There was a time—gather round, children—when investors pretended markets were natural ecosystems. Supply met demand. Price discovered value. Central banks gently adjusted interest rates like thermostat managers with graduate degrees. That time is over. We now live in an era where policy doesn’t just influence markets—it inhabits them. It builds scaffolding, erects guardrails, occasionally swings a sledgehammer, and then sends a press release explaining why gravity is optional. Welcome to investing under constraint. This isn’t a doom-and-gloom piece. It’s not a lament for some mythical free-market Eden that never quite existed. It’s an acknowledgment that today’s investing landscape operates inside a policy framework that is tighter, more interventionist, and more politically charged than at any point in recent decades. And if you don’t understand that constraint? You’re not investing. You’re guessing. The Age of Intervention Is Not Temporary Let’s be clear: policy interventi...
Inflation is the financial equivalent of that one friend who eats off your plate and insists it’s “just a bite.” It doesn’t show up dramatically at first. It’s subtle. Prices nudge upward. Gas creeps. Groceries rise like bread dough with ambition. Then one day you’re staring at a receipt thinking, “When did eggs become a luxury good?” For consumers, inflation is irritating. For businesses, it’s existential. Margins shrink. Input costs rise. Labor demands increase. Customers become price-sensitive and moody. Forecasting turns into a guessing game. But here’s the twist: some business models don’t just survive inflation. They thrive in it. Let’s unpack what makes certain companies inflation-resilient—and why the structure of a business often matters more than the headline growth rate when prices start running hot. First, What Inflation Actually Does to a Business Inflation doesn’t just raise costs. It tests leverage—operational leverage, pricing leverage, and psychological levera...