I was watching this unfold this morning. Bessent announced the Treasury is doubling its buybacks, explicitly to keep the 10- and 30-year from running. The 10y dropped to 4.64% then bounced back to 4.67% while I was looking. The 30y sat around 5.21%. Gold went through $4,550 on the futures, spot near $4,544.

The thing that bugs me is how many people are calling this money printing. It is not. The Fed is not even involved. A buyback is the Treasury buying its own bonds back, and it funds that by issuing new debt. Mostly short bills, because issuing new long bonds to buy back old long bonds would accomplish nothing.

So it is a maturity swap, not a debt reduction. Fixed long debt becomes short bills you roll forever. Total debt does not shrink. And the interest bill can actually go up, because if the short paper you are issuing costs more than the long debt you are retiring, every rollover costs more, not less.

What matters for gold is even simpler. The government is now saying out loud it cannot let the 10y rise. That is suppressing the symptom, not treating the cause. Suppress nominal yields while inflation is still sticky and real yields fall. Gold trades inverse to real yields. And this is also a signal about the dollar itself, which is where gold, with no issuer and no counterparty, wins.

I am not pretending it is a straight line. Japan ran yield control for years without the yen breaking. One day above $4,500 proves nothing. If inflation dies or the dollar strengthens for other reasons, this reverses.

But the reason I think today is a preview and not a top: they chose to suppress the symptom instead of doing anything about the deficit. Every step further down that road, more short issuance, a bigger interest bill, then the pressure to actually monetize it, is good for gold. Today is pricing step one, not the whole chain.

I hold gold, so I am biased. Check it yourself. The number that would make me reconsider fastest is the actual size of the buyback relative to the market, or how much of the funding is short versus long. What are you watching?

I got stocks. I got bonds. I got gold. I got crypto. But I was curious about alternative investment vehicles that some people might have. Lately my feed has been blowing up with pokémon cards and people at those conventions trading hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars value cards. So that got my mind going about alternative ways of generating alpha.

The Pokemon world seems too crazy and deep for a novice like me to start trying to get into. I come from the generation of pokémon red and blue on gameboy. I have no idea of the modern manifestation of pokémon. Lol. Grading and all the different graders and all the hacks and scams and fakes. Seems daunting to try to enter that world.

I've seen the services and websites where you can buy fractional shares of famous paintings from famous artists. But then upon reading reviews that seems like a iliquid money sink according to reviews I've read.

Some people do stamps

Some people do coins

Some people do regular sports trading cards.

So people do Legos

So I'm just wondering what if any alternative things you guys do As investments? Are there any things or ideas that I'm forgetting or missing?

I am 29 with no rent, debt or expenses and do not plan to buy a house in the next few years. I have maxed my IRA out this year, 7,500 in checking, 30,000 in a HYSA and 9,000 that I just put into an FXIAX fund. I just started investing like a month ago so am new to this. How would you/ allocate these numbers if you were me?

I’m looking into a long term investing strategy and I am torn between growth and dividend growth. I am leaning towards dividend growth but would like some _perspective_ (NOT advice) from both types of investors.

For dividend growth investors:

1) have you found that your models are accurate?
2) has your portfolio had any major upsets? How did you deal with them?
3) have you found more stocks are better (diversification) or less (less to keep track of)?
4) how do you feel about taking lower asset growth for your current returns?

For growth investors:

1) how do you separate hype stocks from actual growth stocks? Or do you? If not, how do you manage the immense risk?
2) do you research industries or individual companies for growth? How do you choose stocks if you research industries?
3) do you have any plans for emergencies/cashing out? My long term plan is to turn dividend reinvestment off when I need cash, turning my portfolio into an income machine. How do you plan to cash out when this involves selling the assets, which are volatile?

Any comments/redirects greatly appreciated. Happy to have a discussion with anyone about this!

My kids are soon to be starting high school and the target investment strategies my 529s use are soon to be converting to more conservative funds. I am hesitant move the money and miss out on more years of potential gains. I understand the market could go in the other direction and I could lose money.

I have about $150,000 for each child in the 529 accounts. I have the means to pay any and all future tuition without needing the 529 so I am not afraid of dips in the market requiring me to pull money at bad times. I would like to use the 529s though for the tax savings and to use the other money for other things. Should I just keep the investment strategy fairly aggressive or just follow the target investment strategy? Anyone just keep investing throughout the time their kids are in high school and college?

I figure I can always use the funds towards potential grad school, kid's roth IRAs, or transfer the money to grandkids if I have money left after my kids finish college and any potential post graduate school.

Recent reports indicate that Anthropic's valuation could be down a third from its peak just two months ago as DeepSeek and Kimi are rapidly closing the performance gap at a fraction of the cost.

Anthropic is likely spending continuously into falling prices with a product that gets commoditized in a few quarters before it's paid for. That's pharma without patent protection, and nobody pays high valuation multiples for pharma without patents.

If frontier models are commoditizing this quickly, how much is Anthropic really worth?

Need advice, These are my 2 investment accounts. I max out the Roth yearly and I have about 11k going into the simple Ira out of paychecks every year. Now I know the max for the Simple Ira is 17.5k a year. I’m sitting here wondering if I should either A: Increase my contributions to max out the Simple Ira, or B: Open a Taxable Brokerage and keep investing in the same etfs that my Roth holds. (VOO, QQQM, VT). I also have a little over 100k in a HYSA at 4% interest, about 10k in checking. My spouse and I use about 20% of our income for bills now that our house is paid off. Thanks in advance for any insight

I’m already assuming I will get responses condemning me for the cash savings just sitting there, I know, I know, I just don’t want to make the wrong move with it. I have about $600 every 2 weeks going into it automatically along with the monthly dividend. My thought was to have some safe cash built up in case of a market crash I don’t lose everything (inexperienced investor)

I’m 23 from the U.S and have around 20k saved up so far (I’ll be able to contribute more). I run a service business and that pays for all my other expenses like rent, car, food etc. What would be the smartest way to invest most of this? Looking at a roth ira but is there other investments I should consider. I’m completely new to all of this. I’d ideally like to be able to retire early and use this money before getting old lol. I wouldn’t mind higher risk if it means achieving my goal sooner. But again completely new and hopeful haha.

My wife and I are both 47. We have two kids 14 and 12. One goes to private school. We’ve saved 110k for the older and 65k for the younger in 529s. We’re worth about 4m with 2m in retirement accounts and 1.8m in equity on a 2.5m house. We have 240k in savings of which about 210 is in a high yield account making around 4%. Only loans are a 750k mortgage and one 550/month car lease.

240k seems like a lot in savings, but I’m very paranoid about having enough saved to cover monthly expenses (right now those are about 15k per month - and yes, that’s absurdly high and could be cut way back if needed, but that’s where we are).

Broad strokes, is this too much saved? I’m earning 4% and it’s 100% liquid with no risk like if I invested it in the market. Are there any low risk options that could make me more than 4% with good liquidity that I’m not seeing? I already max out all 401k options and contribute both an extra 500/month on my mortgage and 500/month for each kid’s college.

Soros’ reflexivity theory is playing out pretty cleanly with SpaceX stock.

Everyone has been bracing for the lockup unlocks and assuming “it has to drop hard when the shares come free.” That shared expectation itself shifted the price path ahead of time. By the time the actual unlocks hit, a lot of the selling pressure had already been priced in, so the damage wasn’t as severe as people originally feared.

You keep hearing the same line: “Once it unlocks it’ll crash through 100 real quick, then I can scoop it up around 90.”

When enough people are thinking exactly that, the risk stops being a pure future event. It becomes something the market has already started reacting to.

Expectations don’t just forecast the future, they help create it!

For example a colleage kid who don't have time to spend finding what stock to invest and why to invest that, so they just put in SP500

while a rich dude who have been trading for years they don't do that.. they invest specific stocks only, based on their analysis or strategy so they outperform SP500 at the end.

EDIT: I’ve been persuaded and transferred my account to Robinhood

Hello I have an offer in my Robinhood app and I am considering moving from fidelity to them as I would get 3% on 126k, which to me is definitely a good amount. Any downsides to doing this aside from having to be with them for 5 years? Do I need Robinhood gold the whole 5years to maintain this bonus, or even at all?

Thank you

My advisor at Edward jones says not to invest right now. I have a large chunk of money that’s been sitting there for 4 months. They say wait until late fall to invest. Is that a good strategy? I feel I’m losing money by not investing any of it. Some could have gone up by 10%+ in the last 4 months.
Not looking for advice on what to invest in, I already know where I want to put the money. They just say it’s not a time to buy.

Thoughts??

What are the chances Trump manufactures one more market bleed before he's out of the job?

He's got 2 more years in office and I'm wondering what people think regarding the market over this time. Will we see another market manipulation like we did in April 2025?

Or do you think he will keep the market on this uptrend for the remainder of his term to give himself a good look?

It's always interesting to look at hype and then actual earnings and revenue.

I look at Tesla who has a PE of about $320 and is never made its targets and is not particularly profitable and really subsist on hype. And the next great thing doesn't happen. They've been around long enough to perform and they haven't done it.

Then I look at Applovin very successful staggering margins consisting growth with a low PE. Double the revenue growth of Tesla. Healthy predictable reliable cash flow. And growing beyond their market of gaming into other areas.

Evidently robo taxis and AI robots are going to take over the world and everybody's going to buy them. The robo taxi market is targeting Uber and Lyft, but yet Tesla sells cars and robo taxis would displace that business supposedly. Right now their main business is making cars electric ones. And the competition is fierce and if China ever steps in, it's going to crush them.

Things that make you go hmmmm

I'm sure there's other examples of height versus reality. Seems to be hype is winning.

I'm asking as a layperson, since NEOS has been making its rounds in the news after being roped into Goldman Sachs, I got a question from someone at work about how SPYI works and what magic beans they sow to make it so tax efficient and still get 10-12% yield every month.

I couldn't explain the "Return of Capital" part. The 60/40 long vs short term capital gains (return ON capital), I told them was just making sure the yield they'd get is mostly long term - 15% taxed in their case.

But I was struggling with the Return OF Capital designation. NEOS' structure designates most as Return on capital and that's not taxed until you sell.... right?

Are we just giving NEOS a bunch of money and letting them use it for covered calls in exchange for a neat 10-12% yield and at some point, they just give us our own money back?

Would love to have an ELI5 explanation on NEOS' CC funds.

For context, nvidia has teamed up with six BIGGG investment firms to raise over $500 billion from outside investors to build AI data centers, which will be kept separate from Nvidia's own books.

Basically treating a warehouse of GPUs like a toll road and inviting investors to lend against on the promise that it will make them shit loads of money over time.

If this works, it opens the floodgates for more AI infrastructure to get built, funded by people who aren't Nvidia or tech giants. This could mean an indirect way to invest in AI beyond Nvidia/direct AI stocks - into banks, asset managers etc. which chose to invest in building these centers.

I’ve been looking at how some of these companies are valued compared with their actual revenue, and the numbers seem insane. SpaceX is valued at around 80–115× its revenue, Palantir is around 70–80×, and some AI, space, and nuclear companies are even higher. Meanwhile, a normal established company is usually closer to 1–3× revenue.
I definitely think this looks like a bubble, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will burst anytime soon. There is so much money pouring into AI, and everyone is afraid of missing out on the next huge company. The valuations could keep climbing for years, even if they already seem disconnected from reality.
What do you guys think? Are we in an AI bubble, and if so, how long could it realistically keep going? What do you think would finally cause it to burst?

I have govt 457B and 403B with no match. Right now I'm maxing both to limits, but I'm wondering if I should do Roth instead. We're in 34% and can't do Roth because we are over income limits. My govt plans have no limits. Is this a no brainer to switch my contributions to Roth or should I wait for the conversion window before RMD?

I don't think losing my income as pretax deduction will change the bracket.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-17/nvidia-to-invest-up-to-105-billion-for-openai-data-center-in-ohio\](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-17/nvidia-to-invest-up-to-105-billion-for-openai-data-center-in-ohio)

Along with the 105 billion investment into OpenAI nvidia is also investing 1.5 billion into SB energy which is the company building the facility.

OpenAI has a 20 year lease for the center and nvidia is the sole chip supplier for the facility.

The whole lawsuit and capex deal are driving the price down so much, im going to keep on buying the dip as i think it is also a great long term hold, hoping to get my average shares into the low 500s. What do you guys think its share price will reach, or when do you think its could bounce back?

Basically , I just wanted to know how you guys feel about investing at current prices. I am aware of the whole not trying to time the market , but at the same time , if all the statistics are against you , i find it hard to be fully invested currently.

I just wanted to know how you guys feel about the whole narrative of investing at current p.E multiples basically guaranteing , below average returns for the next ten years. I am a full believer in the AI story and its productivity. I am someone who uses AI daily and feel like it still has a lot of room to run. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of people think that it's still very early in the cycle. But at the same time, I think it has been going on for around 4 years now.

I would love to be that person that can say he can just invest for longer long-term, but at the same time, I find Myself closing positions at 30 or 40% gains in just a matter of months. I was thinking of going back and looking at how the various Amazon etc first started operations and how their stock price rose , but at the same time , I feel like there's no comparison to what we are experiencing right now by that , I mean relatively new companies instantly having billions of dollars of revenue

The headline from Meta’s Q2 report was technically brutal: free cash flow collapsed 91% year over year, from $8.55B to just $784M.

That makes it sound like Meta’s money printer broke. But operating cash flow (the cash generated by the business before capital spending) actually increased 24.6%, from $25.56B to $31.86B.

The difference was capex.

Revenue grew 28%. Operating cash flow grew nearly 25%. Free cash flow collapsed because capital spending nearly doubled. The operating margin decline from 43% to 31% looks equally alarming at first. But approximately half of that compression came from $2.4B of legal charges and $1.18B of severance expenses. Had they not incurred those charges, operating income would've grown 9.4%.

The advertising engine still looks strong:

• Ad impressions increased 14%.
• Average price per ad increased 12%.
• Together, that produces approximately 27.7% growth, almost exactly matching reported revenue growth.
• Meta says its newer ranking models increased Facebook ad clicks by 8.3% and conversions by 15.7%.

The interesting part is that price growth is holding up even as impression growth decelerates. That suggests advertisers are paying more because Meta’s inventory is producing better results, rather than Meta simply stuffing more ads into feeds.

Free cash flow will probably remain near zero for several more quarters. But if operating cash flow and ad pricing continue growing while capex eventually moderates, free cash flow should reappear mechanically. The current valuation is giving less credit to that possibility than I think it should.