Together with Starfighters Space
Happy Thursday, everyone!
During this Memorial Day Weekend, we honor those who lost their lives serving in the United States Armed Forces. To all of you who have lost family members or friends, we hope this weekend is filled with purpose and positive memories.
Before you sign off for the holiday weekend, we hope you’ll take a few minutes to review the most important happenings in the market.
Let’s dive into everything you should be watching!
A quick breakdown — in case you don’t have the time.
⭐ Investors are growing more worried about inflation than war.
⭐ We broke down our new favorite ETFs.
⭐ We’re experiencing earnings-based market growth, not a big bubble.
⭐ Inflation has quietly erased most retail growth.
⭐ Nvidia beat earnings, record data center revenue showed high chip demand.
Market Overview
As of market open, 5/21/26
ETF Winners & Losers
Chart of the Week
Investors are growing more worried about inflation than war.
According to Bank of America’s latest Global Fund Manager Survey, the biggest “tail risk” for investors is no longer geopolitical conflict — it’s inflation returning for a second wave.
Roughly 40% of fund managers now view “second-wave inflation” as the biggest market risk, up sharply from 26% last month. Meanwhile, concern around geopolitical conflict dropped to 20%, down from 44% in April when it was the top concern.
That shift says a lot about how investors are viewing the market right now. While wars and geopolitical tensions can create short-term volatility, many investors are becoming increasingly concerned that persistently high oil prices, rising wages, and elevated government spending could keep inflation stuck above the Fed’s target for much longer than expected.
If inflation proves sticky again, it could complicate the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut interest rates and keep pressure on both consumers and valuations across the market.
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In Case You Missed It…
In this week’s Monday-morning episode of the Rich Habits Podcast (linked here) — Austin and Robert sit down with Troy Cates and Garrett Paolella of NEOS Funds to break down one of the most talked-about investing themes of 2026: generating high monthly income from assets like the S&P 500, Gold, Bitcoin, and even Oil.
After last week’s deep dive into covered call ETFs, this episode goes straight to the source — exploring how NEOS structures these strategies and why so many investors are suddenly paying attention.
Here’s what they covered…
The Market Backdrop Driving Income Strategies — The conversation starts with a macro update on inflation, the Fed, oil prices, and the market volatility that defined the first half of 2026. With rate cuts delayed and geopolitical tensions reshaping inflation expectations, investors are increasingly looking for income-producing strategies that can perform in uncertain environments.
How NEOS Generates Income From Gold, Oil & Bitcoin — One of the biggest topics was NEOS’s commodity-focused ETFs like IAUI, BTCI, and MLPI. Instead of relying on traditional dividends, these funds use options strategies to generate monthly distributions from assets that historically produced little or no income on their own.
The “Boosted” ETF Strategy — Troy and Garrett also explain NEOS’s newer boosted ETFs, which aim to deliver even higher income by increasing options exposure. While these products can generate larger monthly distributions, they also come with different tradeoffs around volatility and upside participation.
Why Austin Reinvests the Monthly Distributions — Austin shares how he’s personally using funds like IAUI and BTCI — collecting the monthly cash flow and reinvesting it back into the ETFs to steadily compound both income and share count over time.
Passive income investing is evolving far beyond traditional dividend stocks. In today’s market, investors are increasingly using options-based ETFs to generate cash flow from asset classes that historically never paid them anything at all.
Here’s a link to the Q&A episode that was posted on Thursday.
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
We’re experiencing earnings-based market growth, not a big bubble.
This is the real reason the market continues grinding higher despite constant recession fears.
Wall Street analysts keep raising earnings estimates for the S&P 500, with projected earnings now reaching roughly $334 per share in 2026 and nearly $385 per share in 2027. Those are massive jumps from current levels and a major reason why valuations have remained elevated even as interest rates stay high and inflation pressures persist.
At the end of the day, stock prices tend to follow earnings over long periods of time. If corporate profits continue growing this quickly — especially across technology, AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and large-cap growth — the market can justify higher multiples underneath the surface.
This also helps explain why every pullback has continued getting bought aggressively. Investors are betting that AI-driven productivity gains, strong corporate margins, and accelerating business investment will keep pushing earnings estimates higher over the next several years.
Of course, the risk is that expectations eventually become too optimistic. But for now, analysts continue revising estimates upward almost every single week — and as long as earnings keep surprising to the upside, the bull case for equities remains intact.
Robert’s Callout
Inflation has quietly erased most retail growth.
At first glance, the consumer still looks incredibly strong. Since April 2021, U.S. retail and food service sales have climbed more than 24%, which sounds like a booming economy on paper.
But once inflation is factored in, the story changes dramatically.
Real retail sales — meaning sales adjusted for inflation — have been essentially flat for the last five years. Americans are spending far more money than they were a few years ago, but much of that increase has simply gone toward paying higher prices rather than buying more goods and services. Groceries, gas, insurance, restaurants, housing, and everyday essentials have all become meaningfully more expensive since 2021.
This helps explain why many consumers still feel financially stretched despite low unemployment, steady wage growth, and a stock market hovering near all-time highs. The economy has continued moving forward, but inflation has quietly eaten away at purchasing power for millions of households.
It’s also a reminder that headline spending data can sometimes look stronger than the underlying reality. Consumers are still spending, but much of that spending is increasingly going toward keeping up with higher costs rather than materially improving quality of life or discretionary purchasing power.
The Rich Habits Radar
👉 Nvidia beat earnings, record data center revenue showed high chip demand.
👉 OpenAI announced plans for a potential September IPO
👉 SpaceX filed for its IPO, which will be the largest of all-time.
👉 Leopold Aschenbrenner’s ‘Situational Awareness’ fund released new 13F.
👉 Meta cut thousands of jobs as Zuckerberg pushed deeper into AI efficiency.
👉 Analog Devices beat earnings & announced a $1.5B power-chip acquisition tied to AI data center demand.
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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or a recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
Disclosure: This content is sponsored by NEOS Investments. The creator is compensated by NEOS to discuss NEOS ETFs. This content is for informational purposes only, and is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice, and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell any security. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Before investing, carefully review the NEOS ETFs prospectus at neosfunds.com.