How to Check Your Stocks When Money Costs More

Profits are growing and borrowing got more expensive. That tug-of-war picked the winners and losers from October 5 to 9, 2026, and it tells you what to check in the stocks you own.
Rates Went Up. Stocks Held. Here’s Why.

The 10-year Treasury closed at 5.28% and the S&P 500 fund slipped 0.2%. Earnings are carrying more of the load, and that changes what an owner should check.
Stocks vs. Cash in Retirement: What 125 Years and 35 Countries Actually Show

What more than a century of market history says about the money you keep in cash, and what it does not say.
Chip Stocks Bear Market: Should You Sell Now?

Week ended July 18, 2026. The S&P 500 fell 1.5% while the equal-weight index slipped 0.4%. Money left crowded AI names for energy and defensives.
“3” Reasons Why Human Ingenuity Is More Valuable Than All the “Rare Earths” on Earth

Rice University’s flash Joule heating converts garbage to graphene in 10 milliseconds at 3,000°C—costing just $125 per ton in electricity ( Rice University News). Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel, a property verified by Columbia University research that measured its tensile strength at AI is becoming like the internet: too embedded to break out. […]
Stocks Just Had Their Worst Week in a Year. The Companies? Still Fine.

Weekly Market & ValueAligned Portfolio Review — trading week of June 1–5, 2026 The short version The S&P 500 — a list of 500 of the biggest U.S. companies — fell 2.6% last week. Tech stocks fell harder, down 5.6%. Almost all the selling hit the biggest tech and AI names. The average stock barely […]
The Unpriced Peace Dividend: What an Open Iran Means for Global Markets

April 6, 2026 | TL;DR Iran has 208 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves. Forty-seven years of sanctions have kept most of it offline. James Altucher and Iranian-born investor Kiana Danial argue that regime collapse would trigger a peace dividend larger than the one that followed the Soviet […]
How the Iran Conflict and $111 Oil Are Shaping Stocks – Weekly Market Review

One Variable Rules This Market: Oil, Iran, and the Week That Showed Investors What Really Matters April 5, 2026 | David Berkowitz, CFA | VAP Wealth Advisors TL;DR The S&P 500 snapped a five-week losing streak with a 3.4% gain through Thursday, April 2, led by mega-cap tech and semiconductors — then the weekend changed […]
March 2026 Market Review: Iran Oil Shock, Job Losses, & the Software Rally

War with Iran, oil above $90, a 92,000-job loss, and the software rally that no one expected Published: March 8, 2026 | Red Bank, NJ TL;DR — Weekly market summary The S&P 500 closed at 6,740.02 on March 6, falling 2.0% for the week and reaching its lowest close of 2026 after U.S.-Israeli strikes on […]
Why Market Volatility is the Price of Wealth Creation

Published: March 5, 2026 | Red Bank, NJ TL;DR $100,000 invested in the S&P 500 in January 1973 grew to over $24 million by year-end 2025, with dividends reinvested [OfficialData.org] S&P 500 cash dividends rose from roughly $14.89 per share in 1996 to $78.92 in 2025, a 430%+ increase [Standard & Poor’s via Multpl.com] Private […]