Compound Growth

June 2026 Monthly Recap: Are Markets More Important Than The Economy?

• Compound Growth • Season 2 • Episode 25

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0:00 | 52:34

June brought rotation, not direction. The Nasdaq finished down almost 3%, the S&P was flat, the Dow was up, and small caps led with the Russell 2000 up 3.6%. Taiwan's index is up 62% year to date, but it's essentially two stocks, and that same concentration shows up in the margin debt numbers. The US just hit $1.28 trillion in margin debt, an all-time high, while Taiwan's is up 160% year over year and past dot-com bubble levels.

Inflation is sticky (core PCE at 3.4%) even as wages stall, and Wheeler and Colin bet on the Fed doing nothing before year end. The savings conversation gets messier from there: the personal savings rate is near an all-time low, and new Fidelity data shows 19.6% of 401k participants have a loan against their account, Gen X highest at 25.5%.

SpaceX's IPO gets a reality check, up 27% from its offer price but already wrapped in 2X and 3X leveraged ETFs with zero trading history behind them. It all circles back to the episode's real thesis: almost every ultra-high-net-worth client they know built wealth slowly, including Warren Buffett. They close on a labor market that feels worse than the stock market looks, and the bigger question of just how dependent the country now is on the market itself.

Sources:
Fidelity Investments Q2 2026 retirement analysis (401k loan and savings rate data)
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey (jobs plentiful / hard-to-get differential)
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Personal Income and Outlays report (core PCE)
Market and margin debt data via YCharts (SpaceX, Taiwan Weighted Index, margin debt by country)

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Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell