For two years the argument about foreign demand for American debt has been theory. This weekend it produced a receipt. Bloomberg reported that Japan's holdings of foreign securities fell $87.8 billion in August, almost exactly matching what Tokyo spent defending the yen. The Finance Ministry has confirmed the intervention ran to ¥15.4 trillion, roughly $98.6 billion, the largest in Japanese history. The yen went from 160.39 to 154.50 and it worked. But understand what happened. America's closest financial ally liquidated tens of billions of Treasuries in a single month, and not one dollar of that selling was a vote against the United States. It was a country defending its currency with the only liquid asset it holds in size. Luke Gromen framed the mechanism better than anyone this week. When the dollar gets too strong, foreigners sell dollar assets, starting with what they can sell rather than what they want to. So austerity aimed at strengthening the dollar paradoxically increases the effective supply of Treasuries, because central banks have to dump them to defend their own currencies. Every lever pulled to make the dollar stronger creates more sellers of the thing Washington needs buyers for. Now the number almost nobody framed properly. Bank of America shows fifteen year and longer Treasuries have returned negative two percent per year over the past decade, the worst ten year stretch in roughly a century. Everyone shared that as a disaster. Almost nobody quoted the title BofA put on the chart, which reads negative long run returns, great entry points. The only two prior troughs on it are December 1959 and September 1981. September 1981 was the greatest moment to buy a long bond in modern financial history. And the myth. IMF reserve data shows the dollar at 57% of global reserves, its lowest in thirty years, which sounds alarming until you read the next line. Between 2015 and 2023 roughly equal numbers of countries increased and decreased their dollar holdings. The decline is concentrated in two strategic rivals. The dollar is not being abandoned, it is being trimmed by China and Russia and occasionally liquidated by allies with currency problems, and those need different medicines. Full piece, including why retail has quietly abandoned the chip trade, where Russian gold is actually going, and what Friday's inflation print decides, is here https://cycledesk.substack.com/p/the-dollar-myth-and-the-bond-market?r=7unzzg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueread more
..... and counting.........using one single KTS #2 Tool. 😂🤣 And I told you exactly how to do it about two years ago. Seriously. Go check for yourself. Open your favorite accounts on this app right now and look at their all-TIME returns. I’ll wait. Nobody’s close. Most portfolios on this app? 😂🤣 In March 2024, I shared a simple ETF approach that could be used to READ, LISTEN to, and TIME the markets to achieve double-digit annualized returns. (KTS #2 – Follow the Sector.) On April 29, 2024, I bought one share of $XME and one share of $XES as part of the “This Is the Way” series to demonstrate the application of KTS #2. Here's yesterday's RE-POST of the original March 2024 post sharing the KTS #2 tool: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/KTS-2-Follow-the-Sector-RE-POST__POST-1788528588432-2Vw4Cx2V_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML And here's the link to the "This is the Way" Series post: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/This-is-the-Way-Series-1-KTS-2__POST-1714389509714-79HySrJi_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML Since April 1, 2025, these two subsectors have returned: $XME: +110% 🏆 $XES: +75% 🏆 While $SPY returned only half of XES and one-third of XME for a measly +38%. 🤢🤮 You could have simply followed my second KTS post and outperformed…….everyone. 🤑🤑🤑 Think about all the TIME you’ve spent building your portfolio since that date? 🤔 Think about how you are juggling the daily ups and downs of economic data, concerned about whether you should be in …. or out of the SpaceX IPO. Is the semiconductor rally over? Is Crypto a buy again? Is the Fed going to raise or cut rates? The country’s debt is unsustainable!?!?!? Silver & Gold are back???? What’s Michael Burry thinking? What’s BlackRock buying? Are software stocks back for good? What’s going on in the Middle East? China and North Korea!?!?!? Russia-Ukraine??? Whatever happened to the ESG movement? Is TRUMP just saying shit to keep markets propped up until the midterms? And is the SpaceX IPO – at the highest level of understanding – just Elon Musk selling a new crypto coin to the Teachers’ Unions??? 🤣😂 You think this helps you. But does it? Does half of what you read really matter? Maybe it’s interesting. Maybe you’d rather be catching every financial news development because it’s your passion. But is it necessary for portfolio outperformance? 🤔 The answer is no. No, it’s not. That should be music to your ears! 😀😃😄😁🙂😊 There are even popular members of this community who preach spending 50–100 hours researching a single company before investing 😂🤪🫨😳🤣😆. And their profile shows an all-TIME return of……………-1.65%! WTF!?!?? In the greatest bull market of their life 😂. Oh geez. Keep it up basement boy - maybe you’ll get there one day? 😂🤣 Meanwhile……. successful investors step back to see the big picture. They read the plan and the strategy we laid out. They see it playing out in real-TIME and are reaping the rewards of their intelligence – and got their weekends back. 😎 Answer this honestly. It’s April 29, 2024, and you get to run it again. Door 1: Buy XME and XES, close the app, and go live your life for two years. Door 2: Your “sophisticated” portfolio, your watchlist, your 100 hours of research, your swing trading. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!!! 😂 Which door do you walk through? 🤔 I’ll give you 5 minutes to digest that……even though it should only take you 5 seconds. 😂 Or maybe you’re buying XEQT, VFV and other passive funds? Do you even know how just ONE measly percent of outperformance impacts your retirement age? 🤔😅 If not, read this: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/Why-Outperforming-the-SandP-500-Index-Matters__POST-1712844746313-WeQtSmOp_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML Look at the chart attached and tell me which sector you would have wanted to own over the last 18 months. I’ll tell you what: my first pick wouldn’t be the line at the bottom (S&P 500), but that’s just me. Wanna know the best part? $XME and $XES have chopped sideways for most of this year (2026) building potential energy….and STILL beat virtually everyone on this app. Now wait until that coiled energy converts to kinetic energy! 🚀👩🚀😅😂🤑🤑🤑 And the party isn’t over. I told you when I bought it..…and you had a 2-year window to enjoy my content for free and learn an alternative approach designed to outperform any type of market. The ones who could recognize the true value and listen are now members because they understand that they can outperform for the rest of their lives by stepping back and reading the market instead of the news within the context of the real estate/banking crisis cycle. They’re also the only ones who’ll know when $XES and $XME aren’t favored sectors anymore. Always remember that I want you all to win! But I can’t do it for you. You have to recognize for yourself that conventionalist propaganda will never allow you to outperform… and take the steps to change that. Learn about membership here: https://www.beskarcapitalkts.com/ Natural selection is alive and well. I always give you my best. 🏆 This is the Way! 🏄🌊 read more
Markets reopen Tuesday after Labor Day. Last week's blowout jobs number (162K vs 55K est.) is still the story — rate cut bets took a hit and that pressure carries into this week. The big 3 to watch: 📱 Wednesday — Apple iPhone event. New product cycle. AAPL moves the whole market. 📊 Thursday — PPI. First inflation read of the week. Hot = more Fed pressure. 🔥 Friday — CPI. The one that matters most. September Fed meeting is Sept 16-17 — this print either puts a cut back on the table or kills it for good. Earnings on deck: GME Tue AH, CHWY Wed AH, ADBE & ORCL Thu AH, KR Fri AM. Playbook: stay light until CPI Friday. The jobs report already showed this economy isn't cooling fast — one more hot inflation print and the September cut is dead.read more
I took the hard decision to sell my beloved $RKLB and reallocate into $PL. Not because I think $RKLB isn’t executing or because I’ve lost confidence, it’s actually quite the opposite!! $RKLB remains one of the companies I’m most bullish on in the space industry and the CEO is the greatest of all time. It’s just no longer the best fit for my investment thesis as the industry evolves and my investing strategy being to allocate big where I have the most conviction, so having $RKLB at less than 10% of my portfolio did not make sense for my strategy. I do keep one symbolic $RKLB share in my RRSP bought at $3.72 because it’s where everything started when I started my investing journey 3 years ago. The focus for space companies now is tilted towards "space applications", like $RKLB acquiring $IRDM for $8 billion to get connectivity into their inventory, satellites monitoring agriculture, $PL providing real-time satellite imagery, etc. Among these applications, I see a lot of potential in the development of AI infrastructure in space over the next few years and I believe Planet Labs is positioned to benefit from this. My thesis is that $PL sits at the intersection of satellite infrastructure, Earth observation and AI for both on Earth and potentially in space. $PL isn’t an in-space data centre company today but it is already a pioneer! Planet is $GOOGL’s partner on Project Suncatcher, an initiative exploring the deployment of Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in orbit to scale AI compute in space. The first two prototype satellites are expected to launch in early 2027, for an envisioned constellation of 81 satellites. Some benefits of data centres in orbit is that you have unlimited and free power and you do not need water to cool as heat gets radiated out of the satellite into space. It’s essentially a low-latency connectivity satellite like Starlink, but instead of beaming Internet it beams AI results back on Earth. Planet has also been a pioneer in Earth observation and is now rapidly adding AI into its satellite imagery platform. The company has partnered with Anthropic to incorporate Claude to help customers turn raw satellite imagery into actionable insights more efficiently. According to a Bloomberg report from last week, $PL is also in discussions to provide satellite-imaging services to help monitor data-centre construction as it expands beyond its defense/government market. In August, $PL renewed a contract with an undisclosed hyperscaler AI developer to monitor data-centre and semiconductor manufacturing construction globally. Its Pelican high-resolution imagery is being used to track construction milestones at these facilities. I like to see how $PL has been diversifying their revenue lately. I would not be surprised to see an acquisition very soon given they have now $860M in cash following their ATM offering. For FY2027, ending January 31, 2027, Planet expects revenue of $430–441M (+41% YoY) and adjusted EBITDA of $3–10M (-50% YoY) Have a great long weekend!! read more
I’ve hinted here recently in a few posts at what a few of my next moves for my portfolio might be. And I’m about to show you something I’ve been working on and debating over for over a week now. Here in the coming week I’ll be rebalancing my portfolio. Removing VOO and going full on stock picker mode. That being said I’ll be adding $TSLA$SPCX and $KO . Im very excited for this update and thankful for everyone tuning into my journey.
I believe data centers stocks are not too far gone and are still GREAT buys at today’s prices. (NFA) The question now is, which is the best buy TODAY? $NBIS at $226 $IREN at $45 $CRWV at $90 $WYFI at $20 $KEEL at $3.50 $APLD at $26 $CIFR at $17 I added to my Iren position last week 🤷♂️ read more
week 35 of 2026 and the portfolio has definitely seen a pull back but still up for the year 20.41% YTD with some dividends coming in from $AFL and $CF. $SCHD is also up 26.87% YTD hope everyone was able to enjoy their long labor day weekend!
The 4% rule was recently discussed and Ive also seen some misconception when it comes to safe withdraw strategies in retirement...the basic idea is pretty simple: If you have $1,000,000 invested, a 4% withdrawal rate means taking roughly $40,000 in your first year of retirement, then generally increasing that dollar amount with inflation. The research behind the 4% rule was built around roughly a 30-year retirement and a diversified portfolio. It's not a guarantee that your portfolio will earn 4% every year. It's a historical framework for surviving market crashes, inflation and different sequences of returns. But here's where I think some investors get confused. I've been seeing investors in covered-call ETFs saying things like: "My fund yields 8–10%, so I can withdraw 6-8% and still be fine." I don't think that's the right way to look at it. An 8–10% distribution does NOT mean your portfolio is generating an 8–10% total return. Covered-call ETFs generate income by selling call options. That can create a large cash distribution, but you're giving up some upside potential in exchange for that income. And some distributions can also be classified as return of capital, which isn't the same thing as the portfolio actually earning that amount. That's the part that can create a false sense of security. You see $10,000 deposited into your account and think "I'm living off the income. I'm not touching my principal." But the more important question is? What happened to the total value of my portfolio after that distribution? Cash flow ≠ return. That's why I personally don't want to build my retirement around chasing the highest possible yield. I've been seeing people talk about withdrawing 5%, 6%, 7%+ as if it's automatically sustainable because their ETF is distributing that much. It can work in certain circumstances. But there's a huge difference between: "My ETF pays me 8%." and "My portfolio can sustainably support an 8% withdrawal rate for the rest of my life." Those are two completely different things.The biggest problem with a high withdrawal rate is sequence-of-returns risk. Imagine retiring with $1M. If the market performs terribly during your first few years of retirement while you're withdrawing 6% or 7% every year, you're taking money out while the portfolio is down.That can permanently damage your portfolio's ability to recover. And the longer your retirement is, the more important this becomes. Obviously, real retirement planning is more complicated than multiplying your portfolio by a percentage. Taxes, pensions, CPP/OAS, inflation, asset allocation and spending changes all matter. The 4% rule isn't a magic number either. It's a guideline based on historical outcomes. For me, I'd rather build a portfolio large enough that I only need to withdraw 3-4%. And hopefully a much better chance of never having to worry about running out of money. The goal isn't just to retire. The goal is to stay retired. Hope this made sense and Happy Monday. read more
I think something gets lost in discussions about whether a fund’s distribution is “sustainable”: what do we actually consider a pretty damn good long-term return? ⠀ In my ERP post, I talked about using the risk-free rate plus the equity risk premium as a starting point for expected stock returns. The estimate I discussed came out around 9% nominal, before inflation. That isn’t a ceiling or a guarantee, but it gives us somewhere to start when thinking about what an investment might reasonably deliver. ⠀ https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/Equity-Risk-Premium-9percent__POST-1788217798809-T6cHd7D9_t00uBlccemcq8jzT ⠀ Different exposures and strategies deserve different assumptions. If we expect substantially higher returns, though, there should be an explanation for where that additional return comes from and why it should persist. ⠀ Warren Buffett is an interesting reference point here. He’s widely regarded as the greatest investor of all time, and from 1965 through 2025, Berkshire compounded at 19.7% annually, compared with 10.5% for the S&P 500 with dividends included. Sustaining roughly 20% for that long is the kind of result that earned him that reputation. ⠀ https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2025ar/2025ar.pdf ⠀ That gives some perspective on casually assuming 20%, 30%, or more as a long-term total return. ⠀ Those returns can obviously happen. They can happen for several years. But if we’re building long-term expectations around them, there needs to be something supporting that assumption. Maybe a manager adds alpha, meaning returns beyond what an appropriate benchmark or risk model would explain. Maybe leverage increases expected returns, or there’s some other advantage. ⠀ And even an established advantage doesn’t guarantee substantial alpha forever. Compounding the annual returns in Berkshire’s report over the 22 years from 2004 through 2025 gives approximately 10.5% annually, compared with 10.7% for the S&P 500 including dividends. That isn’t a formal calculation of alpha, but it shows how much closer Berkshire’s more recent returns have been to the market, despite its extraordinary lifetime record. ⠀ This connects back to competition. Sometimes when people say a fund manager needs to “stabilize the NAV and maintain the yield,” it sounds like the fund operates in a silo, where producing enough return is primarily a matter of choosing the right settings. ⠀ But there’s someone on the other side of each trade. Option buyers are paying for rights that have value. Other managers are looking for the same attractive opportunities. If an advantage is accessible and repeatable, more capital can pursue it and reduce the future reward. ⠀ That doesn’t impose a hard cap on anyone’s returns. It does make a large, persistent edge something we should explain rather than assume. ⠀ Which brings me back to high distributions. ⠀ In my High Yield post, I talked about why NAV erosion and distribution cuts aren’t inherently bad on their own. A fund could deliver a perfectly decent total return while its NAV declines because it distributes substantially more than it earns. ⠀ https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/High-Yield__POST-1787186691972-RSs7aPx2_t00uBlccemcq8jzT ⠀ You can take that to an extreme mathematically. Start with $100 and distribute 99%, leaving $1. Then distribute 99% of that dollar, leaving one cent. You can keep taking a fraction of a positive balance indefinitely, even as the amounts become vanishingly small. ⠀ The NAV has almost completely disappeared, but you haven’t lost almost all your money. In this simplified example, you received it back as cash. Before costs and taxes, there was no investment gain or loss. ⠀ That’s why NAV erosion alone isn’t enough information. ⠀ This ties into @matt.41’s recent question about what a sustainable distribution would be for HHIS. Suppose, hypothetically, HHIS yielded 23%. The percentage alone doesn’t tell us whether the fund can maintain its dollar payments or support someone spending them while preserving their capital. ⠀ If we mean earning a 23% total return year after year, though, we’re expecting more than Buffett’s roughly 20% lifetime annualized return. That doesn’t make it impossible, but it brings us back to the question: what would allow the strategy to sustain a result that extraordinary? ⠀ Let’s set aside any negative opinions or “CC hate” you might encounter and focus just on total return and what we reasonably expect it to be. When someone like me questions whether a strategy is sustainable, that’s the concern: whether its expected total return can support the spending and capital preservation someone is counting on. ⠀ If a fund earns 9% but distributes 60% of its starting NAV, the difference has to come out of its NAV. A falling NAV or an eventual distribution cut can be exactly what we’d expect, even while the fund delivers a perfectly decent total return. ⠀ As I covered in “Separating the Variables: The Concrete Version,” reinvesting a percentage of the distributions isn’t enough information either. Spend half of a 10% distribution and you’re withdrawing 5% of the portfolio. Spend half of a 20% distribution and you’re withdrawing 10%. ⠀ Same reinvestment rule, twice the withdrawal rate. Whether either is sustainable still depends on the strategy’s total return and risk. ⠀ https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/Separating-the-Variables-2-The-Concrete-Version__POST-1787842873351-Y6LX3ulN_t00uBlccemcq8jzT ⠀ There’s also a separate issue with “stable.” I wouldn’t treat XEQT as a stable place for a house down payment needed in the short term, and the same concern applies to income funds with meaningful stock-market exposure. Regular cash payments don’t make the capital supporting those payments stable. ⠀ Someone who understands these relationships may reasonably prefer a high-distribution structure. The concern I’m focusing on is the long-term expectation attached to it. We can disagree about what a strategy will earn, but that’s where the discussion needs to happen, because the distribution rate can’t answer that question for us. ⠀ It feels like every week we end up with another post about the discourse itself instead of the actual investing questions and trade-offs worth discussing. I hope this comes across as a respectful and useful breakdown for people who are curious. There’s plenty of room for different preferences, and I think understanding the assumptions behind them makes for a much more valuable conversation.read more
I think $NFLX will be a $150 stock by 2030. Revenue growth, margin expansion, advertising, and buybacks. I think earnings will compound much faster than people expect. From today’s price, I genuinely think Netflix is one of the easier doubles in my portfolio.
The massive AI bull run of 2026 is officially facing its biggest threat yet.With Brent crude fast approaching the $100 mark due to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the game is changing. https://webkarobar.com/brent-100-stocks/
I am currently 47 years old. Unfortunately in that time frame I have lost a lot of family members. Some (most) were accidents, some to age, some to cancer, and one to suicide. That’s 11 deaths total. Only 1 person out of 11 had a will. When you are grieving the last thing you want to do is close an estate up. It’s even harder if nothing has been prepared in advance. After the initial shock of the death settles (the phase where everyone is usually nice), greed comes through in a most alarming manner. I’ve watched people turn into monsters. Make sure you have a will!!!! or people will fight.  I know most people hate thinking about their death or their spouses death but honestly it’s just a fact of life. I’ve personally been the executor of 2 estates now. This is my advice: 1. If your young get life insurance. If you’re retired it’s not worth it. 2. Make sure you have a will. 3. Make sure you have a personal directive. 4. Make sure you have a power of attorney set up. 5. If your married make your spouse the beneficiary of your TFSA and RRSP(has to be done through the account not the will), they will roll into the spouses account without taxation. 6. If you’re married, and you own a house, make sure both names are on the title, joint tenant, NOT tenant in common. This activates right of survivorship on property and doesn’t have to go through the estate. 7. If you’re married, both people should have their name on all the vehicles, joint, otherwise it’s a headache after death. 8. Buy a file folding system. I have a plastic one that has a clasp and handle. 9. Put EVERYTHING in this file folder that would be needed if you died tomorrow. a) all land titles B) information on house insurance so it can either be eventually canceled or name changed over. C) your will (or the location of your will),  power of attorney, and personal directive D) the information for your car, car insurance, and registration on vehicles. E) information on life insurance. F) all current year papers needed for filing your taxes. Because the survivor will have to do it and will need that information. G) where your household bills are. ALL OF THEM, electricity, gas, Netflix, magazine, subscriptions everything you can think of that is in their name. Because you are going to have to cancel them. H) their credit card information where to contact to cancel the cards I) birth certificate, SIN numbers, marriage, license, etc. J) information on all your investments accounts, bank accounts, etc. K) anything else you can think of for your situation If you’re married, I’d have one box per person. When you die, the funeral home will issue many death certificates. And your lawyer will give you copies of the will. These will be needed to change over any accounts. Everything else goes through the estate which is taxed and the lawyers take their fees so I’d avoid this as much as possible especially if you’re married. This is why having property in both people‘s names is so important because it doesn’t have to go through probate. I am widowed now and I have my black file folder and my two remaining children know if something happens to me, all they have to do is grab the folder. Everything they need to take care of my estate will be located in this folder. At the beginning of every year, I open this file up and go through everything to make sure it’s up-to-date. If you are young and do not own much or can’t afford a will, you can draft one up but it must be handwritten to be classified as a legal document. You cannot type it out!! If you’re not worth much, everything will most likely be sold to pay your bills and cover your funeral expenses. But you can state who your executor will be in your handwritten will.  Disclaimer I’m not a lawyer or an accountant and this is not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer and talk to an accountant. Make sure everything is set up for you and your situation. These are situations that I personally ran into. Good luck Also I’ll add in. IF you have a lot of assets make an appointment with your accountant first. They will tell you how to properly set things up. Then take that information to your lawyer. read more
17 days after selling McDonald's ($MCD), I bought it back. But not because I'm lovin' the food… I first started buying MCD during the COVID crash in our taxable "overflow" account, at as low as $132, and ended up with 11 shares at a cost basis in the mid-$180s. Then our 20-year-old roof took storm damage, and we needed a new one, so we sold all of our McDonald's at $279 to help pay. But what surprised me most was that I missed owning it! This past Friday, I was working at the DeKalb, IL post office, and I could see a McDonald's from where I was. Every single time I looked up, people were going in and coming out. Then around lunch, two postal employees came back carrying McDonald's bags and drinks. That did it. On my lunch break, I sold some VTI and started a McDonald's position again. What's funny is that I almost never eat there. The only time I really do is at the airport, when we leave the house in a hurry and need something quick and cheap before boarding. But I don't have to be a customer. I just have to notice everybody else is. One thing I'm really lovin' is how former McDonald's CEO Harry Sonneborn famously said, McDonald's isn't in the burger business. It's in the real estate business. About 95% of the restaurants are run by franchisees who pay McDonald's rent and royalties, and McDonald's owns most of the land they sit on. That's why it has a very high 46% operating margin and 49 straight years of dividend raises (soon to be 50 years and a Dividend King this fall). One of McDonald's tasty twists is negative shareholder equity on paper, which sounds scary. It's not for two reasons: First, they've paid out more in dividends and buybacks over the years than they kept, and that's what drives the number below zero. Second, and what I find fascinating, is that all of McDonald's real estate is on the books at what they paid for it. So let's say they bought a corner lot for $700K in 1976, and it's worth $20 million today — the balance sheet still says $700K. McDonald's has a massive amount of hidden net worth that no ratio I know of shows. But I do have a bias I'm working through. Part of me wants to wait for $180 again, but that's dumb. The company earns more now than it did when my average cost was in the $180s. A more profitable business shouldn't sell for the same price it did five years ago. So instead of anchoring to an old price, I'm looking at what I'm paying for the earnings today: P/E, or price-to-earnings (showing how many dollars you're paying for each dollar of earnings), is about 20.8. Its average over the last nine years is about 26, so currently you'd pay $20.80 for every $1 of McDonald's earnings. Free cash flow yield, which shows you the exact percentage of actual cash a company makes compared to what its stock costs, is 4.3%. Its median is 3.15%. Dividend yield is 2.9%. Its 5-year average is 2.3%. By all three, this is the cheapest McDonald's has been in years. So, why is it down? U.S. traffic went soft. Lower-income consumers are pushing back on prices, and CEO Chris Kempczinski said on the last call: they don't have a strategy problem; they simply didn't execute at the level they needed to in the second quarter. I give him credit for honesty, but that's a strike against him, and I think his leash just got a lot shorter. And if you haven't seen the video of him eating the Big Arch burger, you have to watch it here. He got roasted because it looks like the man has never held or eaten a burger before! If things don't turn around soon, I think they'll replace him. But there's another thing you might not know: McDonald's corporate can recommend a price, but the franchisees don't have to follow it. Kempczinski said U.S. restaurants haven't consistently executed the discount strategy, and only about 60% to 65% of the system had put in the "under $3 menu," which is supposed to include 10 items. Thousands of independent owners, each doing their own thing. It's like herding cats, for better or worse. Turning around McDonald's is like turning around the aircraft carrier I served on, the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). It can't change direction like a small boat. It's slow, but once it turns, it turns. These things take time, and that's why I'm buying with confidence. What pushed me into buying was that parking lot in DeKalb that looked packed every time I looked at it. But the data says something different. U.S. same-store sales rose just 0.8% last quarter, and every bit of that came from higher checks — people spending more per visit — while fewer customers actually walked in. Placer.ai measured McDonald's U.S. visits down 4.5% from a year ago. So the lesson is that a busy lot doesn't tell you if it's busier than last year, and it turns out it wasn't. And on top of that, according to Inc., about 36% of McDonald's visitors come from areas where the median household income is under $50,000. Those are the people getting squeezed hardest right now, and they're the same customers McDonald's fumbled with its value menu. That looks like a broke-customer problem and a management problem, and both are fixable. I've been hearing since high school in the 1990s that McDonald's is finished. The Super Size Me documentary. Fitness fads. Fast casual dining. Now it's GLP-1s. It's 2026, and McDonald's is still growing, still profitable, and still the biggest restaurant company on earth. This looks like another in a long line of cycles, not a broken or dying business. Two things I'm watching, and if these break, I’ll reconsider adding more: U.S. guest counts. They need to stop falling and turn positive over the next few quarters. If traffic is still negative a year from now with a new value menu fully rolled out, then I was wrong, and it's structural. The October dividend raise. This would be year 50, and a solid raise of around 5% tells me management is confident. A token raise of 1% to 3% would be a warning. My plan: I'm buying in my Roth IRA, and I intend to never sell. Tax-free compounding, theoretically forever. In the $250s, I keep adding. The lower it goes, the more aggressively I buy. I don't use it. But I'm lovin' it. How about you? This is from the FREER weekly newsletter, which you can check out here 👉 https://dapper-dividends.kit.com/posts/i-never-eat-there-but-i-just-bought-the-stockread more
Congrats to Isar Aerospace on becoming the first European entity to reach orbit successfully from Continental Europe soil! Yes, before Canada!! 🤷♂️ This opens a brand new market and competition 🔥 The German company successfully launched its Spectrum rocket during the test flight from its base in Andøya, Norway. With $RKLB expanding to Germany, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they acquire Isar Aerospace… I sure hope! 🤷♂️
According to Bloomberg News co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus Matt Winkler on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, money is flowing into Canadian stocks and bonds from global investors at an unprecedented level. Please watch the below BNN interview. Here is a quick look at what is driving this capital migration and how both CAD and USD investors can position their portfolios. What the Data Shows * Global Capital Inflows: Foreign investors have channeled billions into Canadian equity and debt markets over the past year, outstripping major global peers. * Stock Market Outperformance: The Canadian market has posted strong gains relative to global benchmarks, buoyed by international capital demand. * Cooling Inflation: Canada’s inflation rate has moderated steadily compared to the US and Eurozone, providing support to Canadian fixed-income markets. * Resilient Key Sector Players: Exporters and energy heavyweights like Cenovus ($CVE / $CVE in CAD) continue to generate high cash flow while supplying essential energy demand south of the border. Portfolio Playbook for DIY Investors For Canadian Dollar (CAD) Portfolios: * Broad Market Core: Broad index ETFs such as $XIU or $VCE offer low-cost, direct exposure to Canada's top banking, energy, and industrial giants. * Dividend Yield: High-yield dividend funds like $VDY capture strong cash-flowing heavyweights that are attracting international capital. * Account Optimization: Hold Canadian dividend payers in your TFSA or taxable account to take full advantage of tax-free growth or local dividend tax credits. For US Dollar (USD) Portfolios: * US-Listed Broad Exposure: US-based investors can access Canadian market growth without currency conversions using ETFs like $EWC (iShares MSCI Canada ETF). * Cross-Listed Companies: Individual Canadian leaders trade directly on US exchanges in USD, including $CVE (Cenovus), $IMAX (IMAX Corp), and $RY (Royal Bank of Canada). * Account Optimization: Holding US-listed or cross-listed shares inside an RRSP or IRA balances exposure while taking advantage of international growth trends. Are you adjusting your asset allocation to add international exposure right now, or keeping your core focus on US mega-caps like $VOO? Please watch this BNN interview: https://youtu.be/xZGbTYirIsk?si=aW9qBb5lWIE2A8xQ read more
I'm running a live call tonight in Summit Capital, my free investing community, alongside @realnickstrategy (@wealthmatica on X), aka Mr. $ZETA himself. Nick will be sharing new details from his recent conversations with management, updates on the Palantir partnership, and real price targets and trim levels. A lot has happened with this company over the last few months and Nick's going to break it all down. If you've got money in this stock, missing this call means missing pieces of the puzzle you won't get anywhere else. We've got a ton of $ZETA investors in the community who talk about this stock every single day. Come hang out, ask questions, everyone's welcome and it's all free. Link in bio + comments. Summit Capital on top 🏔️read more
THIS HAS MARKED EVERY MAJOR BUYING & SELLING OPPORTUNITY SINCE 1990 Save this. You will use it forever. This is how generational wealth is made. Dot-Com Crash. Global Financial Crisis. COVID Crash. 2022 Bear Market. 2025 Tariff Selloff. The $VIX is Wall Street’s fear gauge. If you trade $SPY or $QQQ, you need to understand it. VIX <20: TRIM / REDUCE RISK VIX 20–30: HOLD VIX 30–40: START BUYING VIX >40: BUY THE PANIC RIGHT NOW: VIX 14.53 We’re back in the low-volatility zone. Trim positions and let winners run. Do less right now. Fear creates opportunity. That’s where the real wealth is made. read more
My plan is to attain fire 🔥 in about 2 years from now… (by DEC 2028). I will be 43.5 years old then. That means I will attain my retirement before 21.5 years… 1. Regular monthly cash flow: This is probably the biggest advantage. If your portfolio produces enough sustainable cash flow to cover your expenses, you don’t need to decide every month which investments to sell. My plan: Portfolio: $600,000 Covered-call distributions: 17% = $102,000/year Living expenses: $50,000/year You could potentially live on the cash distributions while reinvesting the excess of 50,000$. This can make early retirement feel more like receiving a salary. 2. Less psychological pressure during a market crash: Imagine you own a traditional index portfolio worth $1 million and withdraw 4%. If the market falls 30%, your portfolio could temporarily fall to $700,000. Selling investments during that period can be psychologically difficult. A covered-call strategy may continue generating option income and distributions even during volatile markets, although distributions and NAV can still decline. Covered calls can provide some downside cushioning but do not eliminate market losses. 3. Potentially easier budgeting Monthly distributions can match monthly expenses: Covered-call distributions → Bank account → Rent, groceries, bills and other expenses. This creates a simple retirement cash-flow system. 4. You may avoid selling assets during specific market conditions: With a traditional withdrawal strategy, you may need to sell investments to generate spending money. With an income-focused portfolio, distributions can provide some or all of your required cash. This can reduce the number of discretionary sales you make. $USCL$QQCL$ENCL$HHIS$MSTE$HBTE$BANK$UTES$BIGY$EASY$QDAY$SDAY$CDAY$YTSLread more
These are the three biggest misconceptions I see on here when it comes to covered-call ETFs. I call them misconceptions because the fund companies themselves do not make these claims and, in many cases, their own material directly contradicts them. Fund companies are actually pretty clear on this. They consistently remind investors that yield is not the same as return, and that total return is the number you need to look at when evaluating how an investment is actually performing. So with that said, here are my top three. 1. A higher yield means you can spend more I put this at number one because I see a lot of people looking at the yield of a fund and making investment decisions based largely on that number. A higher distribution yield means more cash is being paid out per dollar invested, but it does not mean the investment is earning a higher return. A fund yielding 12% can still produce a lower total return than a fund yielding 4%. That is the distinction people need to understand: cash flow and investment return are not the same thing. A lot of people seem to assume that a higher yield automatically means they can spend more than a traditional 4% withdrawal rate. That conclusion is not supported by math or the fund companies themselves which consistently point investors back to total return, because that is what ultimately determines how much a portfolio can support over time. 2. If you sell shares, you will eventually deplete your account This one gets repeated all the time, usually because people focus on the number of shares being sold instead of what is happening to the total value of the portfolio. Selling shares is not automatically the same thing as consuming your capital. What determines that is the relationship between your withdrawals and the total return of the investment, not the yield. If your investment earns a 10% total return and you withdraw 6%, you can still end the year with more money than you started with. You may own fewer shares, but the shares you still own can be worth more. That is really no different from owning a covered-call fund that pays a large distribution and then reinvesting part of that distribution to maintain or grow your capital. Fund companies themselves make this point. Recently, Olivia Li, Portfolio Manager at BMO ETFs who manages covered-call funds, stated: “You can create essentially the same cash flow by investing in the underlying index and periodically selling a small portion of your holdings.” Jay Pestrichelli, Chief Trading Officer at Tidal, has made the same broader point: yield does not equal return, and investors need to look at total return when evaluating these products. If the investment earns more than you spend, your capital can grow. If you consistently spend more than the investment earns, you are consuming capital. It does not really matter whether that money arrived as a distribution or because you sold a few shares. 3. Covered calls let you retire with less This last one is probably the easiest to separate from what the fund companies actually say, because you will not see them promoting this idea. It is entirely a retail-investor claim. There are some people that argue that covered-call funds allow someone to retire with less money saved simply because the fund pays a larger distribution. But a 15% distribution does not suddenly give a smaller portfolio the same spending power as a much larger one. Someone with a $500,000 portfolio earning a 15% distribution is not automatically in the same position as someone with a $1 million portfolio simply because the cash yield is higher. The distribution rate tells you how much cash is being paid out. It does not, by itself, tell you how much the portfolio can sustainably support over time. There are no fund companies that are out there pushing this narrative or supporting it and when they are asked they bring the conversation back to total return. Those are the 3 big misconceptions that I see people spreading. In the end total return tells you what the portfolio earned. If you don’t want to spend down your portfolio you have to spend less than the total return. Covered calls change how the cash flow is delivered. They do not change the mathematics of total return. There are plenty of reasons people choose to be income investors, and many of them are perfectly valid. For anyone looking seriously at income investing, I highly recommend reading The Income Factory and spending some time reading or listening to interviews with the people who actually manage these funds. One of the things you will quickly notice is that many of the more outlandish claims made about income investing are not coming from the fund managers themselves. Now I imagine there will be people who disagree with this, and for those people I would say: go directly to the fund company and ask them. Does a higher distribution rate, by itself, allow you to sustainably spend more? Is selling shares inherently worse, from an economic standpoint, than receiving the same amount of cash through a distribution? Can a covered-call fund with a higher distribution allow you to retire with a smaller portfolio? And share the answers they give below !read more
I’m a Millionaire. It Doesn’t Feel Like I Thought It Would. Here’s something that feels strange to say. By the traditional definition of net worth what we own minus what we owe our household would technically be considered millionaires. I’m not saying that as a flex. In fact, that’s kind of the point. When I was younger, a millionaire meant big houses, fancy cars and expensive vacations. Basically, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. If you just heard Robin Leach’s voice, congratulations …..you’re probably my target audience. But being a millionaire at 53 looks surprisingly… normal. We have investments and equity in our home. We also have a mortgage, and I still get up and go to work. What got me thinking about this was my friend @williamwang23 Will’s recent post about becoming a millionaire in his early 30s. That’s an incredible accomplishment. But what really stands out to me is that Will became curious about money early. He learned, saved, invested and, most importantly, gave his money time. I didn’t start DIY investing until I was 50. We saved and built home equity, but I didn’t become curious enough about investing and money until much later. And I have to give @moementumfinance Moe credit for the word curious. He talked about it during our panel at BlossomCon, and it really stuck with me. Over the last three years, I’ve asked more questions, learned more and become much more financially literate. I’ve also made mistakes. I’ve posted things that weren’t quite right, and people here have corrected me. I’m good with that. Being financially literate doesn’t mean knowing everything. It means being curious enough to ask questions and open enough to learn from the answers. I wish I’d figured that out at 30 instead of 50. Because Will and I might technically carry the same “millionaire” label today, but he’s given his money decades more time to compound. That’s why the number itself is so relative. Our goal is still to build a $1 million+ investment portfolio by retirement. On paper, our net worth could eventually be well into the millions. But we’re not planning a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous retirement. We want to travel, enjoy our time, help our kids when we can and have enough that money gives us choices. And maybe that’s the funny part. Technically, I’m already a millionaire. But we’re still working toward becoming what younger me thought a millionaire was. Not the mansion or the yacht. The freedom. The security. The choices. Maybe that’s what being wealthy really means. What does being a millionaire mean to you? read more
The next AI bottleneck is POWER ⚡️ — and these stocks have recently pulled back. If you were at blossomcon I’m sure you heard me emphasize how important power , electricity and grid upgrades will be in order for ai and physical ai to move forward. This is one of the reasons why I continue to increase exposure to electrical infrastructure Power is the next AI bottleneck because chips now arrive faster than electricity, transformers, and grid connections. Jensen Huang calls electricity “the bottleneck,” not GPUs. Energy sits at the base of AI infrastructure: factories turn electrons into tokens, so revenue is tokens per watt. He expects small nuclear reactors beside data centers and says computing may need ~1,000× more energy as agents run continuously. Elon Musk says the limiter moved from chips to transformers to generation. The U.S. will soon make more chips than it can power; he cites ~15 GW of 2027 compute sitting idle. China scales solar faster. His fix: on-site turbines now, solar satellites later. Gavin Baker frames two constraints—watts and wafers. Power shortages slow overbuild and make tokens-per-watt decisive. Watts ease around 2027–28; zoning remains a choke. Chips take months. Gigawatts take years. $VST — Generates massive amounts of electricity from nuclear and natural gas. Has 20-year nuclear power deals with AWS and Meta, giving it direct exposure to Big Tech’s growing power needs. $CEG — America’s largest nuclear operator. Supplies huge amounts of reliable 24/7 electricity, with long-term power deals tied to Microsoft and Meta’s growing data-center needs. $GEV — Builds the gas turbines and grid equipment needed to create and move electricity. AI data centers need huge amounts of new power generation, making turbines increasingly important. $VRT — Builds the power and cooling infrastructure inside data centers. Think liquid cooling, power management, UPS systems and increasingly microgrid infrastructure. $BE— Provides onsite fuel-cell power, allowing data centers to generate electricity closer to where it’s needed instead of waiting years for new grid connections. $CCO— One of the world’s largest uranium producers. Uranium is the fuel that keeps nuclear reactors running, giving Cameco exposure to rising nuclear power demand. $ETN — Makes the electrical equipment that gets power into and around the data center — breakers, switchgear, transformers and power-distribution systems. read more
