2026: The Final Rigged Game? Peter St-Onge on the "Counterfeiting Cartel."

Complexity Kills Returns

Multi-step investment theses fail because each additional variable compounds risk, similar to sports parlays where every leg must hit for success, making simple questions and straightforward strategies superior.

AI Timeline: 1997 Not 2000

Current AI metrics including media coverage, Fed rates, and public opinion suggest the market resembles the 1997-1998 growth phase rather than the 2000 bubble peak, indicating potential runway before valuation corrections.

Usage vs. Value Divergence

Internet usage continued rising through the 2001 crash while only asset values collapsed, suggesting AI adoption will persist even during potential "AI winters" when valuations contract.

Trim on Capex Collapse

Reduce AI allocation from 40% to 20% if capital expenditure suddenly collapses, data center construction faces energy constraints, or major players cancel investments, but avoid rotating to defensive assets unless a broad recession threatens.

Economics of Choice

Austrian economics studies human choice and supply/demand dynamics dating back to Aristotle, contrasting with Keynesianism's assumption that government possesses benevolent omniscience to fix market failures.

The Fed's Boom-Bust Cycle

Central banks artificially lower rates to stimulate growth, creating inflation, then hike rates to strangle it, causing recessions—a 500-year-old government-driven pattern that creates malinvestments requiring liquidation.

Debunking Animal Spirits

Keynesian theory attributes recessions to irrational "animal spirits" and mass investor stupidity, absolving government of blame, while Austrian theory identifies interest rate manipulation as the predictable cause.

Recession Correlation

Charts of recessions and Federal Reserve interest rates show near-perfect correlation because cheap credit creates unsustainable businesses that collapse when rates rise, unlike Keynesian claims of random sentiment shifts.

Bad News Is Good News

Markets now rally on negative economic data because investors anticipate Federal Reserve liquidity injections, explaining why stocks surged during recent government shutdowns historically destructive to GDP.

Quantitative Easing Scale

Since 2008, the Fed creates money digitally to buy assets, injecting $9 trillion during COVID—equivalent to 40% of all dollars in existence—making liquidity, not fundamentals, the primary market driver.

Defensive Rotation Threshold

Maintain growth exposure during sector-specific bubbles, but rotate to defensive assets like Campbell's Soup stock only when the Fed's rate hikes threaten a broad economy-wide recession requiring shelter from systemic collapse.