Dear New World Investor: Front Matters: In 2005, InvestorPlace asked me to expand Technology Investing to the more general New World Investor, so over the years I added coverage of precious metals, energy, commodities, foreign stocks, cannabis, and more. After last year’s +52.9% overall returns, I realized two things: (1) The life of New World Investor is coming to a natural end at a good time; and, (2) I’d like to restart a more focused California Technology Stock Letter for the AI/nuclear age, covering only tech and a little biotech. I started CTSL in 1982 to bring the institutional-quality technology...

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Dear New World Investor: This is our year-end performance review. Overall, we had a great year, up 52.9%, thanks primarily to three factors: ** Our precious metals holdings were up 160.6% ** The Dominators were up 45.8%, including 135.0% on Palantir (PLTR), and 125.3% on Micron (MU) in less than 10 months. Only two of the Magnificent 7, Google and Nvidia, beat the S&P 500 last year. ** The biotechs didn’t go down Click for larger graphic Obviously, in spite of tariff turmoil, the Fed, a government shutdown, increasing unemployment, and consumer confidence in the toilet, it was a bull...

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Dear New World Investor: The headline September payrolls report claimed the US added 119,000 jobs in September. That’s (A) more than double the consensus estimate for +50,000; (B) more than 5x August’s originally reported +22,000; (C) a positive number following August’s -26,000 revision to minus 4,000; and (D) probably wrong. WARN-act notices of impending layoffs across the 21 states tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland spiked to 39,000 in October. We have only seen a greater number of warnings in 2008, 2009, 2020 – all years marked by severe economic downturns – and May 2025. Click for larger...

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Dear New World Investor: The shutdown-delayed September Consumer Price Index rose 3% year over year, up a tenth from 2.9% in August but slightly below consensus expectations for a 3.1% increase. It was the highest reading since May, but much of the gain was in food, gasoline, and energy. So the core CPI rose 3% year over year in September, down a tenth from 3.1% in August and below expectations. On a monthly basis, core prices increased 0.2%, below August’s 0.3% gain, which was the strongest monthly rise in six months. In general, tariffs are still pushing up goods prices...

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Akebia Therapeutics (AKBA) announced this morning that in their Type C meeting with the FDA, they learned that the Agency would require “a significantly larger number of patients than proposed, and accordingly would require meaningfully more time and cost to complete.” Therefore, they are not going to pursue a broad non-dialysis chronic kidney disease (NDD-CKD) label for Vafseo. But: “We were encouraged by the discussion with FDA on smaller subgroups of CKD patients where we may be able to align on a potential clinical trial design and path forward.” Given CEO John Butler’s history of winning against the FDA, I...

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Dear New World Investor: NO ISSUE NEXT WEEK! You can call it summer vacation, but we call it finally moving to our Cathedral Trees Sanctuary natural burial ground. July’s Consumer Price Index had either something for everyone or nothing for anyone, depending on your bias. The headline year-over-year number was +2.7%, the same as June and a tenth under the +2.8% expected. The month-over-month change was +0.2%, as expected. So the rate of inflation didn’t increase even with a large amount of tariffs and was below expectations – good news. But inflation stayed firmly above the Fed’s +2.0% target –...

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Dear New World Investor: June quarter real GDP was reported Wednesday morning up +3.0%, above the +2.6% consensus. Click for larger graphic h/t Yahoo Finance I’ve been talking about this “surprising” strength for weeks, so I hope you weren’t surprised by that – Fed Chairman Powell certainly wasn’t. The Fed held the Fed funds rate range unchanged at 4.25% to 4.50%, although two Fed Governors voted in favor of a 25-basis-point rate cut, the first dissent by two Fed governors since 1993. Powell said the obvious: “Although swings in net exports continue to affect the data, recent indicators suggest that...

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Dear New World Investor: At the top of each Friday’s Boomberg on Substack I repeat an important note: “Stocks peak about every 36 years, most recently in 1929, 1965, and 2000. This 36-year cycle can be traced all the way back to the earliest eras in recorded human history, back to Pythagoras and Plato and the Axial Age around 600BC. After each peak comes a period of decline (punctuated by bear market rallies) that typically lasts 16 years or so. Then, with the excesses of the prior bull period wrung out and investors most depressed, the next 20-year run to...

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Dear New World Investor: There are two things I realized about President Trump before his first term started in 2016: 1. In a complex situation, he likes to shake everything up, see where things land, and then decide what to do next. 2. He actually follows The Art of the Deal:      a. Make a ridiculously large ask      b. Pay attention to how loud they squeal      c. Reduce the ask as necessary to get more than what you wanted in the first place It’s not “nice” and certainly not subtle, but it seems to work over and over....

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Dear New World Investor: My Rocket Lab recommendation had a rocky start but now is working well and has a long way to run. Redwire also is off to a rocky start and isn’t nearly as interesting as RKLB, but it also seems bound to be a money-maker as the space economy grows. What I’d really like to recommend is the #1 space company, SpaceX. SpaceX has grown rapidly through four businesses. They are (1) a reliable, low-cost way to put satellites in orbit, so they have a large, growing commercial launch business. SpaceX is the first company ever to...

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