed back above 8%, and domestic companies warn that producing in Europe now costs twice as much as in Asia.</li>
<li>The Nordic Free-Traders: Conversely, Germany and the Nordics are trying to defend what remains of unfettered global trade.</li>
</ul>
Here&rsquo;s the problem with the Nordic bloc&rsquo;s case to businesses and voters: Germany&rsquo;s business model is no longer competitive.
In the trade triangle that includes the U.S., Europe, and China, Europe is the odd man out.
Germany and other more free-trade-oriented countries are reacting too late to compete on a more even playing field.
By the time it starts adapting to the new, harsher global energy and trade reality, it&rsquo;ll be too late to do much about it.
The U.S. has cheaper energy and a more industrial policy focus to give its producers a fighting chance (not that our stock market bubble helps, but that&rsquo;s another story for another time).
And China has the advantage of coordinating a whole-of-society focus on dominating what its leaders consider to be the industries of the 21st Century.
It&rsquo;s unclear whether China can continue shoring up its imbalances. But in the meantime, China keeps dumping the consequences of its imbalances onto a hapless Europe.
So this month, we recommend betting against the iShares Eurozone ETF (NYSE: <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/EZU">EZU</a>).
EZU tracks the MSCI EMU Index. It holds 222 stocks from developed market countries that use the euro as their official currency. EMU stands for the European Monetary Union. Here are the relevant countries: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.
EZU&rsquo;s top five sector allocations are:
<ul>
<li>24% Financials</li>
<li>20% Industrials</li>
<li>17% Information Technology</li>
<li>9% Consumer Discretionary</li>
<li>7% Utilities</li>
</ul>
Here is a long-term chart. Notice that EZU did not perform well during the first Trump administration from 2017 to late 2020. It was flat for most of that four-year period.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5VsV23hPtVqmZCOID7HMpl/0aa34c03d233738c6651d7fe62498365/AW2-alert-061126-image2.jpg" alt="chart" width="485px" />
The revenue per share and earnings per share of EZU&rsquo;s portfolio have been eroded by heavy exposure to barely solvent European banks.
These banks benefited from the ECB&rsquo;s shift out of chronic zero interest rates. The problem is that neither the governments nor most local companies can afford to keep paying positive real interest rates on their debt loads. The ECB will come under increasing pressure to slash rates as 2026 proceeds, which deprives its banks of interest income.
Earnings for the index are elevated, have been moving sideways for a few years, and have a history of plummeting during global recessions.
At 18 times earnings and only a 2% dividend yield, EZU is not cheap enough to compensate for the rapidly rising risks facing its portfolio companies.

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How Europe Shot Its Economy In The Foot

Updates

There is a new currency being minted right now &mdash; and almost nobody can name it.
It isn't gold&hellip;&nbsp;
It isn't the dollar&hellip;&nbsp;
It isn't even Bitcoin.
You can't hold it in your hand, you can't bury it in the backyard, and your bank won't let you deposit it.
But every AI lab on the planet is fighting for it.
Every government on Earth is now stockpiling it.
And the man building the biggest reserve of it just pulled off the largest IPO in human history.
The currency is compute.
If that word sounds like jargon, stay with me a moment &mdash; because once you see it, you can't un-see it.
It changes how you should think about where the next decade of wealth gets created.
<h3>The Line That Gave It Away</h3>
A couple of years back, the heads of the big AI labs started talking in a strange new way.&nbsp;
They stopped talking about software. They stopped talking about apps.
They started saying things like "it all comes down to compute."
At first it sounded like Silicon Valley nerd-speak. It wasn't.&nbsp;
What they were admitting is that the bottleneck on artificial intelligence &mdash; the one thing standing between their models and something far more powerful was raw processing power. The chips. The electricity to run them. The physical infrastructure to house them.
Pour in all the dollars you want; what every one of them actually needs is the thing at the end of the pipeline: compute.
When the most powerful companies in the world start measuring their strength not in dollars but in a single scarce resource&hellip; that resource has become a currency.
<h3>We've Seen This Play Out Before</h3>
In 1870, the resource that took over the world was oil. And one man understood something his competitors didn't.
John D. Rockefeller realized the money wasn't really just in the oil itself. It was in controlling the whole chain &mdash; the refineries that turned crude into something useful, the pipelines that moved it, the distribution that put it everywhere.
He didn't just sell the currency of the industrial age. He owned the machine that minted it.&nbsp;
That machine was Standard Oil.
And a hundred and fifty years later, history is rhyming.
Today the strategic resource isn't crude pumped out of the ground. It's compute. And once again, the real fortune won't just go to the people who simply use it. It'll go to whoever controls the refinery &mdash; the chips, the power, and the fabs that turn sand and electricity into intelligence.
So the question that matters is simple: who's building the new Standard Oil?
<h3>The Rockefeller of the AI age</h3>
I'll give you a hint.&nbsp;
He already controls the railroads. Now he's coming for the refinery and the power plant.
Rockefeller's empire was built on controlling how the currency moved. Over the past year Elon Musk has assembled the one thing no one else on Earth has &mdash; and he&rsquo;s building exactly the way Rockefeller did.
Start with the transport layer. Elon controls the rockets that haul mass to orbit and Starlink, the network that pipes the output back down. In a world where compute is the currency and the refinery is migrating to space, that is the chokepoint &mdash; and while every rival is left negotiating for a ride, Musk owns the freight line.&nbsp;
The rockets are his railroads. Starlink is his pipeline.
Now for the two other pieces.
The first is a project he calls Terafab. This is the refinery.
A refinery that takes a raw resource and turns it into the high-value fuel everyone fights over. Terafab will take silicon and turn it into chips: the refined, scarce fuel of the AI age, the thing nations now guard like enriched uranium. Whoever controls the refinery controls the fuel supply for the entire industry.
But fuel sitting in a warehouse doesn't do anything. You have to burn it. And that's the second piece &mdash; the data center, the power plant where chips and electricity get fused into the only thing anyone actually wants at the end: compute. The refinery makes the fuel. The power plant turns the fuel into the currency.
That's a Standard Oil strategy.&nbsp;
Musk isn't trying to win one link in the chain &mdash; he owns the railroad, he's laying the pipeline, he's building the refinery, and he's building the power plant. Every rival who wants to mint this currency has to come through infrastructure he controls.
Which leaves just one question.&nbsp;
<h3>Where It Gets Strange</h3>
Where do you put a power plant that devours that much electricity &mdash; and throws off that much heat?
For two hundred years the answer was "wherever the resource is." For the compute age, I think the answer is going to surprise people: off the planet.
This is a thread we&rsquo;ve been pulling on for a while.&nbsp;
We call it the Great Migration &mdash; the slow, inevitable shift of heavy compute up into orbit, where solar power is unlimited, where the cold of space solves the heat problem for free, and where you're not fighting cities and regulators for land and electricity.
The same man building the refinery already owns the only fleet on Earth that can cheaply move mass into space.
Connect those dots, and the SpaceX IPO stops looking like a rocket story. It starts looking like the opening move in a plan to mint the world's most important currency &mdash; and to do it somewhere no competitor can easily follow.
<h3>The Proof Is In How the Powerful Are Behaving</h3>
You don&rsquo;t have to take my word that compute is the new money.
Governments now treat advanced chips the way they once treated enriched uranium &mdash; with export controls, with watch lists, with national-security reviews.
Nations talk openly about how much compute they have versus their rivals, the same way the old powers once counted oil reserves and gold bars.
When a country starts measuring its strength in a unit, and starts hoarding that unit, and starts forbidding its enemies from getting it, that's a currency.&nbsp;
And currencies, unlike fads, don't go away. They get more entrenched. The early holders get richer the longer the game runs.
<h3>What This Means For You</h3>
You can&rsquo;t open an account and buy a pile of compute.
But you can own the refinery and the picks-and-shovels that feed it &mdash; the chip designers, the power and energy plays, the thermal and fabrication names, and the orbital infrastructure that becomes the future foundation for it.
That&rsquo;s the map we&rsquo;ve been laying out. The names are already in our portfolio. Keep watching.
For today, I just want you to walk away with this one idea:
Oil was the currency of the last century.&nbsp;
Compute is the currency of this one.&nbsp;
And the man minting it just went public.
The people who understood Standard Oil in 1880 didn't need to be geniuses. They just needed to see the pattern before everyone else did.
We're at that same moment again&hellip; right at the start.

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Elon’s Secret Currency

Welcome to the Omega Wealth Circle Wiretap &mdash; your exclusive look at what our top minds are talking about right now.
These insights and analysis are straight from our internal meetings and chat programs.
So the Wiretap helps you keep pace with our thinking &mdash; if not gives you a head start on our next action alerts.
Here&rsquo;s what has our editors and analysts fired up this week:
<h2 class="subhead nbp">1. Trump&rsquo;s Next Wall Street Winners</h2>
Ukrainian drones continue to wreak havoc deep inside Russia, while the U.S. pilot who was shot down by Iranian drones says they were very sophisticated.
So it&rsquo;s little wonder that President Trump&rsquo;s military budget includes $54 billion for drones &mdash; up from $225 million this fiscal year.
Yet stocks for companies that specialize in drones are lagging&hellip;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s one of the biggest dislocations in the market right now,&rdquo; says Chris Cimorelli.
He thinks it&rsquo;s only a matter of time before Wall Street figures out the opportunity and starts diving in.
&ldquo;When these things pop,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;they pop violently.&rdquo;
Obviously one of the biggest hold-ups is that the $54 billion is only in the president&rsquo;s proposed budget. The spending still needs to be approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives.
But that&rsquo;s not a longshot &mdash; even in today&rsquo;s political environment.
&ldquo;Everybody agrees we need this,&rdquo; says Byron King. &ldquo;We need to just throw freaking money at it.&rdquo;
He&rsquo;s confident that &ldquo;the money&rsquo;s going to be there, and it&rsquo;s going to get spent.&rdquo;
So the only real question is where that tidal wave of cash will flow&hellip;
Davis Wilson offered a few ideas in <a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/55-billion-reasons-to-go-drone">The Million Mission</a><a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/55-billion-reasons-to-go-drone"> last week</a>. One of his top names is AeroVironment Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/AVAV">AVAV</a>), the current industry leader.
Mohan Garikiparithi thinks AVAV is a great play&hellip; but not because of its attack drones.
&ldquo;Their offensive drones kind of flopped in Ukraine,&rdquo; he admits.
Instead, he thinks the Pentagon will put a bigger emphasis on drone defense.
Ukraine has shown how hard it is to prevent drones from hitting critical infrastructure. And Russia knows they&rsquo;re coming. So it&rsquo;s not hard to imagine someone using drones to hit targets right here in the United States&hellip;
But last year Aerovironment acquired BlueHalo, which specializes in neutralizing hostile drones. It could be the edge that sends gobs of federal money its way.
Dan reminds us that Jim Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence pick CACI International Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/CACI">CACI</a>) is also in the counter-drone business.
In addition, there are a handful of drone-related exchange-traded funds, like the REX Drone ETF (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/DRNZ">DRNZ</a>).
Some of the legacy defense contractors could end up with some of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s cash, too.
&ldquo;Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/HII">HII</a>) builds drones,&rdquo; Byron offers.
This could be Wall Street&rsquo;s next big theme, backed by government cash. So it could become the subject of <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/article/exclusive-your-next-omega-wealth-circle-benefit">a future targeted portfolio report</a> &mdash; exclusively for you.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">2. Getting Ahead of the Quantum Arms Race</h2>
On Monday, Trump signed an Executive Order directing the U.S. government to speed up development of <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/article/your-wiretap-the-first-usd10-trillion-company-quantum-computings-chatgpt#anchortagsecond">quantum computers</a>.
Chris Cimorelli saw this coming, as he <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/article/q-day-is-coming">explained in 10X Trade Club last week</a>.
In short, some nation or rogue entity could one day use a quantum computer to make current encryption technology obsolete.
Everything from financial accounts to government databases will be vulnerable. In theory, quantum computers can even decrypt blockchains &mdash; rendering cryptocurrencies worthless.
The only way to counter the threat is with another quantum computer &mdash; which is why the United States must be the world&rsquo;s leader in the technology.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s basically a mini-Manhattan project,&rdquo; Chris explains.
Trump&rsquo;s announcement sent quantum stocks briefly soaring, but Chris doesn&rsquo;t think all of them have staying power.
&ldquo;IONQ Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/IONQ">IONQ</a>), D-Wave Quantum Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/QBTS">QBTS</a>) and Rigetti Computing Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/RGTI">RGTI</a>) will go up for a while,&rdquo; Chris tells us. &ldquo;But you can't really bet on them long-term, because they are momentum plays.&rdquo;
He thinks a few companies that specialize in quantum security could have legs, however.
And for a larger, longer-term way to play the quantum computer race&hellip;
&ldquo;You definitely bet on IBM Corp. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/IBM">IBM</a>),&rdquo; Chris says.
Alan agrees. &ldquo;Nobody believed in IBM,&rdquo; he tells us. &ldquo;Nobody.&rdquo;
Now the company has made itself a leading name in the quantum computing business. And that has reinvigorated its stock.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">3. An Electric Vehicle Revolution</h2>
While electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining popularity in Europe and Asia, they&rsquo;re still a fairly niche product in the United States.
Of course, there are good reasons for that. EVs are expensive&hellip; hard to resell&hellip; take forever to recharge&hellip; and have a habit of freezing or catching fire.
But for years, Ray Blanco <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/article/your-wiretap-we-need-baby-boomers-wisdom-regional-banks-face-extinction#4">has been telling us</a> about Toyota Motor Corp.&rsquo;s (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/TM">TM</a>) plan to overcome those objections.
The solid-state batteries they&rsquo;re developing have a much longer range than current EV batteries. They&rsquo;re also designed to last much longer and can be fully recharged in less than 10 minutes.
Oh, and they are less affected by low temperatures and are slow to overheat&hellip; so the risk of freezing or fire is greatly reduced.
Vehicles with solid-state batteries aren&rsquo;t expected to start rolling out until 2027 or 2028.
Matt Badiali thinks that&rsquo;s soon enough to start trying to get ahead of this breakthrough.
&ldquo;Go long Toyota,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Go short Tesla Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/TSLA">TSLA</a>).&rdquo;
Frankly, I&rsquo;m not convinced that Toyota shares will take off, even if its solid-state batteries live up to their promise and get delivered on time.
The company lacks a spokesman like Elon Musk, who can talk shares of his companies into the stratosphere. So I think Toyota will have to work extra-hard to show its cars really are a game-changer.
Alan Knuckman thinks Toyota could pull it off, however, reinventing itself like IBM did. 
Nobody likes Toyota right now, either, he tells us.
&ldquo;It's been between $125 and $250 now for five years,&rdquo; he explains. So he thinks there could easily be a breakout.
Matt points out that &ldquo;the implications are way beyond EVs.&rdquo;
He tells us, &ldquo;these solid-state batteries are kind of the holy grail of energy storage.&rdquo;
They&rsquo;re lighter because they use less raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel. So they&rsquo;ll find their way into many other vehicles, including drones.
And, of course, Toyota isn&rsquo;t the only company developing solid-state batteries for vehicles.
So our team is considering the whole ecosystem of solid-state battery adoption. We&rsquo;ll let you know when we find the most promising ways to get ahead of this trend.

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Trump’s Next Wall Street Winners… Get Ahead of the Quantum Arms Race… An Electric Vehicle Revolution… and More!

This is your post-action report on the actions taken by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System (Fed) on June 17, 2026.
As we anticipated in Tuesday&rsquo;s FOMC meeting preview, the Fed left interest rates unchanged at the June 17 meeting. This leaves the Fed funds target rate at 3.5%&ndash;3.75%, where it&rsquo;s been since Dec. 10, 2025.
We&rsquo;ll explain the Fed&rsquo;s latest policy decision, the signals Kevin Warsh sent in his first meeting as chair and why they may mark the beginning of a very different Fed.
<h3>UPDATE: &ldquo;Not the stale Bernanke-Yellen-Powell Fed&rdquo;</h3>
First, here&rsquo;s the text of the relevant part of the Fed&rsquo;s press release issued at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday:
<blockquote>The Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.5% to 3.75%, in support of the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s dual mandate. The Committee reaffirmed its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East. Productivity growth and capital investment are strong. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee&rsquo;s 2% goal, in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy. The Committee will deliver price stability.</blockquote>
This meeting included a Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), which is a set of predictions on interest rates, unemployment, economic growth and other key metrics issued by the Fed governors and the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents.
These projections (known as the &ldquo;dots&rdquo; because they are presented as points on a graph) can safely be ignored. The dots offer some insight into current views, but they have little or no predictive value. They are almost always wrong.
The rationale for holding rates steady is straightforward. Inflation is not only above the Fed&rsquo;s target of 2.0%, it has been rising rapidly and shows no immediate signs of coming down.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7lrgODlBzM3ved42uguVwU/d537b8b2c2c89b24de9f07c22961d73b/CDC-alert-061826-image.jpg" alt="chart" width="540px" />
Meanwhile, unemployment has been steady between 4.3% and 4.5% since July 2025. That&rsquo;s not particularly high and it has not been going up.
With inflation on the rise and unemployment steady, it was clear that the Fed would focus all of its policy initiatives on inflation.
As a practical matter, this meant that rates were definitely not going down. There was some sentiment for a rate increase, but this was outweighed by the view that inflation might come down on its own in the coming months as oil prices decline sharply due to the extension of the Iran war ceasefire and the prospect that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen soon.
This prospect was enough to avoid a rate increase for now.
Since this was Kevin Warsh&rsquo;s first meeting as chair, there was certainly a view inside the FOMC that Warsh should begin his tenure with a strong show of support from committee members.
The result was a unanimous 12-0 vote to do nothing.
While the policy decision was a non-event, the meeting itself was highly significant.
New Chair Warsh used the FOMC statement and his press conference to make a number of important points. He made it clear that from now on this will be the Warsh Fed and not the stale Bernanke-Yellen-Powell Fed.
Here&rsquo;s a summary of significant changes:
<ul>
<li> Warsh personally declined to participate in the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). This tells us two things: Warsh does not consider SEP important and he will probably get rid of the &ldquo;dots&rdquo; in the near future. Good riddance. </li>
<li> The FOMC vote to approve the policy statement was unanimous. This is in contrast to recent meetings that incorporated dissents &mdash; including the April 2026 meeting &mdash; which had an almost unheard-of four dissents. That shows Warsh is firmly in charge for now. </li>
<li> The FOMC statement was highly abbreviated, much shorter than statements have been for years. This reveals a Warsh policy that less is more. You can expect fewer leaks and wordy announcements from the Fed and more focus on listening to markets. </li>
<li> The FOMC and Warsh himself did not offer any forward guidance. Since the rise of Ben Bernanke, the Fed has taken the view that by projecting inflation and growth expectations into the future, it could influence consumer and investor behavior in such a way as to achieve the targeted result. (This was always nonsense. I&rsquo;ve met with Ben Bernanke, and he&rsquo;s just as arrogant in person as he appears to be.) Warsh knows that markets and the consumer economy are bigger than the Fed and they will go their own way based on more factors than the Fed can possibly influence or compute. </li>
<li> Warsh created five independent task forces to review key functions of the Fed. These areas include communications, balance sheet management, the use of existing data, productivity and jobs in an era of transformation, and the Fed&rsquo;s inflation framework.</li>
</ul>
The work of these task forces may take months or longer. But the topics themselves suggest material changes in how the Fed operates.
Likely outcomes are that the Fed will communicate less and listen more. It will likely reduce its balance sheet by selling, or not rolling over, intermediate- and long-term securities. The impact of AI on jobs will be an important focus. And Warsh is likely to favor more diverse inflation measures instead of the current preferred benchmark of core PCE.
Taken together, these developments do not just mark the beginning of a new chair. They mark the beginning of a new Fed.
The core of Warsh&rsquo;s views and his new policies are contained in this excerpt from his press conference following the FOMC announcement:
<blockquote>We recognize that inflation has been running well ahead of the Fed&rsquo;s long-stated inflation goal of 2%. That&rsquo;s been going on for more than five years. Persistently high prices are a burden for the American people.</blockquote>
<blockquote>But the recent past need not be prologue. I am pleased to report that members of the FOMC are unambiguous and unanimous: This Committee will deliver price stability.</blockquote>
<blockquote>At any institution, a change in leadership is a natural and timely opportunity to reaffirm its mission, to review current practices and to consider whether those practices best meet our objectives. </blockquote>
<blockquote>On that score, you might have already noticed something: a difference in today&rsquo;s policy statement. It&rsquo;s a bit shorter, a bit simpler &mdash; and it dispenses with some older language.</blockquote>
<blockquote>That statement just gives you the facts, as best we can judge it. Absent, also, is so-called &lsquo;forward guidance,&rsquo; which we agreed was not well-suited to the current policy conjuncture.</blockquote>
<blockquote>This afternoon you also received the usual Summary of Economic Projections. It&rsquo;s been the practice of this Committee for participants to submit these projections, and I have encouraged my colleagues to continue to do so. I, however, have refrained from offering any projections of my own &mdash; consistent with my long-held views on the SEP, at least as currently structured.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In the median projections, real GDP rises at 2.2% this year, 2.3% next year, and total PCE inflation runs at 3.6% this year, 2.3% next year. The unemployment rate stands at about 4.3%. The median participant judges the appropriate federal funds rate to be at 3.8% at the end of this year and 3.6% at the end of next.</blockquote>
Reducing Warsh&rsquo;s statements and initiatives to their essence, he is saying that the Fed will stop trying to lead markets and start listening to markets.
Markets are bigger than the Fed and they offer a wealth of information about the state of the economy &mdash; if you know where to look and how to interpret the data.
Yield curves, swap spreads, TIPS breakevens and other indicators are far more valuable than Fed junk science such as the Phillips Curve, forward guidance and wealth effects.
One can only hope that Warsh will be successful and the Fed will end its long history of being wrong about almost everything.
Institutional changes aside, the Fed&rsquo;s dilemma over whether it should fight unemployment or inflation will be resolved. Inflation will come down on its own due to a slowing global economy and a likely recession. Unemployment will rise sharply for the same reasons.
The Fed&rsquo;s interest-rate pause today will make both conditions worse, but its short-term obsession with inflation makes it blind to that outcome. Everyday Americans will pay the price as many lose their jobs and more businesses fail.
The next meeting of the Fed&rsquo;s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is scheduled for July 29, 2026. Given the uncertainties of the war in Iran and the impact of higher short-term and intermediate-term interest rates, the U.S. economy will be in a very different place by late July.

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FOMC RECAP: Warsh Declares Independence

I've started over twenty companies. Seventeen failed spectacularly. Lost fortunes, twice. Got rejected by every publisher, every agent, every investor I ever approached. I know failure. I've lived inside it long enough to redecorate.
So when Starship &ndash; a $100m+ rocket the size of a skyscraper &ndash; exploded over the Indian Ocean last Friday, I felt something like recognition.
Not recognition of defeat. Recognition of the process. The same feeling I've had seventeen times before &mdash; when something falls apart and you already know what comes next.&nbsp;
And here's the part most investors missed: while the debris was still sinking, the space stocks in our portfolio went up.&nbsp;
Failure, correctly understood, is a buy signal. And right now, with the biggest IPO in history weeks away, the market is starting to understand that better than ever.&nbsp;
<h3>Breaking Eggs on the Way to Mars</h3>
Elon Musk has been mocked, shorted, and written off more times than most people have tried anything serious.
Tesla nearly went bankrupt. He's been through congressional hearings and the kind of public humiliation that would have finished most people.
He's also the richest person on earth.
The reason &ndash; and I say this as someone who has failed at more things than he'd like to count &ndash; is that he built failure into the process itself. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. SpaceX just happens to be breaking very expensive ones.
SpaceX doesn't treat a failed launch as a setback. It treats it as data.&nbsp;
You launch, you fail, you learn, you launch again faster than anyone thought possible.&nbsp;
Every Starship test since 2023 has destroyed hardware. And every one of those destroyed rockets has pushed the engineering closer to something genuinely historic: bringing launch costs from $18,500 per kilogram &ndash; where they sat for decades &ndash; down toward a number that would have sounded like science fiction five years ago.
When the prize is that large, markets stop grading on perfection. They start grading on progress. And every failed attempt is evidence that progress is happening.
<h3>Everything in Orbit Rises</h3>
Here's what all those years of failure actually built and why it matters to your portfolio right now.
SpaceX proved something no space company had before - that cheaper access to space generates real revenue at scale.
Starlink has ten million subscribers and eleven billion dollars in annual revenue. That business was built on the back of every failed test that came before it, which is exactly why I've never flinched at a Starship explosion.&nbsp;
The upcoming IPO &ndash; expected to value SpaceX at $1.75&ndash;$2 trillion, the largest public offering in history &ndash; has created a gravitational pull on everything near it.
Investors who can't buy SpaceX directly are buying the next best thing.
The Procure Space ETF (UFO) is up 13.5% in the past seven days.
And we're not even at the main event yet&hellip;
<h3>The Main Event Hasn't Started</h3>
The SpaceX IPO roadshow begins June 4th. Right now, space investing is still a niche conversation &ndash; something we've been in for years while most people weren't paying attention.
But when the world's most anticipated company goes public at a $2 trillion valuation, that changes fast.&nbsp;
Space shows up in the news, in boardrooms, in the brokerage accounts of people who've never thought about it in their lives. The money that follows an IPO like this doesn't trickle &ndash; it floods.
Seventeen failed companies taught me how to read a moment like this. When Starship blew up over the Indian Ocean, most investors saw a disaster. We saw a company doing exactly what it said it would do &ndash; and a portfolio already positioned for what comes next.
We have more coming specifically around the IPO. Keep your eyes on your inbox, the main event is still ahead.

ALN-Alert-052826-Featured

Starship Exploded. Our Portfolio Went Up.

We&rsquo;re approaching Memorial Day, a national holiday to commemorate those who&rsquo;ve fallen in service to the United States of America.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/kkcZYmMf7gZk7YfzehNiE/ba2487e37d1a6d7d013b8253079279a6/AWN-alert-052226-image1.jpg" alt="Boston Commons, Garden of Flags" width="540px" />
Courtesy: Homebase.org Boston Commons, Garden of Flags
On Monday, stock markets, banks and government offices will be closed and there will be no mail delivery.
The world still turns, however. There&rsquo;s no telling what might occur in the Middle East, East Asia, Europe or even right down the street.&nbsp;
Of course, this is Strategic Intelligence, where we discuss oil, gold, copper, mining, military technology and much else. Later in this note, I&rsquo;ll tell you about an upcoming event that could benefit you greatly.
For now, I want to get back to Memorial Day.
As with many American heritage ceremonies, Memorial Day began locally in the early 1800s across states, regions, counties, cities and towns of a young nation.
Sometime in mid-spring &mdash; depending on the weather &mdash; people visited cemeteries to place fresh flowers on the graves of soldiers. The practice became known as Decoration Day. Historical reports describe ceremonies of this kind throughout the 1830s, &rsquo;40s and &rsquo;50s.
Then came the Civil War (1861&ndash;1865), with casualties by the hundreds of thousands from both North and South. Across a divided and shocked nation, Decoration Day became not merely personal acts of remembrance, but large civic events that drew entire communities.
In 1868, Army Gen. John Logan issued an order directing military personnel to muster in late May to honor fallen comrades. The idea quickly spread beyond military posts.
By the 1870s, many states had established official Decoration Day holidays, and by the 1880s, people increasingly referred to the observance as &ldquo;Memorial Day.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3LzEh8oQwmcaftCUPQhGOL/519df5904d6e014e542798d204680ea8/AWN-alert-052226-image2.jpg" alt="March of Time" width="350px" />
&ldquo;March of Time&rdquo; by Henry Sandham (1896) Veteran Union soldiers &mdash; led by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman &mdash; march in Boston&rsquo;s Memorial Day parade
Although Memorial Day did not officially become a federal holiday until 1967, it was already recognized nationwide by the early 1900s.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">&ldquo;Those Who Were My Brothers&rdquo;&nbsp;</h2>
Now let&rsquo;s time-travel to May 1884 &mdash; to Keene, New Hampshire &mdash; where a distinguished American was invited to speak to a local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union Civil War veterans.
The guest speaker was 43 years old, a successful admiralty lawyer and former Harvard law professor. He was also a newly appointed Massachusetts judge. But most important to the veterans in Keene, he was a thrice-wounded and decorated Civil War soldier.
&ldquo;Not long ago,&rdquo; the speaker began, &ldquo;I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer.&rdquo;
For the next 20 minutes, he delivered one of the great speeches in the history of American rhetoric. He reflected on themes of tragedy. He employed vivid imagery and incisive metaphor. All while drawing on personal experience from the battlefield.
The speaker was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841&ndash;1935), at the time reasonably well known in some circles but by no means famous.
Holmes, in fact, was less than two years into a seat on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. It would be another 18 years before President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he would serve nearly three decades.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/UkPrOF1KZsXiFBP0tRQpl/8b0292717e0ee311357a109b6df3fabd/AWN-alert-052226-image3.jpg" alt="Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr." width="350px" />
Courtesy: Archives of U.S. Supreme Court U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
But to the GAR veterans in Keene, Holmes was not primarily a judge. He was a man who had fought through the nation&rsquo;s great internal conflict alongside soldiers like themselves.
To these veterans of the Granite State, Holmes offered a sweeping meditation on Memorial Day.&nbsp;
&ldquo;We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us,&rdquo; he observed.&nbsp;
&ldquo;As surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead&hellip; at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves &mdash; the dead come back and live with us.
&ldquo;I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures [that] come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.&rdquo;
Holmes made a seismic point, something that still resonates today, particularly with veterans:
&ldquo;The generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
&ldquo;We have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Such hearts &mdash; ah me, how many! &mdash; were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories.&rdquo;
Holmes spoke to a country still reckoning with the aftermath of terrible conflict. In our own way, America is living through unsettled times again.&nbsp;
Rereading Holmes&rsquo;s speech 142 years later, its sadness, tragic loss and passion for fallen friends still echo like a knell.&nbsp;
<h2 class="subhead nbp">Join Us on the 4th of June</h2>
As America approaches her 250th birthday, my colleague Jim Rickards and our editorial team will broadcast on Thursday, June 4 at 2:00 p.m. ET &mdash; LIVE from Philadelphia&hellip; the birthplace of the American experiment.
With Jim Rickards leading this livestream event &mdash; and with insights from yours truly and the rest of the team &mdash; we&rsquo;ll break down what&rsquo;s really driving markets in 2026, including&hellip;&nbsp;
The Iran war and energy shock, growing stress in private credit, deep-rooted inflation, the affordability crisis, critical minerals, gold, AI-driven power shortages and the future of Trump&rsquo;s agenda.
I promise that this won&rsquo;t be a dry economics lecture. Expect lively give-and-take, fast-moving debate, behind-the-scenes stories and practical insights you can use immediately.
Along the way, we&rsquo;ll also share actionable ticker ideas tied to these major trends.
Again, there&rsquo;s no cost to attend and no credit card required. Watch for more details soon. But for now, save the date: Thursday, June 4.
That&rsquo;s all for now. Thank you for subscribing and reading.

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Jim Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence is designed to help you prepare and profit from the coming collapse of the dollar.
It&rsquo;s masterminded by Jim Rickards, New York Times bestselling author of the The Road to Ruin, Currency Wars, The Death of Money, The New Case for Gold and more.
He&rsquo;s spent over 40 years in investment banking, international economics, political and national intelligence advisory roles. As adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community, he served as a facilitator of the first-ever financial war games conducted by the Pentagon.
To safely guide your investments, Jim has developed a revolutionary way of looking at the financial system and stock markets. He calls it &ldquo;complexity theory,&rdquo; which has been used by government intelligence agencies but never applied to the financial world.
Jim will use this theory to help you build safe investment positions in stocks, bonds, cash, art, land, precious metals and other hard assets.&nbsp;
You can get Jim&rsquo;s research every month &mdash; with weekly email updates &mdash; in Jim Rickards' Strategic Intelligence.

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Flowers for the Fallen

Everybody has been talking about the AI bubble lately.
When you look at how stretched this market has become over the past few weeks, it&rsquo;s not hard to understand why.
The Nasdaq is now trading dramatically above its major moving averages.
In my entire 30-year investing career, I&rsquo;ve only seen the index stretched this far above its moving averages once before.
And that was in 1999 during the height of the dot-com bubble &mdash; the exact comparison people have been making to the AI boom from the very beginning.
Now we&rsquo;re starting to see even more similarities emerge.
Earlier this week, the S&amp;P 500 pushed to a fresh high even while fewer than 60% of stocks remained above both their 50-day and 200-day moving averages.
In plain English, that means the market continued moving higher even while fewer and fewer stocks were actually participating underneath the surface.
That kind of narrowing breadth signal has only appeared six times over the past 50 years.
And every single one of those signals occurred during a single 14-month stretch between late 1998 and early 2000.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7fJLtyg8zIYRk5OFY99PFh/3cfecfe97017c2540c18cae737b2336b/bad-05-15-26-img-1.png" />

Source: Bespoke Investment Group
We all know that the dot-com bubble ended in pain, so a lot of people look at the similarities to today&rsquo;s market and assume that a crash is imminent.
But they&rsquo;re missing the most important part&hellip;
When those same signals first started appearing in late 1998, the market didn&rsquo;t immediately collapse.
The S&amp;P 500 went on to gain another 27%, while the Nasdaq surged another 134% before the cycle finally peaked.
What&rsquo;s especially interesting to me is where the leadership shifted during that final phase.
Early in the internet boom, speculative dot-com stories captured most of the attention.
But as the internet buildout accelerated, the real melt-up happened in the companies supplying the infrastructure behind the boom itself.
And in many cases, these companies actually became cheaper as their stocks rose because earnings growth accelerated even faster.
That&rsquo;s why I believe some of the biggest AI gains have yet to be made.
If we really are entering a late-stage melt-up, the next phase won't be about the companies simply talking about AI.
This next phase will be about the companies supplying the chips, power, infrastructure, and physical backbone needed to support the next wave of AI growth.
And we own many of those names already.

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From political shifts to technological breakthroughs, you&rsquo;ll know where to put your money before the rest of Wall Street catches on.
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Bubble Watch: Another Dot-Com Signal Just Fired

Last weekend, my wife Angela and I headed up to Harrah&rsquo;s Cherokee. She was there for a Rotary conference. I was there as her &ldquo;plus one&rdquo; &hellip; which, for me, meant two straight days at the poker table.
Some of you may not know this, but in a former life, I was a semi-professional poker player. It wasn&rsquo;t my full-time job, but I earned reliable income at the tables &mdash; enough that I had a business partner living in Las Vegas and logged literally thousands of hours on the felt.
Looking back, that experience shaped the way I think about investing far more than any finance textbook or Bloomberg terminal ever could.
And the single most important lesson poker taught me was this: The best investors don&rsquo;t look for certainty.
They look for asymmetric opportunities.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">The Edge Most Investors Ignore</h2>
An asymmetric bet is simply a situation where the potential reward is far greater than the potential risk.
In other words, instead of risking $100 to make $100, you might risk $50 to potentially make $200. The odds are tilted in your favor before the outcome is even decided.
That concept changes everything.
Here&rsquo;s a simple poker example:
Imagine you&rsquo;re holding a promising hand and facing a $50 call into a $200 pot. You don&rsquo;t need to win every time to make that bet profitable. In fact, you only need to win more than 20% of the time to come out ahead over the long run.
If you&rsquo;re winning that hand half the time, the math works overwhelmingly in your favor.
Now flip the situation around. Suppose you have to risk $200 to win a $250 pot. Suddenly, you need to be right nearly half the time just to break even.
Even skilled players struggle to overcome those odds consistently.
That&rsquo;s why successful poker players stop obsessing over individual wins and losses. Instead, they focus on expected value and long-term edge.
The same principle applies directly to investing.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">How to Build Asymmetry Into Your Portfolio</h2>
There are several ways investors can stack the odds in their favor. Here are three of the most important&hellip;&nbsp;
1. Find Stocks With Outsized Upside Potential
The first place to look for asymmetry is in a company&rsquo;s underlying story.&nbsp;
Think about a small defense contractor bidding on a major Pentagon contract. If the company wins, the stock could soar 50%, 100% or even more.
But if it loses, the stock might simply drift back to where it started or decline modestly.
That&rsquo;s not a balanced risk/reward setup. It&rsquo;s an asymmetric opportunity where the upside meaningfully outweighs the downside.
Biotech companies awaiting FDA approval can create similar setups.&nbsp;
So can small technology firms launching breakthrough products, energy companies making major discoveries or businesses preparing for transformational earnings announcements.
The key is identifying situations where a positive outcome could dramatically reprice the stock higher while the downside remains relatively limited.
2. Structure Trades With Defined Risk
The second layer of asymmetry comes from how you manage the position itself.
Before entering any trade, I always ask myself two questions:
Where am I wrong?
And what does success realistically look like?
If I believe I could lose $5 per share if I&rsquo;m wrong but potentially make $30 per share if I&rsquo;m right, that creates a 6-to-1 reward-to-risk setup.
Think about what that means mathematically. I could be wrong five times in a row and still come out ahead with just one successful trade.
That&rsquo;s incredibly powerful.
Unfortunately, most investors approach the market backward. They spend all their time thinking about how much money they could make, but very little time defining how much they&rsquo;re willing to lose.
That&rsquo;s dangerous.
One of the most important habits I developed during my poker years was deciding my risk before the cards were even dealt. Good poker players know exactly how much they&rsquo;re willing to lose in a hand before they put chips into the pot.
Investors should approach markets the same way.
Defining your downside in advance won&rsquo;t eliminate losses entirely. But it can keep small mistakes from turning into catastrophic ones.
3. Use the Right Investment Vehicle
Even when you find a great opportunity and structure the trade thoughtfully, the investment vehicle you choose still matters enormously.
Personally, one of my favorite tools for asymmetric investing is in-the-money call options.
Now, I know some investors hear the word &ldquo;options&rdquo; and immediately think of reckless speculation. But when used properly, options can actually help control risk while increasing upside efficiency.
When you buy shares of stock outright, you must commit the full amount of capital upfront. But an in-the-money call option often allows you to participate in most of the stock&rsquo;s upside movement while putting far less money at risk.
At the same time, your maximum loss is generally limited to the premium you paid for the option.
That creates a naturally asymmetric structure.
Of course, options do involve a learning curve. Investors need to understand expiration dates, strike prices and position sizing before using them.
But once you understand the mechanics, options can become one of the most effective tools available for creating favorable reward-to-risk setups.
<h2 class="subhead nbp">Patience Matters More Than Perfection</h2>
Even the best asymmetric strategy will still produce losing streaks.
That&rsquo;s normal.
A fair coin, for example, will land on tails three times in a row about 12% of the time.&nbsp;
The same thing happens in investing.
You can make smart, disciplined and mathematically sound decisions and still experience periods where multiple trades go against you in a row.
That&rsquo;s part of the process.
The goal is not to win every trade.
The goal is to make far more when you&rsquo;re right than you lose when you&rsquo;re wrong &mdash; and let probability work in your favor over time.
That lesson was drilled into me across thousands of poker hands over the years. And it continues to guide every investment decision I make today.
The real edge in investing doesn&rsquo;t come from being right all the time.
It comes from being positioned correctly when you are.

AWN-alert-050826-featured

A Semi-Pro Poker Player’s Mindset

Today we&rsquo;re going to continue with our energy theme because energy security is, and will continue to be, a critical issue. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global economic growth forecast from 3.3% to 3.1%. It specifically blames the Iran war&rsquo;s energy disruptions as the reason.
That forecast came out a week ago. Meanwhile, the war continues, unabated. That will lead to even slower growth. In addition, the IMF ramped up global inflation expectations from its January 2026 estimate of 3.8% to 4.4%.
In other words, the Iran war will continue to have a massive global economic impact. And most of that impact comes from countries&rsquo; overreliance on energy from a small unstable geographic area.
Here in the U.S., we got hit with some unexpected inflation. Across the board, wholesale prices jumped 4% in a month. The Labor Department&rsquo;s Producer Price Index (PPI) exploded 4% from March 2025 to April 2026. Energy prices jumped 8.5% since February 2025.
The key energy costs exploded as you can see in the charts below. Everyone who drives a car knows that the price of gasoline climbed higher recently:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6PVEphiO7MdUt1vC5lAUl3/800f40ecb6d00aa82833ce2f88222f06/ris-04-21-26-img-1.png" alt="chart" />
The same thing happened with diesel fuel, a critical cost for construction and transportation:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/63WoVXCtwVFPWEvhShd8hY/34d16209334daf305845269b714e17b6/ris-04-21-26-img-2.png" alt="chart" />
And finally, the price of electricity continued to move higher. This is another cost that impacts consumers in all facets of their lives. It not only increases the electric bill for our homes, but also tacks on more cost for everything that we buy &ndash; groceries, paper goods, all the &ldquo;stuff&rdquo; of life:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5bkmAqHH37jW9fTxQ512Rl/555718635bccf9fa15177d85e6009af0/ris-04-21-26-img-3.png" alt="chart" />
These rising energy costs create inflation across all segments of the economy.
To be clear, the problem isn&rsquo;t just that we aren&rsquo;t adding new sources of electricity fast enough &ndash; it&rsquo;s worse. The U.S. is actually going backwards&hellip;
<h3>Shooting Ourselves in the Foot</h3>
The current administration killed somewhere around 30 to 35 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power. This includes TotalEnergies&rsquo; (NYSE: TTE) windfarms: 4 GW offshore North Carolina and New York, 10 GW offshore Virginia, and 22 GW on federal lands.
Those are just a few examples of projects specifically killed by new legislation. Companies shelved or delayed another 266 GW (about 1,891 projects). That was due to tax credit rollbacks, permitting freezes, and funding clawbacks.
I don&rsquo;t care what your political position is&hellip; we need electricity. All electricity. Give me solar. Give me wind. Give me coal. Hell, give me a hamster on a wheel&hellip;
Because if we don&rsquo;t have it, we ALL will pay much higher prices. And, as the Iran war illustrated, energy costs fuel inflation across the entire economic spectrum.
This isn&rsquo;t just a U.S. problem. In fact, it&rsquo;s much more critical in other countries. Some of the following major economies are dependent on imported energy to function:
<ul>
<li>Greece &ndash; 93%</li>
<li>Japan &ndash; 90%</li>
<li>Italy &ndash; 77%</li>
<li>Spain &ndash; 74%</li>
<li>Germany &ndash; 67%</li>
<li>Chile &ndash; 65%</li>
<li>France &ndash; 51%</li>
<li>India &ndash; 35%</li>
</ul>
This is a dire issue. Energy security is at risk. However, it was just an existential risk until Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Suddenly, countries all over the world ran short of fuel for vehicles, airplanes, and electric power stations.
Electric vehicle (EV) news outlet Electrek addressed this insecurity in regard to Europe:
<blockquote>Ben Nelmes, CEO of New Automotive, said, &ldquo;Every electric vehicle registered means Europe is less reliant on imported oil. At a time when energy security has moved to the top of the political agenda, the EV transition is delivering real and measurable resilience. The pace of change we&rsquo;re now seeing across major European markets &ndash; including countries like Italy and Poland that were slower to start &ndash; suggests the transition has entered a new phase.&rdquo;</blockquote>
In 2026, the adoption of EVs soared.
<blockquote>&ldquo;Across the EU&rsquo;s major markets, EV sales are growing at rates above 40%, marking a clear step change, not statistical noise. That translates into half a million electric cars registered so far this year, cutting roughly 2 million barrels of oil demand annually.&rdquo;</blockquote>
The problem here is that batteries aren&rsquo;t power sources. They must be filled up&hellip; with electrons instead of gasoline. The competition for those electrons will grow. Demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, and EVs are all soaring.
Nuclear energy is one of the principal areas of energy growth. According to the World Nuclear Association, total capacity could reach 1446 GWe by 2050. That&rsquo;s up from 398 GWe today.
Nuclear power&rsquo;s role in global power supply fell from 17% in the mid-1990s to 9% today. That contraction began in 2011. The International Energy Agency (IEA) points to the period from 2011 to 2020 as a big decline in nuclear power. In that period, producers shut down 12 gigawatts of nuclear power.
That trend stemmed directly from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster of 2011. That&rsquo;s when a major earthquake, followed by a 50-foot-high tsunami, struck the Tokyo Electric Power Company&rsquo;s nuclear power plant.
Germany immediately began shutting down its fleet of reactors. The country closed 11 of its 17 power plants over the following decade. Belgium planned to close all its reactors by 2019 (down from 25% of its total electric power production). Italy, Spain, and Switzerland all shelved plans for new reactors.
It was a devastating decade for nuclear power. The declining demand worked its way down to the uranium miners. The capital fled. Production flattened out. In 2025, there was a 5.4-million-pound supply deficit. By 2040, supply will hit 201 million pounds, up just 14% from 2025. Demand, however, will grow to 397 million pounds, up 118% from 2025.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/cPLSt10I5PaIXRS6SdlJT/9b85c696a0a9d8c9dd273ad9ef244156/ris-04-21-26-img-5.png" alt="chart" />
This is a classic setup for higher uranium prices. And, as with most mined commodities, the industry can&rsquo;t fix this before those prices go up. You can&rsquo;t substitute a different fuel. If you want nuclear power, you need uranium.
A lot of uranium.
That&rsquo;s why we are investing in uranium companies in our portfolio. The bull market in energy will be a massive wealth generator over the next 5 to 10 years. We want to position ourselves to profit as the world reckons with its energy missteps.

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Real Wealth Insider uncovers moneymaking resource and mining opportunities before they break into the mainstream.
These aren&rsquo;t consensus trades. They&rsquo;re early-stage stories driven by developments most investors never see coming: an overlooked rare-earth deposit&hellip; a sudden flood of federal investment&hellip; or a political shift that unlocks an entire region.
At the center of it all are geologist-CEOs and industry insiders &mdash; the people closest to the rocks, the permits, and the capital. Real Wealth Insider lets you invest your money alongside their expertise.&nbsp;
Your guide is Matt Badiali, a geologist, executive, analyst and consultant with more than 20 years in the resources business. Matt doesn&rsquo;t rely on secondhand reports. He tours projects, meets management face-to-face, and stays in constant conversation with investors and operators across the global mining industry.
That boots-on-the-ground edge is how Matt spots the next major discovery before it happens.
When he&rsquo;s convinced a company is worth your money, you&rsquo;ll know immediately. Matt sends clear trade instructions, explains his thesis in plain English, and shares the geological and insider insights behind the play.
With Real Wealth Insider, you&rsquo;re not reacting to the headlines &mdash; you&rsquo;re positioned ahead of them.

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Real Wealth Insider – Strike wealth with on-the-ground intelligence from a geologist-CEO with deep industry connections.

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UPDATE: The Global Energy Tab Comes Due

What&rsquo;s going on with the price of gold?
After hitting an all-time closing high of $5,355 per ounce on Jan. 29, 2026 (slightly higher on an intraday basis), the price of gold has plunged.
It dropped to $4,375 per ounce on March 26 &mdash; an 18% dive in just two months. Gold has bounced back some since then, currently near $4,800 per ounce, with continued volatility.
Gold may have found an interim bottom, but further declines cannot be ruled out. Investors are asking the usual questions:
Has gold peaked for this cycle? Is the price going to fall further? Should I dump my gold holdings?
These are logical questions, but they miss the point. The recent price action in gold says little about gold itself but a lot about the global situation in dollars.
Since gold is priced in dollars, the dollar/gold relationship can be thought of as a cross-exchange rate expressed as USD/GLD.
A lower price for gold can mean that gold is being abandoned. But it can also mean that the dollar is surging for reasons that have nothing to do with gold.
<h2 class="subhead">The Global Dash for Dollars</h2>
In fact, the fundamentals for gold are as solid as ever.
Central banks are still net buyers. Mining output remains flat. Fears of U.S. confiscation of U.S. Treasury securities held in foreign-reserves accounts are still front and center. And the BRICS plus other nations are still searching for alternatives to U.S. dollar holdings.
The attraction of gold as the &ldquo;everything hedge&rdquo; in the face of war and geopolitical uncertainty remains strong.
The reason the dollar price of gold is going down is because there is a global liquidity crisis underway.
Everyone wants &mdash; and needs &mdash; U.S. dollars. One reason: Countries need to buy oil and natural gas at almost any price, given global supply shortages tied to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Wall Street was wrong when it assumed the war would be short and the Gulf would quickly reopen. In fact, the war will persist for months, and there&rsquo;s no sign the Gulf will be back to normal in the near term.
Japan, Germany and South Korea are all facing major industrial slowdowns due to these energy supply shortages.
The other factor driving the demand for dollars is the private credit meltdown in the U.S. and UK. Fund managers are scrambling for dollars to cover markdown losses and meet margin calls.
The private credit crisis and the war have combined to drive stocks lower, which means even more margin calls for leveraged investors.
<h2 class="subhead">When Cash is King, Gold Gets Sold</h2>
When you&rsquo;re desperate for dollars, you don&rsquo;t sell what you want, you sell what you can &mdash; that means gold and U.S. Treasuries. Which is why the price of gold is going down and interest rates are going up.
A good example is Turkey&rsquo;s recent sale of 58.4 metric tonnes of gold, only because Turkey needed dollars to pay for energy imports. The country sold the one asset that could most easily be sold for dollars: gold.
Further evidence of the global dollar shortage comes from the Treasury International Capital System (TIC) report, courtesy of the U.S. Treasury.
This monthly report shows holdings of U.S. Treasury securities by major countries. It&rsquo;s produced in spreadsheet form, making it easy to see whether countries are selling or buying Treasuries.
The TIC report, however, requires some interpretation. Holdings attributed to the Cayman Islands, for instance, are generally understood to represent large hedge funds. Holdings attributed to Belgium are often understood to represent custodians operating on behalf of China.
The latest TIC report shows that China (including Belgium for this purpose) reduced its Treasury holdings by $15.4 billion. This is a significant reduction at a time when Chinese trade surpluses are rising and dollars are flowing into its economy.
Hong Kong&rsquo;s separate Treasury holdings dropped from $267.8 billion to $259.9 billion. The implication is that China is selling Treasuries to obtain dollars to support its banks and its currency.
Another notable decline was Saudi Arabia, which reduced its Treasury holdings from $149.5 billion to $134.8 billion in the most recent report. Notably, both the Chinese and Saudi actions occurred before the Iran war began.
We can expect even sharper declines in the months ahead as the need for dollars &mdash; whether to buy oil or offset reduced oil export revenues &mdash; becomes more acute.
We also see evidence from major bank government securities dealers that they are increasing the size of their reverse repurchase agreement (repo) positions.
In a reverse repurchase agreement, the dealer lends cash and takes in Treasury securities as collateral.
In effect, these dealers &mdash; not the Fed &mdash; are acting as lenders of last resort to large customers, hedge funds and smaller banks that need cash.
<h2 class="subhead">Hold Your Ground</h2>
The same dollar shortage dynamics driving the TIC data and dealer repo positions are also forcing holders to sell gold to raise cash.
This dynamic will run its course. Weak hands will sell gold while strong hands bide their time. Gradually, those strong hands will identify a bottom and begin buying.
And the next stage of the bull market will begin.
Now is no time to sell gold. It&rsquo;s time to sit tight and wait for the next phase.

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Soaring resource costs&hellip; crashing stock prices&hellip; chaos on Wall Street&hellip;
Today&rsquo;s markets may seem more unpredictable than ever.
But drawing on his experience with the Central Intelligence Agency, Jim Rickards has developed a system for pinpointing the best times to enter and exit a trade.
It reveals the exact cross-section where you have enough good information to be smart AND still have time to effectively act.&nbsp;
And while the U.S. government has been using this system to predict geopolitical events for decades, Jim is the first to apply it to the investment markets.
He calls it the &ldquo;Kissinger Cross&rdquo; strategy&hellip; and it&rsquo;s only available in The Situation Report with Jim Rickards.
Jim and his team use it to detect big moves in gold, energy, currencies and commodities before they happen. Then it&rsquo;s just a matter of pairing that knowledge with the right trades &mdash; for chances to quickly multiply your money.
So don&rsquo;t be a victim of Wall Street&rsquo;s sudden ups and downs.
With The Situation Report with Jim Rickards, you can harness the power of the &ldquo;Kissinger Cross&rdquo; strategy &mdash; for a chance at big profits from gold, energy, currencies and commodities.

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Harness trade signals from Jim’s proprietary “Kissinger Cross” strategy to profit from gold, energy, currencies and commodities during the market chaos.

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Gold Flashes Red

Things are getting more unstable at the Fed, but not for the reasons most investors think.
Yes, the Fed is trying to handle rate policy during a period of both higher inflation and rising unemployment.
But that&rsquo;s not the real story.
Behind the scenes, a drama is unfolding that has nothing to do with rate hikes or cuts.
A political and legal power struggle is escalating between Jay Powell and Donald Trump.
And it couldn&rsquo;t be coming at a worse time with all the volatility happening in markets and geopolitics.
I will expand on this drama in this month&rsquo;s update below and give my prediction on rates for the next Fed meeting.
As we anticipate a bumpy ride for markets, we will be prepared with trades for you as a valued subscriber. With recession looming, you&rsquo;ll be perfectly positioned to make gains on distressed companies using our Credit Risk model strategy.
Now, please watch my video in its entirety to understand what you aren&rsquo;t hearing from the mainstream media about the latest Fed drama, the economy and markets that impact your investment portfolio.
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As we move into April, we are constantly monitoring markets to find profit opportunities. We will send out any buy or sell alerts as warranted.

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VIDEO UPDATE: Jay Powell’s Endgame

Paradigm Press LLC, provides independent economic commentary, analysis and education through print and online publications, videos, online seminars, conference calls and more.

We provide independent economic commentary, analysis and education through print and online publications, videos, online seminars, conference calls and more.

How Europe Shot Its Economy In The Foot

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