Capital Wealth DailyInflation Blinked. The Fed Gets a Month Off.
Part II, the August 12–13 Wall Street Journal: a tame CPI, three trillion sidelined dollars and the firms hunting them, a $500 billion plan to turn chips into collateral, and healthcare’s new job as the anti-AI hedge. For balance, a marathon through Bordeaux with twenty wine stops.
Inflation blinked. The Fed gets a month off.
July CPI cooled to 3.4%, barely, from 3.5%. Core ran a tame 0.2% for the month. That was enough. Futures now put 58% odds on the Fed holding in September, up from a coin flip. The hawks who wanted a hike lost their best argument to a two-tenths surprise. The market’s response was almost suspiciously calm. One strategist called it the “Enter Sandman market. Sleep with one eye open.”
Our TakeCooling to 3.4% is still not 2%. It gives the Fed permission to wait. It doesn’t give portfolios permission to relax. Action: keep the bill ladder earning while the committee argues, and read the TIPS story below for the week’s real income news.
Inflation blinked. It cooled a tenth, and the Fed bought itself a month of quiet.
$3 trillion is sitting on the sidelines earning less than inflation.
Anthropic is shopping the largest listing ever, bigger than SpaceX’s $86 billion.
Long TIPS pay about 3% above inflation. That is the best offer of its kind in decades. We bought it.
The Pfizer review closed with a trim. The coverage test doesn’t care how the yield looks.
Markets · The Money File
6 stories · 3 pictured · 3 listed
Three trillion dollars is sitting in cash. Wall Street just bought the candy store.
Scared money is a market, and Wall Street just priced it. Our answer is duller and cheaper: a bill ladder for the cash, coverage-tested dividends for the income, and no 12% distribution until we ask where the 12% comes from.
Anthropic is shopping the largest IPO in history. The timing is the story.
IPOs price at the seller’s favorite moment. That’s the whole genre. We’ll read the filing the way we read SpaceX’s: with admiration, arithmetic, and no order ticket.
Wall Street wants to turn Nvidia chips into an asset class. Plenty could go wrong.
When the product finances the customer who buys the product, the cycle works until it doesn’t. We own the toll booths’ earnings, not their paper, and the AI bond flood stays an AVOID.
Off Duty · The Human File
6 stories · 3 pictured · 3 listed
France holds a marathon with twenty wine stops. It sells out in nine minutes.
Somewhere between the optimizers and the abstainers is a Frenchman jogging past a chateau with a plastic cup, living to 90 out of spite. The plan should fund that guy.
The best longevity drug this week is your grandchildren.
Purpose is the asset the statement can’t show. In planning terms, pay to stay close: the flights, the spare bedroom, the school-pickup schedule. It compounds better than most tickers.
The quiet income deal of the decade: 3% real, guaranteed, for 30 years.
This one goes in the portfolio, not just the paper. A starter LTPZ position joins the income sleeve, tax-deferred accounts only. The bill ladder handles today. TIPS now handle the next thirty years.
From the desk Bias, the book, what’s priced, the planopen
Inflation gave the Fed a month off and the market a shrug. The week’s real work was in the income aisle: $3 trillion of scared cash, Goldman buying the boomer-candy shop that sells to it, and 30-year TIPS at nearly 3% real, the best inflation-protected deal in decades. The TIPS are the one we acted on. A starter LTPZ position joins the income sleeve. Elsewhere, the AI trade grew a financing arm skeptics call circular. Healthcare formally became the market’s hedge. Our Texas power watch aged nicely as the incumbents fell on schedule.
- S&P7,748.50 +0.26%
- DJIA53,770.27 −0.04%
- NASDAQ26,588.49 +0.54%
- 10Y4.682%
- OIL$83.27 −$0.07
- GOLD$4,408.90 +$25.90
- Iger and Kushner buy the Lakers at $12.5B, the richest sports price ever
- GM builds a $4.5B supplier safety net
- Bezos circles Liverpool FC at an $8B valuation
- United Wholesale’s $600M hedging hole and an Oaktree rescue
- Home sales slip as mortgages hit 6.69%
- Intel upsizes its raise to $20B
- Sony and TSMC form a $4.7B image-sensor venture
- StubHub’s World Cup refund mess (−15%)
- On Holding’s deliberate −20%
- Domino’s builds a pizza for the 43% who eat alone
- Cisco’s $9.3B year of AI orders
- BofA pledges $250B for energy and AI infrastructure
- Lilly sues the black-market peptide shops
- SF rents pass New York on the AI boom
- Wendy’s +15% on a Peltz play
- Property-tax relief hits four state ballots
- A $15 alien fishing lure clears every shelf in America
- Eclipse glasses resell for $8,400 in Spain.
Three planning triggers. TIPS belong in the IRA, never the taxable account (phantom-income tax). Condo owners should request the reserve study before the Fannie/Freddie rules reprice weak buildings. And if a “12% income ETF” pitch reaches you, bring it to the next review, and we’ll find where the 12% comes from together.