Good morning, investors. Today we’re covering, 50 years of bubbles, Big Tech’s big bills, how to invest in an AI-driven world, and much more.
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This Week’s Top Stories
NEED TO KNOW
50 Years Of Bubbles
Are we in a bubble?
Gold is rising for safety. But stocks are rising too.
This kind of risk-off/risk-on divergence has often appeared ahead of major market turning points.
Markets break when everything is going up, but nobody feels comfortable.
And that’s exactly where we are now.
Gold’s Move Is Not Normal
Gold needed 5,600+ years to reach $1,000/oz (2008, during the financial crisis)
It just became a $5,000/oz asset in a fraction of that time
Assets move like this when capital is seeking protection, not return.
Why This Looks Like 1979 (Almost Perfectly)
The current gold rally shares the core mechanics of the 1979–1980 gold bubble:
Parabolic acceleration
Crisis-driven demand
Narratives overpowering valuation
Traditional pricing models breaking
Silver acting as leveraged gold (always a late-stage signal)
In both periods, gold stopped behaving like a commodity and started behaving like a monetary escape valve.
But the Differences Matter
This is where 2026 diverges from 1979.
Buyers
1979: Retail mania and panic buying
2026: Central banks and sovereigns (slower, structural demand)
Interest Rates
1979: Aggressive tightening
2026: Easing bias with heavy debt limiting policy options
Monetary Credibility
1979: Strong U.S. balance sheet
2026: High debt and weaker trust in fiat
Psychology
1979: Gold dominated public attention
2026: Gold remains under-owned; focus stays on AI, crypto, equities
That combination explains why gold can behave like a bubble without the classic mania yet.
The Bigger Warning Is The Cross-Asset Behavior
What’s more concerning than gold itself is this:
Gold up sharply (fear hedge)
Stocks up, but jittery and reactive
Volatility clusters around earnings
Small surprises cause big price swings
That exact mix shows up late in every bubble cycle.
Gold rising with stocks doesn’t signal confidence.
It signals hedging underneath optimism.
That’s defensive behavior.
Is Gold a Bubble?
The honest answer: it’s acting like both.
The price action looks bubble-like
The buyer base looks structural
The macro backdrop is far weaker than in past cycles
That’s why this moment is dangerous.
When safety assets go vertical while risk assets wobble, history says the next phase is about preservation, not performance.
In other words, it’s time to play defense.
CHART OF THE WEEK
Big Tech, Big Bills
Big tech is about to spend +$600 billion on capital expenditures.
To put that into perspective:
This rivals the GDP of mid-sized countries
It’s the largest corporate investment cycle since the late 1990s
And it’s happening while the rest of the economy is flashing warning signs
That combination should make you pause.
Meanwhile, Main Street is cracking.
Office delinquencies at record highs
Commercial real estate refinancing risk exploding
Equity valuations near historical extremes
Gold at all-time highs
Silver trading like a small-cap altcoin
Consumers relying more on credit while savings fall
When corporate investment goes vertical while defensive assets surge, history says the system is becoming unstable.
And this looks uncomfortably like before the dot com.
AI may be transformative, just like the internet was.
But overinvestment still destroys capital.
Gold’s Crash History
Gold outperformed stocks in 7 of 9 major crash periods.
S&P 500 average drawdown: –30.9%
Gold average return: +6.5%
This is why gold is labeled a defensive asset.
But here’s the problem in 2026.
Gold isn’t just defensive anymore.
It’s acting speculative.
Instead of slow, steady protection:
Gold is moving parabolically
Daily swings resemble risk assets
Prices are racing ahead of historical trend lines
That’s not how gold typically behaves.
What we’re seeing now, is a flight to safety paired with macro-political warfare.
Real Estate Trouble
11.7% of office CMBS loans now past due.
The highest level in over 25 years.
Office rent delinquencies are one of the cleanest signals that Main Street stress is real, even if markets haven’t priced it yet.
Here is why this is a problem.
Everyday businesses don’t miss bond payments first.
They miss rent.
When office delinquencies rise:
Small and mid-sized firms are under pressure
Banks tighten lending
Refinancing becomes harder
Layoffs follow with a lag
That feedback loop eventually reaches earnings, hiring, and consumption.
All the way up to bigger publicly listed companies.
But remember, the market ≠ the economy
The stock market can rally while the real economy weakens.
And that gap can persist longer than people expect.
But historically, one always catches up to the other.
AI-Resistant Investing
The AI market is projected to grow at a 37% CAGR from 2026 to 2031.
When everything is being disrupted, stability becomes an asset.
Here is the overlooked side of the AI boom.
Some industries:
Have low labor intensity
Rely on physical assets
Operate under regulation, scarcity, or necessity
Can use AI without being replaced by it
Those businesses don’t need exponential innovation to survive.
They just need demand to persist.
Owning businesses that don’t depend on AI hype is becoming a hedge by itself.
Not against innovation, but against expectations.
Other Big Things
🛍️ Sydney Sweeney – Rings NYSE opening bell with American Eagle’s CEO
🌐 Alphabet – Plans tech’s first 100-year bond since the dot-com era
🚀 SpaceX – Musk shifts priorities, now targeting a moon ‘city’ before Mars
📉 Michael Saylor – Snaps up 1,142 BTC despite a $5B unrealized loss
🤖 SpaceX + xAI – Musk closes a record-setting deal