Happy Sunday, and welcome to the first real week of summer. Pools are open, the grills are out, and the calendar finally agrees with the weather.

Markets have been jumpy lately. Inflation is proving stickier than anyone wanted, rates look like they're staying higher for longer, and stocks and bonds have spent the spring lurching around on the same headlines. We're not going to pretend to know what any of it does next.

This is why I invest in every property on mogul. Real estate isn't trying to win the week. A roof over someone's head gets rented in good months and bad ones, and the rent tends to climb right alongside the cost of everything else. That's the whole idea.

Alright, that's enough from me. Let's get into it.

- Alex Blackwood

💾 SK Hynix Joins $1 Trillion Club as AI Chip Boom Surges: SK Hynix has crossed a $1 trillion market valuation, joining rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology as soaring demand for AI memory chips fuels massive gains across the semiconductor industry. Investors are betting that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure will continue driving strong profits and global chip demand.

🧠 Nvidia Plans $150B Annual Investment in Taiwan as AI Demand Surges: Nvidia CEO said the company intends to invest about $150 billion per year in Taiwan, calling the country the “epicenter” of the global AI revolution. The spending would deepen Nvidia’s reliance on Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem, especially for advanced chip manufacturing, as global demand for AI computing power continues to accelerate.

💳 Robinhood introduces AI tools for trading and spending: Robinhood is rolling out AI-powered features that allow users to get assistance with stock trading and even make credit-card purchases through automated suggestions and actions. The company says the tools are designed to simplify financial decisions and personalize investing, but the move also raises concerns about risk management and how much control users should hand over to AI-driven systems in sensitive financial activities.

The Senate just handed the central bank a new chair, by the narrowest margin in modern history

Why the asset that pays rent didn't blink

The Fed has a new boss. On May 13, the Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve in a 54-45 vote, the closest in modern history. Jerome Powell's term ended two days later, Warsh was sworn in at the White House the week after, and his first meeting actually running the show lands June 16-17. He inherits the trickiest setup any incoming chair has faced in years: inflation at a three-year high, gas prices climbing, and a White House that has spent more than a year publicly demanding lower rates.

The Setup

Warsh is a puzzle. He built his name as a hawk, the kind of governor who wants rates high enough to choke inflation out. Then last year he flipped, arguing rates should come down, partly on a theory that AI will boost productivity enough to keep prices in line. So he arrives running a Fed the president wants cutting, while the actual inflation data is heading the other way. He has promised to keep the Fed "strictly independent" and to never predetermine a rate at the White House's request. Markets aren't fully buying the calm. Traders have even started pricing in a chance of a rate hike by year-end, something that looked absurd a few months ago.

The Question Everyone Will Ask, and a Better One

The market is going to spend all summer on one question: does Warsh cut, hold, or hike? It is a fun parlor game and a terrible way to build a portfolio, because both outcomes are already half priced in and nobody, Warsh included, actually knows yet. The more useful question is the one almost no one asks. Which assets don't care about the answer?

Why This Matters

Here is the thing about a rental house. It doesn't watch the FOMC. If Warsh cuts and asset prices drift higher, the homes we own tend to float up with everything else. If inflation stays hot and rates stay higher for longer, fewer people can afford to buy, more of them rent, and rents tend to reprice upward. 

It's an 8-bedroom, 3-bathroom PadSplit in Mechanicsville, just outside Richmond, sourced off-market at 2,945 square feet. The walkout basement is its own self-contained unit, with three of the bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchenette, so the residents on that floor get a level of privacy most co-living rooms don't offer. Brandy Creek Commons, anchored by a Publix and an Aldi, sits less than a mile away.

Every home we own in Richmond is fully occupied right now. And, so is the zip The Ashe sits in: 23111 has 23 total PadSplit rooms in it, and all 23 are rented. One of our other Richmond homes, The Drebin, is among the best-performing properties on the entire platform. The Ashe is our third home in a market that has yet to give us an empty room.

This book explains exactly why the modern world feels like it is shifting under everyone at once. Dalio is not arguing politics, he is mapping long-term cycles. He studies 500+ years of history across Dutch, British, and American dominance and treats them as repeatable systems driven by debt, productivity, internal conflict, and external competition.

His main idea is that every major power looks strongest right before it starts to weaken. Not because it suddenly fails, but because success creates imbalances. Debt grows faster than income, inequality widens, politics becomes more fractured, and short-term fixes replace long-term discipline.

He also links global power to economic structure. Reserve currency status, military strength, education, and capital markets all reinforce each other until a tipping point. When a rising power starts matching the incumbent, capital begins to shift quietly before politics catches up.

The book is not predicting collapse. It is showing that periods that feel chaotic, like inflation, geopolitical tension, and rising debt, are often what transitions between world orders actually look like while they are happening.

Read it before you assume today’s global tension is unique. Dalio is showing you the same pattern has played out before, just with different players.

 ⭐ 4.6 / 5.0 in my book (no pun intended)

Researchers at University of Cambridge built it so they could check if coffee was ready without leaving their desks.