Category: Markets and Macro

The economic story of early 2026 is being written as much on social media and campaign stages as in bond markets and grocery aisles. President Donald Trump is promising $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks even as his trade policy raises prices, while Ron DeSantis is warning that a weakening dollar and record silver prices signal deeper…

Wall Street’s flagship benchmark has finally done it. The S&P 500 has tagged the 7,000 level for the first time, a psychological line that once looked distant even to seasoned investors. The index’s climb has been powered not just by the usual mega‑cap suspects but by a surprisingly eclectic cast of winners that is reshaping…

Microsoft has just delivered the kind of quarter most tech giants would envy, yet the stock has been punished as if the story has stalled. After a sharp sell-off that wiped out tens of billions in market value, the debate is no longer about whether the company can grow, but whether investors understand what they…

The warning that a 2030 economic cliff could wreck your retirement is not just another doomsday headline. It reflects a convergence of demographic strain, market risk and policy uncertainty that is already reshaping how long Americans work and how far their savings will stretch. I see a clear pattern in the data: if you are…

Idaho’s reputation as a deep red, low-tax stronghold is colliding with a new fiscal reality: a projected budget hole that could force the state to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to stand still. At the center of that squeeze is a roughly $200 million annual hit tied to the…

For investors who bet early on the latest “Trump trade,” the payoff has been eye catching: a 29% gain in roughly six months tied to a basket of assets expected to thrive under President Donald Trump’s policy mix. Now the same strategists who built that trade are telling clients to walk away, arguing that the…

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, is arguing that the United States is living through a rare burst of productive capacity that looks more like the late 1990s than the stop‑start recoveries that followed past crises. He describes it as a “massive positive supply shock,” a phase when businesses can produce more with…

Warnings that the global economy could face a 2008-style shock in 2026 are no longer coming from fringe pessimists but from official surveys focused squarely on artificial intelligence. The latest research flags a build-up of leverage behind AI infrastructure and stocks that looks uncomfortably like the mortgage-fueled excesses of the last crisis, only faster and…

The United States is gliding into a labor market shock that will not look like past recessions, and the warning signs are hiding in plain sight. Official jobless figures still look manageable, yet the combination of rapid automation, slowing hiring, and deep racial and sectoral divides is setting the stage for a wave of displaced…

Texas is not just adding people and jobs, it is steadily increasing the amount of economic output and income available to each resident. Strip out the population surge and the state is generating thousands of dollars more per person than it did only a few years ago, a sign that households are genuinely getting richer…