Why a Middle-Class Life Costs So Much More Now

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

September 10, 2026 - Oil ripped nearly 7% today, WTI pressing $103 and Brent hitting $108, on news that Saudi output has fallen to a 36-year low and Houthi forces have seized a coastal city and multiple Red Sea islands near the Bab-el-Mandeb strait — putting them in position to threaten shipping through it more easily than at any point in this conflict. Zach and Chase break down why almost nobody has noticed that an oil-sector position has quietly outperformed semiconductors this year, even as AI dominates every headline — and why that stat stopped being a curiosity today: mortgages crossed 7%, diesel crossed $6 a gallon nationwide, and the 10-year Treasury just posted its highest weekly close since 2007. They also unpack why Trump's own jawboning about oil prices is losing its power to move markets, and make the case for why continuing the current course may now be more politically costly than cutting losses. Plus: the $5,000 stimulus-check promise, and why Chase thinks it costs more than it helps.Schedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com

September 9, 2026 - The jobs numbers are solid, prices are up, and the labor market's strong — by every normal measure the Fed should be raising rates, not talking about cutting them. But Chase makes the case that the reason those numbers look strong at all comes down to one narrow input: AI capital expenditure. He estimates it at 3 to 3.5% of the entire US economy this year, against real GDP growth of roughly 4 to 4.5% — take it away, he says, and growth is at best flat, more likely negative. Also today: Treasury Secretary Bessent's $6 billion stock buyback plan appears to have backfired (bond yields rose, not fell, right after the announcement), and what that says about credibility and half-measures.Schedule your complimentary Know Your Risk Portfolio Review at KnowYourRiskRadio.com