From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
December 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A conversation with Frank Holmes on crypto, commodities, and today’s investment opportunities.
February 9, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The Nasdaq logged its fourth straight down week, pulled lower by the “SaaSpocalypse” in software.
Goldman Sachs’ Software Basket fell 16% for the week. Hedge fund exposure to software shrank sharply, according to Prime Book data.
Lou Miller, Goldman’s global head of Equity Custom Baskets, told clients that buyers remained scarce even as the group entered oversold territory.
In the late 1990s, telecom infrastructure outpaced demand, pricing compressed, and equity valuations adjusted long before usage caught up.
Today’s AI buildout carries healthier balance sheets and real utility, yet capital intensity remains high, and patience wears thin when returns depend on perfect adoption curves.
February 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 9, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The week’s trading revealed that a rotation out of high-flying tech into defensive names is well underway. The Dow, which includes broader, non-tech-related stocks, is starting the week above 50,000 for the first time in its history.
February 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 4, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Market behavior is shifting alongside technology. AI shortens business cycles and accelerates repricing. Leverage magnifies reactions. Empire of Debt warned that systems built on smooth assumptions fail loudly once those assumptions collide with reality. Software reached that collision point first.
February 4, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
You can bet on nearly anything on Polymarket. One bet is that Elon Musk, current net worth $775 billion, will add the other $225 billion and become the world’s first trillionaire.
Betting market odds now overwhelmingly see it happening this year, and this could be a sign of a top.
February 3, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
In Singapore, Bloomberg reported that retail buyers crowded United Overseas Bank, the city’s only bank selling physical gold, until customers without pre-orders were turned away.
In Sydney, lines stretched into the street outside ABC Bullion after Friday’s selloff. Thai investors held existing positions instead of selling into weakness. In China’s Shuibei district, ahead of the Lunar New Year, buyers stepped in, and local prices held premiums over exchange benchmarks.
“It’s still a buying market,” said Globlex Securities CEO Thanapisal Koohapremkit. Quiet accumulation doesn’t announce itself. It just keeps happening.
February 3, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
AI tools are incredibly useful and AI stocks remain richly valued. Yes.
New tech will also create new, productive and higher paying jobs. Ones we haven’t even dreamed up yet.
In the meantime, the jobs market is being measured by the tools needed to calculate the economy without knowing what the new jobs will be.
February 2, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
For months, speculation swirled like chimney smoke in a snowstorm. Would Trump tap a dove? A loyalist? A Wall Street man in a red hat? Warsh checks none of those boxes — and all of them.
He’s a former Fed governor, a Goldman alum, and a card-carrying skeptic of central bank omnipotence.
He’s said, “The Fed is not independent from government. It is independent within government,” which sounds like something out of a fortune cookie written by Hayek.
He doesn’t want the Fed playing God, and he’s not keen on printing money to mop up Congress’s mess. He believes in limits. In credibility. In consequences.
February 2, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Corporate insiders began ringing the cash register just as the S&P 500 touched 7,000. Given that the market is up over 40% from last April’s “Liberation Day” lows, a modicum of profit-taking is wise.
January 30, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Kevin Warsh, former Fed governor and one-time Morgan Stanley hand, is officially President Trump’s pick to replace Jerome Powell as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
The choice is meant to be brazen, if not entirely unexpected. Despite having been nominated in his first go in the Oval Office, Trump has been gunning for Jerome Powell since Day One of his second term.
Now, Warsh, whose libertarian-leaning critique of the Fed has hovered like a drone over Jackson Hole for years, will succeed Powell should the Senate confirm him before May 15, 2026.
January 30, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The analysis we’ve published of the main drivers for gold applies to silver and bitcoin, too. The latter two, however, remain more speculative and gap down and spike up more dramatically.
If you’re leveraged to silver, whether through mining companies, ETFs, or the like, it may be prudent to take some profits off the table. And keep your eyes peeled for future moves upward.
January 29, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
In one refrain from our book Empire of Debt, we warned that late-stage credit systems always suffer the same fate: the debasement of money disguised as growth. Ray Dalio said the quiet part out loud in an interview yesterday:
“If you depreciate the money, it makes everything look like it’s going up.”
Which is precisely why the markets get jittery at the top. And why politics are as wacky and polarized as they have been.
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is demanding higher taxes on the rich to plug budget holes left by former Mayor Adams. He wants billions from Albany. Governor Hochul has yet to weigh in.
In California, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and other Silicon Valley billionaires are backing a new pro-business PAC to fight a proposed 5% wealth tax on the state’s 200 richest residents. Larry Page has already moved to Florida. The line to Nevada is forming.
Ray Dalio, again, with the map:
“When governments run large deficits and the debt is no longer bought willingly, they have two choices: raise taxes and cut spending, or print money. Those that can print, do. Those that can’t, fall apart.”
Populist politics surge. Moderates vanish. Scapegoating begins. The wealth gap widens until it becomes an impassable chasm.
January 29, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The S&P 500 topped 7,000 for the first time yesterday, adding to its stack of all-time highs this year and continuing the trend set in 2025.
But… those highs are measured in dollars. When priced in gold, which topped $5,500 — also a historic number— this morning, stocks are actually at a 12-year low.
