Insights

Vigilantes at the Gates: What higher long-term yields are telling us, and why preserving optionality matters

Investment Perspective / September 2026 In Barbarians at the Gate, the famous account of the battle for RJR Nabisco, the threat came from outsiders trying to take control of a company. Today, the vigilantes at the gates are different. They are the bond investors who collectively determine what it costs the United States to borrow money. For decades, the term...

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Inflation Is Worse Than the CPI Says

By Michael H. Russo | August 2026 Our Store of Value Protocol remains active. The reason is unchanged: the market is not paying investors for the risk they are being asked to carry. Total US market capitalization stands near 219% of GDP, roughly two standard deviations above its historical trend1, while the VIX, a widely used measure of stock market...

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The Quiet Rebuilding of QE

By Michael H. Russo | July 2026 The energy spent debating what the Federal Reserve is going to do is better focused on what they can do. Whether they will cut rates, raise rates, by how much and when, hides the more consequential question of how the U.S. government intends to finance itself — and the answer, assembled piece by...

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Fighting the Last War

A New Fed Chairman, a Changing World Order, and Why the Old Playbook No Longer Applies Argos: Bespoken Behavior | By Michael Russo | June 2026 In 2021, Ray Dalio published Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, a study of how the great empires of the last 500 years — the Dutch, the British, the American — rose,...

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Why We Are Not Chasing the Dream, Even When Everyone Else Is

Argos: Bespoken Behavior – June 2026 | By Michael Russo Our Store of Value Protocol is, at its core, a compensation decision. We hold a simple definition of risk: more things can happen than will happen. When the ratio of possible outcomes to actual outcomes expands well beyond normal — and when the consequences attached to those possibilities are severe...

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