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Gambling has been around throughout recorded history. But until recently, the bets were confined to binary outcomes (red/black, win/lose or political races) and were confined to big issues like elections and sports championships. Large pools of bettors participated in the same bets, oddsmakers set odds or spreads in such a way as to guarantee themselves a profit, and the bettors would win or lose.
Lotteries are another popular form of gambling where the entire prize goes to a few winning numbers, net of whatever skim the lottery sponsor wants to take (usually 50% in state lotteries; far less in others). Table games in casinos, like roulette and craps, are also extremely popular
Polling is a more recent art, but it also plays a prominent role today in politics and popular opinion on policy issues. Pollsters are using more sophisticated techniques than in the past, including text messaging and online approaches to overcome the fact that people often refuse to answer their phones.
<h2 class="subhead">Today, You Can Bet on Anything</h2>
Recently, two new phenomena have exploded on the scene to upset the familiar worlds of betting and polling.
The first is online betting where a user with a cell phone can bet continually on almost anything. You&rsquo;re not limited to the winner and loser of a game or the point spread.
In baseball, you can bet on the score at the end of each inning. You can bet on the outcome of each pitch on whether it&rsquo;s a ball, a strike, a hit or a home run. In football, you can bet on yardage gained or lost on each play. If you can imagine an outcome, someone will find a way to let you bet on it. FanDuel and DraftKings are leaders in this market segment.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6ihgLOKJ0Mry3tIcsWhQXV/ec3e75eeb436b0ea8e2c13d549b565e7/tac-commentary-hero-img-02-25-26.jpg" alt="image 1" width="540px" />
The second is the rise of prediction markets. This is also a form of gambling, but you&rsquo;re betting on high level political and economic outcomes. Will Trump attack Iran before March 15th? Will Democrats re-take control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-term elections? Will UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer lose office before June 1st? You can bet on these and many other political and economic outcomes with ease on online prediction market venues like Polymarket, Kalshi and PredictIt.
<h2 class="subhead">Gambling or Playing Futures?</h2>
There are host of regulatory concerns around these betting platforms. The first and most obvious is whether such gambling is even legal. In almost all cases, the answer is yes (subject to licensing requirements and background checks for sponsors). The second is whether these bets are futures contracts subject to regulation by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In this area, the CFTC is playing a very cagey game.
On the one hand, CFTC claims that political bets on Polymarket and Kalshi, etc. are not gambling but they are futures contracts. The rationale is that when you bet on a prediction market you&rsquo;re not betting against the house (gambling) but against other market participants (futures). At the same time, the CFTC is promising a very light form of regulation of prediction markets. So, the CFTC is making a play for increased regulatory authority while promising light regulation in return. This approach cuts state gambling regulators out of the picture and seems to have the support of the Trump White House.
Our concern is not how this regulatory battle works out. Regardless of the outcome, these betting markets are here to stay. Instead, we&rsquo;ll focus on how they actually work and look at some embedded flaws that make published results less authoritative than investors may understand. Polls, gambling odds, and prediction markets all provide valuable information. But understanding the flaws and limitations is essential to avoid being misled.
<h2 class="subhead">Framing, Bias and Skews</h2>
The main problems with polls are bias and skews. A pollster can get an answer desired simply by phrasing the question in a certain way, a process called &ldquo;framing.&rdquo; The same basic question will produce materially different responses depending on how it is framed.
Asking &ldquo;Do your support ICE agents removing law abiding immigrants from their homes?&rdquo; will produce a high negative answer. Asking &ldquo;Do you support ICE agents removing criminal illegals from law abiding communities?&rdquo; will produce a high positive answer. In fact, the two questions amount to the same thing and should produce the same response, but they don&rsquo;t because of how the questions are framed.
A bigger problem is polling involves skews. This can take several forms. The first is a small sample size. It takes about 1,300 respondents to produce a reasonably accurate poll. If you see a sample size of 800, you are much more likely to get a result with a 5% margin of error, which is practically worthless in a world where many key elections are decided by 1% margins or less.
Another type of skew is the composition of the sample. If a district has 40% Democrats, 40% Republicans and 20% Independents, then the sample should have a similar make-up.
But a pollster can select a sample of 50% Democrats, 30% Republicans and 20% Independents. That sample will clearly skew Democrat and make the result unreliable (even though it will be widely publicized by biased legacy media). And you can skew a sample even more by including 30% Blacks where the Blacks are only 10% of sample population. That has a major impact because Blacks vote 90% for Democrats.
The simple solution is to read the fine print on the reports of the pollsters. Look for small sample sizes and political and racial skews in the composition relative to the actual population. When you see these markers, discount the poll results accordingly.
<h2 class="subhead">The Public Vs. Experts</h2>
Prediction market results are also not quite the reliable data their promoters would have you believe.
Prediction markets rely on a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds. The idea is that a large number of everyday citizens with no particular expertise will produce a better answer to a question than a single expert using precise measuring tools.
The classic example is a contest to &ldquo;Guess the weight of a cow&rdquo; at a country fair. Evidence is clear that if you take 1,000 random guesses from everyone at the fair and produce an average number, that number will be closer to the actual weight than an expert veterinarian or cowherd could produce. Of course, some guesses will be ridiculously high or low but those will tend to cancel out in the averaging process, and the average will be quite accurate.
This wisdom of crowds model is what gives prediction markets their reputation of high accuracy. But there are a number of flaws that the market promoters don&rsquo;t tell you.
The first is that there is an inverse relationship between the accuracy of a crowd guess and the technical expertise to make the guess in the first place. Anyone can guess the weight of a cow &ndash; no special training required. And that average guess is quite accurate.
But as you move toward more technical questions; (What should the angle of launch of lunar rocket be in order to arrive in close proximity to the moon by the time it gets to the lunar orbit path?), the crowd falls down because they have no idea how to approach the problem. Only experts need apply. Of course, that doesn&rsquo;t stop anyone from betting. But buyer beware.
The other flaw also involves skews. When you&rsquo;re evaluating output from a prediction market, you need to consider who&rsquo;s in the betting pool. If there&rsquo;s a high minimum bet or a high fee required to join the platform, then the participants will skew toward higher-income individuals. That will skew the results toward the views of higher-income individuals since the betting pool excludes the working class.
This particular bias was on full display in the run-up to the Brexit referendum in June 2016. Prediction markets said there was a 72% chance the referendum would vote to &ldquo;remain.&rdquo; My prediction at the time was that &ldquo;leave&rdquo; would win. I was right. But I based that partly on the fact that the participants in the betting were largely London bankers and lawyers with a big, vested interest in &ldquo;remain&rdquo;. Everyday British subjects like taxi drivers, chambermaids and bartenders were underrepresented in that pool.
Finally, when you see polling data or prediction market output reported in percentage terms, it&rsquo;s important to know they mean entirely different things. When a poll shows a candidate with 55% support, that means exactly what it says (subject to adjustments for skew and sample size discussed above). It means that candidate should get about 55% of the vote and win the election with ease.
When you see a candidate with, say, 75% support in a prediction market, it does not mean that candidate will get 75% of the vote. It means there&rsquo;s a 75% probability that the candidate will get 51% of the vote or higher.
Put differently, prediction market odds are not about winning the percentage shown. They&rsquo;re about the likelihood of a binary outcome &ndash; win or lose. There&rsquo;s still valuable information there (again, subject to skews) but it means something different than many people assume.
That&rsquo;s why outcomes in prediction markets are much more volatile than polls. A candidate who slips from 52% to 48% in the polls might see her prediction market odds drop from 75% to 25% overnight. Again, buyer beware.

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Insider trading is illegal. But that doesn&rsquo;t stop connected insiders from using their first-hand knowledge to take advantage of the market.
It can feel like you&rsquo;re always just behind the curve, only acting on news after it breaks.
But Jim Rickards' Insider Intel offers another way.
It helps you take advantage of stocks that insiders are quietly piling into.
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Instead, Jim and his team scan the markets for subtle signs of &ldquo;off the books&rdquo; trading &mdash; using the proprietary I-3 Indicator.
Once it&rsquo;s zeroed in on suspicious activity, Jim&rsquo;s team examines the macroeconomic and fundamental clues that could explain the signals.
If everything checks out, they&rsquo;ll tell you the best way for you to cash in on the expected move.

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The Rise of Predictions Markets: Buyer Beware!

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

Miscellaneous

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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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.

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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.

ris-04-21-26-featured

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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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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Crisis Trader with Jim Rickards uses proprietary algorithms to peer into corporate balance sheets &mdash; uncovering the ugly secrets of popular companies.
You don&rsquo;t want these names in your portfolio. But you can set yourself up for massive profits when the truth inevitably comes to light.
Jim Rickards and Dan Amoss can show you how. They correctly predicted every move the Federal Reserve made to fight inflation. And now they believe we&rsquo;re on the verge of a historic economic downturn.
Most investors are completely unprepared for the wave of bank failures and corporate bankruptcies that will rock Wall Street.
Luckily, you don&rsquo;t have to be caught unaware.&nbsp;
Jim and Dan will guide you through the worst of what&rsquo;s to come &mdash; revealing opportunities to score big wins from the market&rsquo;s worst stocks.

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Unearth the ugly secrets buried in the balance sheets of popular stocks — and position yourself for maximum gains when their hidden crises get too big to ignore.

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VIDEO UPDATE: Jay Powell’s Endgame

I'm on the floor of SATELLITE 2026 in Washington, D.C. &mdash; the biggest satellite conference on the planet. And last night, the news I've been anticipating dropped.
Bloomberg and Reuters reported that SpaceX aims to file its IPO prospectus as soon as this week. The company could raise more than $75 billion at a valuation exceeding $1.75 trillion &mdash; the largest public offering in history.
I'm watching it break in real time, surrounded by the people building the industry it's about to put a price tag on.
The market is about to officially value space-based connectivity at over a trillion dollars. And I've spent the last two days on the ground with the companies riding that same wave.
Here's what I'm seeing &mdash; and what it means for our portfolio.
The opening general session featured CEOs from SES, Eutelsat, Viasat, Telesat, and Space42. The dominant theme wasn't technology &mdash; it was sovereignty.
One speaker put it bluntly: a company from space can deliver connectivity into your country whether you want it or not.
Countries are waking up to this. The 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference is shaping up to be dominated by satellite spectrum fights for the first time ever. Governments want to control the signal coming from orbit &mdash; and they're increasingly insisting that whoever delivers it works through their national carriers, not around them.
This is a massive tailwind for companies that operate that way.&nbsp;
That's exactly what our pick AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) does.
ASTS partners with sovereign carriers &mdash; AT&amp;T, Verizon, Vodafone, TELUS, Rakuten &mdash; and shows up on your phone as your own carrier's network. In a world where governments increasingly care about who controls the signal from orbit, that architecture is perfectly positioned. While other satellite operators are running into regulatory headwinds, ASTS is running with them.
Then I got something most analysts covering this company from a desk in New York didn't get this week.
I tracked down Scott Wisniewski &mdash; ASTS President and Chief Strategy Officer &mdash; at Via Satellite's "Live in the Booth" session on the exhibit floor Tuesday. This is the man responsible for the commercial strategy behind ASTS's carrier partnerships &mdash; the same partnerships that underpin the $1 billion revenue opportunity he outlined for investors for 2027. He was the most sought-after person on that floor, and I got him on record.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/26plZREVJzslHKjGXfm3qb/6258b8fd5efe533f403015375cec78c3/ALN-ALert-032526_1_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
What he confirmed aligned exactly with what I've been writing: the carrier-native architecture isn't just a differentiator. In the current regulatory environment, it's becoming a requirement.
At the ST Engineering iDirect booth, an engineer confirmed what I've been writing about: the industry is actively integrating satellites into 5G networks. And satellites, he told me, will be integral to 6G. The ground segment incumbents &mdash; the established players who built today's satellite infrastructure &mdash; are publicly acknowledging that space-based cellular is the future. That's the future ASTS was purpose-built for from day one.
<h3>The SpaceX IPO Is the Tide. ASTS Is How I'm Positioned In It.</h3>
The SpaceX IPO is about to tell the world that space connectivity is a trillion-dollar market. I agree.
But the opportunity isn't limited to one company. ASTS connects to the phone already in your pocket, drawing milliwatts, through your existing carrier, on domestically licensed spectrum. No terminal. No installation. No dedicated power source. Every new BlueBird satellite covers millions of square miles.
And the momentum is accelerating. BlueBird 7 launches March 30 on Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket &mdash; the first ASTS satellite on New Glenn, with its seven-meter fairing capable of carrying up to eight BlueBirds per flight.
With 45&ndash;60 satellites targeted by year-end, $150&ndash;200 million in 2026 revenue guidance, over $1 billion in hard commercial commitments, and a $30 million SDA defense contract, ASTS is executing at full speed.
The SpaceX IPO validates the space economy. ASTS is how I play it.
Disclosure: Ray owns shares of AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (ASTS).

ALN-ALert-032526(Featured)

With the simple mantra of &ldquo;Choose Yourself,&rdquo; James has built a massive following &mdash; helping people find new and unusual opportunities to generate inward success.
Now he wants you to achieve the next step: True financial freedom and independence.
He&rsquo;s tapping into the skills he developed as a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist to reveal every secret he&rsquo;s ever learned about building wealth.
And he&rsquo;s not alone.&nbsp;
James is connected to the biggest players in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. So he&rsquo;s hand-picked a team of investment experts and trading superstars to create Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network &mdash; connecting you directly to their wealth of knowledge.
You&rsquo;ll learn tips for navigating Wall Street&hellip; personal finance strategies.. and tricks to boost retirement income. The team will also tell you specific ways to get ahead of hot investment trends like AI, cryptocurrencies, biotech, cybersecurity and driverless cars.
With Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network, you&rsquo;ll have the tools to start building a personal financial fortress to live a life of abundance and true financial well-being.

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James will tap his powerful network of business leaders and Wall Street insiders to help readers ascend to the next level of the Choose Yourself lifestyle: True financial freedom and independence.

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SpaceX’s IPO Could Create the Next $1T Sector

I wrote a book in 2008 called &ldquo;The Forever Portfolio&rdquo; that nobody read.&nbsp;
It came out at the worst possible time, and I begged my publisher not to release it.
Lehman Brothers had just collapsed. Bear Stearns was gone.&nbsp;
Institutions that had been around for over a century were closing their doors overnight.
It was the height of the financial crisis, and most investors felt like the world was ending.&nbsp;
And here I was, publishing a book about buying stocks forever.
Nobody bought it. But the ideas in that book were some of the best I ever had.
I predicted that a global pandemic was inevitable and that fortunes would be made by the companies fighting it.&nbsp;
Years later, COVID proved that right.
I also predicted that obesity would become one of the biggest health crises of our time.&nbsp;
Today, GLP-1 drugs are generating tens of billions in revenue.
Then there was Chapter 2: &ldquo;Computer Viruses Will Live Forever.&rdquo;
I described how computer security was a growing problem that would never go away, and the companies leading the fight were among the best long-term bets an investor could make.
I stand by both of those predictions, even if the recent selloff in cybersecurity stocks may have cast doubt on that second part.&nbsp;
Because now that the U.S. is at war with Iran, I&rsquo;m more convinced than ever that cybersecurity is one of the best opportunities in the market.
<h3>Wall Street Is Wrong About Cybersecurity&nbsp;</h3>
Earlier this year, software stocks sold off sharply, and cybersecurity stocks got dragged down with them.
Ari Goldschmidt <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/media/my-epstein-story">told you about</a> it in this month&rsquo;s Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network issue &mdash; investors are worried that AI is making it so cheap to develop software that companies won&rsquo;t need outside vendors anymore.
Another concern is that if AI replaces employees, software companies that charge per-employee subscriptions won&rsquo;t be able to earn as much.
Neither of these concerns applies to cybersecurity, yet cybersecurity stocks are the baby being thrown out with the bathwater.
Cybersecurity software is highly technical and constantly evolving. Companies are not looking to cut corners on the software protecting their most sensitive data.
If anything, AI makes cybersecurity more important, not less.
AI tools are making it easier than ever for hackers to rapidly probe an organization&rsquo;s defenses and search for weaknesses.
Amateur hackers armed with the right AI can now pull off attacks that previously required years of advanced training.
This past December, a hacker used Anthropic&rsquo;s Claude chatbot to steal 150GB of data from the Mexican government&hellip;
Roughly 195 million taxpayer records, voter records, government employee credentials and civil registry files.
But AI hacking tools aren&rsquo;t the only thing governments and businesses need to be worried about&hellip;
<h3>War and the Cyber Threat That Comes With It</h3>
The war in Iran has the entire cybersecurity industry on high alert &mdash; and for good reason.
Iran has a long history of using cyberattacks as a weapon of war.
In 2012 and 2013, Iranian hackers launched massive attacks against major U.S. banks, crashing their websites.
In 2024, Iran claimed responsibility for hacking emails tied to the Trump presidential campaign.
Just this week, Western governments began warning businesses to prepare for a wave of cyberattacks.
JPMorgan&rsquo;s CEO said he expects a rise in cyberattacks associated with the conflict in Iran.
Warnings like these force governments and businesses to take the threat seriously and invest in protection.
Major attacks that make headlines serve as a reminder that the cost of being unprepared is far greater than the cost of protection.
One company in our portfolio is positioned to benefit from all of this.
<h3>The Right Company at the Right Time</h3>
Palo Alto Networks Inc. (<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/ticker/PANW">PANW</a>) is a dominant player in cybersecurity, and 85% of the Fortune 100 are its customers.
For the past few years, Palo Alto has been recognized as a top product in nearly every cybersecurity category by both Gartner and Forrester.
Since our original recommendation, the company completed the acquisition of Cyberark, another cybersecurity firm, and is in the process of building a cybersecurity platform.
The company is building a single platform that covers every cybersecurity component a company could need.
Buying the full package costs less than piecing it together&hellip; and the defense is stronger because all of the parts are designed to work together.
The stock hit all-time highs last October, nearly doubling our entry in the Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network Portfolio.
But the selloff in software stocks has dragged Palo Alto down roughly 30% from that high, creating a stellar chance at another great price for this company&hellip;
Especially with net income growing 72% over the past two years and a projected 28% revenue growth looking ahead.
<h3>A Trend That Will Never Go Away</h3>
I wrote &ldquo;The Forever Portfolio&rdquo; book for moments exactly like this.&nbsp;
In 2008, the world was too distracted by the financial crash to notice the &ldquo;forever&rdquo; trends right in front of them.
This is an easy &ldquo;set it and forget it&rdquo; addition to your portfolio if you don&rsquo;t own it, or a great place to add more if you do.
I predicted that computer viruses would live forever in my book 18 years ago. Since then, the threats have only gotten worse.
Advances in AI are making attacks easier, faster, and more dangerous.
The complex geopolitical landscape is adding urgency on top of urgency.
Cybersecurity spending is not going away. It is going up.
Companies that provide best-in-class protection will command a premium as the threats grow.
Palo Alto Networks is a dominant player in the industry, offering best-in-class products as a single package, currently trading at a discount to its recent highs.
Owning shares of Palo Alto Networks lets you capitalize on the continued importance of cybersecurity.

ALN-Alert-03-05-26(Featured)

Iran: All-Out Cyber Warfare Is Coming

As we warned readers last week, the latest stage in the war against Iran waged by the U.S. and Israel erupted late on the night of February 27 (our time) with a massive wave of bomber, missile and drone attacks on Iran.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike groups are deploying warfare jets to conduct strikes on Iranian targets.
U.S. B-2 bombers were included in the strike package and dropped bunker buster bombs to destroy Iranian missiles stored underground.
The impact was enormous.
It included attacks on the headquarters of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian air defense systems and factories that produce Iranian drones, missiles and mines.
By Saturday night (our time), even bigger news broke.
Ayatollah Khamenei was dead.
Khamenei had been the Supreme Leader of Iran for 37 years.
His favorite chants were &ldquo;Death to America&rdquo; and &ldquo;Death to Israel&rdquo;.
Today, America and Israel are still standing, but he&rsquo;s dead.
<h2 class="subhead">The U.S. Strategy &amp; Trump&rsquo;s Goal</h2>
Killing Khamenei was part of what&rsquo;s called a decapitation strike.
The idea is not to kill a large number of troops, but to kill the leadership.
Not only was Khamenei killed, but the attacks also killed his family members, the Iranian defense minister, the leadership of the IRGC and many others.
In all, over 40 top Iranian political and military leaders were killed in the opening hours of the attack.
The decapitation strike that wiped out Iranian leadership was conducted in broad daylight on Saturday morning (Iranian time).
That&rsquo;s unusual; such strikes are usually carried out at night.
But U.S. and Israeli intelligence gathered information that the leaders were meeting in three separate locations at the same time.
That&rsquo;s how such a large group of leaders were killed so quickly.
Trump&rsquo;s goal is to wipe out the existing leadership and invite the Iranian people to form a new government.
An Iranian government-in-exile has already been created and is waiting to take control if that&rsquo;s what the Iranian people want.
<h2 class="subhead">The Iranian Response</h2>
Israel is the main target of the Iranian response.
The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system has shot down most of the Iranian missiles and drones but not all.
Some civilian areas have been hit and a number of civilians have been killed. (U.S. servicemen have been killed as well)
Iran has also counterattacked with missile and drone strikes on a number of Gulf hubs &mdash; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have all been hit.
Some of these are legitimate military targets; in particular, Bahrain is the main port for the U.S. Navy&rsquo;s Fifth Fleet.
Qatar is home to Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East.
But other targets (including Dubai) have no major U.S. military facilities. Attacks on Dubai seem more calculated to cause terror and disrupt telecommunications and transportation.
One constraint on the U.S. conduct of the war is that we are running low on munitions.
Our cruise missiles, anti-missile batteries and drones are highly effective, but we do not have unlimited supplies, and our industrial output capacity was greatly diminished under the Biden administration.
Many of these weapons systems were destroyed and depleted in the war in Ukraine, which is a lost cause and was a waste of U.S. resources.
U.S. targeting in Iran will have to be extremely efficient to achieve U.S. goals of destroying Iran&rsquo;s nuclear enrichment program before running low on offensive and defensive weapons systems.
<h2 class="subhead">The Market Response So Far</h2>
Although the entire situation is fluid and uncertain, here&rsquo;s what we can say with some assurance&hellip;
This war will not be over in days; it will take weeks or longer to finish the decapitation process and to destroy Iran&rsquo;s factories.
Markets seem to be taking things in stride (so far).
Gold is up around 2%, exceeding $5,350 per ounce.
Oil is up about 7.5% to $78.00 per barrel for Brent crude.
So far, there are no signs of market panic. But that could change as this all plays out.
We&rsquo;ll be watching gold, silver, oil and stocks closely in the days ahead.
Iran claims the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. That&rsquo;s false.
It is true that some vessels are steering clear and others have moored temporarily in the Gulf based on warnings from owners and insurance companies.
But the Strait is open and some vessels are proceeding. Closing the Strait of Hormuz even temporarily will not be as disruptive as many expect because there is actually a glut of oil on the market.
<h2 class="subhead">Winners and Losers</h2>
The U.S. will be fine from an energy perspective &ndash; we are a net exporter of oil and natural gas and now have easy access to Venezuelan oil if needed.
This biggest loser is China since they are the main buyer of Iranian oil, which is now cut off.
A net winner is Russia, which will benefit from higher oil prices and can now step in as a supplier to China.
<a id="video"></a>
The biggest uncertainty is whether the Iranian people will embrace the chance for a new government or whether the religious Council of Experts will simply appoint a new ayatollah and continue on as before.
If so, the new ayatollah&rsquo;s life may not be any safer than the last one. Time will tell.
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SPOTLIGHT: Decapitation Strike in Iran

With Minneapolis in full-scale insurrection against federal government operations there and Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Chicago about to go the same way, it&rsquo;s time to consider the danger to your wealth and well-being arising from this new civil war.
It&rsquo;s easy to sit at home and watch the street battles and tragic deaths play out on the TV or internet. You can take a view about which side you&rsquo;re on, but either way you&rsquo;re not in any immediate danger. Perhaps Alex Pretti and Ren&eacute;e Good thought the same thing just before they were shot and killed at point blank range by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
After all, Pretti and Good were educated middle-class residents and the shootings took place in middle-class neighborhoods. This was not some riot with burning and looting in South Los Angeles. They took place in a neighborhood probably not far different from where you live. ICE operations and violent resistance are coming to your town.
<h2 class="subhead">Are You Ready?</h2>
There are two critical aspects to the risk assessment of danger to you and your family. The first issue is to understand the posture of your local and state government toward federal enforcement against criminal illegal aliens. The second is to understand the nature of the resistance to ICE. Let&rsquo;s look at these two facets of the problem.
ICE is not acting randomly and they are not overreaching. ICE operations are well-planned months in advance and are conducted by mostly seasoned operatives under the direction of experienced senior officers. They are not scooping up illegal aliens en masse. Instead, they are targeting &ldquo;the worst of the worst&rdquo;. This means rapists, child molesters, murderers, drug smugglers, and those who have engaged in violent forms of extortion, among other violent crimes.
Some of the targets are loose on the streets but have been identified. Many are behind bars in state prisons. Others have court dates where ICE may be waiting to detain them following their hearings. In all cases, ICE know their targets and limit operations accordingly.
If local and state officials cooperate with ICE, there is rarely a problem. ICE is allowed to remove illegals from state jails and deport them around the world. ICE is allowed to wait outside of courtrooms, sports venues, DMV centers, and other gathering places where the illegals may have reason to go.
Local officials often inform ICE when a criminal illegal is in their custody. In all cases, the detentions and later deportations happen without a hitch. The criminals are on their way to an El Salvador maximum security prison or perhaps to Somalia (good luck with that). It means one less monster to assault and kill Americans.
<h2 class="subhead">It&rsquo;s Different in the Sanctuary States</h2>
Matters play out entirely differently in the 13 sanctuary states and numerous sanctuary cities around the country. Those states and cities refuse to cooperate with ICE. They never notify ICE when illegal criminals are in their criminal justice systems. They refuse to allow ICE to sweep the prisons or wait in courthouses to detain the illegal criminal aliens. But the resistance goes much deeper than that.
Everyday Americans have an outdated view of how the anti-ICE resistance works. They take a naive, even nostalgic view of the protestors as peaceful humanitarians. Perhaps they remember peaceful demonstrations for civil rights in the 1960s or against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. It&rsquo;s just a new generation doing what many Americans did fifty years ago. Perhaps some are waiting for Joan Baez to show up and sing a few protest songs (Baez is 85-years old and still performing).
<h2 class="subhead">The Modern-Day Resistance</h2>
The resistance is highly organized and well-trained. There&rsquo;s nothing ad hoc about it. They have spotters, cutouts (innocent-looking fronts that are resistance assets), and sophisticated communications channels. They use dead drops (placing messages in a pre-arranged spot to be picked up later so that the sender and receiver are not seen together). They also use encrypted Signal groups of 1,000 members or less to exchange instructions and intelligence in ways difficult for officials to intercept or decrypt.
The roles of the individual resistance members are highly specialized. Some are mobile units chasing ICE units and identifying the place of operations. Others check license plates and run them against databases (leaked by sympathetic government officials) to identify ICE vehicles. Once the ICE vehicles are spotted, they are swarmed by resistance supporters who block their progress and threaten the occupants.
Resistance vehicles are often weaponized against ICE. This is why Ren&eacute;e Good was killed when she drove towards an ICE operator with her SUV. All this activity is coordinated through 24/7 resistance command centers that act as dispatchers to send operatives to disrupt ICE activity.
Improvised roadblocks are set up using wooden pallets, discarded furniture, and old appliances. Drivers are forced to stop and show identification. During this process, license plates are identified and documents presented can be scanned and photographed. If you&rsquo;re an innocent local, you&rsquo;ll be allowed to proceed. If you&rsquo;re ICE or a known ICE sympathizer, expect to be harassed or perhaps beaten with the lights and trim of your car being smashed at the same time.
Some resistance members specialize in doxxing. This is the process of identifying ICE officials by name and then quickly using online resources to find their home address, second homes, spouses, children, other family members and their home addresses, schools, vehicles, churches and other personal information. That data is then made public with the knowledge that violent resistance members could kill or kidnap family members or burn down their homes. Those ICE officials will never know a moment&rsquo;s peace wondering if their families are safe. That&rsquo;s the whole idea.
The most ubiquitous piece of resistance gear is the police-type whistles, which are handed out like candy. Once a resistance member spots an ICE officer or vehicle, they immediately blow the whistle as a signal to any nearby sympathizers. Soon, hundreds of whistles are being blown as anti-ICE locals descend on the ICE asset identified by the first whistler. Whistles sound primitive, but they are loud, fast, and effective when it comes to convergence tactics.
Other anti-ICE citizens operate in less visible but still important ways. They can provide a safe house to resistors to retreat in cases of tear gas, pepper spray or rubber bullets being used. They can offer watch services from their own homes using binoculars and Signal messages.
The resistance is also widely dispersed. There is no single center of gravity that can be taken out by the government. Instead, there are many cells and nodes that may communicate with each other but otherwise perform their operations autonomously. You cannot cut off the head of the snake when there is no snake. The resistance is more like a million red fire ants swarming their targets from every direction.
There&rsquo;s nothing spontaneous or peaceful about this anti-ICE resistance. It is aggressive at best and deadly at worst. Dozens of National Guard, local police and ICE operators have been killed in recent years in mass shootings and lone wolf attacks.
This is not peaceful protest. This is not passive resistance. Resistance techniques would be recognized by U.S. Special Forces operatives as the kind of enemy operations they face in Iraq or Gaza, but it&rsquo;s happening right here at home.
The threat to you and your family&rsquo;s health and wealth is clear. Study your local situation. If you&rsquo;re in a sanctuary city or state, pay attention to possible ICE operations. If any operation is planned or underway, secure your property and get out of town until the op is over. It&rsquo;s simply too dangerous to hang around.

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