The Weekly Insight

One dollar of income can cost a retired couple $2,000 a year. 

That's how IRMAA works. Cross a Medicare income threshold by $1, and your Part B premium jumps for the entire year. 

Most retirees see IRMAA as a wall to avoid at all costs. 

We ran the numbers on a hypothetical couple, both 65, with a $5 million IRA: 

→ Convert to Roth for 10 years, filling the 24% bracket: about $107,000 in IRMAA surcharges 

→ Skip the conversions: they still pay $209,000 in IRMAA, just later, once RMDs kick in 

→ The conversion plan: $1.44 million less in lifetime federal taxes and $1.8 million more for heirs after taxes 

IRMAA isn't a wall. It's a price. And sometimes it's a price well worth paying. 

The income that sets 2028 Medicare premiums is being decided right now. Fewer than 75 days remain in 2026. 

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-one-dollar-over-why-income-planning-matters/

Every financial commentator is about to show you the same chart.

Midterm years are historically the market's worst. The year after? The best.

Since 1954, the S&P 500 has climbed in the 12 months after every single midterm election. 18 for 18.

So 2027 should be great, right?

Not so fast.

When the market was down through September of a midterm year, the next 12 months averaged +20.4%.

When it was up, like this year? +12.9%.

The post-midterm rally is mostly a rebound. And 2026 never gave the market anything to rebound from.

Elections don't cause the bounce. The bruise does.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-chart-youre-about-to-see-everywhere/

"Something always breaks."

That was the warning in a CNBC story last week, citing 16 times since 1970 that a rapid rise in rates came with a financial crisis.

With the 10-year Treasury at 5.18%, up 121 basis points since February, it's a fair question.

So, we ran the numbers.

What we found:

→ There weren't 16 rapid rises in the 10-year since 1970. We count 32.

→ 69% of the 16 on the list were followed by a 10%+ drop in the S&P 500.

→ 69% of ALL 15-month stretches since 1970 contained a 10%+ drop.

Same odds. A rate spike alone doesn't change them.

What does matter: the size of the move and how hard the Fed is pushing. Rises of 200+ basis points, or 100+ basis points of Fed hikes, are where the real damage has shown up.

Today: +121 on the 10-year. +25 at the Fed.

Not there yet. But the stress is already building beneath the surface of the index, and we're watching three specific signals from here.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-something-always-breaks-eventually/

The Fed didn't hike rates last week. The market did.

By the close of business the day before Kevin Warsh's decision, traders had priced in a 90%+ chance of a rate hike. Bank of America's own strategist put it plainly: at that point, NOT hiking would have been "nearly unprecedented."

So, Warsh delivered exactly what was priced in. He then held the shortest press conference of any Fed Chair on record, gave zero forward guidance, and allowed no follow-up questions. All in the name of a new communication philosophy he laid out back in June.

The result was the same outcome markets would have gotten under the old regime. Which raises the question we dig into this week: who's really setting policy here?

We also look at something more important than the theatrics: the Fed choosing to fight oil-driven inflation with a demand tool. What happened the last three times a Fed Chair tried that during an energy shock?

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-fed-didnt-hike-rates-the-market-did/

Not a single recession indicator is flashing red right now.

That should be reassuring. It isn't. And the reason why traces back to an economist who's been dead for almost 30 years.

This week, we dig into Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure debt, and why one AI company just got an "investment grade" rating on debt secured by a single customer's contract.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-trillion-dollar-game-of-musical-chairs/

The bond market doesn't make headlines like stocks do.

No breakouts. No "to the moon." Just yields, spreads, and math.

But right now, it might be telling us more than the stock market is.

Here's what's happening: the 50-year-old recession indicator everyone trusts hasn't fired. High-yield bond traders are acting like this is one of the calmest environments in 20 years. And Treasury traders are doing the exact opposite – pricing in real risk and pushing yields higher.

Two markets. Same economy. Completely different conclusions.

We've seen this disagreement before — in 2013, 2016, 2020, and 2023. Every time, it turned out to be nothing.

But the time before that? It started on a single day in June 2007. And the result was the Great Financial Crisis.

Is this that? No. But it's worth understanding why the bond market is the one you should be watching right now – not the one you're ignoring.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/insight-wealth-group-whats-the-bond-market-telling-us/

Four years ago, Jerome Powell used Jackson Hole to warn markets that rate hikes were going to be painful and longer than expected. It became one of the most consequential speeches of his tenure.

Last Friday, new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh stood at the same podium. The market reacted like it got the same kind of signal. Odds of a September hike jumped from 35% to 60% by the time he finished talking.

We think the market missed the point. Again.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-discipline-not-a-decision/

Moderna's melanoma trial results moved the stock this week — and a lot of the healthcare sector with it.

The excitement is real. Personalized, tumor-built cancer treatment is a genuine medical leap.

But here's the number that should temper the "this fixes healthcare spending" take: cancer treatment is only 6.7% of U.S. healthcare spend. Cure it completely, and the number that actually matters — the 20% of GDP we're on pace to hit by 2030 — barely moves.

This edition of The Weekly Insight covers:

→ What this "vaccine" actually is (hint: it's not what you think)
 → Why curing disease categories doesn't solve America's spending problem
 → Whether drug companies are even incentivized to find cures
 → What longer lifespans mean for an economy that needs workers, not just survivors

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-cure-wont-pay-the-bills/

Wall Street just posted one of its greediest readings in over 20 years.

The American consumer just posted one of the most pessimistic readings we've ever measured — in 74 years of data.

Both can't be right. But here's the thing: neither is a forecast.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-time-to-pick-a-side/

A client of ours spent $80,000 to teach his family how money works.

He'd built something over 30+ years. What kept him up wasn't whether his kids would inherit it. It was whether they'd know what to do with it when they did.

So, three years ago he opened eight accounts — two kids, their spouses, four nephews — and put $10,000 in each.

The rules were simple. Three years. Whatever you make is yours. I'll pay the taxes. Top three get prizes.

They met regularly. They argued about strategy. They asked us hard questions about the economy and had to defend their answers to each other.

Saturday the clock ran out. The top two finished less than $100 apart.

Every one of them made money. That wasn't the point.

The point was sitting in that final meeting listening to eight people in their late 20s and 30s discuss markets like people who'd been paying attention for three years — because they had.

Here's the thing most families get backwards. They spend enormous energy choosing the right account and almost none on the conversation the account is supposed to start. The vehicle is downstream of the conversation. Always.

That said, the vehicles matter, and one of them is brand new.

We ran the numbers on 530A accounts — the "Trump Accounts" that launched last month. Same $50,000 in contributions. Same 7% return. Started ten years earlier than a typical Roth, because these don't require the child to have earned income.

$903,545 versus $1,777,410.

Nothing changed except when the clock started.

Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-raising-investors/