Smart Investing Newsletter

The housing market continues to struggle, and the latest data shows just how difficult things have become for both buyers and builders.

If you’re unfamiliar with Kalshi, it operates a prediction market that allows people to wager on the outcome of an incredibly wide range of events. These include everything from football games to the words the Federal Reserve chairman might use in a speech and even the weather.

We have officially entered the era of trillion-dollar math, and some of the numbers being thrown around should make investors stop and think. A recent Barron’s article highlights the extraordinary financial assumptions behind the AI boom.

That sounds like a very silly question, but the reality is that credit card companies like Mastercard now have AI bots that can shop for you. This is crazy to me. People already have enough trouble controlling their spending on credit cards, and now credit card companies are rolling out programs that can do even more shopping for you.

It is hard to tell for sure because private investments are, by definition, private, and we don't have the same level of transparency that we have with publicly traded investments. However, with the 10-year Treasury crossing the 5% mark, common sense would tell you that higher interest rates could put even more strain on an already strained private debt and private equity market.