The Thread

The Price of OptimismThe Thread · Issue #7 · June 29, 2026 A rocket company went public, the stock soared and then gave much of it back — and underneath the noise sits a plainer question: when you buy a stock like this, what are you actually buying? This issue traces the gap between a company's fundamentals and its story, and why you may already own a piece of the most-talked-about stock on the ma...

What Did We Borrow For? The Thread · Special Report · June 22, 2026 Episode summary A client in his early sixties asked me a question I couldn't put down: we've borrowed tens of trillions of dollars — where did it all go, and who actually pays it off? This special report pulls that thread. Almost all of it went to making the present easier — cushioning two crises, cutting taxes, fighting wars — an...

The Thread — Issue #6 | June 15, 2026 When Coverage Doesn't Reach Care Episode summary Coverage in America is near record highs, and we spend more on healthcare than any nation on earth — yet an insurance card keeps turning out to be a smaller promise than people expect. This issue follows that gap across three fronts: where Medicare stops at the nursing-home door, why more of the best providers a...

The Thread — Issue #5 | June 1, 2026 The Good You Can't See In a year of mostly bad headlines, here are three things that are quietly, measurably going right in America — homicide at a modern low, cancer survival transformed, lives lengthened — plus the abundance hiding in plain sight. This issue is about why the good news is so hard to see, and what that invisibility costs the institutions doing...

The Cupboards Are Full The middle-class deal didn't get harder. It got retired. Matthew walks through the single chart that explains why one generation looks at American life and sees abundance while the next feels structurally crushed. Through Sarah — a composite client whose numbers don't reconcile no matter how disciplined she is — the special report follows the gap between the categories that...

The Thread — Issue #4 Why markets feel fragile when the headline numbers don't The economy looks competitive on the surface — dozens of car brands, multiple big online retailers, a drugstore on every corner. Underneath, the math doesn't quite work that way. This issue walks through three places where competitive pressure has been quietly disabled: cars, online retail, and pharmacy/primary care. Th...

The Thread — Issue #3 | May 4, 2026 Why a shrinking IRS, an unreadable healthcare bill, a six-figure college decision, and a record-low consumer sentiment all point to the same realization: the complexity itself has become the cost. In this issue: The IRS is struggling. The enforcement workforce is on track to fall below 30,000 — roughly a third less than its peak just a few years ago. What that m...

Here's a show notes block you can paste into the Substack audio post body — Substack syndicates it out to the podcast apps, so this is what listeners will see in Apple/Spotify/Overcast descriptions too. The Line Nobody Moved — A Special Report from The Thread Why a 1963 formula is still defining who's struggling in America — and what happens when you do the math honestly. In 1963, an economist nam...

Why the oil shock, the shipping cost spike, and a $16,000 EV all point to the same thing: what's coming hasn't arrived yet. In this first issue of The Thread, I pull at the connections running underneath a few stories clients have been asking about — and find that the economic consequences of the Iran conflict haven't fully arrived yet. They're on the water, literally. Understanding the timeline m...

Why $7 Doritos, a broken jobs formula, and a suspicious oil trade all point to the same realization: the old rules don't apply anymore. In this issue: What I'm Pulling At (1:00) Why so many of the conversations I'm having with clients right now come back to the same feeling — that the ground shifted, and nobody told them. The $7 Bag of Doritos (2:45) How PepsiCo lost $50 billion in market value by...