Together with Public
Happy Thursday, Everyone!
We hope everyone is having an awesome week thus far.
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A quick breakdown — in case you don’t have the time.
⭐ The inflation glide path just hit a wall.
⭐ Austin & Robert explain why prediction markets matter to you.
⭐ The equal-weight S&P 500 recently hit a record high.
⭐ Housing starts jumped in January while building permits fell.
⭐ Netflix is paying up to $600 million for Ben Affleck's AI startup.
Members of the Rich Habits Network have had the opportunity to invest in the following companies over the last several months:
We’re actually offering an investment opportunity in Apptronik at the moment!
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It has come to our attention that many of you may not fully understand what it means to invest alongside Robert and Austin in startups and pre-IPO companies.
Over the last 18 months, we’ve provided opportunities for hundreds of accredited investors to invest millions of dollars into over a two dozen companies (including the ones shown above).
Market Overview
ETF Winners & Losers
Chart of the Week
The inflation glide path just hit a wall — and the market hasn't priced it in yet.
February CPI came in at 2.4% year-over-year with core at 2.5%. Both exactly in line with estimates. On paper, this is the kind of clean read that keeps the Fed on track and gives investors one less thing to worry about.
But here's the problem — this data is already stale.
The Cleveland Fed's inflation nowcast is projecting March CPI at 2.87%, a meaningful jump from February's 2.4%. That's not a rounding error — that's the beginning of the Iran energy shock showing up in the inflation data.
Oil has gone from $60 at the start of the year to north of $90. Gas prices are up +20% in 11 days. Ground beef is up +15% year-over-year. Coffee is up +18%. And CNBC's own analysts estimate that if the Iran conflict drags on through the rest of the year, CPI could reach 3.5% by December — nearly double the Fed's 2% target. On the other hand, Trump says the conflict will end rather quickly.
The Fed was on a glide path toward one or two more rate cuts in 2026. Markets were largely pricing that in. But supply-side inflation from an energy shock doesn't respond to interest rate adjustments. Cut too early and you risk re-anchoring inflation expectations higher. Hold too long and you risk choking a labor market that was already softening. Seven in ten components of CPI were already running above the Fed's 2% target before the Iran conflict even started.
February's report is the last clean read we're going to get for a while. The next few prints will tell us whether this is a temporary energy pass-through or the start of something stickier. Either way, the assumption that inflation was a solved problem just got a lot more complicated.
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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 break down prediction markets, explain why they're more accurate than polls, pundits, and headlines, and show you exactly how to use them to make smarter investment decisions.
We are not condoning gambling using these prediction markets. If that was your takeaway from the episode please listen to it again. These prediction markets should be used as tools to help you conduct scenario analysis when re-balancing your portfolio.
Here's what they covered…
See What the Smart Money Actually Thinks — Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi show you real-time probabilities backed by real dollars. Right now, the odds of at least one Fed rate cut by July are around 70%, but three or more cuts by year-end? Only 15%. This is the kind of scenario analysis hedge funds used to pay teams of analysts millions to produce — and you can pull it up on your phone for free.
Why Prediction Markets Beat Polls and Pundits — It comes down to one word: incentives. When a pollster calls you, there's no cost to lying. When you put $500 on an outcome on Polymarket, you've done your homework. Polls tell you what people say. Markets tell you what people believe.
How to Actually Use This for Your Portfolio — Every serious hedge fund does scenario analysis — they assign probabilities to outcomes and position accordingly. Prediction markets give you that same framework. If the probability of a US recession is trading at 30%, and you've pulled all your money out of the market because of one scary headline, you're betting on the 30% scenario and ignoring the 70% base case. The point isn't to predict the future with certainty — it's to think in probabilities instead of making emotional, knee-jerk reactions.
The bottom line: check the prediction markets before you react to the headlines. It takes 30 seconds, it's free, and it'll give you a better read on what's actually likely to happen than most financial advisers are giving their clients.
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 equal-weight S&P 500 recently hit a record high.
RSP — the equal-weight S&P 500 ETF — is up over +2% year-to-date while SPY sank -1%, representing a 3% difference. Just three weeks ago, the difference between the two of them was 5%! That was the widest performance gap between the two ETFs in years.
RSP just posted a record month of inflows as investors actively rotate out of mega-cap concentration and into the other 493 stocks. Goldman Sachs is on the record saying Mag 7 will continue to trail equal-weight this year. (Funny enough we just interviewed the Chief Investment Officer at Goldman Sachs on the podcast, and the episode drops on Monday! Make sure you tune in because we literally talked about this rotation prediction).
All seven Magnificent Seven names are negative in 2026. Microsoft is down -14.4%. Tesla is down -6.9%. The group as a whole (as measured by the MAGS ETF) has lost -5.8% while the broader market quietly grinds higher without them (screenshot below).
In Q4 2025, tech drove 66% of the S&P 500's total EPS growth. That kind of concentration was always going to unwind — the question was when, not if. Now earnings growth is broadening into Financials, Materials, and Industrials domestically. And we’re beginning to see that earnings growth show up in the year-to-date performance of the “boring” sectors of the market.
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And internationally, the story is even more striking — emerging market earnings are expected to grow +29% in 2026, more than double the US estimate of +14%. Europe and Japan are seeing EPS revisions move higher while $104 billion has already flowed into international developed market funds this year versus just $25 billion into US equities.
We talk about “active management” on the podcast all of the time. Yes, it’s a great idea to own the S&P 500 and American capitalism over the long haul. We have the vast majority of our own portfolios in that specific theme. However, during times of uncertainty (like right now) having diversification into international markets and “beaten down” sectors of the market could be a good idea.
If you’re inside the Rich Habits Network, you’ll know we started doing this at the end of January.
If your portfolio is still built around the same seven stocks that carried 2024 and 2025, the market is telling you something. The average stock is doing better than the handful of names that dominated the last two years. Pull up your holdings. Map out your exposure. Because the market just got a lot wider than the Mag 7.
Robert’s Callout
Housing starts jumped +7.2% in January — but building permits fell -5.4%.
Builders are finishing projects they already committed to, but they're pulling back on new ones. The NAHB Housing Market Index sits at 36 — well below the 50 threshold that signals positive sentiment — marking 22 consecutive months of contraction. Two-thirds of builders are offering incentives just to move inventory.
Construction costs remain elevated, mortgage rates are still above 6%, and the "lock-in effect" — where existing homeowners refuse to sell because they're sitting on 3% mortgages — continues to choke the supply of existing homes. Total inventory is 1.22 million units, a 3.7-month supply. That's better than last year, but it's still nowhere near what a healthy market looks like.
The underlying demand for housing hasn't gone away — demographics, household formation, and a decade of underbuilding guarantee that. But the economics of actually buying or building a home remain punishing for most Americans. And now layer in an energy shock that could push inflation higher and delay the rate relief that both buyers and builders are counting on. If the Fed holds rates steady — or worse, signals that cuts are off the table — the permits data is going to keep declining.
This is a market stuck between structural demand and cyclical affordability pressure. At some point, one side breaks. Either rates come down enough to unlock supply and demand, or prices adjust to meet reality. For now, builders are telling you which way they're leaning — and it's cautious.
The Rich Habits Radar
👉 Meta acquired Moltbook, a viral AI agent social network.
👉 Netflix is paying up to $600 million for Ben Affleck's AI startup.
👉 NVIDIA partnered with Nebius to build AI cloud infrastructure.
👉 Elliott Management took a $1 billion stake in Pinterest.
👉 Bluesky CEO Jay Graber stepped down to chief innovation officer.
👉 An antitrust lawsuit is being filed to block Nexstar's acquisition of Tegna.
👉 Live Nation reached an antitrust settlement with the DOJ.
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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.