Why You're Not Really Investing...

No one wants to say it... I will.

Good morning?

Here's the truth no one wants to say out loud.

You're not investing in a free market.

You're playing in a rigged game.

The Federal Reserve has been pulling the strings for 15 years.

They've turned investing into theater.

Since the Great Financial Crisis, the Fed hasn't sold a single 10-year Treasury bond “on net,” according to Luke Gromman, founder of Forest from the Trees.

They've been buying them up in large quantities instead.

The biggest player in the bond market only buys. Never sells.

That's not a market. That's manipulation.

Even when they say they're "tightening," they just roll old bonds into new ones.

The buying never stops. The fake demand never ends.

What This Means for You

When the Fed continues to buy bonds, it pushes prices up and rates down.

Way down.

The 10-year Treasury should currently yield between 5.5% and 6%, according to various academic reports.

Multiple Fed and academic studies have estimated QE's impact on long-term rates:

• Gagnon et al. (2011): QE1 reduced 10-year yields by ~100 basis points.

• Krishnamurthy & Vissing-Jorgensen (2013): QE2 impact was ~20–30 basis points.

• Greenwood, Hanson & Stein (Harvard): Every $400B in Fed purchases drops 10-year rates by ~20–40 bps.

• Fed staff (Bonis et al. 2017): Cumulative QE reduced 10-year yields by ~120 bps.

That difference might seem small. But it changes everything.

Low rates make everything expensive:

• Stocks go up

• Houses go wild

• People take wild risks

• Nothing makes sense anymore

Pension funds can't find safe returns, so they invest in riskier assets.

Retirees buy junk bonds. Regular people bet on meme stocks.

Why? Because the Fed made safe investments pay nothing.

What Would Happen If They Stopped?

Imagine the Fed stepped back tomorrow. Let the market set real rates.

The 10-year Treasury would jump to 6%. Maybe higher.

The results ought to be outrageous.

• Stocks would crash 30% or more

• Mortgages would surge above 8%

• Venture capital would dry up instantly

• Tech stocks would get crushed

This isn't a guess. It's math.

Higher rates mean future profits are worth less today.

Growth stocks that trade at crazy prices would collapse.

Public pensions are already broke. They need stocks to continue rising indefinitely. If the market drops 30%, these funds will be destroyed.

Your 401k? Same problem. Five years of gains could vanish overnight.

Millions of people would have to delay retirement.

Consumer spending would tank.

The "wealth effect" would become the poverty effect.

This Isn't Capitalism

What we have now isn't a free market. It's financial theater.

They've replaced market signals with managed outcomes. They've turned asset bubbles into a false sense of prosperity. And they've made us all addicted to their cheap money drug.

Real capitalism allows prices to reveal the truth.

This system hides the truth behind artificial support.

How to Survive This Mess

You can't change the system. But you can protect yourself.

Stay sharp. Stay disciplined. Watch what matters:

Global Liquidity - Follow the Money Flows. When central banks inject money into the economy, asset prices tend to rise. When they pull back, everything falls. This is your early warning system.

Momentum signals - Don't fight the trend, but know when it's getting stretched. Markets overshoot in both directions. Use momentum to ride the wave, but get ready to jump off before it crashes. We have avoided every major downturn since we started making this public in January 2022.

Insider buying - Company executives are often in the best position to understand their businesses. When they're buying with their own money, pay attention. When they're selling everything, that's your cue too. When they’re buying… that’s your cue.

These are your timing tools. Your compass in the Fed's fog.

They cut through the noise and reveal what's truly happening.

Don't get greedy when markets run too high. Take some profits.

Reset your expectations. Remember: the Fed won't save you forever.

One day, this game will end. The Fed will have to choose between saving the dollar and saving asset prices. They can't do both forever.

When that day comes, you want to be ready, not caught holding the bag.