The Weekly Insight

The Magnificent 7 are down over 10% since October 29th. The other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 are up nearly 15%. That's a 25-point gap. And almost no one is talking about it. This week's Weekly Insight breaks down the eight-month rotation that's reshaping portfolios: → Why "Technology" leading the sector charts isn't the Mag 7 comeback it looks like  → The Q1 earnin...

The Fed spent the better part of a decade talking too much. On Wednesday, Kevin Warsh signaled that era is over. His first press conference as Fed Chairman didn't just announce a rate hold. It announced a philosophy — one that's fundamentally different from anything we've seen in the Powell era: Forward guidance: gone Warsh's own dot plot projection: withheld entirely Five task...

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-235-billion-has-to-come-from-somewhere/

Three months ago we published a memo called "The Chokepoint" — written the morning the U.S. started bombing Iran. We laid out exactly what a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure would do to oil prices, inflation, and global GDP. This week we went back and checked our work. The market has hit all-time highs. Brent crude pulled back from $138. The ceasefire has been enough — for now. But the...

Everyone wants SpaceX shares. The phones haven't stopped. So, we did what we always do: we looked at the data first. What is SpaceX actually selling? Three businesses. One is wildly profitable. One is losing money. One is a $6.4 billion annual cash furnace that every major AI company is running right now. The $1.75 trillion price tag wraps all three together and asks you to believe in a futur...

Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest reading since 1952. The lowest in history. At the same time, Redbook same-store sales just spiked to 9.6% — one of the strongest retail readings in years. Both of those things are true simultaneously. And that gap is exactly where the most important question in the market lives right now. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-s...

Most families spend years worrying about the estate tax. Here's the reality: fewer than 2,000 deaths will trigger a federal estate tax payment this year. That’s 0.07% of all estates.  The tax your heirs will actually pay isn't in the estate code. It's sitting inside your IRA. And there's a limited window — retirement to age 73 — to do something about it. Read more here: https:/...

Two politicians. Same day. Completely opposite claims about what gas prices are doing to American households. Rep. Ro Khanna: $5,000 per household. Treasury Secretary Bessent: "All cylinders are firing. Gas prices are coming down." Both are wrong. So, this week we did the actual math. The real number is approximately $1,400 per year — or $117 a month — for the average household. That&apo...

John Maynard Keynes may be the most influential economist who ever lived. He was right about Versailles. Right about the Depression. He redesigned the global financial system at Bretton Woods. He also lost his entire fortune in the market. His lesson: it doesn't matter how right you are. If the market stays irrational longer than you can stay solvent, you lose. LTCM had two Nobel laureates. L...

Nine trading days. That's how long it took the S&P 500 to recover every point it lost since the Iran war began. The COVID crash — which was considered one of the fastest recoveries in market history — took 104 trading days. Twelve times longer. The market's message is clear: this conflict is a disruption, not a recession. Recession odds in prediction markets never came close to what...

A significant amount of Qatar's LNG just went offline for 3-5 years. Canadian LNG just came online. The market hasn't connected those dots yet — but it will. That's one of three opportunities we're building toward in this week's memo. The others: Emerging Markets, where a war-driven selloff has created a 6.6 percentage point gap vs. the S&P 500. And small caps — but no...

Five Trump announcements about the Iran war. Five market rallies. Every single one fully reversed within a week. By Friday, the market didn't even bother with a rally. That's the story of the last month. The market’s been trading the rhetoric, not the facts on the ground. But Friday, the market has stopped buying it. But here's what matters more: we've seen this movie before. A...

Part of the problem with drafting these memos is the news can change quickly.  When we wrote this on Sunday night, we noted: “If the deadline passes without significant escalation, it may end proving Trump’s Friday missive. It may be the biggest offramp yet.” Monday morning — somebody blinked. Trump announced "very good and productive conversations" with Iran and postponed all strikes on...

The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo removed 7% of the world's oil supply. It gave us gas lines, 11% inflation, and interest rates that eventually hit 20%. It defined a decade. The Strait of Hormuz closure is removing 20%. And yet — Wall Street's earnings estimates for 2026 have not moved one inch since the war began. The S&P is down 3.6%. That gap is about to close. Q1 earnings season starts i...

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-old-playbook-doesnt-apply/

The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide. 20% of the world's oil flows through it every day. As of Saturday, it's effectively closed. We've been warning about this exact scenario since April 2024. Now it's here. In this week's memo, we break down: → Why the U.S. Navy can control the Strait but can't make shippers transit it  → Why pipeline alternatives only solve 13% of...

Is AI going to end the world? Destroy every software company? Bankrupt the biggest tech companies on earth? If you've watched the news lately, you'd think the answer to all three is yes. Here's the problem: the math doesn't work. You can't be right about all of them at once. This week we go all the way back to the Luddites — 19th century textile workers who literally smash...

Markets have been pricing in a weaker dollar for months. Gold, silver, and Bitcoin all jumped in value. And traders were expecting a Fed chair announcement that would continue that theme. Instead, they got Kevin Warsh – a hawk whose resume screams “strong dollar”. The result? More than $8 trillion in paper wealth vaporized as gold, silver and Bitcoin all retreated. But the issues that caused the p...

Great earnings aren’t enough anymore. The market is telling us something – and it’s been saying it for 90 days. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-great-rebalancing/

We had a wild start to the market last week. Markets fell. Headlines screamed. Fear spiked. But by week’s end, nothing had actually changed. It seems like that same cycle is happening more frequently. And it turns out, there is some ancient wisdom that can help us manage it. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-financial-stoicism/

The market is obsessed with AI. But nobody is asking the right question: why is AI worth trillions of dollars? What problem is it solving? This week, we dive into the biggest structural shift in the global economy that no one is discussing – and the investment opportunities it will create.  Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-biggest-thing-nobody-is-talking-about/

As we dive into the new year, markets have continued their solid pace. But there is plenty of international intrigue that has reminded investors of the importance – and drama! – in fossil fuels.  Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-oil-still-matters/

As we wrap up the year, it would be easy to just say, “It was a great year in the markets! See you in 2026!” But as we prepared the year-end Weekly Insight Memo and Weekly Insight Podcast, we thought it would be a good time to focus on the lessons we learned this year. And, more importantly, how they might apply to future years that might not be so wonderful.  Read more here: https://insightwealth...

Barring a complete collapse in the next nine days, 2025 will mark just the sixth time in history that we’ve seen double digit returns in the S&P 500 for three consecutive years. Four years in a row is even more rare (it’s happened three times). And yet, as we told you last week, market prognosticators are expecting another double digit year in the market in 2026. Read more here: https://insigh...

It was a frigid weekend in Iowa. Which may be why an article we read about the “Windchill Economy” caught our attention. But the facts of the article – that how people feel about the economy today is much different than how it’s actually working – got us thinking. How predictive is the consumer's feelings about the economy? And how does it differ from what Wall Street is saying? Read more her...