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Join us this Friday, August 28, from 12-1pm ET for an exclusive webinar with Katie Stockton — taking place exclusively inside the Rich Habits Network!
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A quick breakdown — in case you don’t have the time.
⭐ Households are spending more than they earn.
⭐ Do these wealth building habits actually matter?
⭐ AI-related mentions on earnings calls are roughly 2.7x last year’s level.
⭐ The inflation story looks better than it did in 2022.
⭐ Nvidia printed $96.2B and guided $108B excluding China.
Market Overview
As of Market Open 8/27/26
ETF Winners & Losers
Chart of the Week
Households are spending more than they earn.
The U.S. consumer still looks resilient on the surface. Spending has held up, retail sales have not collapsed, and many investors continue to point to the consumer as the backbone of the economy.
But this chart shows a more fragile reality underneath.
Real disposable income has trailed consumer spending for 24 straight months — the longest such stretch in data going back to the 1960s. In other words, households are still spending, but they are no longer fully funding that spending through income growth alone.
That matters because the “resilient consumer” story starts to look different when the buffer underneath it is thinning. Credit, savings drawdowns, and trade-down behavior are doing more of the work that wage growth used to do. That helps explain why companies like Walmart can keep taking share and cutting prices while consumer confidence and expectations remain under pressure.
This does not mean a recession begins tomorrow. But it does suggest the consumer is becoming more leveraged and more sensitive to any shock — whether that comes from higher prices, rising unemployment, or tighter credit conditions.
Just take Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) for example — their stock collapsed by -28% this week because people simply aren’t buying fancy sneakers from Foot Locker like they used to.
The K-shaped economy is real, and it’s only getting worse. Either own assets that appreciate in value, or get left behind. It’s never been more important to be an investor!
The High-Yield Account for Business Cash
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 Monday’s episode of the Rich Habits Podcast (linked here) — Austin and Robert go after the habits that actually move net worth, not the ones that just sound responsible.
Here’s what they covered…
Automation Beats Willpower — The first habit is simple: automate your investing and start as early as possible. Willpower eventually breaks, but systems keep executing. When money moves into your brokerage, Roth IRA, or 401(k) before it hits your checking account, you stop treating it like spendable cash.
Track Net Worth, Not Just Income — Income tells you what you make. Net worth tells you whether you’re actually getting richer. Austin and Robert explain why tracking assets minus liabilities every month creates the feedback loop most people are missing — especially high earners whose spending rises right alongside their paycheck.
Windfalls Are Wealth Accelerators — Bonuses, tax refunds, work payouts, inheritances, and equity events should not be treated like “house money.” Because windfalls are not already built into your lifestyle, they are some of the highest-leverage dollars you’ll ever receive — if you decide in advance how much goes straight into investments.
Protect Time to Keep Learning — Financial knowledge compounds too. The tools, tax rules, investing products, and market environment are constantly changing, which means your financial education cannot stop once you leave school. Even one hour a week spent learning can lead to better decisions years down the road.
The Action Checklist — Ask yourself: is my investing automated, do I know my current net worth, did I invest part of my last windfall, and when was the last time I intentionally learned something new about money? If one answer is weak, that’s the next habit to build.
The bottom line: wealth is not built in one big decision. It is built through boring repetition — automating early, measuring progress, reinvesting surplus, and continuing to learn while time and compounding do the heavy lifting.
Here’s a link to the Q&A episode that was posted today.
You can submit questions for 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
AI-related mentions on earnings calls are roughly 2.7x last year’s level.
For the last two years, the AI trade has mostly been framed around mega-cap tech, semiconductors, cloud providers, and data centers. But earnings call transcripts are starting to show a much broader story.
AI-related mentions across S&P 500 companies outside of Information Technology are now running roughly 2.7x last year’s level. That means corporate America is not just talking about AI more — companies outside of traditional tech are increasingly trying to figure out how to use it.
Financials stand out the most. The sector now accounts for nearly 40% of all ex-tech AI mentions, and the Financial Services industry group alone has more AI mentions than the entire Industrials sector. Compare this now to the YTD performance of the Financial Services sector shown on Wall Street Favorites below — telling a different story only up +9.3%.
Under the surface, some of the increases are massive. Payment processors are seeing AI mentions up roughly 6x year-over-year. Life Sciences Tools & Services are up around 17x. Research and Consulting Services are up roughly 5x.
That tells us the next phase of AI is not just about who builds the infrastructure. It is about who adopts the tools, improves workflows, automates processes, and uses AI to expand margins over time.
Financials, Industrials, and Health Care now account for roughly 85% of the increase in non-tech AI mentions over the past year. That is a big deal.
AI is becoming an economy-wide productivity story. The first wave was about chips and data centers. The next wave is about adoption — and the companies that figure out how to use AI effectively may become the next group investors start paying attention to.
And don’t just think about AI as a “USA-only” technology. VXUS, EEM, and IEMG all offer exposure to companies around the world who are using AI to grow their earnings per share.
Robert’s Callout
The inflation story looks better than it did in 2022, but it is not normal.
This chart shows the distribution of Core PCE categories by year-over-year inflation. In December 2019, only 24% of categories were running above 3% inflation. By June 2022, that number surged to 72% during the peak inflation shock.
Today, we are not back at 2022 extremes — but we are also not back to the pre-pandemic environment. As of July 2026, 54% of Core PCE categories are still running above 3% inflation, up from 47% last year.
That matters because inflation is not just one headline number. It is the number of everyday categories where prices are still rising faster than normal. When more than half of core inflation categories are above 3%, households continue to feel pressure even if the headline CPI number has cooled.
This is why the Fed remains stuck. Inflation has improved, but it has not normalized. The labor market is still holding up, asset prices remain elevated, and price pressure is still too broad for policymakers to declare victory.
Slower inflation does not mean lower prices. It just means prices are rising at a slower pace. And when inflation stays spread across a wide range of categories, the cost of everyday life remains difficult even if the macro data looks better on paper.
This is exactly what we highlighted in this week’s Chart of the Week: inflation has changed the way households spend, save, and survive.
The Rich Habits Radar
👉 Nvidia printed $96.2B and guided $108B with no China in the number.
👉 Bitcoin cleared $80,000, its highest since mid-May.
👉 Oil dropped more than 5% this week after Hormuz mines were cleared.
👉 New home sales fell -10.5% in July, the slowest pace since January.
👉 Apple saw U.S. App Store spending drop -6%, the first decline in a decade.
👉 Gold ETFs took in $6.4B last week, the biggest haul in 10 months.
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