The S&P 500 just closed its best quarter in six years, gaining around 14% and clearing 7,600 for the first time. If you only look at the index, the economy looks fine. Look one layer down, and almost nothing agrees with that story.
This ‘Starburst’ Could Be Bigger Than the SpaceX IPO
A tech firm that’s been called "the unseen winner of the AI race" could soon break itself up into three separate companies.
The next Netflix... The next Tesla... And the next Amazon are all poised to spin off just from this one stock.
That would create a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for investors who buy shares in the company before it happens.
Buy shares of this stock today, and you could get the same amount of free shares automatically deposited in your account for each spinoff.
Meaning, 10 shares could turn into 30 shares overnight.
And you could wake up with the world's newest, hottest tech disruptors all sitting in your account – with no extra work on your part.
Believe me, when it happens, it feels like magic, but it's actually something called a "starburst."
This brilliant type of spinoff is especially rare in the tech industry.
And if the starburst announcement goes public (and it hasn't yet), it's going to be all the media talks about for a while afterward.
This potential "starburst" is my No. 1 recommendation for how average folks can set themselves up to benefit from what I'm calling AI's "jump to lightspeed" moment.
The Fed just penciled in a hike, not a cut
Coming into 2026, the expectation was rate cuts. That flipped. The Fed's own projections now show nine of eighteen officials expect at least one rate hike before the year is out. That is not a small shift. It means the central bank sees inflation as a bigger threat right now than a slowing economy, and it means the relief that comes with lower borrowing costs is further away than most households were counting on.
Inflation is still climbing, not cooling
Core PCE, the inflation gauge the Fed watches most closely, rose 3.4% year-over-year in May, the highest reading since October 2023. Headline PCE ran at 4.1%, the highest since April 2023. Both numbers moved in the wrong direction for four straight months. A rallying stock market doesn't change what shows up on a grocery receipt or a credit card statement, and right now those numbers are getting worse, not better.
Consumers are telling a very different story than stocks
The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index bottomed at a record low of 44.8 in May before a modest recovery to 49.5 in June. Even with that bounce, sentiment is still one of the lowest readings recorded since the survey began in the 1970s, and it sits well below where it was before the year started. Households aren't reading the same market headlines as Wall Street. They're reading their own bills.
The rally's foundation is narrower than the index suggests
Look inside the S&P 500's first-half gain and the picture is less broad than the index-level number implies. Information technology supplied the overwhelming majority of the best-performing stocks in the index, while more than a third of S&P 500 companies actually declined over the same stretch. A handful of AI-linked giants are carrying a lot of the weight. That's not necessarily a warning sign on its own, but it does mean the index's strength is more concentrated than the "best quarter in six years" headline suggests.
Final Take
None of this means the rally is fake or that a crash is coming next week. Earnings have actually been strong, and that's real support underneath the market. But a rising index and a strained household budget can both be true at the same time, and right now they are. The Fed is leaning toward higher rates, not lower ones. Inflation is accelerating, not fading. And the average family's sense of their own financial footing hasn't caught up with the stock ticker, and may not for a while. If your portfolio is riding the same handful of AI names that drove this quarter, that's worth knowing plainly, not as a reason to panic, but as a reason to know exactly what you're holding and why.
Elon Musk's Insane Projection: 7,692,207% (presented by Brownstone Research)
Written by Deniss Slinkins
Millionaire Core
