Graham Stephan

Hey everyone! Here's my weekly email recap of all things money – from the stock market to real estate to personal finance – with research and actionable ideas I'd love for you to join, and it's totally free :) grahamstephan.com/newsletter

I post an extra weekly video for members, everything else is early access across my channels. You don't lose out anything by not joining the membership.

@GrahamStephan It’s a damn shame that most of your YouTube content is member only content now.

Might get hate for this (most people just read a headline and take it as face value)...but, this "$11B Loss" is the estimated additional personal income tax revenue that would have been collected in tax year 2022 if New York had maintained its 2010 share of U.S. millionaires. It has nothing to do with Mamdani, his policies, or anything that occurred after 2022. Basically, the data calculated how many extra millionaires NY “should” have had if it matched national growth, then applied the average tax liability of actual millionaires in 2022. For the record, I think plenty of Mamdani's policies are counterproductive...rent control raises prices..."taxing the rich" is a just a politically popular move that gets votes at the detriment of long term growth...but, I also don't like spinning the data without including more nuance that might change people's perspective.

Left Los Angeles in 2020. So glad to be out of this gridlocked mess at 3:30pm on a Thursday.

@MrBeast 101,420

First person to reply with the exact number of pennies in this room win $10,000

@pitdesi Seems mostly performative. Very little here, if anything, will make a difference to the average person. I’d call this a total waste of time, it was only done to make it look as though they’re doing something.

This bill is a huge win for the abundance movement. It passed the Senate 85–5 and the House 358–32. Finally, a serious federal housing bill focused on supply instead of subsidies! The bill: • Streamlines permitting • Cuts red tape • Supports manufactured and modular housing • Pushes local governments toward zoning reform • Improves housing finance tools • Helps smaller banks make construction and mortgage loans • Gives cities more incentive to actually build homes That matters because almost everything is downstream of housing. Where people can live determines where they can work, who they can marry, how many kids they can have, how long their commute is, whether they can save money, whether startups can hire, whether cities stay dynamic, and whether the American dream still works. In general, we made it too hard, too slow, and too expensive to build homes where people want to live. Then we acted shocked when prices exploded. The best part of this bill to me is the signal that both parties are finally admitting that supply matters. The real villain for all of us is scarcity! V V cool that housing abundance is no longer a niche YIMBY idea on twitter.

I don’t know any details here, but this wouldn’t be the first time that a “trusted tax person” pocketed the money and never filed returns without Carlos Mencia knowing. Seems absolutely idiotic not to file taxes as a high profile person, so unless he’s a total moron, there’s gotta be more to this story.

Comedian Carlos Mencia has been charged with tax evasion and failing to report $8.7 million in income. Mencia was arrested Thursday and remains in custody. According to the complaint, Mencia allegedly failed to file any taxes for tax years 2019-2024 and could face up to 11 years in state prison. variety.com/2026/biz/news/…

@KabutoKing_ You got a special shout out!

Pokemon history, will be watching this today

@FanaticsCollect How do we know these are real arms-length sales, and not “insider buys” between friends to pump the price?

💸 RECORD SALE 💸 We just sold the most expensive Snorlax card of all time for $120,000. The same card last sold for $15,500 in November 2025, an increase of over $104,000 in just 6 months.

The silent plan to erase the national debt: Full post – grahamstephan.substack.com/p/erasing-nati…

How do you erase a massive national debt without raising taxes or defaulting? You quietly tax the savers. It’s a strategy called Financial Repression. The Fed used it 70 years ago, and now they're planning to use it again. Here's how it works: After WWII, US debt had skyrocketed to 106% of GDP. The government couldn't slash spending without crushing the post-war economy, and hiking taxes further was a political death sentence. So, they chose a third option: Shrink the debt with inflation. Here is how the playbook worked: 1. Cap the yields: The Fed pegged long-term government bond yields at a low 2.5%. 2. Let inflation run: When post-war price controls lifted, inflation quickly peaked past 10%. If you were a disciplined citizen holding a government bond, you got your guaranteed 2.5% interest. But because of soaring prices, your real purchasing power was eroding by roughly 6% a year. The government effectively repaid yesterday's debt with today's dollars that were losing their value. Without this strategy, the system might have collapsed. But by 1974, this silent plan dragged the Debt-to-GDP ratio all the way down to 23%. America's post WWII boom is often seen as an example of miraculous economic growth. But more than growth or responsible budgeting, it's the massive wealth transfer from the public that saved the system. Why is this relevant now? For the first time since WWII, Debt-to-GDP ratios are hitting nearly the same levels. Kevin Warsh has been hinting that the new Fed will be a more disciplined one, and financial repression is always a silent but powerful tool. In today's Substack post, I talked about how to see this coming and what you can do to protect your wealth once it kicks in. I'll drop the link in the comments.

Finally saw the movie Obession. Holy crap. It was insane. The entire theater was completely sold out on a Tuesday night, all show times. I haven’t seen movie crowds like this since I was a kid. Incredible movie, and incredible that this was done on a $750k budget. Go and see it!

The Fed Transition. Link to full post here: grahamstephan.substack.com/p/the-fed-is-s…

The Federal Reserve is about to stop holding the market's hand. For 14 years, we have lived in an era of Forward Guidance, a world where the Fed tells us what they are thinking months in advance, to keep stocks stable. Kevin Warsh is about to end that. His 4-point blueprint for a regime change is a deliberate move to make the Fed a black box again. Here is the breakdown of what is actually happening: 1. The Liquidity Withdrawal: Warsh wants to aggressively shrink the 6.7 trillion dollar balance sheet. When the Fed stops buying bonds and mortgage-backed securities, it removes the artificial floor under the housing market. It forces mortgage rates to be determined by reality instead of money printing. 2. Ending the Dot-Plot: The Fed holds eight meetings a year and releases a "Dot-plot" – a roadmap of where rates are headed. Warsh wants to cut that to 4 meetings and delete the dot-plot. By surprising the market, he hopes that investors will price risk on their own. Expect jagged, volatile swings to become the new normal. 3. The Accounting Shift: This is the most controversial move. By switching to a "Trimmed Mean" inflation gauge, the Fed can ignore extreme price spikes in energy or food. It is a way to make inflation look lower on paper, providing the cover needed to justify rate cuts even if your grocery bill is still climbing. 4. The End of Sacred Independence: Warsh believes independence must be "earned" by hitting targets. The Fed will shift from being a neutral referee to a performance-based agency. If the Fed is under pressure to hit specific goals to keep its autonomy, the temptation to prioritize short-term market wins over long-term stability becomes massive. The bond market is already calling the bluff. Long-term yields are at 20-year highs because investors see the friction between a new Chair who wants to cut rates and an old Chair (Powell) who is still sitting at the table refusing to leave. The new blueprint isn't about lower rates, but rather about a Fed that is changing the way Americans invest for the future. I did a deep dive into who the biggest winners and losers will be under this new regime in this week's Substack post. I'll drop the link in the comments.

This is Ferrari's new humiliation ritual. They'll make you buy this $640k EV (that looks like a melted Cybertruck had a baby with an iPad) before you can get on the list for the real Ferraris you actually want. Welcome to the new 'pay to play' era at Maranello.

@Kalshi Tax loss harvesting?

JUST IN: Harvard sells $87 million position in Ethereum

I tend to think AI will be able to outpace human content in the very near future. People will always review things, there will always be a place where someone talks about something, and AI will be able to synthesize that information faster than a person searching. I don’t think it’ll create slop on slop. It’s just advancing too quickly for that to be an issue 3-5 years from now.

Serious question: what is the endgame of all this? AI can only be useful by synthesizing human information. What happens when Google stops directing traffic to human written sites? They stop being viable, which causes the amount of available information to drop. That leads to either: 1) AI using AI to generate AIR, which is a terrifying slop death spiral, or 2) The internet becomes unusable not only hellscape Not sure what the fuck these companies think they’re doing

Google is now prioritizing AI results instead of user-driven websites. Most people seem to be unhappy with this. But I remember when Apple removed the headphone jack, and back then, everyone was equally upset. Today, no one bats an eye. Genuinely curious - it seems like this was coming sooner or later. No one says “hold on let me google it” anymore…they say “hold on let me ask AI.” Google search is used less as less, it’s only a matter of time until everything is searched and found through AI. To me, this change was going to happen at some point. It just happened to be starting now. Am I wrong to think this way? Is there something I’m missing?

@davidsirota These were just bloated businesses, though. Media is terrible when it becomes too corporate. Nimble creator businesses will absolutely dominate when overhead is low and they have the freedom to pivot as needed.

My best advice to any young person is to avoid the attention economy as a life/career/job path. Do something else - anything that helps people or builds something in the real, tangible offline world. If I had a time machine to restart my life, that's what I would do.

Fun Fact: These 2005-2006 Ford GT's have tracked nearly the same returns as the SP500 since 2021.