<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />9,800
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russian territory aren&rsquo;t altogether new. But 680 miles from the Ukrainian border? That&rsquo;s new.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3t3GJD22H6I9FcF7QhwVBS/2cc02bc6234a6ce1549b682afde84e83/visegrad24x.jpg" alt="Visegrad 24 - X" />
Local officials in the city of Nizhnekamsk, population 241,000, say the attack overnight killed 13 people &ndash; including a child. &ldquo;It is one of the deadliest single attacks on Russia since the start of Moscow's full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022,&rdquo; says the BBC.
For its part, the Ukrainian government says it hit an oil refinery &ndash; part of its strategy to strike targets that generate revenue for Russia&rsquo;s government and logistics for Russia&rsquo;s military.
Nor was that the only drone Ukraine sent into Russian territory: Moscow says it shot down more than 450 Ukrainian drones last night alone.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Russian defense ministry says Ukraine unleashed a record number of drones on Russia last month &ndash; 9,800. That&rsquo;s over 300 a day.
Not coincidentally, the supply of drones from European Union countries has mushroomed this year.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5rUriTgDgJboVEU0O4T9DF/30306be252ce3df9a80d8af3aa0427ac/statista_chart_fmf.jpg" alt="Statista Chart" />
These drones aren&rsquo;t especially speedy. And few hit their targets &ndash; perhaps 3% at most. They&rsquo;re unlikely to change the trajectory of the war, which is moving steadily in Moscow&rsquo;s favor.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Russian military has its own drone fleet that it unleashes on Ukraine &ndash; and those drones appear to be reaching a far higher percentage of their targets. 
That&rsquo;s because Kyiv has exhausted its supply of interceptor missiles &ndash; and Washington has no more to give, having already given so many to Ukraine and having used up so many defending U.S. bases in the Middle East from Iranian drone strikes.
These developments have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Which is why a tiny line-item in the Pentagon&rsquo;s budget blueprint perked up our attention at Paradigm Press.
We alluded to it last Thursday &ndash; a staggering 240x increase in the amount of money sought for drone warfare. From $255 million&hellip; to $55 billion.
We&rsquo;ve also been aiming to identify the companies that could be the biggest beneficiaries of this money flood from D.C. And the team at Rickards&rsquo; Insider Intel has pinpointed it &ndash; with the aid of a proprietary AI tool they call the I-3.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Energy: Reality Check
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;U.S. Oil Price Hits $80 as Doubt Grows Washington and Tehran Will Reach Strait of Hormuz Deal,&rdquo; says a CNBC headline.
Gee, ya think?
A week ago today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal was in the works &ldquo;today or tomorrow.&rdquo; But on Saturday, traffic was at a near-standstill.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6cJ8EbpPz0JCC2KcTKrnQq/93df2eff5315b994bceb9c0d66e2d0d4/macroEdgeX.jpg" alt="MacroEdge - X" />
Yesterday, Donald Trump did an interview with one of the White House&rsquo;s fave reporters, Axios&rsquo; Barak Ravid. He issued no new military threats against Iran, saying he&rsquo;ll rely on economic warfare for the time being. Or as he put it, &ldquo;We are low-keying it.&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; That squares with a column last week by The Wall Street Journal&rsquo;s Holman Jenkins in which he anticipated &ldquo;the deusltory shooting and talking to continue to Jan. 20, 2029, when the next administration will be able to take a big-bath write-off and blame Mr. Trump.&rdquo;
Of course, it&rsquo;s still a long time between now and then &ndash; and the status quo can&rsquo;t hold indefinitely. Some other headlines today&hellip;
<ul>
<li>The Department of Energy says the U.S. government&rsquo;s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now under 300 million barrels &ndash; the lowest level since 1983. By law, it can&rsquo;t fall below 252 million so that the military has a bare minimum to draw on in an emergency. At the current pace of depletion, we&rsquo;ll be there by late October.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Ukraine&rsquo;s attacks on Russia&rsquo;s oil industry are such that according to Reuters, Russia is importing refined products like diesel and jet fuel from South Korea &ndash; which isn&rsquo;t exactly an energy powerhouse</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Yemen&rsquo;s Houthi faction continues to inflict pain on Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s oil industry &ndash; launching another drone attack on Saudi Aramco&rsquo;s Jazan refinery, which the company says is now disabled until at least the end of this month. (More about the Houthis and drones in tomorrow&rsquo;s edition&hellip;)</li>
</ul>
And with that, U.S. oil futures are now over $81 for only the second time this month &ndash; up more than three bucks from Friday&rsquo;s close.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />As for stocks, the major U.S. indexes are little moved from their Friday closes.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up fractionally in record territory at 7,764. The Dow and the Nasdaq are slightly in the red.
The Paradigm editors racked up another slug of winners for readers at the end of last week. Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s The Maverick logged a 15% gain in less than four weeks on shares of Construction Partners Inc. &ndash; and 239% playing options on Atlassian Corp.
Atlassian was also a big winner for Zach Scheidt&rsquo;s Income Alliance &ndash; a staggering 157% in a single day. And in Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha, readers bagged 196% in less than four months playing options on Unity Software.
Elsewhere, gold is consolidating last week&rsquo;s gains &ndash; up $21 as we write to $45,362. But silver&rsquo;s still on a tear, up 2.5% and now over $65 for the first time since June.
No joy in crypto, though &ndash; Bitcoin just over $64,000 and Ethereum under $1,900 again. &ldquo;Bitcoin&rsquo;s trading range has tightened to a point where we should expect a major move soon,&rdquo; says Greg Guenthner at The Trading Desk. &ldquo;Whether that move is up or down remains to be seen.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Et Tu, Texas? (Data Centers)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For the record: The most data center-friendly state government in the country has paused new approvals.
Last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas ordered a pause on new approvals for every data center that wants to connect to the power grid. That&rsquo;s because &rdquo;less than 10% of data centers responded to the state&rsquo;s requests for them to report their power and water usage,&rdquo; according to the Texas Tribune.
And so all approvals are on pause until the state can perform an audit &ndash; some 1,800 projects representing 474 gigawatts, five times the Texas grid&rsquo;s record peak demand.
Donald Trump criticized Abbott&rsquo;s decision &ndash; gently, and without calling him out by name. &ldquo;I just think it&rsquo;s a mistake, because there are other communities that want it. When a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community.&rdquo;
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris counters that &ldquo;many are unaware that [the Electric Reliability Council of Texas] is tracking a more than 500% increase in peak electricity demand. This unprecedented growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid.&rdquo;
The situation is almost certain to encourage more data centers to spin up their own power on-site, &ldquo;behind the meter.&rdquo; The simplest and fastest way to do so is with natural gas.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But that&rsquo;s not problem-free. In July we mentioned the objections neighbors have to SpaceX&rsquo;s colossus project in the Memphis area.
Last week, The New York Times had a front-page story that began with the tale of a woman near El Paso who will soon have a new Meta data center for a neghbor &ndash; powered by natgas turbines.
&ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d bought my dream home, that I&rsquo;d be looking out on the dark sky, hearing the coyotes call,&rdquo; says Cynthia Crouse. &ldquo;Then I woke up to the biggest nightmare I&rsquo;ve ever had.&rdquo;
The Times story zeroes in on &ldquo;planet-warming carbon dioxide&rdquo; &ndash; because of course it would.
But you don&rsquo;t have to buy into the climate change hoopla to recognize that the turbines &ldquo;also produce harmful pollutants including particulate matter, formaldehyde and smog-forming nitrogen oxides that can contribute to heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, strokes and other ailments in people living nearby.&rdquo;
This much is certain: The backlash over data centers <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/backlash-data-centers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">isn&rsquo;t going away</a>. And it <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/maga-lansing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transcends partisan lines</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Great Moments In AI
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />You know the saying &ldquo;close enough for government work&rdquo;? Yeah, this ain&rsquo;t it&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Zw6qyLlySi0jvkG34CpSj/43cf35c90cd136b7b78c7d3d9fb6ebbf/ReutersAfricaX.jpg" alt="Reuters Africa - X" />
Recently the State Department held its annual AIDS conference in Brazil. During one presentation, an official map spotlighted six African countries with which Washington has agreements for AIDS funding.
And the map botched both the shape and placement of every one.
From an NBC News account: &ldquo;The map showed Nigeria, where the U.S. has several hundred troops deployed, as landlocked in the Sahara. Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa, was relocated to the Horn of Africa, while Ivory Coast in West Africa was placed on the other side of the continent.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s&hellip; the&hellip; State Department. They&rsquo;re supposed to&hellip; know&hellip; this stuff.
A watermark on the map said the map was made with the help of OpenAI tools. OpenAI says it&rsquo;s investigating.
Yeah, I tried using OpenAI&rsquo;s ChatGPT to draw a map for a 5 Bullets issue one day recently. The approximate position of everything was accurate but the shapes were so distorted I refused to use it.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4nwMXioLcA4owlHzDuAeJF/6dd024160f4295430e5a25aa3d98f9c0/CaspianSea.jpg" alt="Caspian Sea - ChatGPT version" />
This is what ChatGPT thinks the Caspian Sea basin looks like&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ej5GCbQEBeUZvLb4vIkc7/da322b88d9c8b9ee6703cb7f8baa83fb/caspianSeaActual.jpg" alt="Caspian Sea - Actual" />
&hellip;and this is what it actually looks like.
The State Department says it takes &ldquo;full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners.&rdquo;
Betcha no one got fired or even reprimanded, though&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Show-Me State Taxes
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;As a Missouri resident, I wanted to follow up with you about the vote in the state that rejected abolishing the income tax,&rdquo; a reader writes after Saturday&rsquo;s edition.
&ldquo;As it stands now, under the Hancock Amendment and Constitutional Amendment 4 (2016), the Missouri General Assembly cannot raise state taxes or expand state revenue beyond a constitutional growth cap without sending the proposed increase to a statewide vote for public approval.
&ldquo;Plus, cities, counties, school districts, and special taxing districts cannot create new local taxes, increase existing tax rates, or expand sales tax levies without direct voter approval. And, if overall property assessments in a taxing district grow faster than inflation, local taxing authorities are constitutionally required to roll back their tax rates to prevent automatic revenue spikes&mdash;unless voters specifically approve keeping the higher rate. (There are some exceptions and caveats, but I hope this gives you the big picture of the tax scene in Missouri.)
&ldquo;Amendment 5 would have ended income tax; BUT it would have authorized the Missouri General Assembly to expand sales and use taxes to a wider array of goods and services without requiring a separate, subsequent public vote. (Effectively ending the safeguards outlined above.)
&ldquo;From my conversations with people from all over the political spectrum, I got the feeling that the vast majority of people did not want to allow politicians to expand sales and use tax at their discretion. Plus, they wanted to keep voter protections in place. (You kind of got the feeling it would have turned into an everything tax that could easily feel like a VAT for the state.)
&ldquo;In any case, I hope that paints a picture of the tax scene in Missouri and what Amendment 5 would have done.
&ldquo;Keep up the great work! Love the 5!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I never met a tax I didn&rsquo;t hate, and for 27 years as an expat, I structured it so I paid little or none. I find income taxes almost as distasteful as slavery,&rdquo; chimes in another reader.
&ldquo;When I saw the amendment proposal to eliminate income and property tax, I was elated. Then I read the fine print. As you mentioned, they had to get funds from somewhere. In this case, it eliminated the constitutional restraints on sales and services taxes.
&ldquo;So our choice was to trade on a known form of robbery for another with no theoretical limits. As the winds and political fortunes shift over time, politicians would have a field day favoring this and taxing the hell out of that, with no say from the taxpayer. It would have been a great instrument for social engineering. Fortunately, enough people figured that out.
&ldquo;Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the amendment to end simple majority rule (mob rule) and replace it with the requirement for proposed changes to pass with a majority in all voting blocks did not.
&ldquo;On the surface, this would appear fair, but Missouri is a bit different. The populations of St. Louis and Kansas City on the east and west borders are urban and primarily blue, while the rest of the state in between is mostly rural and red. The proposed amendment would have finally given some clout and better representation to the rural folk and perhaps provided a pathway to alleviate some of the disadvantages we now face. The campaigns in the media misportrayed it sufficiently that it did not pass.
&ldquo;So no changes. C'est la vie.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thanks to our readers contributing on-the-ground insight.
As long as we have local and state taxes on the brain, here&rsquo;s a quick update on the proposal in Florida <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-failure-is-always-an-option" target="_blank" rel="noopener">that would radically curb property taxes</a>.
Opponents of the measure challenged it in court &ndash; and a week ago today, a judge in Tallahassee ruled the language needs to be tweaked.
In particular, the judge said the title of the measure &ndash; &ldquo;Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes&rdquo; &ndash; was too political, running afoul of state law requiring &ldquo;fairness and accuracy&rdquo; in ballot questions.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says while he doesn&rsquo;t &ldquo;necessarily agree&rdquo; with the ruling, a rewrite is underway. The referendum still goes before voters on Nov. 3.

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

680 Miles

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />SPCX: The Last Word (For Now)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> So after three days is there anything to say about SpaceX&rsquo;s earnings report that hasn&rsquo;t been said already?
Yes, actually.&nbsp;
As we mentioned on Wednesday, Mr. Market punished SpaceX for its prodigious spending on AI infrastructure like data centers.
Because SPCX sees AI as a far bigger market than space, the company is spending accordingly. And Wall Street is evaluating SPCX as a competitor with the &ldquo;hyperscalers&rdquo; like Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon.
For the most recent quarter anyway, Wall Street has put SPCX in the same bucket as GOOG and META &ndash; skeptical that those billions and billions will ever pay off.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The read is that SpaceX is burning tens of billions to fight the AI labs. That&rsquo;s not entirely correct,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech investing pro Ray Blanco.
&ldquo;Google is a customer. Anthropic is a customer. SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell named both on the call. The $14.1 billion in cloud services agreements they signed this quarter is money coming from those frontier AI labs.
&ldquo;Only about 10% of that compute goes to training Grok. Elon gave that number when an analyst asked. The rest is inference and rental.&rdquo;
Chief financial officer Bret Johnsen explained that SpaceX isn&rsquo;t playing the same game as the others. "We're able to deploy capital in such a way that we're getting less than a one-year payback.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It's almost like your capital is becoming almost an item that you would put otherwise in COGS [cost of goods sold], because it's moving so quickly as far as monetization and moving into revenue."
Ray finds that a plausible argument &ndash; but the burden of proof is on SpaceX in the next couple of quarters. &ldquo;The payback claim still has to hold going forward. If it doesn&rsquo;t, the bears are right.&rdquo;
But if it does hold&hellip; it will justify Elon Musk&rsquo;s expectations for $100 billion in annualized revenue by December.
For now, everyone on the Paradigm team agrees it&rsquo;s too soon to pull the trigger on SPCX. Only yesterday, 911 million shares held by insiders and employees were unlocked and available to trade openly on the market. Still more unlock events are on tap between now and December.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About the Job Numbers&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gee, who&rsquo;s Donald Trump gonna fire for the rotten job number this summer?
It was a year ago this week that Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics &ndash; the same day the BLS reported that employers added only 73,000 new jobs during the month gone by. It was the lowest increase all year.
The Bureau has gone without a permanent head since; Trump named someone more than six months ago but the nomination has languished in the Senate.
In the meantime, the numbers have generally worsened since then. Which brings us to today&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The wonks at the BLS conjured a loss of 23,000 jobs during July. No one among legions of Wall Street economists saw that coming.
The official unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. How could that happen when the economy shed jobs?&nbsp;
Because 80,000 people dropped out of the labor force during July. And it&rsquo;s a safe bet most of them weren&rsquo;t retiring with a gold watch after 40 years on the job with the same company; they were people of all ages who simply gave up looking for work.
In the scheme of things, a one-month drop of 23,000 jobs isn&rsquo;t a huge deal. The U.S. border has been all but sealed since the spring of 2025.&nbsp;
It used to take at least 150,000 new jobs every month to keep pace with population growth. But with migration dramatically curbed, the number is more like 30,000 &ndash; and the average over the last year has been just shy of that level, about 26,000.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The downside surprise in the job number is giving a lift to nearly every asset class as the week winds down.
That&rsquo;s because every punk job number lowers the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates. As of this morning, futures traders now assign a 56% probability the Fed will leave rates alone at its next meeting in mid-September.
With that, the S&amp;P 500 is on track to end the week in record territory &ndash; up more than a half percent on the day at 7,753. The Nasdaq is up over 1% on the day, but it still has work to do to return to its early-June highs. And the Dow is up a quarter-percent, back over 54,000.
But if it&rsquo;s big movement you want, it&rsquo;s in the precious metals. Gold is up over $100 to $4,349 &ndash; the highest since mid-June. And silver is up over two bucks to $63.59.
In contrast, crypto is treading water &ndash; Bitcoin just under $65,000, Ethereum just over $1,900.
Crude is up less than a percent &ndash; a hair below $78. For the record, we&rsquo;re still waiting on whatever &ldquo;deal&rdquo; with Iran the Trump administration was promising earlier this week and was supposed to be done by now.
➢ Winners this week: With the bump in gold prices today, congratulations are in order for Weekly Wealth Alert readers. Alan Knuckman urged them to take 100% profits this morning on Barrick Mining call options. Nice work for just over a week. Meanwhile at The Income Alliance, Zach Scheidt&rsquo;s premium subscribers booked 59% in less than a month playing options on the software name Atlassian Corp.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold Miners: Still Cheap
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even with the big bump in the gold price today, gold miners are still a steal.
&ldquo;This is an incredible chart of the free cash flows coming from mining companies,&rdquo; enthuses Paradigm natural resources pro Matt Badiali.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/MwYh9X8kFMn7clf2NjroA/37d4e920319223b5822a34014b53d49a/FMF-Issue-080726-1.jpg" alt="Gold miners: Free cash flow per share" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Mining, as you can see from those red lines, doesn't usually generate a lot of free cash,&rdquo; Matt says. &ldquo;That's because mining is capital intensive.&nbsp;
&ldquo;You plow most of your earnings back into the business. You have to find new mines, replace equipment, and maintain your operations. I once saw a metric that measured tons of rock produced per tire&hellip; because the haul truck tires (those giant, taller-than-a-man-things) cost so much money to replace.&nbsp;
&ldquo;But the soaring gold price of the last year-plus eclipsed those costs by so much that miners are now gushing with cash.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It's a great time to be a producer!&rdquo;
The HUI index of gold mining shares is up nearly 7% today, approaching the 750 level &ndash; the highest in over two months. Sooner or later it&rsquo;s going to take out the late-February highs of 978.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />It&rsquo;s Come To This&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> You know the world&rsquo;s turned upside down when this e-letter scoops Alex Jones by over a week.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3SjGD5LiYzEqaUzVKZ89XG/82f6e620b7165df335133810a6d4c44d/FMF-Issue-080726-2.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<a id="5"></a>
OK, the 5 Bullets take wasn&rsquo;t as hyperbolic, but it&rsquo;s right there <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/war-merger">at the top of our July 27 edition</a>. The Ukraine and Iran wars effectively merged with a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian merchant ship in the Caspian Sea.
It&rsquo;s true, as we chronicled a couple of days later, that Ukrainian and Iranian diplomats have since lowered the temperature. But the risk remains &ndash; and we&rsquo;re keeping a watchful eye&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Drones
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We heard from a skeptical reader after colleague Davis Wilson&rsquo;s <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-pentagons-244x-play">guest essay yesterday</a> about drone warfare&hellip;
&ldquo;Before the world decides that hand to hand fighting and tanks no longer serve any purpose, we need to have a discussion about how easy or hard it is to blast every one of those GPS satellites out of the sky/space without which no sophisticated drone can operate.&rdquo;
Dave responds: It is true that GPS satellites are vulnerable to ballistic missiles &ndash; to say nothing of hackers and solar flares.
But many armed drones don&rsquo;t rely on GPS at all &ndash; in part because GPS is also vulnerable to plain ol&rsquo; jamming and spoofing, of which there&rsquo;s been a lot during the Russia-Ukraine war.
AeroVironment (AVAV) &ndash; mentioned in Davis&rsquo; writeup yesterday &ndash; has developed a drone called Red Dragon specifically for scenarios when GPS is not available or not desirable.&nbsp;
Other systems are radio-controlled &ndash; a souped-up version of decades-old model airplane technology.&nbsp;
And for distances of 12 miles or less, there are drones controlled by fiber-optic cable &ndash; which leads to perverse results like this.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7DehtMxiV6mhOGoXXtahRN/133a7dc9f6d2846a1bc075c7e31a45aa/FMF-Issue-080726-3.jpg" alt="clash report" width="540px" />
Anyway, we thank the reader for the thought exercise here. More about drones and their investment potential coming up next week&hellip;

FMF-Issue-080726-Featured

What Wall Street’s getting wrong…

Buried in the Pentagon&rsquo;s latest budget blueprint is an eye-popping number &ndash; one that Congress is almost sure to agree to between now and year-end.
That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;re going to be hearing a lot about drone warfare in the days, weeks and months to come &ndash; more than you have already.
Investable? Yes &ndash; as colleague Davis Wilson has discovered this summer.
Really, it&rsquo;s shaping up to be one of the major themes we&rsquo;ll be following for the rest of 2026.&nbsp;
<h2 style="text-align: center;">55 Billion Reasons to "Go Drone"</h2>
The Pentagon has a math problem.
And it's a big one.
Imagine spending $2 million to shoot down a drone that costs $20,000.
Do it once and nobody notices.
Do it hundreds of times and your military strategy starts to break down.
That's the lesson the United States has learned from the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
Cheap drones are increasingly able to overwhelm expensive defenses.
Now the Pentagon is responding in a dramatic way.
The Department of War just announced it&rsquo;s seeking $55 billion for drone and autonomous warfare programs in its fiscal 2027 budget.
For perspective, that's up from $225 million just one year earlier.
That&rsquo;s a 244x increase in one year.
The message couldn't be clearer: The future of warfare is autonomous.
And as investors&hellip; it&rsquo;s time we take notice.
Here&rsquo;s Where The Money Is Going
The Pentagon isn't simply buying more drones.
It's rebuilding an entire ecosystem.
Think about what it takes to field thousands of autonomous systems.
First, you need the drones themselves.
Then you need the software that allows them to communicate, coordinate, and operate autonomously.
And finally, you need a secure domestic supply chain capable of producing all of those systems at scale.
In other words, this $55 billion spending surge won't create just one winner.
It will create winners across the entire autonomous warfare stack.
Here are the three layers I'm watching closely.
Layer #1: The Drone Builders
The most obvious winners are the companies actually manufacturing the drones.
As warfare shifts from a handful of expensive platforms to thousands of expendable autonomous systems, demand for drone production could explode.
The Pentagon isn't looking to buy a few dozen systems.
It's looking to field them at scale.
Here are the companies I'm watching:
<ul>
<li>AeroVironment (AVAV) &ndash; This was once a $400 stock that now trades below $170. The company is one of the most established names in military drones. If the Pentagon is serious about fielding autonomous systems at scale, AeroVironment is likely to be one of the first companies on speed dial.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Red Cat Holdings (RCAT) &ndash; This is a $1.7 billion company most investors have never heard of. Red Cat focuses on tactical drones used by frontline military personnel for reconnaissance and battlefield awareness.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Kratos Defense (KTOS) &ndash; This is another stock well off its highs. Shares traded around $134 in January and sit near $53 as I type. What attracts me to Kratos is that its entire business is aligned with where military spending is headed: lower-cost, autonomous, and scalable.</li>
</ul>
One thing investors should remember: drones are increasingly becoming consumables.
Unlike fighter jets that can remain in service for decades, drones get used, destroyed, and replaced.
That creates a recurring demand cycle that looks more like ammunition than traditional defense procurement.
Layer #2: The Brains Behind The Drones
Building thousands of drones is one thing.
Getting them to operate together is another.
The Pentagon's vision isn't simply thousands of independent drones flying around the battlefield.
It's aiming to create swarms of these drones.
That requires software capable of coordinating hundreds of systems simultaneously, sharing information, assigning targets, and adapting in real time.
Here are the companies I'm watching:
<ul>
<li>Ondas (ONDS) &ndash; This is a $4.7 billion company operating at the intersection of drones and artificial intelligence. The company develops autonomous drone systems and the software needed to coordinate them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Palantir (PLTR) &ndash; I&rsquo;ve been critical of Palantir in the past for valuation reasons. But undoubtedly the company is already deeply embedded within the defense ecosystem. And because autonomous warfare generates massive amounts of battlefield data, they&rsquo;ll likely be the company to organize it.</li>
</ul>
In many ways, this may become the most valuable layer of the entire autonomous warfare stack.
Anyone can build a drone.
Far fewer companies can build the software required to coordinate thousands of them.
Layer #3: The Picks-And-Shovels Suppliers
The Pentagon has made it clear that it wants to reduce its dependence on foreign drone components &ndash; particularly those sourced from China.
That's easier said than done.
Building thousands of drones requires motors, flight controllers, cameras, radios, and countless other components.
If those parts can't be sourced domestically, the Pentagon's ambitious plans quickly run into supply chain bottlenecks.
That's where a little-known $1.2 billion company called Unusual Machines (UMAC) comes in.
<ul>
<li>Unusual Machines (UMAC) &ndash; One of the few public companies focused on supplying NDAA-compliant drone components sourced outside of China. As the Pentagon pushes to build a secure domestic drone ecosystem, companies like UMAC could become increasingly important.</li>
</ul>
Most investors focus on the finished drone.
Instead, let&rsquo;s focus on what makes the drone possible.
After all, if the Pentagon is serious about deploying autonomous systems at scale, it won't just need more drones.
It will need an entire American supply chain to support them.
The Bottom Line
For decades, military power was built around a relatively small number of expensive platforms.
The future appears to be thousands of lower-cost autonomous systems operating together in coordinated networks.
And whenever an organization as large as the Pentagon changes direction, investors should pay attention.
The exact winners remain to be seen.
But if this $55 billion proposal is any indication, the drone economy is about to get a lot bigger.
I'd rather be early than late.
Dave&rsquo;s last word: We&rsquo;ll have more to say on this theme in the days to come. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, it&rsquo;s shaping up to be a sleepy summer day in the markets. The major U.S. stock indexes are flat in early trading. Precious metals are likewise consolidating their gains from earlier in the week. U.S. crude futures are up about 1% but still under $76. Bitcoin has pushed past $64,000 and Ethereum past $1,900.
Back to our regular fare tomorrow, including our always-skeptical take on the monthly job numbers. Catch you then&hellip;

FMF-Issue-080626-Featured

 The Pentagon’s 244X Play

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Turning Japanese
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a situation shaping up in markets that Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards says could turn out worse than the 2008 financial crisis.
On the surface, it looks like an arcane event in the currency markets. But if it blows up, the effects could be widespread. Under the best case scenario, mortgage rates would sail even higher than they are now, and the AI buildout would hit stall speed.
What&rsquo;s happening is the &ldquo;unwind&rdquo; of the &ldquo;yen carry trade.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Here&rsquo;s how Jim explained it yesterday for Strategic Inteligence subscribers&hellip;
&ldquo;Interest rates in the U.S. for medium-term private borrowers with good credit are currently around 6.0%. Until recently, Japanese interest rates were close to zero or even negative.
&ldquo;A U.S. investor who wanted to finance U.S. manufacturing, engage in a takeover or pursue some other activity requiring capital could borrow cheaply in yen from Japanese banks, convert the yen to dollars and then invest the dollars at a much higher expected return.
&ldquo;If this arrangement were leveraged 3:1, typical for some hedge fund strategies, or even higher in certain buyouts, a wide spread between the cost of borrowing and the return on investment could produce outsized returns on the financing alone, regardless of any profit on the deal being financed.
&ldquo;This cheap, leveraged financing method has been driving investment worldwide in the age of globalization. It&rsquo;s used in China, the EU, emerging markets and U.S. M&amp;A deals, as well as commercial real estate development. The yen carry trade has been one of the engines powering global investment and sky-high asset valuations for decades.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It all works great &ndash; as long as Japanese interest rates stay low and the value of the yen remains stable. Neither of which is happening now.
Suddenly the cost of repaying yen-denominated debt is soaring. Thus the need to &ldquo;unwind&rdquo; the carry trade.
&ldquo;The unwind can be done by borrowing dollars, converting them to yen, paying off the yen loan and continuing the deal in dollars. But if banks won&rsquo;t lend or interest rates are too high, investors may have to sell assets to pay off the yen loans.
&ldquo;This leads to pressure to sell stocks and bonds, which can lead to sky-high interest rates and crashing stock markets.&rdquo;
Key point: Japan is by far the biggest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities &ndash; $1.14 trillion worth.&nbsp;
If Japan has to sell Treasuries to raise cash, that pushes U.S. interest rates higher. It&rsquo;s harder for homebuyers to get a mortgage and harder for the tech industry to finance all those new data centers.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And so Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent staged an intervention a few days ago &ndash; promising to do &ldquo;whatever it takes&rdquo; to stabilize Japan&rsquo;s currency.
Just to make sure everyone got the message, Bessent attended a cabinet meeting armed with a to-do list that had only one item on it &ndash; strategically placed in camera range.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1RNK5ninaGjzBcujBZKW5e/69efc86d6dd9ad38fdfbe12efe85a26b/FMF-Issue-081126-1.jpg" alt="ACYN Tweet Scott Bessent" width="540px" />
&ldquo;The U.S. Treasury has now intervened alongside Japan to support the yen,&rdquo; says Jim &ndash; &ldquo;while Japan is looking to the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s FIMA repo facility, which would allow the Bank of Japan to obtain up to $60 billion in dollar liquidity against its Treasury holdings.
&ldquo;That gives Japan another source of dollars without forcing it to dump U.S. Treasuries on the market.&rdquo;
Jim points out that one of Bessent&rsquo;s predecessors, Hank Paulson, said the quiet part out loud: &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t need them selling Treasuries right now.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Will it work? &ldquo;These efforts to prop up currency values when fundamentals point in the opposite direction usually fail,&rdquo; Jim says.
&ldquo;In 1992, George Soros famously made about $1 billion betting against sterling when the Bank of England tried unsuccessfully to defend the pound and ultimately withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.&rdquo;
One of Soros&rsquo; top traders at the time was none other than&hellip; Scott Bessent.
Jim&rsquo;s conclusion: &ldquo;Bessent knows the game. He also knows from experience that it doesn&rsquo;t always work for the side propping up the currency.
&ldquo;Get ready for the mother of all currency market panics.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll stay on top of it &ndash; including any actionable guidance, should it become necessary &ndash; in the days and weeks ahead.
➢ Recovered history: It was around this time two years ago that Japanese officials merely talking about raising interest rates sent shudders through markets worldwide, including the U.S. stock market. You can revisit that history <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/apology-from-tokyo">in this back issue</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />How &lsquo;Bout Them Houthis?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> U.S. oil futures are up nearly a buck and over $83 as Yemen&rsquo;s Houthi faction all but controls another strategic &ldquo;chokepoint&rdquo; in global shipping.
The Houthis struck a Saudi Arabian vessel in the narrow Bab al-Mandab waterway at the south end of the Red Sea &ndash; killing three.
A few days ago, the Houthis &ndash; loosely aligned with Iran &ndash; declared the Bab off-limits to Saudi Arabian oil tankers. As a result, several tankers have had to transit the Suez Canal and go all the way around Africa to reach their destinations in Asia.
None of this is a surprise to anyone who saw what the Houthis did to the U.S. Navy in 2024-25. We chronicled it in these digital pages&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s not an exaggeration to say tribesmen in flip-flops chased two U.S. aircraft carriers out of the Red Sea.
In late 2023, the Houthis began harassing U.S.- and Israeli-linked shipping through the Bab &ndash; an act of solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza. Many vessels had to take that long route around Africa.
U.S. forces tried to inflict pain on the Houthis but to no avail. The Houthis shot down more than 20 MQ-9 Reaper drones at a cost of over $30 million each.
In the spring of 2025, incoming Houthi missiles forced evasive maneuvers on the part of the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman &mdash; sending an F/A-18 fighter jet sliding off the deck and into the drink. And a similar incident took place a few days later.
With that, the Trump administration reached a truce of sorts with the Houthis after 19 months of low-grade fighting. The Houthis remained the effective rulers of the Bab.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Houthis&rsquo; &ldquo;secret weapon&rdquo; was a barrage of cheap drones &ndash; much cheaper than the U.S. versions.
Here&rsquo;s a Politico headline from late 2023&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/287Guaokaecs0Sxy8xLbpJ/a2607c184f8cdb6c3c472f0ad3c5a006/FMF-Issue-081126-2.jpg" alt="Pentagon worried over cost of Houthi attacks" width="540px" />
What was happening back then was a preview of coming attractions for the Iran war this year &ndash; cheap drones giving fits to a U.S. military that still operates with a mentality that &ldquo;Big Iron&rdquo; like aircraft carriers and F-35s can bring any foe to heel.
That&rsquo;s changing. As we&rsquo;ve been emphasizing in recent days, the Pentagon is seeking a staggering increase in its annual drone budget &ndash; from $255 million to $55 billion.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The View From Main Street
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We take the pulse of Wall Street every day in these 5 Bullets. What about the mood on Main Street?
The National Federation of Independent Business is out this morning with its monthly Small Business Optimism Index. The headline number jumped from 97.4 in June to 99.8 in July &ndash; the highest in nearly a year and higher than the index&rsquo;s 52-year average.
On the portion of the survey where business owners are asked to identify their single most important problem, &ldquo;quality/availabilty of labor&rdquo; has shot back to the top of the list &ndash; cited by 27% of respondents.
&ldquo;We struggle to find skilled labor/trades,&rdquo; says the owner of a construction business in New York State. &ldquo;Labor is a challenge. We currently rely on older or retired help,&rdquo; says a retailer in Pennsylvania.
Nothing else comes close on the single most important problem list. Taxes were cited by 16%, inflation by 14%. Everything else was 8% or less.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for Wall Street, it&rsquo;s another &ldquo;meh&rdquo; day for the major U.S. averages.
The S&amp;P 500 is down fractionally to 7,746. The Dow is essentially flat, just under 54,000. And the Nasdaq is down about a third of a percent, still holding the line on 26,500.&nbsp;
Congratulations are in order for Zach Schiedt&rsquo;s Income Alliance members &ndash; who booked 138% gains in only four weeks yesterday with an options play on the specialty-materials firm ATI Inc.
Gold is treading water at $4,381. Silver is consolidating its gains, back under $65. Crypto is stuck in the mud, Bitcoin at $63,554 and Ethereum at $1,863.
The meat of earnings season is over. The next major economic indicator is the official inflation reading due tomorrow.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This is probably a few years old, but for whatever reason it&rsquo;s resurfacing on social media again. Really, it&rsquo;s timeless&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/17mbFhukWBXmucO6rnBf43/a093ad4359dd5eef8384391482a398a2/FMF-Issue-081126-3.jpg" alt="Federal Reserve Meme" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: AI Maps, Fiber Recycling
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the &ldquo;Great Moments in AI&rdquo; item in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/680-miles">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;It astounds me that the junior assigned the task of producing the map showing African countries did not have the presence of mind to make a simple check of the AI generated output using Google Maps.
&ldquo;It seems no one at State learned anything after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset">getting the Russian word &lsquo;reset&rsquo; wrong</a> during Hildebeast&rsquo;s tenure.
&ldquo;It just reinforces my belief that these so-called elites are &lsquo;intellectual but idiots&rsquo;.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Is there a company that does fiber optic cable recycling in Ukraine?&rdquo; a reader inquires after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-wall-streets-getting-wrong/#5">last Friday&rsquo;s mailbag</a>, which touched on drone warfare.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Are they seeking investors?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Good question. For a long time,fiber optic cable recycling has been an iffy proposition even if you&rsquo;re not in a warzone.
Is it doable? Yes. Is there a payoff for the effort? Not often.
The problem lies in separating the various components of which the fiber is made &ndash; plastics, metals, the glass &ldquo;fractions.&rdquo; Not easy. Nor are any of those materials particularly high-value.
The technology for fiber recycling is improving on the margins &ndash; and companies like AT&amp;T have figured out how to convert old fiber lines into roofing material. But it&rsquo;s still not economical in many situations.&nbsp;
And when you add the labor costs of gathering all that fiber strung across Ukrainian cities? Forget it&hellip;

FMF-Issue-081126-Featured

Turning Japanese

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />2027: Data Centers in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Elon Musk made it clear yesterday during SpaceX&rsquo;s inaugural earnings release: He intends to launch data centers in space next year.
And not a moment too soon.
We&rsquo;ll get to our team&rsquo;s take on SpaceX in Bullet No. 2. But as we said two weeks ago during our last foray into <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/maga-lansing">the data center backlash</a>&hellip; Musk&rsquo;s vision of data centers in space may be the only way to feed industry&rsquo;s insatiable demand for &ldquo;compute&rdquo; without compromising the power grid and the water table.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Pushback from the public is starting to have a measurable impact on the data center buildout.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The public is concerned about rising electricity rates caused by data centers,&rdquo; says University of Michigan political scientist Ben Green. &ldquo;They are concerned about the enormous water use that data centers require.&nbsp;
&ldquo;They&rsquo;re concerned about public handouts in the form of tax breaks that are going to data center developers,&rdquo; Green tells The Harvard Gazette &mdash; &ldquo;and they&rsquo;re also aware that data centers don&rsquo;t bring meaningful economic development, especially in the form of jobs.&rdquo;
Yesterday, colleague Matt Badiali spotlighted this chart from Goldman Sachs for his Real Wealth Insider readers. &ldquo;Goldman expects companies to complete only about 50&ndash;60% of data center capacity. That&rsquo;s due to delays and cancellations.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4ytyfGmg8zQHEJTDcaxHbS/58ddbbb71194606db505d93843a091ce/FMF-Issue-080526-1.jpg" alt="Data center forecast" width="540px" />
But it&rsquo;s not just growing public opposition acting as a constraint.
&ldquo;Our power grid is old,&rdquo; Matt reminds us. &ldquo;It needs a lot of investment as is. Data centers add massive new load to that grid. They currently use 4.4% of all electricity generated in the U.S. That will jump to 12% by 2028, according to research from the Harvard Kennedy School.&rdquo;
And then Matt laid out the following stats &mdash; which were new to me even though I&rsquo;ve been writing about the fragility of the power grid for over four years&hellip;
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;At the end of 2023, 11,600 projects waited to connect to the grid. Those projects represented 2,600 gigawatts of generation and energy storage. At the time, the U.S. grid&rsquo;s entire energy generation capacity was only 1,280 gigawatts.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Only 13% of the new power requests submitted from 2000&ndash;2019 were in operation by 2024. That&rsquo;s not good. Less than one in five got through. Looking ahead, that could mean even fewer data centers.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> You might think these facts and figures undercut the case for investing in copper miners &mdash; something we talk up periodically in this space. But Matt says hold on.
Copper is &ldquo;the key that unlocks the electricity we need for the future,&rdquo; he tells us. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the railroad that makes all this AI data work.
&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s not just AI. EVs, renewable power, batteries, etc. are all incredibly copper intensive. Updating and expanding power grids all over the world, not just here in the U.S., requires billions of pounds of copper.
&ldquo;On the other side of the equation, we&rsquo;re dealing with an aging fleet of mines that require more ore moved to produce the same amount of copper. And there is currently a lack of new copper mines coming online.&rdquo;
S&amp;P Global forecasts that yearly copper mining worldwide will peak in 2030 at 27 million metric tons.&nbsp;
Right now, demand is already at 28 million &mdash; and it&rsquo;s forecast to leap 50% to 42 million metric tons by 2040.
&ldquo;Short of another massive global recession, sustained higher copper prices are inevitable,&rdquo; Matt concludes. &ldquo;We do not have the supply we need to meet forecast demand.&rdquo;
Matt added another copper miner to the Real Wealth Insider portfolio yesterday. If you&rsquo;re new to the sector, you might want to first try an ETF. Sprott offers COPP for larger firms and COPJ for the juniors. [Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: I own both.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />SPCX: Still Not a Space Company
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Remember when we said before the SpaceX IPO that <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/spacex-is-not-a-space-company">SpaceX isn&rsquo;t a space company</a> as much as an AI company? Yeah, the rest of the world discovered the same thing within the last 24 hours.
Yesterday afternoon, SPCX delivered its first quarterly numbers as a publicly traded company. This morning, traders have driven down shares nearly 8% &mdash; mostly because of the company&rsquo;s plans to spend prodigious amounts of money on AI infrastructure.
This shouldn&rsquo;t have surprised anyone who reviewed SpaceX&rsquo;s pre-IPO prospectus. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/spacexs-halo">As our Ray Blanco noted at the time</a>, the company saw space as a $370 billion market&hellip; while AI is a $26.5 trillion market.
Given that backdrop&hellip; and given the scale of Elon Musk&rsquo;s ambitions, whatever he puts his mind to&hellip; is it really so shocking that SPCX&rsquo;s capital spending last quarter totaled $18.4 billion &mdash; compared with only $2.8 billion a year earlier?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We won&rsquo;t dwell on the other headline numbers, which you can find anywhere. That&rsquo;s because under the surface are some other items at least as interesting, if not more.
&ldquo;SpaceX expects to be running at $100 billion in annualized revenue by December,&rdquo; says our Ray Blanco. &ldquo;That's FIVE months from now.
&ldquo;CFO Bret Johnsen laid it all out. In the first weeks of the third quarter, they've already contracted an additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue, ramping from October. Google and Anthropic agreements start hitting later this quarter. Plus the Cursor deal closes and consolidates.
&ldquo;Elon removed the hedge entirely: &lsquo;The $100 billion ARR in December is not a question mark. That's what we'd achieve if we basically did nothing. So I think it may be higher than that.&rsquo;&rdquo;
And while The Wall Street Journal&rsquo;s headline spotlighted Musk&rsquo;s forecast that SPCX will in time generate 10X that amount in revenue&hellip; Ray tells us that Musk has moved up the timeline to reach that $1 trillion target &mdash; from 2031 to 2030. Musk added, &ldquo;There's a non-zero chance of that being in 2029."
&ldquo;The rest of the call,&rdquo; Ray says, &ldquo;explained where it came from&hellip;
Compute. &ldquo;1.4 gigawatts today. Over 2 by year-end. &lsquo;Closer to 10 gigawatts than 5,&rsquo; by the end of 2027 said Musk&mdash; and they're building power and cooling toward 20 gigawatts, deliberately ahead of GPU supply. Payback on new compute capital is running under one year.
Starlink V3. &ldquo;Ten times the capacity per satellite, and 10 times as many satellites. Musk: &lsquo;Even if our monetization per bit dropped by a factor of 10, that would still mean a 10X increase in the revenue of Starlink.&rsquo;
Starship. &ldquo;Falcon delivers about 2,500 tons to orbit a year. The rest of the world combined does roughly 300. The Starship target is over a million tons a year, ultimately 10 million. And the heat shield &mdash; the hardest remaining problem &mdash; is, in Elon's words, solved (although he mentioned he doesn&rsquo;t want to jinx it).&rdquo;
Starmind. The orbital data center now has a name and a date. An optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 computer, launching next year.
Companywide, second-quarter revenue totaled $7.8 billion.&nbsp;
Ray does the math: &ldquo;A $100 billion December run-rate means roughly $8.3 billion in that single month. More than all of Q2, just in December alone.
&ldquo;If they hit that in five months,&rdquo; Ray concludes, &ldquo;the valuation argument is over.&rdquo;
A big &ldquo;if&rdquo; to be sure &mdash; especially with all those insider shares about to unlock between tomorrow and December. For the moment, no one on our team is ready to commit to SPCX as a buy.&nbsp;
[Editor&rsquo;s note: Ray posted his insights first thing this morning on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app. Our editors deliver a host of instant insights every trading day &mdash; material we don&rsquo;t publish anywhere else.
What&rsquo;s more, the app is hands-down the simplest way to stay on top of our editors&rsquo; buy and sell recommendations &mdash; no sifting through your email to find exactly what you need to know.&nbsp;
The app is available for both iOS and Android. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download at this link</a>.]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Meanwhile, the major U.S. stock indexes keep powering higher.
To be sure, the momentum of the last two days is waning. But the S&amp;P 500 is up another third of a percent at last check to a record 7,762. The Dow is up another 1%, also in record territory approaching 54,700. The Nasdaq is just barely in the green at 26,600.
The big action, however, is in precious metals &mdash; gold up nearly 4% to $4,236, the highest since mid-June. And silver&rsquo;s up nearly 5% to $62.35, the highest in a month.
Crypto is like watching paint dry this week &mdash; Bitcoin a little over $64,000 and Ethereum a little under $1,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Such a Deal
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Oil Markets Price In an Iran Deal That Does Not Exist Yet,&rdquo; says a pithy headline at the Oil Price website.
Indeed, U.S. oil futures remain under $76 even though the probability of a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is slipping further and further away.
When we left you yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said &ldquo;there is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow.&rdquo;
But late last night, Donald Trump told reporters, "We're moving along very nicely. We'll find out. We'll know in 48 hours, I would say."
Which takes us to Friday &mdash; just in time for the &ldquo;deal&rdquo; to fall apart and the war to resume while markets are closed for the weekend.
In a not-unrelated development&hellip; Do you remember how the &ldquo;memorandum of understanding&rdquo; between the United States and Iran back in June never got off the ground in part because Israel was attacking Lebanon?
Well, Israel just resumed airstrikes on Lebanon today. In fact, the Israel Defense Forces ordered everyone in the village of Mansouri to leave their homes. By one account, it&rsquo;s the first time the Israeli military has done that since the 2006 Lebanon war.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/JkEK4kxoiOqVOBzEjpRGv/6d0dbd4f5c861c4e6df52dbb7ad213d1/FMF-Issue-080526-2.jpg" alt="South Park Meme" width="540px" />
Honestly I didn&rsquo;t plan on the South Park banker to appear in these digital pages twice in the same week, but here we are.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Well, if the buzzword this year is &ldquo;affordability&rdquo;...
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2yUgJ9H0XkC0oIjgYK2qtW/058a013bf6eef2eb7b1d5d1db7b2ffe5/FMF-Issue-080526-3.jpg" alt="Ranch Meme" width="540px" />
And we&rsquo;ll carry on the theme in the mailbag&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Affordability
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I can't believe how easy you can throw out that line that if your GI parents didn't help you, too bad,&rdquo; a reader grouses after something I said at the conclusion of an issue last week.
OK, it&rsquo;s at this point I invite you to check out that issue: <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/its-all-over/#dave">This link</a> will take you directly to my comments at the end.
Back to the reader: &ldquo;The problem is people like you who think that since your parents have money, they should pay for whatever their kids need, they should live at home half their lives, go out to the clubs and, of course, buy the newest fab car out there.&rdquo;
The rest of the email continued in that vein. You get the idea.
Now here&rsquo;s the thing: Did I ever say in my reflections that boomer parents are obligated to finance the lifestyles of their adult progeny?
No, all I said was that on several levels &mdash; housing, higher education, health care &mdash; life for folks in their 20s and 30s is a lot less affordable now than it was in the 1970s and &rsquo;80s. And that boomers might wish to see where the millennials and GenZ-ers are coming from.&nbsp;
To drive the point home, I reminded boomers that the GI generation was notoriously tin-eared and unwilling to listen to boomers&rsquo; concerns (whatever those concerns might have been) when boomers were younger.
I honestly didn&rsquo;t think anyone would be triggered by those remarks &mdash; but such is the life of a GenX writer trying to mediate disputes between the generations on either side of me.&nbsp;
(I&rsquo;ve been doing it <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2015/10/22/putins-plan-b/#345">for over a decade</a>. It does seem as if the vitriol is getting worse now&hellip;)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;If Gen X is destined to be &lsquo;abandoned&rsquo; then there&rsquo;s a real possibility to fix Social Security or end it,&rdquo; a reader responds to the mailbag section of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/musk-wants-to-hire-your-plumber">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Once the boomers are too small a group the millennials will be able to do what they want with it.&rdquo;
Dave responds: That&rsquo;s still many years in the future. Crunch time comes well before then. The Social Security trustees estimate the old-age-and-survivors trust fund will be exhausted by year-end 2032 &mdash; at which point, benefits would have to be cut by 22%.&nbsp;
Go figure, the oldest Xers will have just reached full retirement age of 67&hellip;

FMF-Issue-080526-Featured

2027: Data Centers in Space

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Musk Wants to Hire Your Plumber
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> You think it&rsquo;s hard finding a good plumber or electrician now? Just wait&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/36GB9LiWMlqvxtKVfB6FO/235ed28f0533b1db121f6445ef35d5f1/FMF-Issue-080426-1.jpg" alt="Elon Musk Tweet Space X is hiring" width="540px" />
Huh&hellip; &ldquo;Skilled trades&rdquo;?
&ldquo;CEOs behind the world&rsquo;s hottest companies agree on one thing,&rdquo; writes Eleanor Pringle at Fortune: &ldquo;Among the most valuable workers in today&rsquo;s labor market are engineers and skilled tradespeople who can build the infrastructure needed for the artificial intelligence boom.
&ldquo;According to Pew Research, the U.S. is already home to more than 3,000 operational data centers, and more than 1,500 are currently in development.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Never mind the &ldquo;off Earth&rdquo; part for the moment: The data center buildout needs people on terra firma right now.&nbsp;
Nvidia&rsquo;s Jensen Huang said as much earlier this year.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft, and we&rsquo;re going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers,&rdquo; he told BlackRock&rsquo;s Larry Fink last winter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> SpaceX&rsquo;s application process is more rigorous than Musk makes it out to be.
&ldquo;Musk often uses this simple hiring rule for potential employees, but SpaceX doesn&rsquo;t just hire anyone &mdash; it's truly looking for the best of the best,&rdquo; writes Niamh Ancell at CyberNews.
The three bullet points? &ldquo;These points must outline the potential employee&rsquo;s &lsquo;exceptional ability,&rsquo; clearly evidenced by presenting the most difficult technical challenges they&rsquo;ve solved.
&ldquo;Musk&rsquo;s method shows a shift toward more obvious skill-based hiring rather than getting sidetracked by what a person may put on their resume.&rdquo;
And when the time does come for Musk to pursue his vision of data centers in space&hellip; well, it&rsquo;ll go without saying that relocation will be required.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Imminent Deal (Again)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Because no one believes Donald Trump&rsquo;s imminent-deal-with-Iran announcements anymore&hellip; the task has now fallen to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
&ldquo;There is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the [Strait of Hormuz] and move toward a more normalized position in this conflict,&rdquo; Bessent told CNBC this morning.&nbsp;
Asked whether Iran would charge a toll, he said only &ldquo;it would be freedom of movement.&rdquo;
And with that, U.S. oil futures are down another 5%-plus &mdash; now under $76 for the first time in over three weeks.
Assuming a deal comes through, will this be a rerun of the &ldquo;memorandum of understanding&rdquo; in June &mdash; where a deal was supposedly done but it took days for the text to be made public?&nbsp;
Ah, memories&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the meantime, Big Oil is making bank &mdash; and Donald Trump is big mad.
The lead to Bloomberg&rsquo;s story was devastating &mdash; but only because it was accurate: &ldquo;President Donald Trump scolded Exxon Mobil Holdings Corp. and Chevron Corp. for their soaring profits, as oil prices surged amid the war in Iran he launched in February alongside Israel.&rdquo;
The two companies more than doubled their second-quarter net income &mdash; choosing to use that money to shrink their debt burden.
As Trump sees it, the two are &ldquo;making too much money&rdquo; and they should &ldquo;give some of that back to the public,&rdquo; presumably in the form of lower gasoline prices.
"I don't like it. I should be the last one to say because I'm a big free enterprise guy, nobody bigger," he told reporters at the White House. "You surprised I'm saying it? I'll say it loud and clear. I'm not happy about it."
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4DcvBI8CHlmnN3DrWPTu4z/b9a26e4897a9549c2b01901d2af39617/FMF-Issue-080426-2.jpg" alt="Don Johnson Tweet" width="540px" />
Exactly what he plans to do about this, he did not elaborate. It would be &mdash; well &mdash; interesting to see him try to go the Jimmy Carter route and urge Congress to pass a &ldquo;windfall profits tax.&rdquo;
For the record, XLE &mdash; the big energy ETF in which XOM and CVX comprise over a third of the holdings &mdash; is up 36% over the year, compared with 23% for the S&amp;P 500.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the broad stock market, it&rsquo;s adding to yesterday&rsquo;s big gains.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up another 1%, blasting past its previous record close on June 2. Indeed the index is barely 20 points away from the 7,700 mark.
The Dow, after setting a record yesterday, is up another 1.3% today, barely 100 points away from 54,000.
The Nasdaq is up 1.6% &mdash; not record territory, but good enough to surpass 26,000 again.&nbsp;
Gold is staging a modest rally &mdash; up a half percent to $4,078. Silver&rsquo;s up 2% to $59.27. Crypto remains range-bound &mdash; Bitcoin a little over $64,000 and Ethereum a little below $1,800.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />About Those Tariff Refunds&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For as much as your editor keeps a pulse on the news and the markets, I end up learning about some things through memes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/46RiEpGA9sJJCVcP4SqN5u/01068756d91dfbaa007c905808bb12a0/FMF-Issue-080426-3.jpg" alt="Kalshi Meme" width="540px" />
Upon further investigation, it is true that Amazon is due a $600 million refund from tariffs imposed by the Trump administration last year, struck down by the Supreme Court this year.
But&hellip; are customers truly out of luck?
On AMZN&rsquo;s quarterly earnings call last week, CFO Brian Olsavsky said the firm "identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we passed specific import charges on to customers."
But no, there&rsquo;s no process by which Amazon customers can apply for refunds of their own. Not yet anyway.&nbsp;
"When we receive those refunds [from the federal government], we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them," Olsavsky said.
Turns out Amazon&rsquo;s refund is lower than some of its competitors because the firm had the foresight to stockpile items before the tariffs were imposed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which reminds us we should update our item about the tariff-refund lawsuit against Costco.
Costco customer Matthew Stockov sued in March, asserting it would be &ldquo;unjust enrichment&rdquo; if the firm recouped its tariff costs twice &mdash; &ldquo;from customers through elevated pricing and from the government.&rdquo;
At the time, Costco wasn&rsquo;t even sure what, if any, tariff refunds it might collect.
In May, the company responded to the suit, urging a federal judge to deny Stockov&rsquo;s request to make the case a class action &mdash; adding that Stockov received all the goods he paid for at posted prices.
As near as we can tell, that&rsquo;s the most recent development. To be continued&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We always enjoy a searing rejoinder to corporate babble&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/58zTsd4WPGgZt0ntR7x1vQ/afbc1564de7595e40398d460e867cce3/FMF-Issue-080426-4.jpg" alt="Dani Donovan" width="540px" />
That said, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/critical-minerals-ministerial/#4">the dog&rsquo;s post on LinkedIn</a> is still the ne plus ultra of the genre.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: What About the Xers?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On a lark, I went to the &ldquo;suspected spam&rdquo; folder of the 5 Bullets email account this morning and found&hellip;&nbsp;
&hellip; a handful of recent emails from real readers, some of them weighing in on the generational warfare that&rsquo;s been waged in our mailbag of late. We&rsquo;ll share one today&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I appreciate Dave's continued throwing up about generations and specifically millennials and Gen Z. What the hell about Generation X???
&ldquo;We are a large voting block and a bunch of us are unaffiliated because of crap like this. I'm so sick of being passed on and overlooked and so are my cohorts in Gen X. I think you're really doing your readers a disservice when you willfully do not include a large voting block &mdash; in the last several decades in a lot of elections votes have come down to literally a few.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm saying we're tired of being looked at like what we were labeled slackers and not to be cared about.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Would love to get your feedback and I don't mean just feedback I mean honest feedback like I'm giving you. Quit writing half-truths and tell us like Paul Harvey used to: &lsquo;And now you know the rest of the story&rsquo;!&rdquo;
Dave responds: LOL, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-the-financial-crisis-and-covid">I&rsquo;m an early-wave Xer</a>.&nbsp;
Furthermore, I&rsquo;m not only old enough to know who Paul Harvey was, I was in the audience as he accepted a prestigious award in 1992 from the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
(<a href="https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-paul-harvey-global-warming/5053796">Here&rsquo;s a clip</a> from his speech where he poured cold water on global warming.)
Anyway&hellip; I&rsquo;m sorry to tell you, but we&rsquo;re not really that large of a voting block. The millennials leapfrogged us and took over the title of largest voting block from the boomers around 2019.
The demographer Neil Howe says it&rsquo;s the fate of &ldquo;Nomad&rdquo; generations like Xers &mdash; or before us, the Lost Generation born in the late 1800s &mdash; to be afterthoughts in the broad sweep of history. We&rsquo;re forever living in the shadow of the &ldquo;Prophet&rdquo; generations like the boomers who immediately preceded us.
As Howe wrote in his 2023 book, The Fourth Turning Is Here&hellip; &ldquo;We remember Nomads best for their rising-adult years of hell-raising (Paxton Boys, Missouri Raiders, rumrunners) and for their midlife years of hands-on, get-it-done leadership (think of Daniel Morgan, Stonewall Jackson, George Patton). Underprotected as children, they become overprotective parents. Their principal endowments are in the domain of liberty, survival and honor.&rdquo;
We get the short end of the generational stick all our lives. In our childhood, Howe characterizes our reputation as &ldquo;bad.&rdquo; Seriously, can you imagine movies like The Exorcist or Taxi Driver being made any time other than when Xers were kids?
And I hate to break it to you&hellip; but it&rsquo;s not going to get any better. Howe says while Prophet generations like the boomers are &ldquo;respected&rdquo; in their elderhood, Nomads are by contrast &ldquo;abandoned.&rdquo;

FMF-Issue-080426-Featured

Musk Wants to Hire Your Plumber

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Will Wall Street Flunk Elon?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; era is over &mdash; and we have Elon Musk to thank for that.
It was three years ago when a Bank of America analyst coined the term &mdash; applying it to Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
Not only were they all tech-adjacent, they frequently ranked as the top seven companies in the United States by market cap. Were it not for Saudi Aramco, they&rsquo;d have been the top seven worldwide.
But then came SpaceX &mdash; muscling its way into the group with its IPO in June.&nbsp;
For a while, it was bigger than Mark Zuckerberg&rsquo;s Meta. At its peak share price of $226, it threatened to overtake most of the others as well.
True, SpaceX doesn&rsquo;t look quite so mighty now, trading for $112 this morning. Ranked by market cap, SPCX is No. 10 worldwide (with Tesla at No. 11).
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Still&hellip; all eyes are on SPCX ahead of its first earnings report, due tomorrow.
The expectations of Wall Street analysts are all over the map.&nbsp;
And because SpaceX spends far more money building out AI than it does launching rockets or operating Starlink&hellip; SPCX will be put to the same test that the other &ldquo;hyperscalers&rdquo; were late last month.&nbsp;
As a refresher, Wall Street gave passing grades to Microsoft and Amazon, expecting their prodigious AI investments will pay off long term &mdash; while flunking Google and Meta.
And if SPCX likewise flunks? It might not be the only downside catalyst for the stock this week.
&ldquo;A bigger overhang,&rdquo; says a Yahoo Finance report, &ldquo;is a lockup expiration on Aug. 6 that will free as much as 20% of shares for sale under the company's lockup plan. Many investors worry that the added supply will keep the stock under pressure.&rdquo;
Yes. And still more shares unlock next week. Granted, not all of those shares held by insiders and employees will be sold right away. But Paradigm analyst Davis Wilson figures SPCX will trade for under $100 before all&rsquo;s said and done.&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s a reason &mdash; many reasons, really &mdash; that none of our editors recommended SPCX out of the box. Too many people get burned in the weeks and months after chasing a hot IPO.&nbsp;
Elon Musk&rsquo;s vision and savvy aren&rsquo;t enough to overcome that phenomenon.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About Those Chip Stocks Now&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;I do not want to rush back to buy into these chip stocks,&rdquo; says Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner.
A quick recap of where we are and how we got here: &ldquo;Semiconductors (specifically the memory trade) have produced generational gains for investors over the past several months. Micron Technology Inc. (MU) has gained nearly 700% over the past 12 months. Sandisk Corp. (SNDK) is up an eye-popping 2,700% over the same timeframe.&rdquo;
And then came the month of July.
&ldquo;We need to understand the emotional weight that comes with huge price moves,&rdquo; Greg reminds us. &ldquo;Prices aren&rsquo;t just numbers. There are emotions involved. SNDK ran from the $550s to over $2,300 in less than three months.
&ldquo;But hitting $1,200 on the way up back in early May feels a lot different than tumbling 50% from its highs to hit $1,200. Context matters!
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6L1JRvOSlBiKLBPoAQPTFB/979df8a7efb9179862e926a6723cd862/FMF-Issue-080326-1.jpg" alt="Same Price Different Emotions" width="540px" />
So now what?&nbsp;
&ldquo;Many speculators are going to attempt to lean on fundamentals as they convince themselves to immediately re-enter or double-down on their trades,&rdquo; Greg says.
&ldquo;They aren&rsquo;t wrong about the numbers, of course. These growth stories are impressive, and it&rsquo;s easy to make an argument that many of these stocks remain cheap despite their huge rallies this year.
&ldquo;But these numbers aren&rsquo;t what&rsquo;s driving the market right now.&nbsp;
&ldquo;We have a short-term downtrend on our hands following the July swoon. And until we see a convincing breakout, we have to respect this series of lower highs and lower lows.&rdquo;
Example: Micron. From a double-top in June over $1,200, MU sank below $750 and this morning trades around $813. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d want to see the stock convincingly retake $1,000 before even thinking about a trade on the long side.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Time is the cure for these runaway animal spirits,&rdquo; Greg concludes. &ldquo;These stocks will find a floor eventually. Then, they will chop along in wide ranges. The &lsquo;hot money&rsquo; will move to the next exciting play. Shareholder turnover will help bleed off the last bit of excess enthusiasm.
&ldquo;Eventually, the stocks will set back up again for another run.&rdquo;
Which we&rsquo;ll be watching for&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sure enough, the chip names are treading water while the broad market is rallying strong to start the month.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up 1.3%, less than 30 points away from its record close of 7,609 on June 22. Weekly Wealth Alert editor Alan Knuckman says at this rate, a melt-up rally to 8,000 is more likely than not: &ldquo;Last week&rsquo;s shakeout was exactly what was needed to move higher.&rdquo;
The Nasdaq is up nearly 2% but still has work to do to reclaim the 26,000 mark. The Dow is up 1% and back over 53,000.
Precious metals are starting the month quiet &mdash; gold at $4,035 and silver at $57.32. Crypto is going nowhere fast, Bitcoin at $63,630 and Ethereum at $1,861.
Treasury yields are pulling back from last week&rsquo;s highs &mdash; but last week&rsquo;s action has Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring on alert. &ldquo;The dollar fell while yields rose,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;
Typically, rising long-term interest rates are a signal that the Federal Reserve is on the verge of raising short-term rates.&nbsp;
But not now, not with the dollar falling. Foreigners aren&rsquo;t chasing higher yield; rather, they want compensation for the risk of taking on Uncle Sam&rsquo;s gargantuan debt load. Seen in that light, Sean won&rsquo;t rule out the 10-year note punching through last week&rsquo;s 4.7% level to challenge the 2023 highs near 5%.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Another Monday, Another Peace Deal
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />As for the oil trade&hellip; evidently Donald Trump&rsquo;s words carry more weight than attacks on physical supply.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4TbID7UwZKu2BpGO9qoDnp/a5021922c10c312b909e5262a3f76da7/FMF-Issue-080326-2.jpg" alt="Rory Johnston Tweet" width="540px" />
On Saturday, Trump called off plans to launch a new round of attacks on Iran &mdash; promising once more that a deal is in the works.&nbsp;
Once more, the Iranian side is denying any talks are underway &mdash; and it continues to lob missiles and drones in the direction of tankers that try to transit the Strait of Hormuz without Tehran&rsquo;s permission.
But U.S. oil futures are putting more weight on Trump&rsquo;s words &mdash; sending the price down over five bucks and back below $80 for only the second time in the last two weeks.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s become the stuff of memes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5u6cOIFxPNNQfkq7eq6yQB/b53399a1a775dc44727557b53a12d290/FMF-Issue-080326-3.jpg" alt="The stuff of memes" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Coincidentally or not, Trump&rsquo;s announced change of heart came hours after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-price-of-admission">the pay-for-play scheme</a> on his Truth Social platform went live.
Banks and hedge funds can now pay for early access to posts by the president.
&ldquo;Many trading firms already plug into Trump&rsquo;s posts through Bloomberg, Reuters or other services that scrape his posts and relay them in real-time to their customers,&rdquo; says NBC News. &ldquo;But using this data feed on Truth Social could enable firms to access his posts seconds or even milliseconds faster than the general public.&rdquo;
Shortly before posting that he was calling off the new round of attacks on Iran, Trump issued this obscure post that may or may not have been referring to candlestick charts &mdash; a common form of tracking highs, lows and closes.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6eWzf9HaAjAeFRhMp4RXvk/f6e48b3c325012247a917a5919c60980/FMF-Issue-080326-4.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Depending on who you want to believe, Trump&rsquo;s climb-down might have come at the behest of Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudi Press Agency says &ldquo;MBS&rdquo; spoke to Trump on the phone and &ldquo;stressed the need to prioritize dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions&rdquo;.
That sounds as if MBS was scared to death that if Trump followed through on his threats, Iran would respond by attacking oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikdoms.
And so we&rsquo;re back to low-grade stalemate. &ldquo;A big debate is raging in Washington,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst Will Schryver. &ldquo;They are desperate to find a way to save face, but all the options are bad.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />When Karl Marx meets a South Park meme&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6BjFBZZMIzVPB6QR4PeMgx/7639c115f102d3cd205ce00f7a8ebd1b/FMF-Issue-080326-5.jpg" alt="Comic Relief" width="540px" />
The meme jogged your editor&rsquo;s memory. If it seems as if socialism has caught on with the younger set only within the last decade or so, ponder this&hellip;
Way back in 1987, the Hearst Corporation commissioned a poll for the bicentennial of the Constitution. It found nearly half of those surveyed believed the phrase &ldquo;From each according to his ability, to each according to his need&rdquo; came from the Constitution.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Fake News, Flock Cameras
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;People should assume the news is fake until it's proven otherwise,&rdquo; writes one of our longtimers after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-calls-out-fake-news">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a> &mdash; in which Elon Musk labeled as &ldquo;fake news&rdquo; a report that Tesla was looking to spin off its Chinese unit.
&ldquo;With regard to Elon's comment, I took it to mean that we should not trust ANYTHING we read in The New York Times or elsewhere unless we find confirmation from independent &mdash; and more trustworthy &mdash; sources.
&ldquo;Sadly, I have to agree with him. I have a few trustworthy sources &mdash; 5 Bullets is high on my list &mdash; but the NYT and others of their flavor are guilty until proven innocent in my judgement. Sad, as they were quite good many years ago.&rdquo;
Dave responds: To be clear, the original report Musk decried was in The Wall Street Journal. But point taken: Both the Murdochs and the Sulzbergers deserve our skepticism.&nbsp;
[Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: I was on the Murdoch payroll at Fox Television Stations for eight years.]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rare that I see a crossover between Paradigm Press and our local news in our bucolic valley resort community, anchored by Vail and Beaver Creek resorts,&rdquo; a reader writes.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The Flock cameras have been controversially received here.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Holy moly. The reader sends along a story from the Vail Daily about the town of Avon, population 6,000, and its 20 (!) Flock cameras &mdash; two of which were vandalized on July 18.
&ldquo;The town put out a Facebook post about the incident, which was met with a barrage of support for the crime, garnering more than 18,000 comments,&rdquo; the newspaper reports.
So the town council called a public hearing where a handful of locals spoke up. &ldquo;Avon resident Maria DeSimone said she put together a petition asking the town to remove the automated license plate-reading cameras, and had received 466 signatures as of Tuesday.&rdquo;
To be continued, in Avon and elsewhere. We&rsquo;ll give the last word for now to this fellow on X&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/PDVGDNgPhIt6UVwMzNGty/d29c3a5d817145ec580ac14ec8ebf8e6/FMF-Issue-080326-6.jpg" alt="MW4 Liberty" width="540px" />

FMF-Issue-080326-Featured

Will Wall Street Flunk Elon?

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Elon Calls out &ldquo;Fake News&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It&rsquo;s getting prominent play in The Wall Street Journal &mdash; and Elon Musk says it&rsquo;s fake news.
The gist of the story is that Tesla is about to spin off the Chinese portion of its business. As the thinking goes, a spinoff would smooth the way with regulators in both Washington and Beijing whenever Musk gets around to merging Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk&rsquo;s response is emphatic.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5R16or6gB6v5vmTATd34jn/31393a1b4118ec368874c1478bb0cdc5/musk_tweet.jpg" alt="Musk Tweet" />
&ldquo;Until proven otherwise&rdquo;? Does that mean he&rsquo;s leaving the door open?
Really, the most interesting thing here is that it&rsquo;s now taken for granted that sooner or later Musk will bring TSLA and SPCX under the same umbrella.
Six months ago, it was a totally far-out notion &mdash; which is why Paradigm editors like Davis Wilson, Ray Blanco and our AI authority James Altucher were telling their readers it was at least plausible and maybe inevitable. We aim to stay ahead of the curve.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But before the merger happens, Musk has some unfinished business in the wake of SpaceX&rsquo;s IPO.
&ldquo;Everyone covered the SpaceX IPO as a number, and I get why,&rdquo; says James Altucher. &ldquo;Over $1.7 trillion valuation, biggest IPO ever, Elon now worth more than Bezos, Zuckerberg and Ellison combined. Which is the kind of sentence that doesn&rsquo;t even sound real when you say it out loud.
&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve been in and around markets for 25 years now, long enough to know the headline number is never the story. The story is what happens after.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Getting rich and having capital to deploy are two completely different things, and Elon just crossed from one into the other,&rdquo; James says.
&ldquo;$180 billion doesn't sit in an account collecting interest, not for a guy who's spent his whole career doing the same thing over and over: Cash out, then pour it into the next bet before anyone else sees it coming. He did it with PayPal money. He's about to do it again.&rdquo;
James is well aware that SPCX&rsquo;s share price has tumbled since the IPO, and likewise for the space sector as a whole. If you hold these names, he gets your apprehension.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve lived through enough of these cycles to recognize the pattern by now &mdash; a sector runs too far ahead of itself, cools off and everyone treats the cooldown like the whole thesis just died.
&ldquo;It didn&rsquo;t.
&ldquo;I still believe AI and space are where the next decade of real wealth gets built, and every time I&rsquo;ve seen a pullback like this one, it&rsquo;s turned out to be where the opportunity was hiding, not where it went to die.&rdquo;
So where is the opportunity hiding now?
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been digging into that question all week,&rdquo; James tells us &mdash; &ldquo;and what I found is enough that I&rsquo;m doing something I basically never do on a weekend.&rdquo;
James is convening an Emergency briefing this Sunday Aug. 2 at 7:00 p.m. EDT. At that time, he&rsquo;ll walk you through the opportunity before it becomes front-page news.
<a href="https://signups.paradigm-press.info/2533068" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You can reserve your spot at this link</a>: We&rsquo;ll follow up with an email spelling out everything you need to know so you&rsquo;ll be ready Sunday night.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Harder They Fall
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results,&rdquo; quipped Warren Buffett once.
Wall Street is abuzz this morning about the sudden downfall of a wunderkind hedge fund manager named Leopold Aschenbrenner.
In his mid-20s, he was managing over $20 billion in assets at his firm, Situational Awareness. And then came the tumble in AI stocks this month.
He owned a lot of the most familiar names &mdash; Nvidia, Micron and so on. But he leveraged those holdings 4:1 &mdash; borrowing money in hopes of amplifying his gains. When gains turn to losses, the losses are amplified too.
&ldquo;When your lender believes their money is at risk, they can demand additional collateral.
If you can't provide it&hellip; your investments get sold to repay the loan,&rdquo; writes colleague Davis Wilson at The Million Mission. (<a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/death-by-leverage-a-warning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">It&rsquo;s a short and worthwhile read</a>, including how Aschenbrenner became a phenom at a tender age.)
And so Aschenbrenner&rsquo;s shares now belong to Ken Griffin&rsquo;s Citadel hedge fund &mdash; who for all intents and purposes bought a bunch of quality AI companies at a handsome discount.
On a couple of levels, the whole thing bears a certain resemblance to <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/03/29/gray-monday/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an episode in 2021</a> &mdash; when a fund manager named Bill Hwang got too far out over his skis and likewise got a margin call. He had to shut down his firm, Archegos Capital Management.
But there are a couple of key differences: Hwang&rsquo;s mismanagement put a scare into Wall Street because a couple of his lenders &mdash; big overseas banks like Credit Suisse and Nomura &mdash; were left holding the bag. Nothing of the sort happened this time.
In addition, Hwang was sentenced in 2024 to 18 years for fraud and racketeering; he&rsquo;s out on bail while he appeals his conviction. As far as we can tell, no one accuses Aschenbrenner of anything other than hubris.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Just to add to our Flock camera discussion at the conclusion of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/altucher-the-tech-sell-off-fact-vs-fiction" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday&rsquo;s edition&hellip;</a>
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/Yf2rbKzI36Qbtv8ZVn0Er/3c37c4b575cad5e35260e16271ebc942/surveillance_tweet.jpg" alt="Survelliance Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Data Centers
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Something about all the data center struggles that plague the news really puzzles me,&rdquo; a reader writes as we continue to follow up from <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/maga-lansing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Communities are fighting to ban data centers because of energy costs and noise pollution. And data centers are able to sue successfully in some cases to be allowed to build anyway. Not good for either side. And so far it looks like one side or the other must lose. No one has come up with a win-win.
&ldquo;Everyone wants the good things AI can bring (medical research advancements, for one). But no one wants to live near one. (Landfills are similar &mdash; we need them but who wants to live right next door to one?)
&ldquo;But rather than fighting a win-lose heated battle, isn't it possible that more brainstorming can be done to see how to find the win-win instead?
&ldquo;The energy crisis data centers create is a real problem, but my impression is that a solution has been found to deal with that. If a data center wants to build, they have to provide their own energy infrastructure solution rather than straining the pre-existing local infrastructure beyond its capabilities.
&ldquo;But it seems like the noise and vibration problems haven't been addressed, so that remains a sticking point causing communities near data centers a great deal of stress. But can't the same approach be taken with noise and vibration pollution that is used with energy?
&ldquo;You can build a data center as long as you either (a) locate it far enough from any population so that noise and vibrations can't harm anyone or (b) the part I haven't seen suggested yet &mdash; you can build your data center near the population as long as you provide a proper solution for the known emotional costs to people of the constant sound and vibrations that data centers generate (sound-absorbing walls around the data center perimeter, perhaps, plus whatever else might be needed).
&ldquo;If a complete enough solution doesn't yet exist, then the onus is on the data centers to figure one out.&rdquo;
Dave responds: All good thoughts. If only it were so easy.
Even the energy component of the equation remains problematic when data center operators supply their own power &ldquo;behind the meter&rdquo; and don&rsquo;t connect to the power grid.
For instance, Elon Musk wanted to spin up his Colossus data center in the Memphis area quickly. So he brought in natural gas turbine generators that under ordinary circumstances are illegal to use as a primary source of electricity because they don&rsquo;t meet emission and noise requirements. He didn&rsquo;t apply for the necessary permits &mdash; knowing the application would be denied for that reason.
&ldquo;There are very few people who want a power plant in their backyard,&rdquo; Musk acknowledged ahead of SpaceX&rsquo;s IPO.
And then there&rsquo;s the whole water question &mdash; but we&rsquo;ll have to leave that for another day. Because goodness knows the story isn&rsquo;t going away&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Earnings Season: Mixed Verdict
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The jury has delivered a mixed verdict on the AI buildout &mdash; at least as far as it impacts the Big Four &ldquo;hyperscalers.&rdquo;
Amazon was the last of the four to deliver its quarterly numbers after the closing bell yesterday. As far as Mr. Market is concerned, there are no worries about the company&rsquo;s continued spending on AI infrastructure and whether it will pay off in the long haul. AMZN shares are up nearly 15% on the day.
So Amazon and Microsoft got a big thumbs-up for their spending plans&hellip; while Meta and Google got a big thumbs-down.
As James Altucher sees it, even this mixed verdict puts to rest any talk of a bubble in AI.
&ldquo;When the housing bubble burst, you could get in a car and go look at it,&rdquo; he told Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network readers yesterday. &ldquo;Whole subdivisions in Florida and Nevada with nobody living in them, streets and driveways and mailboxes and no people. That's what a popped bubble leaves behind, a pile of something nobody wants.
&ldquo;Computing can't be held. Companies rent it by the hour, and when the hour is gone it's gone. So the customer tells you every month whether they meant it.
&ldquo;Microsoft's finance chief told investors that demand keeps running past the capacity they have. Then she raised her forecast anyway.
&ldquo;Microsoft went from 20 million paying AI subscribers to 30 million in three months, 10 million more seats in 90 days. You don't add that many unless the first 20 million kept theirs.
Meta is spending just as much. It hasn't told anyone yet what's coming back. Microsoft showed the receipts.&rdquo;
That goes a long way to explain the mixed verdict.
&ldquo;In 2009 there were empty houses,&rdquo; James concludes. &ldquo;Today I go looking for them and I can't find any. I find companies that can't build fast enough, customers who keep renewing and contracts already signed for years most people won't be patient enough to wait out.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />As for the broad U.S. stock indexes today&hellip; they&rsquo;re all in the green, but just barely.
At 7,444 the S&amp;P 500 is on track to end the week higher than it ended last week &mdash; Wednesday&rsquo;s big drop notwithstanding. It&rsquo;s a similar story for the Nasdaq, back above 25,000. But the Dow has a long way to go to make up for Wednesday&rsquo;s fall even though it&rsquo;s back over 52,000.
Among the big movers is Apple, down nearly 9% after delivering its quarterly numbers. Seems an ongoing shortage of chips from Taiwan Semiconductor makes it hard for the company to meet demand for its signature phones, tablets and computers.
Congratulations to Alan Knuckman&rsquo;s Weekly Wealth Alert readers, who collected 100% gains yesterday on the remaining half of their Bristol Myers Squibb trade. (The first half was a 50% winner a week ago today.)
The bond market remains on edge about inflation: The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is over 4.73%, getting *this* close to its highs of 18 months ago. The 30-year bond is even worse &mdash; up to 5.27%, another high last seen in 2007.
Rising rates are translating to falling precious metals: Gold is down $60 to $4,042 and silver is off more than $1.50 to $57.36.
Crude is up nearly 3% to $85.86 even though U.S. forces did not conduct airstrikes on Iran last night. Traders are likely positioning themselves in case the airstrikes resume over the weekend while the market&rsquo;s closed.
Crypto can&rsquo;t get any traction, Bitcoin at $62,464 and Ethereum at $1,855.

fmf header 073126

Elon Calls out “Fake News”

FMF-Issue-073026-Featured

Altucher: The Tech Sell-off — Fact vs. Fiction

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />You Think Inflation&rsquo;s Bad Now?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Inflation &ldquo;is about to get much worse,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards warned his Situation Report readers on Monday.
And that was before the Iran war got cranked up again last night &mdash; sending oil futures shooting higher again.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7vqCPA5sV1huFPJ7cNNs0y/6d4d71bc83be1e887d74cbd56c243c2a/FMF-Issue-072926-1.jpg" alt="Oil Futures skyrocketing" width="540px" />
Yesterday Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington &mdash; his eighth visit to the United States in the last 18 months, just in case you&rsquo;re keeping score. After meeting with Donald Trump, Netanyahu pronounced it &ldquo;one of the best conversations&rdquo; they&rsquo;ve ever had.
Evidently Iranian leadership figured another U.S. attack was coming, so they should act preemptively for once. They lobbed a few missiles at a U.S. base in Jordan, to limited effect.
Or maybe Iranian leadership knew the Federal Reserve was making a decision on interest rates today and wanted to jack up the oil price to make the Fed lean in the direction of raising rates.
You know, just to mess with Trump. At this rate, why wouldn&rsquo;t they?
This morning on Fox News, Trump went on a foul-mouthed harangue &mdash; promising to deliver a &ldquo;beating&rdquo; to Iran. Which the Iranian side is surely prepared for and might even welcome.
Amid that backdrop, U.S. oil futures are up nearly 7% at $84.63.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Lost in the war-is-off, war-is-on-again headlines is the fact the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to anyone who lacks Tehran&rsquo;s permission.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/326TkLBL7UoOTCTA5Ag3Cb/4617639366c59b1c27a85a8890754718/FMF-Issue-072926-2.jpg" alt="War is Off war is On" width="540px" />
&ldquo;This closure affects not only oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG),&rdquo; says Jim Rickards &mdash; &ldquo;but also urea, nitrates and sulfur, all of which are critical inputs for fertilizer. Helium exports are also affected, and helium is essential to semiconductor manufacturing.
&ldquo;The only reason the global economy has not already partially shut down is because prewar stockpiles helped cushion the disruption. Those inventories are now being depleted, and the world is moving dangerously close to a global recession.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which brings us to the Energy Department&rsquo;s weekly inventory figures &mdash; which come out every Wednesday.
Private-sector reserves fell by 3.7 million barrels last week &mdash; the biggest drawdown in six weeks. The big terminal at Cushing, Oklahoma remains at &ldquo;tank bottoms&rdquo; &mdash; which means that with any further drawdowns, there won&rsquo;t be enough pressure to move the oil into pipelines.
Meanwhile, another 3.7 million barrels was drained from the government&rsquo;s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We&rsquo;re at still another lowest-since-1983 level.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5xWQ2QwmnhrUduYGFFwe5O/b5cf69b668ae50b2889ed15cf837114d/FMF-Issue-072926-3.jpg" alt="SPR nearing all time lows" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The ripple effects from the closure of the strait are only beginning,&rdquo; Jim Rickards continues.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Global shipping is itself a supply chain, involving shipowners, charterers, captains and crews, insurers, logistics hubs and sovereign navies. When a vessel is stranded in the Persian Gulf, it cannot be somewhere else loading new cargo.
&ldquo;Goods will begin piling up in Shanghai because container ships cannot complete their normal rotations. The costs of those delays, known as demurrage, are eventually added to the price of whatever goods consumers ultimately buy.&rdquo;
According to AAA, the national average gas price today is $4.09 &mdash; up meaningfully from $3.86 a month ago.
&ldquo;The price of gasoline is literally in your face every time you fill your tank,&rdquo; Jim says. &ldquo;But diesel may be even more important because nearly everything you buy, whether in a store or online, arrives by truck. Trucks run on diesel. Those higher transportation costs eventually work their way into the price of almost everything you purchase.
&ldquo;Price increases move from crude oil to refined fuels to paper towels and soap in the blink of an eye. That process is still in its early stages because this war is nowhere near an end.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And don&rsquo;t forget about fertilizer.
&ldquo;One-third of globally traded urea, a key fertilizer input, and one-half of seaborne sulfur, another critical ingredient in phosphate fertilizers, passes through the Strait of Hormuz,&rdquo; Jim tells us.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Those supplies are now effectively cut off from world trade. Fertilizer prices at the New Orleans hub, a major import location, have risen from $516 per metric ton before the war to $683 today.
&ldquo;Russia and Southeast Asia have some nitrate supplies, but moving them is not as easy as placing a phone call. The logistics chains involve railroads, ports, vessels and unloading capacity at their destinations. All of that must be reconfigured on short notice from existing supply routes.
&ldquo;These disruptions take months to sort out, and suppliers may hesitate because they&rsquo;ll insist on long-term contracts rather than one-time sales. Given those logistical hurdles, higher prices are inevitable.&rdquo;
And that&rsquo;s for those of us lucky enough to live in the developed world. In the Global South, &ldquo;we could be looking at mass starvation on a scale not seen since Bangladesh in the 1970s or China during the Great Leap Forward.&rdquo;
If you&rsquo;re a Rickards reader, hold on to the energy recommendations from Jim and his team. If you&rsquo;re not a Rickards reader, you can offset your rising cost of living with an ETF like the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE).&nbsp;
[Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: XLE is a long-term hold in my portfolio.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Odd Behavior
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The stock market is not behaving the way it usually does on a day like this.
Usually the major indexes tread water ahead of a Federal Reserve policy announcement &mdash; and ahead of major earnings announcements. Both are coming our way this afternoon.&nbsp;
By the time you read this, the Fed will have announced that it&rsquo;s leaving the benchmark fed funds rate steady at 3.75%. The potential drama lies in whatever Fed chair Kevin Warsh says during his post-announcement press conference, only the second of his term.
Then after the close, two of the big AI &ldquo;hyperscalers&rdquo; report their quarterly numbers &mdash; Microsoft and Meta. Wall Street gave a hostile reception last week to Google&rsquo;s plans to continue stepping up its capital spending on data centers and other AI infrastructure &mdash; even if that spending does benefit other AI players like the chip and memory suppliers.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For whatever reason, Mr. Market is mashing the sell button ahead of these events.
The S&amp;P 500 is holding up best among the major U.S. indexes &mdash; but it&rsquo;s still down over 1% and below 7,400 for the first time in a month.
The Nasdaq is down nearly 1.5% and well below the 25,000 mark now. And the Dow is down 1.75%, back below 52,000.
Amid the sell-off, Paradigm readers are still booking winners: Alan Knuckman urged his Weekly Wealth Alert readers to take 100% gains this morning on Ford call options. Meanwhile yesterday Ray Blanco recommended that Catalyst Trader readers take 143% gains on the biotech name Axsome Therapeutics.
Precious metals are likewise selling off with gold about to lose its grip on $4,000. But silver is fairly steady, a hair under $57.
Not much to say about crypto &mdash; Bitcoin just over $64,000 and Ethereum just under $1,900.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We now have a clearer picture of the downdraft that might be headed the stock market&rsquo;s way for the next couple months.
Bespoke Investment Group has updated its fascinating chart comparing the Nasdaq Composite&rsquo;s performance during the 1990s dot-com boom and the 2020s AI boom.
It sets the starting point of the dot-com boom with the launch of the Netscape web browser in December 1994. And it sets the start of the current boom with the launch of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1GbyTSqLza8JlmMIlEjRsu/be1706391339a68b791cb36083993190/FMF-Issue-072926-4.jpg" alt="Nasdaq % change" width="540px" />
Note the substantial drop that might be just ahead of us if this analogue continues to hold.&nbsp;
In 1998 the drop was triggered by the Russian government defaulting on its debt. A U.S. hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management was sitting on complicated bets tied to Russian debt. And all of the big banks had a daisy-chain relationship with LTCM.&nbsp;
Jim Rickards &mdash; who was lead counsel for LTCM &mdash; says the crisis had the potential to bring down the global financial system. But Jim negotiated a rescue with the banks and the Federal Reserve &mdash; no taxpayers were harmed in this operation &mdash; and the market roared back later in the year.&nbsp;
That late-1998 recovery set the stage for the blowoff top in 1999 and early 2000.
Here in 2026, we still have late summer and early fall to get through. &ldquo;We are going into the worst seasonal period of the year &mdash; August to October,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.&nbsp;
And that&rsquo;s not just 1998 &mdash; that&rsquo;s the average performance going back nearly a century.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Data Center Power Play
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The nation&rsquo;s biggest power-grid operator says when push comes to shove, everyday people and businesses will get priority over data centers.
PJM Interconnection serves 67 million customers in a region stretching from New Jersey to Illinois &mdash; including the biggest concentration of data centers in the world in northern Virginia.
On Monday, PJM warned the data center operators on its grid that starting next year they could face mandatory power outages to prevent other customers from experiencing blackouts.
&ldquo;The present trajectory of rapid load growth, tightening supply and rising capacity costs is not sustainable,&rdquo; said PJM chair Paula Conboy.
PJM plans to hold an emergency power auction in September &mdash; with data centers expected to shoulder the bulk of the rising costs.&nbsp;
The regular annual auction held this month was a bust. &ldquo;Despite the high prices that are meant to incentivize the construction of new power plants,&rdquo; says a Reuters dispatch, &ldquo;PJM fell short by about 6.8 gigawatts of its reliability requirement to meet projected demand &mdash; a steeper shortfall than what resulted from the previous auction &mdash; which raises ⁠the risk of blackouts on the grid.&rdquo;
&ldquo;The decision arrives as the breakneck pace of data center construction has grid operators scrambling to generate power,&rdquo; the Tech Crunch site reminds us. &ldquo;By 2035, data centers are expected to use four times more electricity than they do today&hellip;
&ldquo;The move will likely spur many new data centers &mdash; and potentially existing ones &mdash; to set up their own sources of on-site power. Those that don&rsquo;t will probably rely on backup generators, which tend to be costlier to run&hellip;&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s been over two years since we first warned that AI was turning into <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">&ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid.&rdquo;</a> Last year, many Paradigm readers profited from the trend by playing independent power producers like Talen Energy. New profit opportunities were on the agenda today during the Paradigm team&rsquo;s weekly conference call, so watch this space as well as your paid publication(s).
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This seems like an amenable way to wind down our recent socialism discussion&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3WaPFa251o75GcfGnx3r8O/4c47f7712b4b8e196c80ecbffccec235/FMF-Issue-072926-5.jpg" alt="Teach your kids about socialism Meme" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: When Editors Disagree
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> I&rsquo;d planned a mailbag focused on the data center backlash today, but a reader&rsquo;s query takes precedence.
He writes in light of Mason Sexton&rsquo;s warnings that the current bull market might come to an end this week.
&ldquo;This may not be proper to ask James Altucher and Jim Rickards about, but would they please comment on Mason&rsquo;s predictions? Are they selling a lot of their stocks soon or just riding the market out?
&ldquo;We have paid James and Jim a lot of money and I believe the members would like to know what they think about Mason&rsquo;s predictions.&rdquo;
Dave responds: I sent your inquiry to our executive concierge Dustin Weisbecker for follow-up. But let me address the question in a general way, for you and everyone else.
You should know up front that we don&rsquo;t enforce a &ldquo;company line&rdquo; among our team.
The last thing we want is for our editors to censor or second-guess themselves. You&rsquo;ve paid good money for your subscription(s) and you deserve the editors&rsquo; unvarnished, no-holds-barred opinions.
On those occasions when their opinions diverge, we respect your intelligence enough to weigh those opinions and come to your own conclusions. (Presumably if you subscribe to both Rickards and Altucher publications, you&rsquo;ve done exactly that when it comes to gold and Bitcoin.)
Good editors are few and far between, but we attract them like moths to a flame &mdash; for good reason.
A typical denizen of Wall Street is always answering to someone &mdash; clients, advertisers, the board of directors. When he's not looking over his own back, he's kissing someone else's backside. If he thinks the stock or other security his firm is flogging is junk, he has to hold his tongue.
All those problems go away if he comes to work for us: He's beholden to no one. He can speak his mind. He can live where he likes &mdash; the beach, the mountains, the small town where he grew up. Subscription revenue (from people just like you) is our industry's bread and butter, so as long as he speaks his truth and his truth resonates with his subscriber base, he's golden.
Whatever paid publications you have, stick with the guidance of the editor or editors as long as their ideas continue to ring true for you. Their research is thorough and well-considered. They wouldn&rsquo;t be on our team if it weren&rsquo;t.
And thanks for the opportunity to address the question once again. We have new readers all the time, and even old hands need a gentle reminder now and then&hellip;

FMF-Issue-072926-Featured

You Think Inflation’s Bad Now?

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It&rsquo;s All Over
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The current bull market in U.S. stocks began nearly four years ago. And one market sage is convinced it ends tomorrow.
First, let&rsquo;s review how we got here.&nbsp;
You&rsquo;ll recall there was the COVID crash in early 2020&hellip; then a steep recovery for the rest of 2020 and all of 2021 as people took their stimmy checks and plowed them into the stock market.
But as soon as the calendar turned to 2022, the market took a big hit &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 tumbling from 4,800 to 3,600 in about 10 months. That&rsquo;s a 25% drop, and anything greater than 20% meets the conventional definition of a &ldquo;bear market.&rdquo;
The bottom came on Oct. 12, 2022. A few weeks later, AI burst into public consciousness with the release of ChatGPT 3.5.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s been up, up and away ever since &mdash; albeit with the inevitable steep pullback here and there.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1AePbFMGeQ5yoVlyTkabup/73ae93b996b2a927623901b3b936f49c/7.28_5_Bullets_Chart.png" alt="S&amp;P since october 12,2022" width="540px" />
You&rsquo;ll notice the market&rsquo;s been moving sideways the last two months. The S&amp;P peaked just over 7,600 on June 2 &mdash; and hasn&rsquo;t revisited that level since.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The AI trade is looking tired, for a handful of reasons&hellip;
<ul>
<li>As we mentioned last week, Google reported its quarterly numbers. Since late 2022, Google and the other &ldquo;hyperscalers&rdquo; have been rewarded every time they said they&rsquo;re upping the amount of money they&rsquo;re plowing into AI infrastructure like data centers. But last week, Google was punished instead &mdash; the share price tumbling 6% in a day</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The semiconductor stocks, measured by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), are in a bear market &mdash; down 25.8% from their peak only five weeks ago (including a 5.4% drop today as we write). Even the mighty Nvidia isn&rsquo;t immune &mdash; its market cap shrinking such that it&rsquo;s surrendered its crown as the world&rsquo;s biggest company to Apple</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>South Korea&rsquo;s stock market &mdash; dominated by the memory-makers Samsung and SK Hynix &mdash; also peaked five weeks ago and it&rsquo;s down 34% since. On several days (including today) the market has shut down altogether as &ldquo;circuit breakers&rdquo; kicked in to stop the bleeding. And that puts a hurt on the dominant U.S. memory name Micron &mdash; down another 10% today.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The market is extremely fragile right now,&rdquo; affirms Mason Sexton, editor of The Map &mdash; an assessment with nearly 50 years of market experience behind it.
His string of brilliant calls stretches all the way back to the early 1980s &mdash; when he called a bottom that marked the start of an epic 18-year bull market in stocks.
Along the way, he also called the crash of 1987&hellip; the start of the global financial crisis in 2007&hellip; and the end of that crisis in 2009.
More recently &mdash; and you might want to scroll back up to that chart above &mdash; he nailed both the drop and the recovery from the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; tariff announcement last year and the start of the Iran war this year.
Key point: Neither of those big drops constituted a &ldquo;bear market&rdquo; &mdash; that is a 20% drop or more. The bull market was still intact.
But for a variety of reasons, Mr. Sexton assesses that tomorrow will be at least the beginning of the end for the bull market that began in October 2022. And as he sees it, tomorrow might very well be the end &mdash; with a steep drop throughout August and September.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Oil Supply Takes Another Hit
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil prices continue to fall despite a big hit to Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s oil exports.
Of course, Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s oil exports were already constrained by Iran all but closing the Strait of Hormuz. But the kingdom could still rely on a pipeline that moved oil from the eastern portion of the Arabian peninsula to the Red Sea port of Yanbu on the western side.
No longer &mdash; not since Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s puppet government in Yemen relaunched its war against Yemen&rsquo;s Houthi faction a couple of weeks ago. The Houthis have declared the slender Bab al-Mandab waterway closed to Saudi shipping.
Result: Figures from the analytics platform Vortexa show that Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s crude oil loading volumes at Yanbu have plunged 40% in recent days. The only reason they haven&rsquo;t collapsed altogether is that the kingdom still has access to an Egyptian pipeline &mdash; and tankers can avoid the Bab by traveling north to the Suez Canal.
But in the market for U.S. oil futures, the only thing that matters is that U.S. and Iranian forces have stopped lobbing drones and missiles at each other (and Donald Trump hasn&rsquo;t amped up the war rhetoric).&nbsp;
The paper price for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate sits at $81.46 &mdash; down more than 10 bucks compared with last Thursday.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the major U.S. stock indexes, it&rsquo;s a mixed bag: The S&amp;P 500 is up less than a quarter percent at 7,428.
The Nasdaq is holding up well &mdash; down a modest 0.15% &mdash; despite the downdraft in the chip and memory stocks. And the Dow is up 1%.
Precious metals are losing ground, gold at $4,038 and silver down a buck to $57.31. The story in crypto is similar, Bitcoin sinking toward $63,000 and Ethereum back below $1,900.
The Federal Reserve begins one of its two-day policy-setting meetings today &mdash; with the outcome announced tomorrow. Paradigm macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards anticipates the benchmark fed funds rate will be left unchanged at 3.75% &mdash; which is where it&rsquo;s been since last December.
That&rsquo;s because Jim says the Fed under its new chair Kevin Warsh is badly split &mdash; one faction that wants to cut rates to prop up the economy and another that wants to raise rates to contain inflation.&nbsp;
Under the circumstances, Jim says the new Fed chair Kevin Warsh will prevail on his colleagues to split the difference &mdash; &ldquo;do nothing, wait for another month of data and keep the door open to a policy change in September.&rdquo;
Speaking of Jim&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Was It Something We Said?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> OK, this wasn&rsquo;t on our bingo card for 2026&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5qb2U7qTgOVmUrIcloMsfw/0b3a6bd18c4b0836d3cac62ea1ff1078/FMF-Issue-072826-1.jpg" alt="Trump posts Jim on Truth Social" width="540px" />
Yes, that&rsquo;s the president of the United States&hellip; linking on his Truth Social platform to a sales promotion for Jim Rickards&rsquo; flagship publication, Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence.&nbsp;
It happened early yesterday morning during one of the president&rsquo;s periodic bouts of binge-posting.
Hey, what can we say? We&rsquo;re financial publishers. We&rsquo;re in the business of ideas that grab people&rsquo;s attention.
So far, the media haven&rsquo;t picked up on this development &mdash; not much, anyway. There&rsquo;s one online outlet that seems hostile to Trump but whose write-up on this story was very fair and down-the-middle.
Moving on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Follow-Up: The Fort Knox Fake-Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In 18 months the Trump administration has moved from &ldquo;We must audit Fort Knox!&rdquo; to &ldquo;Trust me, bro.&rdquo;
When Elon Musk was still heading up the White House&rsquo;s DOGE effort in early 2025, he <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-bull-run-three-more-years#3">seemed receptive</a> to public pressure for a full-on audit of the U.S. Treasury&rsquo;s gold bars held at Fort Knox, Kentucky &mdash; which would have been the first since at least 1953.&nbsp;
Musk even suggested a live video walkthrough &mdash; and on four occasions, Donald Trump said he welcomed the idea.
But our own Jim Rickards was quick to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/golds-hype-cycle-you-are-here">throw cold water</a> on the notion. At best, he said it would be a meaningless photo op. And in the end, not even that much happened <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/fort-knox-fake-out">for reasons we explored</a> in June of last year.
You&rsquo;d think the administration would at least offer some respect to citizens who wonder whether some or all of the gold is gone &mdash; or even if it&rsquo;s all there, whether it&rsquo;s been leased to foreigners.
But no. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was interviewed recently by Fox News host Jesse Watters. Watters asked, &ldquo;Have you visited Fort Knox?&rdquo;
&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Bessent answered. &ldquo;People on my staff have. The treasurer has been to Fort Knox, and I&rsquo;m happy to say all gold is present and accounted for.&rdquo;
&ldquo;There you have it,&rdquo; Mike Maharrey writes for the Money Metals website: &ldquo;The fox guarding the henhouse says the hens are all accounted for. Case closed!&rdquo;
Our only hope now is a measure in Congress called the Gold Reserve Transparency Act &mdash; and it doesn&rsquo;t appear to have much momentum. Only five House members have signed onto the measure, and that was over a year ago.
And it probably won&rsquo;t be reintroduced in the next congress because the lead sponsor &mdash; Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) &mdash; was taken out by special interests in the primaries this past spring.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Socialism (Continued)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The U.S. is already socialist,&rdquo; a reader writes as we share more responses to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/socialism-then-and-now">last Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;What does the federal government spend the most on and regulate the most? Education/student loans and health care. Both primary concerns of any socialist state.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Hold that thought, we&rsquo;ll come back to it&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;As you document Republican accusations against Democrats of supporting communism, how would you characterize the Trump administration's buying spree of favored private companies?&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;Five percent here, 10% there and pretty soon 51% altogether: &lsquo;public ownership of the means of production&rsquo; just as Karl Marx advocated in The Communist Manifesto.&rdquo;
Dave: It is problematic in the extreme (even as it has been rather profitable for some of our subscribers). And as we chronicled on Saturday, it&rsquo;s not very popular either.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Our final correspondent wishes &ldquo;to illustrate a much more foundational problem.
&ldquo;My first reaction to your piece wasn't concern about socialism. It was concern about fear.
&ldquo;Your article frames &lsquo;socialism&rsquo; as the great threat facing America. That framing misses the more immediate danger: the accelerating concentration of economic and political power into fewer and fewer hands.
&ldquo;Whether one calls the system capitalism, socialism or something else becomes almost secondary if ordinary citizens continue losing agency while political actors increasingly centralize wealth and influence.
&ldquo;Ironically, your article acknowledges the real issue when it quotes &lsquo;Election Wizard&rsquo; describing the frustration of younger generations. Millennials and Gen Z aren't simply embracing socialism because they've suddenly become students of Karl Marx. Many have concluded that the current system isn't working for them. Housing, health care, education, wages and the ability to build a secure future are all moving further out of reach.
&ldquo;That deserves serious examination rather than simply warning about socialism.
&ldquo;Paradigm often excels at questioning conventional narratives, yet this piece adopts one of today's dominant political narratives almost wholesale. Republicans increasingly portray socialism as the existential threat to America, while Democrats portray authoritarianism as the existential threat. Both narratives generate fear. Neither asks the deeper question: Why are so many Americans losing confidence in the institutions that govern them?
&ldquo;From my perspective, the fundamental issue is neither socialism nor capitalism. It is extraction versus creation.
&ldquo;We have built an economic and political system that increasingly rewards the extraction of wealth, influence and power rather than the creation of broadly shared prosperity. That dynamic can exist under governments calling themselves capitalist, socialist or something in between.&nbsp;
Labels matter far less than outcomes.
&ldquo;My concern is that we no longer possess the social cohesion necessary for a healthy republic. When citizens are encouraged to fear one another more than they question the incentives embedded within the system itself, polarization deepens. At the same time, the underlying concentration of wealth and power continues largely unabated.
<a id="dave"></a>
&ldquo;If the discussion remains &lsquo;capitalism versus socialism,&rsquo; we risk debating labels while ignoring the systems that are actually destroying America.
&ldquo;You have the opportunity to elevate the conversation rather than reinforce another cycle of political fear. I hope you'll consider doing so.&rdquo;
Dave: That&rsquo;s exactly why I included the strategic-empathy remarks from &ldquo;Election Wizard.&rdquo;
So allow me to elaborate on your own outstanding reflections with a few words addressed specifically to anyone reading this who&rsquo;s a boomer &mdash; especially if you wrote in and said basically that millennials and Gen Z need to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
You need to understand that the world facing young people today is not the world you faced as a young person yourself.&nbsp;
Yes, inflation hit hard in the 1970s. And the early &rsquo;80s recession sucked. But you were able to pay for college by flipping pizzas nights and weekends&hellip; you were able to buy a starter home for only two or three times your annual pay&hellip; and the health care sector had not yet become the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/luigi-mangione-isnt-the-problem">extractive monster</a> it&rsquo;s become today.
The 45-and-under set isn&rsquo;t so lucky. They&rsquo;d be happy to climb the ladder of success that you did &mdash; but all too often they&rsquo;ve discovered someone knocked out the first three or four rungs.
Try to see where they&rsquo;re coming from.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s the least you can do if your GI Generation parents refused to do so for you&hellip;

FMF-Issue-072826-Featureed

It’s All Over

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />War Merger
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It was just a passing mention in these digital pages 11 days ago &mdash; the possibility that the Iran and Ukraine wars would merge into a single conflict. Now we&rsquo;re here.
Yeah, yeah, I know &mdash; the headlines in corporate media are all about how the Iran war is back on pause. We&rsquo;ll get to that soon enough. Our objective, as always, is to separate the noise from the real news.
And the real news is that the Ukrainian military attacked an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea &mdash; the giant saltwater lake that straddles Europe and Asia, its coastline shared by five countries including Russia and Iran.
We told you back on July 16 that only 500 miles separated the Ukrainian and Iranian conflict zones. That gap is rapidly closing.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7d96FqF2YnUkDhNBJCDDxb/88e45bcdd2c6e7337b25b52f0c62decf/7.27_5_Bullets_Map.png" alt="TWO CONFLICT ZONES" width="540px" />
We also noted that Washington and its NATO allies furnish weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian forces&hellip; while Moscow provides ISR data (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to Iran to fight U.S. forces.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s no dispute about what happened on Saturday: Ukraine&rsquo;s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy took credit for the strike, which killed an Iranian crew member.&nbsp;
Zelenskyy claimed the ship was hauling military cargo. Iran&rsquo;s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi called the attack &ldquo;a blatant UN Charter violation&rdquo; that &ldquo;cannot go unanswered.&rdquo;
The stakes are high for Tehran. &ldquo;Iran&rsquo;s Caspian ports have become increasingly important for trade as the U.S. blockade has complicated access to its southern maritime routes,&rdquo; says the Financial Times.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The northern corridor allows Iran to import goods from states around the Caspian and receive Chinese cargo transported overland by rail through Central Asia before reaching ports on the Caspian coast.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But if the stakes for Tehran are high, they&rsquo;re even higher for Washington.
Johns Hopkins historian Michael Vlahos is alarmed. Here&rsquo;s how he put it last night during his weekly spot with the veteran radio host John Batchelor&hellip;
<blockquote>If you look at Mr. Trump&rsquo;s approach to the Ukraine war, which is to renew the assault on Russia&hellip; and you look at his approach to Iran, which has seen 14 days of relentless attacks&hellip; it speaks to an American imperial court in Washington that cannot accommodate even the idea of an alternative outcome&hellip; that they are so hooked on achieving some kind of submission on the part of their adversaries, either Russia or Iran, that they can&rsquo;t give up&hellip; even though they&rsquo;re losing on both fronts.</blockquote>
It&rsquo;s too soon to say World War III started on Saturday with the attack in the Caspian. Great wars don&rsquo;t arrive on a precise calendar &mdash; and when they begin often depends on where you sit.
Ask an American when World War II began and he or she is likely to say Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Ask a typical European and they&rsquo;re more likely to say Sept. 1, 1939 &mdash; when Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia began carving up Poland. Ask someone in China and you&rsquo;re liable to hear Dec. 13, 1937 &mdash; the start of the Nanjing Massacre &mdash; or even Sept. 18, 1931 when Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Is It a Missile Shortage? Or Is It the Fed?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> OK, we can&rsquo;t ignore the noise &mdash; because that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s moving markets for the moment.
When we left you on Friday, it looked as if Washington was going to step up its attacks on Iran. In the event, the attacks let up for the first time in two weeks.&nbsp;
Donald Trump&rsquo;s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, went on the Sunday talk shows to say the aim was &ldquo;giving diplomacy some space.&rdquo; And he insisted it had absolutely nothing, no sirree, to do with widespread reports that U.S. military leaders are unnerved by a shortage of interceptor missiles.&nbsp;
We warned you about this looming shortage <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/unconditional-surrender">during the war&rsquo;s earliest days</a>. It&rsquo;s almost certainly the reason three U.S. troops were killed by an Iranian airstrike in Jordan a few days ago.
As we write at midday, Donald Trump himself has weighed in to say talks are making progress. (We await the usual statement from Tehran basically saying, &ldquo;Talks? What talks?&rdquo;)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If the shortage of interceptor missiles isn&rsquo;t what prompted the peace-is-at-hand chatter again&hellip; maybe it&rsquo;s the Federal Reserve.
The Fed holds its next policy-setting meeting on Wednesday. Going into the weekend, futures traders assigned a 40% probability that the Fed would jack up short-term interest rates because of the risk that rising oil prices would fuel a new bout of inflation. Not exactly an outcome the Trump administration wants.
But lo and behold that probability is diminishing because U.S. oil futures have gotten clobbered &mdash; down nearly six bucks as we write to $83.66.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> While oil prices are falling amid claims of U.S.-Iran talks&hellip; the major U.S. stock indexes are not following the script.
Instead, they&rsquo;re treading water &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 up microscopically from Friday&rsquo;s close at 7,412. The Nasdaq is down about 0.15% while the Dow is up 0.4%.&nbsp;
➢ Congratulations are in order for Alan Knuckman&rsquo;s Weekly Wealth Alert readers, who bagged a quick 50% gain on Friday playing call options on the Big Pharma firm Bristol Myers Squibb.
Later this week, four of the &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; companies will report their numbers &mdash; Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft.
Bond yields are climbing down in sympathy with oil prices: The 10-year Treasury note is down to 4.64% &mdash; still elevated by recent standards but well below the 4.7% threshold that was breached last Thursday.
Falling interest rates are giving a lift to precious metals &mdash; gold back within $12 of $4,100 and silver up over 1% to $58.72.&nbsp;
Crypto is holding its own with Bitcoin just under $65,000 and Ethereum comfortably over $1,900.
&ldquo;Bitcoin still will need to post a convincing base breakout, hold the gains and advance into the $70K range,&rdquo; says Trading Desk editor Greg Guenthner. &ldquo;Then, it needs to erase its June swoon.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Once it does this and gets back into the $74K range, I think it&rsquo;s safe to get a little more bulled up on crypto. But until then, we could be in for more chop. For now, the crypto bulls can enjoy the reprieve from what is now a 10-month bear market.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />FDA: Regulatory Logjam Clearing
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The FDA just caught up to my medicine cabinet,&rdquo; snarks Paradigm&rsquo;s bleeding-edge investor James Altucher.
Toward the end of May, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-yamanaka-secret">James shared</a> with 5 Bullets readers how a few months earlier he went to the doctor for the first time since he was 18. (He&rsquo;s 58 now.)
The doctor was an anti-aging specialist who furnished him with a box of peptides.
&ldquo;I've barely taken aspirin in my life,&rdquo; he said two months ago. &ldquo;Now every morning I inject a small stack of needles into myself. They're subcutaneous &mdash; about half a centimeter &mdash; so it sounds more dramatic than it is.
&ldquo;What are peptides? The simplest way I've found to think about them is as text messages to your cells. Each one carries a different instruction: lose weight, grow muscle, repair tissue, improve sleep, slow aging.&rdquo;
Never heard of peptides? Bet you&rsquo;ve heard about the best-known category of them &mdash; the GLP-1s like Ozempic that instruct the body to stop being hungry.
James saw massive investment potential &mdash; a market that&rsquo;s already grown from $20 billion in 2020 to $162 billion today, and just getting started. What&rsquo;s more he saw a regulatory catalyst on the horizon.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And that catalyst triggered last Thursday &mdash; when some of the very peptides that James takes got the green light from an FDA advisory panel.&nbsp;
Compounding pharmacies can start making them in bulk. The panel&rsquo;s decision came &ldquo;over the objections of the FDA&rsquo;s own scientists,&rdquo; says James &mdash; &ldquo;which is not a thing that happens often.&rdquo;
The relevant stocks in the Atlucher&rsquo;s Investment Network portfolio did a classic pop-and-drop. Maybe that&rsquo;s because last week&rsquo;s approval is only the second step in a three-step process.
The next step is full approval by FDA leadership. &ldquo;Formal rulemaking still has to run, and that process extends into next year,&rdquo; says James&rsquo; biotech analyst Ray Blanco.&nbsp;
But Ray says it&rsquo;s only a matter of time given that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already said he&rsquo;d work to overturn current restrictions.
For now we give James the final word: &ldquo;I've said for a while that the biggest shift in health care right now is the money moving away from just treating sickness and toward keeping people well in the first place.&nbsp;
&ldquo;This is what that shift looks like when it finally reaches the regulators.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This meme is already out of date. The national debt is approaching $39.7 trillion.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3EZufFDc1IC3SNZQWIVjLO/10d0190e59f92f07368971dbc39c78d9/FMF-Issue-072726-2.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Socialism
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We got a blizzard of replies &mdash; enough to fill 10 pages of a Word doc &mdash; to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/socialism-then-and-now">last Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a>about socialism and the advent of the DSA faction in the Democratic Party.
&ldquo;As soon as physical health conditions allow, I will leave California and move to Arizona,&rdquo; says a longtime reader.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Getting out of NYC,&rdquo; says another reader. &ldquo;The country may go completely communist but a red state will move slower and then I&rsquo;ll be dead.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m 1,000% against socialism and communism! Hands down,&rdquo; says yet another. &ldquo;I spread the word every chance I can to educate everyone on the dangers and expectations of it.&rdquo;&nbsp;
This individual says it was a challenge with his own son amid a contested Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin, &ldquo;but I explain everything to him and now he understands.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you and Jim for bringing this issue to the forefront,&rdquo; a reader writes.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Most Americans have lost faith in our elected representatives, academia, athletics, education, business community, Federal Reserve, judiciary and the media. So is it any surprise that socialism/communism would be appealing to younger generations?&nbsp;
&ldquo;When you have grown up in a system that has manipulated capitalism, free markets and the rule of law, and engaged in endless foreign conflicts treating our military as if they are pawns in the game of chess, and then been educated that Western civilization is the source of all evil, what do expect would happen?
&ldquo;So where do we go from here? It&rsquo;s time to reverse Alexander Tytler&rsquo;s Cycle of Democracy before it&rsquo;s too late. So how do we do this? We all have to recognize that there is no Democrat or Republican Party, it is them versus us, and the only way to regain control of the republic is to either form another party or transform the Republican Party (which was formed to abolish slavery and polygamy) into a party that actually that actually restores confidence in the republic for which it was founded.
&ldquo;For as long as I can remember the Republican Party has been the party that acts like the party out of power when they have it and door mates when are not. They, like all politicians, speak a good game, but it&rsquo;s time to play, they are running away. Voluminous with words, cheap on actions.
&ldquo;Young people want to support a message that restores confidence in their purpose and their future. Right now, the only ones that are providing any hope are the lies that Marxists spew.&nbsp;
&ldquo;We would do all of us and them a great service by taking control of our citizenship and mentoring them that they live in the greatest country in the world, but we have gone astray from our founding principles, and it is up to us to bring it back before we suffer the fate of an evil that once established, can only be destroyed through bloodshed.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Good points &mdash; although for the sake of accuracy I&rsquo;m compelled to point out there&rsquo;s no evidence the 18th-century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler ever described a cycle of history as you describe.&nbsp;
It <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_Woodhouselee#Debatable_attribution">appears</a> to have originated instead with the 20th-century American industrialist Henning Prentiss. A lawyer named Loren Collins did yeoman&rsquo;s work on this question <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110723192744/https://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html">in the early 2000s</a>.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I have no concerns about the &lsquo;socialist wave&rsquo; whatsoever,&rdquo; a reader avers. (We&rsquo;ve had to truncate the email to keep today&rsquo;s edition to a reasonable length)&nbsp;
&ldquo;This is a natural response and should be expected. The pendulum must swing back and forth. Another opportunity for us to practice the skill of adjusting to your environment. Let me explain.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The current economics is not working for most Americans. People are losing their quality of life. Life is getting harder, so they are searching for anything that is better. &lsquo;Hey, that socialism sounds good, let's try that!&rsquo; So if the American people do not see life getting better for themselves, expect the socialist wave to swell.
&ldquo;And we must own it. Our leadership in government and business/corporations has gotten us to this point. Your quote of Charles Goyette's 2009 lamentation sums it up simply. And the bill for the pi&ntilde;ata party is coming due.&rdquo;
Dave: It pains me to say so but I am increasingly resigned to the prospect that for the foreseeable future, America will lurch back and forth every few years between right-wing dictatorship and left-wing dictatorship.
It&rsquo;s an experience familiar to many people in third-world countries, but one I&rsquo;m still adjusting to after the last five years or so &mdash; and not something I relish now that I&rsquo;ve (probably) entered the last third of my life.&nbsp;
I assume all one can do in those circumstances is try to keep one&rsquo;s head down. Easier said than done in a profession where one must tease out how public policy might affect various investments. But we&rsquo;ll press on&hellip;

273465104 flags of USA and Iran painted on cracked wall

shutterstock 273465104 (1)

War Merger

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Bipartisanship
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Something&rsquo;s suspicious when both President Trump and Michigan&rsquo;s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer land on the same side of a major economic issue.
And if you happen to land on the other side? You might be on a federal watch list.
Begin with the news yesterday, as reported by Reuters&hellip;
<blockquote>President Donald Trump announced a nonbinding pledge by U.S. power producers and &zwnj;data centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills&hellip;.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Community meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment and a factor in rising electric bills.</blockquote>
Trump tried to pitch data centers as a net plus: "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities.&rdquo;
But that comment was soon followed by a remark that suggested &mdash; well, a certain inevitability to the whole thing.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/kV3HDBKfRrOxw8wIBZ6KU/45c5ffbcb9694c34ce8932640c24f0fe/FMF-Issue-072426-1.png" alt="Aaron Rupar X post" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Yeah, there was zero &ldquo;convincing&rdquo; going on earlier this year in Saline Township, Michigan &mdash; population 2,277. Only litigation and intimidation.
A consortium of companies including OpenAI and Oracle was bound and determined to build a $16 billion data center known as &ldquo;The Barn&rdquo; on a site about 15 miles south of Ann Arbor.
It&rsquo;s part of the &ldquo;Stargate&rdquo; project that Trump, OpenAI&rsquo;s Sam Altman and Oracle&rsquo;s Larry Ellison touted last year on the first full day of Trump&rsquo;s second term. The Barn had Gov. Whitmer&rsquo;s full backing.
But before the project could go ahead, about 250 acres of farmland had to be rezoned. The township board, feeling the heat from the locals, resisted. Among the objections &mdash; The Barn would grow the region&rsquo;s power demand by 25%.
Last September, both the township board and planning commission voted to nix the project.
Then the data center&rsquo;s developer &mdash; an outfit called Related Digital &mdash; sued the township.&nbsp;
The township had precious little money to fight deep-pocketed companies with an army of lawyers &mdash; and so it opted to settle the case. Under a court-ordered agreement, The Barn will get a 50% property tax abatement for the next 12 years.
And so on June 1, Gov. Whitmer was joined by OpenAI&rsquo;s Sam Altman and Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the ceremony, Whitmer was chatting it up with Oracle&rsquo;s Magouyrk &mdash; and inadvertently laid the game bare for all the world to hear.
Admittedly the audio is muddy. But no one, least of all Whitmer, has stepped forward to challenge the interpretation that soon went viral. (You can click on the image to listen for yourself&hellip;)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4Z0AIDJRDh5OX2qSNN20PF/2f32129160038795c6df04da68e18dbd/FMF-Issue-072426-2.png" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" />
Which is in keeping with Whitmer&rsquo;s governing style, writes Detroit News columnist Kaitlyn Buss.
&ldquo;Whether the issue was COVID restrictions, corporate subsidies, electric vehicle mandates, energy policy or now data centers, the pattern is familiar. Public opposition is treated not as a legitimate obstacle to overcome but as background noise to manage.&rdquo;
➢ Bonus points: The VP of the developer&rsquo;s parent company is married to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who&rsquo;s running to succeed Whitmer as governor next year.
So the story&rsquo;s over? Hardly.&nbsp;
Opponents of the project have every reason to worry about government retribution &mdash; as do opponents of data centers everywhere. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Anti-Data Centers? There&rsquo;s a Watch List for That
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When it comes to AI, both federal and state law enforcement are surveilling what Wired magazine calls a &ldquo;new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3E4bREGSDqs9nBjEMzgqDE/dd978565d62f87b0a6d8398f86fa7e08/FMF-Issue-072426-3.png" alt="Wired Magazine" width="540px" />
Earlier this year, Wired got its hands on more than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from Homeland Security, the FBI and &ldquo;fusion centers&rdquo; that link the feds with local police agencies.
The reports come on the heels of National Security Presidential Memo 7 &mdash; a document signed by Trump last year that instructs the Justice Department to target people with &ldquo;anti-American,&rdquo; &ldquo;anti-Christian&rdquo; and &ldquo;anti-capitalism&rdquo; views.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now you might think in the context of AI, the feds are simply zeroing in on militant types &mdash; like the fellow accused of trying to firebomb the San Francisco home of OpenAI&rsquo;s Sam Altman.&nbsp;
You know, the sort of people the FBI labels &ldquo;anarchist violent extremist actors.&rdquo;
Not so.&nbsp;
For instance, one document describes how the fusion center in northern Virginia &mdash; home to the world&rsquo;s biggest concentration of data centers &mdash; is trying to sniff out potential attacks on data centers before they happen.&nbsp;
&ldquo;But in the breakdown of Suspicious Activity Reporting indicators,&rdquo; <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism/">writes</a>Wired&rsquo;s Daniel Boguslaw, &ldquo;the intelligence report lists activities that could easily be carried out by peaceful protesters, legal experts say&hellip; [A] category like &lsquo;anti-tech extremism&rsquo; could be drawn so broad as to ensnare peaceful data center protesters, AI skeptics and anyone with a bone to pick with technology that permeates modern life.&rdquo;
Says Spencer Reynolds of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund: &ldquo;These intelligence reports are part of a long tradition of agencies identifying protest or even simply having strong opinions as precursors to violence.&rdquo;
And so if you organize a data center protest in your community&hellip; you run the risk of a visit from the cops if you criticize public officials a little too forcefully on social media. They&rsquo;ll construe it as a &ldquo;threat.&rdquo;
Examples abound: <a href="https://x.com/TPV_John/status/2066692340257833375">Here&rsquo;s an especially outrageous one</a>, with the caveat we don&rsquo;t know when or where it took place.&nbsp;
These are deeply concerning developments wherever you fall on the red-blue political divide &mdash; as you&rsquo;ll see momentarily.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Data Centers Scramble the Red-Blue Divide
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The power elite&rsquo;s agenda couldn&rsquo;t be clearer &mdash; and it&rsquo;s not just about President Trump and Gov. Whitmer.&nbsp;
In May we took note when finance bigwigs like BlackRock&rsquo;s Larry Fink <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/backlash-data-centers/#2">implied that anyone who opposes data center construction might be a budding domestic terrorist</a>. This month we perked up when The New York Times among others <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-data-centers-and-chinese-stooges">suggested that data-center opponents are dupes</a> of the Chinese and Russian governments.&nbsp;
Politico is out with a new poll trying to frame data-center resistance as a mostly Democrat thing, given an upswell in Democratic opposition the last six months.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/s9NspmOnThBPmpjuxTVYl/e50b3374df9950e58de20f24dcaa35cc/FMF-Issue-072426-4.png" alt="Politics split on data centers" width="540px" />
But GOP opposition is growing too &mdash; and polling data doesn&rsquo;t fully capture on-the-ground reality.&nbsp;
In May, we <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/backlash-data-centers">spotlighted</a> the opposition to a sprawling data center project in Box Elder County, Utah &mdash; which backed Trump in the 2024 election with 79% of the vote.
Last weekend brought dozens of protests nationwide &mdash; an effort spearheaded by Women for Trump founder Amy Kremer.
Either Trump doesn&rsquo;t know about these developments &mdash; or he knows and doesn&rsquo;t care.&nbsp;
Maybe he too is getting &ldquo;used to people saying &lsquo;f*ck no&rsquo; and then doing it anyway.&rdquo;
One thing&rsquo;s for sure: <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/spacex-partners-with-rival">Elon Musk&rsquo;s data centers in space</a> can&rsquo;t come soon enough.
OK, let&rsquo;s turn to the markets today&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Markets Today: All Hail the Pakistani Generals!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Aaaand&hellip; here we go with &ldquo;news&rdquo; designed to depress the oil price and lift the stock market.
From Reuters: &ldquo;Pakistan is exploring a path towards a resumption of stalled U.S.-Iran talks over ending their nearly five-month-old war, three Pakistani sources said, following a push initiated by China.&rdquo;
Ah, the good old Pakistani generals! Been weeks since we&rsquo;ve heard from them.
Let&rsquo;s see: There&rsquo;s still next to no oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz. The Bab al-Mandab at the south end of the Red Sea is a no-go for many tankers.&nbsp;
And now Bloomberg reports that China is snapping up all the Russian oil it can to offset any further losses from the Middle East. That means European buyers of Russian oil will have to turn to the United States instead.
➢ Just in: U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East have issued a unified security alert warning of possible &ldquo;unforeseen escalation&rdquo; in the Persian Gulf.
But whatevs. The Pakistani generals are good enough to drive down U.S. oil futures by 4% to $88.42. We can have a sub-$90 close this afternoon before Washington steps up its attacks after 4:00 p.m. EDT.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2CXHPUj4QapaqtkkqVDynP/0fe259275a5644e994111bb7e47d47e4/FMF-Issue-072426-5.png" alt="Calvin froedge post" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Sure enough, the major U.S. stock indexes also responded to the Reuters story.
For the first hour or so of trading, the S&amp;P 500 was little changed from yesterday&rsquo;s close. But now it&rsquo;s up more than a half-percent at 7,450. Likewise the Nasdaq recovered its early losses and is slightly in the green now.
The big earnings report that came out after the market closed yesterday was Intel. The numbers were great &mdash; sales up 25% from a year earlier, comfortably ahead of Wall Street analysts&rsquo; estimates.
But as was the case with Google and Tesla yesterday, Mr. Market worries that all Intel&rsquo;s spending will have an uncertain payoff &mdash; and that yesterday&rsquo;s numbers are as good as it gets for the rest of the year. INTC shares are down over 4% on the day.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1GvqonpG9OyAcH8rM3IzNM/b25929c4260182d644e637ed3fff24c8/FMF-Issue-072426-6.png" alt="Tommy Thornton post" width="540px" />
As the week winds down, we&rsquo;ll note several wins Paradigm readers have booked in recent days&hellip;
<ul>
<li>20% in two months on the defense contractor RTX for readers of Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s The Maverick &mdash; a classic rebound after a bad earnings reaction during the spring</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>After Tesla&rsquo;s rotten quarterly numbers noted here yesterday, subscribers to Zach Scheidt&rsquo;s Income Alliance booked 72% gains on a put-option play</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Ray Blanco urged his Catalyst Trader readers to grab 37% gains after nine months of holding Agios Pharmaceuticals</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And members of the Paradigm Mastermind Group collected 570% after 20 months on a combined AI-crypto play. That&rsquo;s just half the position; James Altucher is urging readers to let the rest ride.</li>
</ul>
Elsewhere, precious metals are modestly in the green with gold at $4,063 and silver at $58.45. But crypto is losing ground with Bitcoin under $64,000 and Ethereum approaching $1,850.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Yesterday&rsquo;s market action brought a rare event &mdash; one that doesn&rsquo;t bode well for stocks in the near term.
On the Paradigm mobile app, trading pro Enrique Abeyta notes that both the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 &ldquo;gapped&rdquo; down 1% on the open&hellip; while oil futures spiked 5% at the same time.
An obscure stat? Perhaps. But &ldquo;this has happened only six times in the last 20 years,&rdquo; says Enrique &mdash; &ldquo;with most of those being in 2026.&rdquo;
The others occurred in early 2011 and early 2022. On both occasions &ldquo;it did not bode well for the stock market in the coming six months.&rdquo;
Combine that with the fact that stock market performance is usually punk going into this time of year anyway, &ldquo;we would be patient in buying dips right now.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Seeing as we started today&rsquo;s edition with bipartisanship, we&rsquo;ll end it the same way.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4z7EEHXb259oJa5NuSudZz/3cb7e4a1680077907b3bbcdcf917c1b2/FMF-Issue-072426-7.png" alt="40 trillion national debt" width="540px" />
Haven&rsquo;t forgotten about the mailbag replies after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/socialism-then-and-now">yesterday&rsquo;s socialism edition</a> &mdash; we&rsquo;ll get to it Monday!

FMF-Issue-072426-Featured

MAGA 🤝 Lansing

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Socialism, Then and Now
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Socialism is a failed economic theory,&rdquo; Colorado&rsquo;s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said last night on Fox News. &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s important to talk about the dangers of socialism.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll take up the governor on his challenge today.
Actually we took up the challenge years ago &mdash; <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2019/11/14/whos-afraid-of-a-little-socialism/#105">a few weeks before the first votes were cast in the 2020 presidential primaries</a>, in fact.&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s because in late 2019 a poll showed 70% of millennials willing to vote for a socialist like Bernie Sanders &mdash; significant because 2019 was also the year demographers said millennials surpassed boomers as the largest living adult generation.
Your editor was concerned, but not panicked.&nbsp;
At the time, no one used the term &ldquo;socialism&rdquo; in its original sense &mdash; state ownership of the means of production. &ldquo;Socialism&rdquo; simply meant a system of &ldquo;free&rdquo; or heavily subsidized health care, higher education and so on.&nbsp;
Which wasn&rsquo;t the worst thing in the world. In fact, research from JPMorgan Chase found that compared with the United States, the &ldquo;socialist&rdquo; Nordic countries had stronger protections of property rights and exerted less control over private enterprise.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But that was in 2019. Bernie Sanders is almost 85 now. The &ldquo;socialist&rdquo; torch has been picked up by a new &mdash; and evidently more militant &mdash; generation.
Perhaps its most famous member is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/whos-afraid-of-zohran-mamdani">New York&rsquo;s mayor Zohran Mamdani</a> &mdash; who&rsquo;s 50 years Sanders&rsquo; junior.
In recent weeks, Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards has been sounding the alarm with his readers about the advent of congressional candidates aligned, like Mamdani, with the Democratic Socialists of America.
In a handful of primaries this summer, DSA candidates have knocked off center-left incumbents in safely Democratic districts. One of those victories came in Denver &mdash; hence the concern on the part of Colorado&rsquo;s Gov. Polis.&nbsp;
Once sworn in next January, they&rsquo;ll combine forces with the so-called &ldquo;Squad&rdquo; led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) to comprise a faction of about a dozen members who could make or break major legislation.&nbsp;
To hear Jim tell it, this generation is much more radical and you wouldn&rsquo;t be out of line to call them communist: &ldquo;They give it away when they talk about &lsquo;the means of production&rsquo; and &lsquo;the abolition of private property.&rsquo; Those phrases are straight out of Karl Marx.
&ldquo;They favor wealth taxes. That means after you pay income tax and invest the remainder, they want to tax the assets themselves, not just the income. Some people might have to sell their homes to raise the cash needed to pay the wealth tax on their portfolios.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Investors need to know what&rsquo;s coming before the DSA knocks on your door and tries to move in,&rdquo; Jim goes on.
In recent dispatches to Strategic Intelligence readers, Jim counsels residents of deep-blue states to consider moving elsewhere; as mentioned here last Saturday, a wealth tax is on the ballot in California this fall.
If that&rsquo;s too extreme a step, he advises reducing exposure to stocks &mdash; because they&rsquo;re a target for wealth taxes &mdash; and increasing exposure to cash and physical gold. &ldquo;Gold can preserve value and is difficult to trace. There is no government reporting requirement for privately held physical gold.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And there&rsquo;s another step to consider, one that could make the most difference &mdash; &ldquo;strategic empathy&rdquo; for younger voters answering the siren song of socialism.
&ldquo;Strategic empathy&rdquo; is the term coined by an anonymous account on X called &ldquo;Election Wizard,&rdquo; which is affiliated with the predictions market Kalshi.&nbsp;
It simply means you&rsquo;ve got to understand where younger people are coming from if you&rsquo;re going to have a prayer of persuading them to see things a different way.
&ldquo;Millennials got hit at two critical moments,&rdquo; Election Wizard writes. &ldquo;Many entered the workforce during the 2008 financial crisis, when jobs were scarce, wages were weak and a lot of them were already carrying student debt. Then, just as many were finally building some wealth, COVID-era inflation hammered their purchasing power.&rdquo;
[Which is why they were <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/02/01/the-millennials-revenge/">piling into meme stocks in early 2021</a>, by the way&hellip;]
Gen Z didn&rsquo;t have an adult experience of 2008&hellip; but many of them entered the workforce during the pandemic, and likewise feel as if they can&rsquo;t get ahead.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Furthermore, Election Wizard reminds us that millennials and Gen Z have little conception of what communism is all about.&nbsp;
&ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t live through the Cold War, the Berlin Wall or the Soviet Union. And given the state of American education, you can&rsquo;t assume they were ever seriously taught about the mass murder, repression, famine, gulags and human misery communist regimes produced.&rdquo;
Election Wizard says these generations are absolutely persuadable: &ldquo;In 2024, younger voters moved sharply to the right, while voters 65 and older shifted slightly toward Harris. Millennials and Gen Z do not belong to the left. They are now a large and powerful voting bloc, politically restless, economically frustrated and looking for someone who seems serious about ripping out what they think is broken.&rdquo;
And if Republicans don&rsquo;t deliver policies that give them a chance to better their circumstances?&nbsp;
Well, then, &ldquo;a charismatic radical like NYC Mayor Mamdani will take their anger, give it a target and turn it into power.&rdquo;
OK, your turn: How concerned are you about the socialist wave? And what, if anything, are you doing about it? (&ldquo;Vote harder&rdquo; is not an answer, heh.) Write here &mdash; <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">feedback@paradigmpressroom.com</a> &mdash; and we&rsquo;ll share your feedback either tomorrow or Monday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Tech Tanks
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gee, what should we tackle first as we turn our attention to the markets today? Soaring oil prices or tanking tech shares?
The tech sector is falling out of bed with Google parent Alphabet having delivered its quarterly numbers after the closing bell yesterday.
The revenue and earnings numbers were great. But Mr. Market is deeply concerned about the accelerating pace at which GOOG is investing in AI infrastructure such as data centers.
&ldquo;For the full year 2026,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta, &ldquo;they raised spending by almost 10% and said 2027 will &lsquo;increase significantly.&rsquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/71sjmzLYBq6voulmBYQ4Z/2884058a54800f09b142d42bcba4c59a/7.23_5_Bullets_Chart.png" alt="Data Centers cost Money" width="540px" />
Result: GOOG&rsquo;s free cash flow &mdash; the money left over after meeting both operating and capital expenses &mdash; has now gone negative for the first time in over a decade.
Time was that these Big Tech companies had money to burn. No more&hellip;
So what does it all mean? &ldquo;At some point these companies are going to have to rein back the spending,&rdquo; Enrique says &mdash; &ldquo;but it doesn't look like that is today!&rdquo;
Indeed, &ldquo;this AI buildout isn&rsquo;t stopping,&rdquo; affirms Davis Wilson of our sister e-letter The Million Mission.
It&rsquo;s bad news for GOOG today &mdash; down 7% as we write. It&rsquo;s also bad for the other &ldquo;hyperscalers&rdquo; staring up the same intimidating capex cliff. Microsoft is down 3%, Oracle 4.5%, Meta 4.75% and Amazon 5%.
But&hellip; looking ahead a few weeks and months, Enrique says all that spending will benefit semiconductors and other AI infrastructure plays. Sure enough, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is holding up fairly well under the circumstances &mdash; down 1.5% on the day.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Overall, however, it&rsquo;s a miserable day for the major U.S. indexes &mdash; especially the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
Checking our screens the Nasdaq is down 2.6% and in danger of cracking below 25,000 for the first time since the end of April.
GOOG wasn&rsquo;t the only &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; name to report its numbers yesterday. So did Tesla &mdash; whose earnings fell short of Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations. TSLA is down nearly 13% on the day.
The S&amp;P 500 is holding up a little better &mdash; down 1.4%. But it&rsquo;s broken below 7,400 for the first time in nearly a month.
The Dow is holding up best, down 1% but well beneath 52,000 now.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Another Oil Chokepoint
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> U.S. oil futures are up nearly 6% to a six-week high now that both of the major &ldquo;chokepoints&rdquo; for Middle East oil shipping are snarled up.
By now you&rsquo;re familiar with the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; through which traffic is still barely 10% of prewar levels. And that&rsquo;s on a good day.
But as we anticipated last week, traffic is now severely curtailed through the Bab al-Mandab &mdash; at the south end of the Red Sea.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1JUmyR8c90v8wMXyurpvqA/34fc6838db546e1930a7a521db099a24/FMF-Issue-072326-1.jpg" alt="Oil chokepoint" width="540px" />
Fighting flared up last week between Saudi Arabia and Yemen&rsquo;s Houthi faction for the first time since 2022.&nbsp;
Overnight, the conflict turned into another front in the broader Middle East crisis &mdash; as the Houthis (loosely aligned with Iran) fired missiles and drones on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea.
This is problematic in the extreme for Saudi Arabia. While the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, the kingdom has kept oil flowing to the rest of the world via a pipeline stretching westward to the Red Sea, where it&rsquo;s loaded onto tankers.
But if that oil can&rsquo;t move south through the Bab, it has to instead move north through the Suez Canal&hellip; and then all the way around Africa to its Asian destinations, which adds 40-plus days to the trip. Worse, the largest tankers are too big for Suez &mdash; which means the crude has to be transferred to smaller vessels and then back onto larger ones.
Still&hellip; not all Saudi Arabian crude is stymied. We&rsquo;re seeing credible reports that vessels bound for China are still allowed to get through. Funny how that works.
What a mess. Little wonder U.S. oil futures are back over $92. And Brent futures &mdash; the global benchmark &mdash; are over $100.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Once more, rising oil prices are feeding rising inflation expectations&hellip; and thus rising interest rates.
The yield on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note punched through 4.7% today &mdash; the first time that&rsquo;s happened since January 2025. And the 30-year bond? Hoo boy&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/HPoJjzaA9wk8OP8SKy5ue/c2f94bbd070506313dca6629e4b78538/FMF-Issue-072326-2.jpg" alt="Oil Prices are feeding rising tweet" width="540px" />
But rising rates feed through to lower precious metals prices. All of yesterday&rsquo;s gold gains have been vaporized, and then some &mdash; the bid back to $4,048. And silver&rsquo;s down two bucks to $57.60.
Crypto is likewise giving up much of its gains the last 24 hours &mdash; Bitcoin back under $65,000 and Ethereum below $1,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Follow-Ups: Truth Social Pay-for-Play, DOGE Scam
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> OK, it appears Wall Street lawyers have caught on to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-price-of-admission">the problem we spotlighted Monday</a> with a new scheme surrounding Donald Trump&rsquo;s Truth Social platform.
As we mentioned at the time, Trump Media (DJT) wants to charge banks and hedge funds for early access to posts by the president as well as Donald Jr. and other major names on Truth Social.
On CNN, some reporter dweeb said the scheme was legal because other social media firms like X and Meta do the same thing.
Whelp, maybe it&rsquo;s not so legal after all.&nbsp;
The Financial Times interviewed a couple of law professors who raised red flags similar to the ones yours truly raised here on Monday.
&ldquo;If I were the general counsel of any of these institutional investors I would say, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t even touch this unless Truth Social will guarantee there will be no advance notice of any posts that contain information about the actions of the United States government,&rsquo;&rdquo; says Richard Painter, a corporate law prof at Minnesota and an ethics adviser to the Bush 43 administration.
Trump and other administration officials &ldquo;have no business commercializing information that they generate in their official positions,&rdquo; adds Duke&rsquo;s James Cox.
And yet&hellip; Wall Street firms might still choose to bite. &ldquo;His tweets move markets so we all need to pay up,&rdquo; an anonymous hedge fund exec tells the FT &mdash; although he adds &ldquo;it&rsquo;s so bad that nothing surprises me in that sense anymore.&rdquo;
File that one under &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hate the players, hate the game.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Meanwhile, you can&rsquo;t make this stuff up: Some of the DOGE boys who were hired to reduce government spending are now pursuing government contracts.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/civil-war-by-another-name#4">You remember DOGE, right?</a> The effort spearheaded by Elon Musk to slash federal spending by $2 trillion a year? Musk commissioned young ambitious tech bros to sift through the government&rsquo;s books in search of savings.
The original $2 trillion goal then became $1 trillion. And then $150 billion. And in the end, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/will-america-tariff-itself#3">about $9 billion or 0.1% of the federal budget</a>. DOGE formally ceased to exist by November 2025.
But now the Reuters newswire, citing three anonymous sources, reports that &ldquo;a team of former DOGE employees have raised a major funding round for a startup that aims to use AI to expand U.S. military cyber capabilities&hellip;
&ldquo;The startup, called Cathedral, was launched in recent months with a plan to secure U.S. government contracts&hellip; As part of the plan the company is looking to acquire a data center, or partner with a data center provider that can provide dedicated compute power to the cyber operations.&rdquo;
Potential valuation of the company &mdash; $1.4 billion.
It&rsquo;s at this moment we invoke the author Charles Goyette&rsquo;s lament way back in 2009: &ldquo;America&rsquo;s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system. America has become a pi&ntilde;ata: Everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the pi&ntilde;ata party.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We wind up today&rsquo;s edition in more or less the same place where we started&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1JJVwql1nir8IvLQ81r7bl/37b1ff9b25c5be9fb8e64a7bea668412/FMF-Issue-072326-3.jpg" alt="Bitcoin for freedom tweet" width="540px" />

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