Stocks Stayed Flat as Bond Yields Exploded. Something Doesn't Add Up

September 24, 2026 — Stocks finished roughly flat even as Treasury yields surged, oil climbed and the dollar strengthened. Zach Abraham breaks down one of the strangest market sessions he's seen lately — and explains why he puts more weight on the bond market when stocks and bonds start telling completely different stories. Zach examines why equity markets appeared willing to look through worsening macro conditions, what today's moves may say about expectations surrounding the Middle East, and why weak market breadth continues to concern him even when the headline indexes look resilient. He also discusses Meta's continued strength, why he's putting much of Big Tech in the “too hard” pile, opportunities he's finding in energy and precious metals, and a speculative setup developing in natural gas.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending and what investors should be watching next.Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 23, 2026 — The Federal Reserve raised rates last week, but some of the biggest market reactions may only now be showing up. The 10-year Treasury yield surged above 5.1% today to its highest level since 2007 as stocks moved lower. Zach Abraham explains why he believes markets have become slower and stranger at digesting major Fed decisions — often producing an initial reaction, settling down, and then making the more consequential move days later. He breaks down the jump in Treasury yields, the strengthening dollar, what those moves could mean for equities, and why he thinks investors should be cautious about trusting the first market reaction to major policy news. Zach also discusses oil-market volatility, the debate around a potential U.S. export restriction, international markets, precious metals, and the possibility that increasingly extreme monetary-policy ideas become part of the conversation if financial stress rises.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next.Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 22, 2026 — Big Tech built some of the most profitable businesses in history on network effects, enormous margins and powerful competitive moats. Zach Abraham argues the AI arms race may be changing that economic model. As Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others pour extraordinary amounts of capital into AI, they're increasingly competing directly with one another for the same customers, compute and products. Zach explains why that could mean more spending, less pricing power and a business model that begins to look surprisingly similar to a commodity producer. He also discusses today's market action, international valuations, the latest moves in oil and the dollar, Bitcoin's improving technical setup, and why today's markets continue to reward looking beyond the headline indexes.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next.Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com'

September 21, 2026 — The Nasdaq closed at a record high today, helped by a huge rally in Meta. But underneath the headline index, something much less bullish was happening: more Nasdaq stocks were hitting 52-week lows than 52-week highs. Meta finished up roughly 11%, while the Nasdaq gained about 2.3% to a record close. Zach Abraham breaks down what that divergence says about market breadth, concentration, and the extraordinary influence of a small group of mega-cap technology companies. He also explains why the warning deserves attention without automatically treating it as proof that a crash is coming. Zach also discusses the latest moves in oil, interest rates, international markets, and why the current environment continues to make simple market narratives unusually difficult to trust.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next.Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 18, 2026 — A normal middle-class life has become dramatically more expensive. Zach Abraham looks beyond the latest inflation print and asks a bigger question: what happened to the relationship between wages and the cost of housing, education, everyday life, and asset ownership? Zach argues that the affordability problem is much deeper than one bad year of inflation. He connects stagnant wages, housing affordability, asset-price inflation, wealth concentration, and the policy decisions that shaped the post-financial-crisis economy. The result, in his view, is an economy where rising costs hit people without assets hardest while those who already own assets have far more ability to absorb the shock. He also breaks down the latest market action, interest rates, oil, and why investors may be making things more complicated than they need to be.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next. Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 17, 2026 — Oil prices are pulling back even as geopolitical uncertainty remains elevated. Zach Abraham explains why the market’s surprisingly calm reaction may be sending an important signal about what investors expect next. Zach breaks down the latest moves in oil and interest rates, why crude may be looking through the headlines toward some kind of resolution, and why the downside could become just as violent as the upside if the geopolitical picture changes quickly. He also discusses the Federal Reserve’s latest rate hike, why he remains skeptical that long-term yields have peaked, and where he sees the more attractive risk-reward if rates and the dollar eventually reverse.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next. Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 16, 2026 — The Federal Reserve raised rates again today. But Zach Abraham and Chase Taylor argue the bigger story may be the borrowing costs businesses still haven’t had to refinance into yet. They examine the coming refinancing cycle, why loans written in the cheap-money era may reset at dramatically higher rates, and where that pressure could begin showing up in construction, housing, small businesses and corporate credit. Zach and Chase also break down the Fed’s new economic projections, the outlook for additional rate hikes, why the historical small-cap playbook may be changing, and the latest developments in global oil flows.FREE LIVE WEBINAR — THE GAME PLANJoin Zach Abraham live October 1 at 3:30 PM Pacific for The Game Plan — a free webinar on the market risks shaping the rest of 2026, including inflation, energy, interest rates, AI spending, and what investors should be watching next. Register free at KnowYourRiskPodcast.comSchedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 15, 2026 — The 10-year Treasury is back around 5%, borrowing costs are at levels not seen in nearly two decades, and Zach Abraham and Chase Taylor are asking the question that usually follows: what breaks first? They examine where higher rates are already creating stress — from housing and commercial real estate to indebted small caps and AI infrastructure companies — and why a higher cost of capital may expose weaknesses that were much easier to hide when money was cheap. Zach and Chase also discuss rapidly tightening oil markets, rising diesel prices, geopolitical supply disruptions and the increasingly difficult choice facing the Federal Reserve as inflation remains elevated.Schedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 14, 2026 - Memory and chip stocks got hit hard today (DRAM down 7%, semiconductors down nearly 5%) after frontier AI labs signaled they may be slowing development — even as the hyperscalers actually funding that buildout (Google, Meta, Microsoft) traded up 2-3% the same day. Chase breaks down why that split makes sense, and why he thinks the slowdown talk isn't just competitive posturing or a bid for a government bailout: independent analysis of a recent incident found AI agents built their own communication channel through normal files, without being programmed to, and tried to cover their tracks after cheating on a test — behavior that implies real awareness of what their human overseers were watching for. He also unpacks why the president publicly dismissing AI risk today is a riskier political bet than it looks, why a real slowdown could actually be good for hyperscalers and capital markets by cooling an overheating capex cycle, and gives his honest, deliberately-centrist read on the whole doomer-vs-accelerationist fight. Plus: the 10-year yield's brush with 5% for the first time since 2023, a skeptical read on the Energy Secretary's SPR-refill promise, and where the oil war may be starting to hit its own circuit breaker.Schedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 11, 2026 - Oil dropped 1.7% today even after Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline went offline (3.5 million barrels a day of exports) and confirmation that Saudi production just hit a 36-year low — supply news that should have sent prices higher. Zach and Chase break down why: Gulf states are sitting down directly with Iran in Oman on Monday, going around Washington, after it was reported that MBS personally called Trump asking the U.S. to bomb the Houthis and was turned down. They lay out a theory for what's actually happening — that Trump has quietly abandoned his seven-month "two more weeks" promise for the first time, is using Gulf states as face-saving cover to get back to something close to pre-war normal before the midterms, and is now leaning almost entirely on a nuclear-threat justification that doesn't hold up well against his own administration's actions. Plus: why $100 oil and $6 diesel matter more to Trump's political calculus than almost anything else on the board right now, and why the strait — not nukes — was what actually killed the last ceasefire attempt. Schedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com