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Happy Thursday, everyone!
Hope y’all are having a great week so far.
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A quick breakdown — in case you don’t have the time.
⭐ The Fed held rates steady yesterday.
⭐ Goldman Sachs’ approach to building a modern portfolio.
⭐ The DJIA closed below its 200-day moving average.
⭐ Consumer confidence is quietly breaking down.
⭐ Nvidia projected $1 trillion in chip orders through 2027.
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Market Overview
ETF Winners & Losers
Chart of the Week
The Fed held rates steady yesterday at 3.5%–3.75%.
Powell said inflation isn't coming down as much as they'd "hoped." The updated Summary of Economic Projections tells the story — the Fed raised its core PCE inflation forecast from 2.5% to 2.7% for 2026. That's a meaningful revision in Fed-speak. GDP was nudged up to 2.4%, but the inflation revision is what matters. Seven of 19 FOMC members now expect zero rate cuts this year — up from six in December.
The dot plot still shows one cut in 2026, but the distribution is drifting hawkish. More dots are clustering at 3.5%–3.75% (i.e., no change) than we saw three months ago. The gap between the hawks and the doves is widening, which tells you the committee itself doesn't agree on where this is going.
Here’s the problem — oil is pressing $95. PPI came in at +0.7% this week — more than double expectations. The Cleveland Fed's nowcast is projecting March CPI at 2.87%, a meaningful jump from February's 2.4%. Gas prices are up +20% in 11 days. Ground beef is up +15% year-over-year. Coffee is up +18%. Historically speaking, the Fed would be able to raise interest rates to combat this inflation (despite it being supply side). But after seeing the February jobs report (payrolls fell by -92K and unemployment ticked up to 4.4%) — they can’t raise rates. It would crush the economy.
Below is the current odds on Polymarket — helping us understand how real money is being deployed against these new assumptions shared by Jerome Powell yesterday. There’s a 33% chance of NO RATE CUTS in 2026, and a 32% chance of only ONE. This is a material change from where we were only 4 months ago — as an underlying tailwind heading into 2026 was a 2-3 rate cut assumption by the Fed.
Cut too early and you risk re-anchoring inflation expectations higher. Hold too long and you risk choking a labor market that's already softening — consumer sentiment just fell to a three-month low. The Dow dropped 750 points after Powell's press conference. All three major indexes hit fresh 2026 lows yesterday.
Like it or not, the older I get the more I realize “Don’t fight the Fed” is the only phrase in investing that seems to matter. It’s crazy to see how much “power” the Fed has on the stock market — not because they want it, but because of how important their job is to balance the dual-mandate.
If you’ve been inside the Rich Habits Network, you’ll have known for months now that we’ve been expecting volatility and our base case assumption for the indices back in January was a revisiting of their 200-day moving averages. The indices are all now down -6% to -9% —it’s time to see where things go from here.
We remain optimistic!
Today’s Rich Habits Newsletter is brought to you by Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build your portfolio for the long haul with stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
Beyond the assets, Public integrates AI in ways that are actually useful. You can get real-time context on why a stock you care about is moving, instant earnings call summaries—you can even build a custom index from a prompt.
In Case You Missed It…
In this week's Monday-morning episode of the Rich Habits Podcast (linked here) — Austin and Robert sat down with Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Global Co-Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, to break down why $2.8 trillion has moved into model portfolios, where the macro risks really are, and what Goldman is telling institutions about portfolio construction right now.
Here's what they covered…
Why $2.8 Trillion Is Moving Into Model Portfolios — Model portfolios are essentially institutional-quality portfolio frameworks that advisors can outsource to instead of building everything from scratch. Goldman builds the same portfolio construction they use for their institutional CIO business and delivers it to the retail market. The industry is projected to grow over 160% in the coming years as advisors increasingly focus on practice-building while outsourcing the investment management piece.
The Macro Backdrop Is Reflationary — Alexandra described the global economy as reflationary with solid growth, but flagged two risks most people aren't watching: a softening labor market and stress building in private credit, where 20-40% of exposure is concentrated in software companies. Higher oil prices from the Iran conflict are already hitting consumers at the pump and could shift the inflation trajectory from "glide path" to "stickier than expected."
Don't Chase Momentum — Goldman's playbook right now is quality over junk. Alexandra pointed to unprofitable tech names that rallied +67% through October 2025, then gave back -22% in a month. If you were the last one in, you only experienced the drawdown. The emphasis is on companies with strong balance sheets, real cash flow, and diversification beyond US large cap — especially as earnings breadth expands into international markets.
The Broadening Is Real — Austin and Robert highlighted that RSP (equal-weight S&P 500) is outperforming SPY year-to-date, and Alexandra confirmed Goldman expects the Mag 7 to continue trailing equal-weight in 2026. Energy, staples, materials, and utilities are quietly leading, while all seven Magnificent Seven names are negative on the year. Capital is rotating — the only question is whether your portfolio has rotated with it.
The big takeaway: the era of buying the index and letting seven stocks carry your returns is over. Active management, diversification, and portfolio construction matter more in 2026 than they have in years. Goldman's multi-asset team just said it on our podcast.
Here’s a link to the Q&A episode that was posted this morning.
You can submit questions for these episodes by asking them inside of the Rich Habits Network, replying to this email, or sending us a DM on Instagram.
The Rich Habits Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple, iHeart, YouTube, and wherever else you get your content!
Austin’s Callout
The DJIA closed below its 200-day moving average.
As we’ve been warning about for months now inside of the Rich Habits Network, the high-beta names (unprofitable tech, space exploration, nuclear energy, quantum computing, etc.) all experienced their climax tops back in October and November — foreshadowing what could be to come for the major indices.
Now only five short months later, all major indices (starting with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shown above) are trading at or below their respective 200-day moving averages. On the surface, this isn’t a big deal as market pullbacks are healthy and normal. However, if exhaustion begins to creep in and too much time is spent below these moving averages, stage analysis (shown below) tells us that a stage 4 decline could be headed our way.
For now, this isn’t a time to panic.
Either you’ve been in the Rich Habits Network and preparing for this volatility alongside us for months now, or you haven’t been. Now is NOT the time to try and time the markets — now is the time to double down on dollar cost averaging and be happy to have the opportunity to buy long-standing indices below their all-time highs, especially in your long-term retirement accounts.
For example, I bought more DIA in my Solo 401k yesterday! Dollar cost averaging is always the plan. During times of volatility is when investors get scared and STOP investing — this is a mistake. Stay invested, and continue to deploy net new capital into blue chip index funds and ETFs.
Robert’s Callout
Consumer confidence is quietly breaking down.
Michigan consumer sentiment fell to 55.5 in March, a three-month low. The forward-looking expectations component dropped to 54.1, the weakest reading since November. One-year inflation expectations held steady at 3.4%. These aren't dramatic single-month moves, but the trend matters — sentiment has now declined for three consecutive months, and it's happening against a backdrop of rising gas prices, sticky food inflation, and an Iran war with no clear end date.
Lululemon reported earnings this week and the headline numbers looked fine — they beat Q4 estimates. But the guidance told a different story. Management forecast a second straight year of profit declines and flagged weakness across every income cohort and every age group. This is a company that sells $128 leggings to people who are supposed to be financially comfortable. When their customer is pulling back, it's not a Lululemon problem — it's a consumer problem.
The consumer has been the backbone of this economy since the pandemic recovery — consumer spending drives roughly 70% of GDP. When confidence starts to erode on the expectations side, it eventually shows up in spending data. That's exactly what Lululemon's guidance is telling us.
The labor market is still holding, but "holding" isn't the same as "strong." And now layer in the Fed's decision yesterday to hold rates steady with a hawkish tone — Powell said inflation isn't coming down as fast as "hoped." If the rate relief that consumers and businesses have been counting on gets pushed further out, the spending pullback we're seeing in the early data could accelerate.
The takeaway isn't to panic — it's to recognize that the consumer tailwind that carried markets for two years is weakening. Earnings reports from premium brands are real-time economic data, and right now, they're flashing caution.
The Rich Habits Radar
👉 Nvidia projected $1 trillion in chip orders through 2027.
👉 The Fed held rates steady and raised its inflation forecast to 2.7%.
👉 Lululemon beat Q4 but guided down for all of 2026.
👉 NPR called private credit "the new source of big trouble on Wall Street."
👉 Dollar Tree announced plans to close nearly 1,000 stores.
👉 Mastercard is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for $1.8 billion.
👉 Google launched "Stitch," an AI-powered design canvas.
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