Elon Musk Says America Is "1,000% Going to Go Bankrupt"

The national debt just crossed $39 trillion. Your retirement is in the blast radius.

Elon Musk has stared down financial ruin before. He pulled Tesla and SpaceX from the edge of collapse when both companies were weeks from running out of cash, and turned them into two of the most valuable enterprises on the planet.

Now he's issuing the most urgent warning of his career, and this time it's not about his companies. It's about America itself.

As the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under President Trump, Musk got an inside look at the true state of the government's finances. What he found made him say publicly that the U.S. is "1,000% going to go bankrupt" if nothing changes.

Here's what he uncovered:

✅ Runaway government spending has pushed national debt to unsustainable levels

✅ The Federal Reserve's rate hikes are squeezing the economy, making inflation irreversible

✅ The stock market is on shaky ground, putting traditional 401(k)s, IRAs, and TSPs at risk

With Trump back in charge, massive spending cuts are already underway. Even Musk admitted they won't be enough to fix the system.

But while these cuts are necessary, they could send shockwaves through Wall Street, creating the kind of unpredictable market turbulence that wipes out years of retirement savings overnight.

That's why financial elites and billionaire fund managers aren't waiting to react. They're moving their wealth now.

For the everyday American who's worked hard to build their nest egg, the Trump administration preserved a little-known IRS loophole that allows you to shield your retirement savings before the next wave of turbulence hits.

Download Your Free 2026 Wealth Protection Guide and follow the simple steps to secure your nest egg now.

Historically, those who prepare ahead of financial turbulence fare better than those who don't.

>>Get Your Free Wealth Protection Guide<<

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3 Contrarian Trades for a Market That Looks Too Hot

By Bridget Bennett. Date Posted: 8/25/2026.

Being a contrarian investor is much easier when there are plenty of beaten-down stocks to choose from.

With major indexes near all-time highs and the rally expanding into more areas of the market, TradeSmith’s Jeff Clark says those opportunities have become harder to find. That has pushed the longtime options trader into a more defensive position as the market heads toward September and October, historically challenging months for stocks.

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“There’s not a whole lot of things that are unloved right now,” Clark said.

That does not mean Clark expects the bull market to end. In fact, he believes stocks could finish the year higher. However, between now and roughly the middle of October, he sees an increasingly unfavorable risk-reward equation.

Clark pointed to stretched valuations, exceptionally bullish investor sentiment and overbought conditions across multiple sectors. With the S&P 500 near 7,700, he sees perhaps a few hundred points of additional upside—but potentially considerably more downside if the market finally pulls back.

For Clark, that is not an attractive trade.

He would rather hold more cash and wait for the S&P 500 to retreat toward the 7,200-to-7,300 area, where he believes the risk-reward picture would become much more compelling.

Using Options to Reduce the Capital at Risk

Clark’s defensive posture does not mean avoiding the market completely. Instead, he is changing how he gets exposure.

Options have a reputation for being speculative, but Clark argues that much of that risk comes from how investors use them. His approach is to put substantially less capital into a trade by purchasing call options rather than buying 100 shares of an expensive stock or ETF.

The key, he says, is not to use the lower cost of options as an excuse to dramatically increase the size of a position.

Take the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SMH). Clark illustrated how buying 100 shares could require more than $50,000. An investor willing to tolerate a 10% decline could therefore have several thousand dollars at risk.

Instead, Clark would consider committing only a fraction of that amount to call options. The full premium paid for those calls could still be lost if the trade goes wrong, but the remaining capital stays out of harm’s way.

That distinction is critical to his strategy.

The goal is not to take the $50,000 that could have been invested in shares and put all of it into options. It is to use a much smaller amount to maintain upside exposure while defining the maximum loss in advance.

With fewer deeply oversold stocks available today, Clark sees three areas where that approach could make sense.

Contrarian Trade No. 1: Long-Term Treasury Bonds

Clark’s first idea may be one of the least-loved areas of the market: long-term Treasury bonds.

The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ: TLT) had been trading near its yearly lows, with yields elevated and investors focused on the enormous federal debt load. To Clark, that pessimism is exactly what makes the setup interesting.

He sees TLT as oversold, extended below several moving averages and surrounded by poor sentiment.

Clark also believes recent comments and actions involving the Treasury market could help establish a bottom in long-duration bonds. His expectation is for Treasury bond prices to move higher between now and October.

At the time of the interview, TLT was trading near $82. Clark said an advance toward roughly $86 by October would represent a reasonable upside target.

Buying 100 shares at $82 would require about $8,200. A move to $86 would generate roughly $400 in gains.

Clark’s alternative was an October $83 call trading near $1, or about $100 per contract. Four contracts would require approximately $400.

If TLT reached $86 at expiration, those calls would have about $3 each in intrinsic value. The position would be worth roughly $1,200, compared with the original $400 cost.

The more important part of the example is the downside: rather than placing more than $8,000 into the ETF, only the $400 option premium would be exposed.

For Clark, that is what good options trading should accomplish—less capital at risk with meaningful participation if the thesis is correct.

Contrarian Trade No. 2: Natural Gas

The second setup goes straight back to Clark’s favorite principle: buy something when nobody wants it.

Natural gas fits that description in August.

Clark highlighted natural gas producers, including EQT Corporation (NYSE: EQT), Antero Resources (NYSE: AR) and Comstock Resources (NYSE: CRK), as names that have been relatively weak compared with other areas of the market.

But his broader way to play the seasonal setup is the United States Natural Gas Fund (NYSEARCA: UNG).

Natural gas can be notoriously difficult to trade, but Clark sees a seasonal pattern worth watching. In recent years, natural gas prices have frequently established important lows during August before strengthening into the fall.

The logic is straightforward. When temperatures are high and home heating is nowhere near the front of investors’ minds, natural gas can fall out of favor. By the time cold-weather demand becomes an obvious story, markets may already have begun pricing it in.

“You want to buy things when they’re out of favor,” Clark said.

With UNG near $10 in his example, Clark sees the possibility of a move toward $12 if natural gas experiences even a modest seasonal rally.

Once again, he prefers calls to a large outright position. He pointed to October $10 calls trading around 60 cents at the time of the interview. If UNG reached $12 near expiration, the value of those calls could increase substantially.

This is classic contrarian investing: finding an asset investors have largely ignored, identifying a potential catalyst for sentiment to change and defining the amount of capital at risk before entering the trade.

Contrarian Trade No. 3: Semiconductors Playing Catch-Up

Clark’s third idea comes with an important condition.

If investors believe the broader market can continue marching higher, semiconductor stocks may need to start participating.

The semiconductor sector had been one of the market’s biggest leadership groups earlier in the year before losing momentum. While many other stocks and indexes pushed toward new highs, Clark noted that SMH remains well below its previous peak.

That divergence creates a possible catch-up trade.

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) earnings could also become an important catalyst for the group. If enthusiasm builds around the report and the broader rally remains intact, Clark believes semiconductors could regain momentum.

But he does not consider the trade risk-free.

A semiconductor ETF can move sharply in either direction, and Clark sees potentially similar percentages of upside and downside in the underlying fund. That makes buying the ETF outright less attractive to him.

Calls change that equation.

Rather than committing tens of thousands of dollars to 100 shares of SMH, Clark would consider buying one, two or perhaps three calls. The options could lose 100% of the premium paid, but that premium represents a much smaller pool of capital than an equivalent stock position.

The point, once again, is not maximum leverage. It is maximum control over the amount that can be lost.

The Strategy Has to Change With the Market

The approach is notably different from the strategy Clark discussed earlier this year.

In May, he highlighted Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: KTOS), Figma, Inc. (NYSE: FIG) and SoundHound AI, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOUN) as beaten-down opportunities. He discussed selling uncovered puts as a way to potentially generate premium while agreeing to buy shares at lower prices.

Those setups made sense to Clark because the stocks were already deeply out of favor.

Selling an uncovered put creates an obligation to purchase shares at the strike price if the option is assigned. Clark’s argument was that investors could collect premium while waiting for a price at which they already wanted to own the stock.

Today’s market looks very different.

With fewer oversold stocks available, Clark does not see the same abundance of opportunities to sell puts on beaten-down names. For bullish trades, he is more interested in using calls to define risk while keeping most capital on the sidelines.

It is a reminder that investing strategies cannot operate on autopilot.

A setup that makes sense when stocks are oversold may be far less attractive after a broad rally. When volatility is elevated, position sizing can matter as much as getting the market direction right.

Clark has watched individual stocks, Bitcoin, precious metals and other assets make increasingly large moves over short periods. That volatility can create opportunity—but only if investors avoid risking more than they can afford to lose on any single idea.

For now, that means being selective.

Long-term Treasury bonds and natural gas offer the kind of unpopular, oversold setups Clark traditionally favors. Semiconductors represent a different type of opportunity: a lagging sector that could play catch-up if the bull market continues.

But with the broader market near record highs, the common thread across all three ideas is not simply finding more upside.

It is finding a way to pursue that upside while keeping downside under control.

3 Infrastructure Stocks Built Around the Backbone of the Economy

By Chris Markoch. Date Posted: 8/18/2026.

Investors have spent the last few years chasing the shiniest object in the market: artificial intelligence (AI). But there's a "safer" trade taking shape beneath the AI headlines—one built on wires, towers, and steel that the country has neglected for decades. It doesn't come with a flashy multiple, but it offers regular income and lower volatility.

Why Infrastructure Stocks Are Back in Focus in 2026

In 2021, the U.S. Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The legislation was designed to jump-start repairs to the country's aging infrastructure. That means investing in traditional infrastructure projects, such as fixing roads and bridges, updating the electrical grid, and improving water and desalination systems.

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That money has been consistently flowing into the economy. However, many investors considering infrastructure investments are looking at artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. That's understandable when you consider that billions of dollars are being spent to build data centers and the supporting infrastructure for this generational technology shift.

But in 2026, many investors have grown tired of the volatile AI trade. That's putting some old-school infrastructure stocks back in favor. In addition to the potential for stock price gains, each of these names offers a high-yield dividend above the current elevated inflation rate.

National Grid Offers a High-Yield Play on Grid Modernization

At first glance, National Grid Transco (NYSE: NGG) looks like a boring, regulated utility company. However, the company is helping power a transatlantic grid overhaul, connecting North Sea renewables, while the U.S. accounts for nearly 45% of its operations.

That dual-market footprint is exactly what makes National Grid interesting right now. The London-based company has operations in the United Kingdom and the northeastern United States.

On the U.K. side, the company is bringing offshore wind power from the North Sea into a grid that was built for a different energy era. On the U.S. side, its New England and New York utilities are seeing a surge in demand from data centers. The questions surrounding that demand are a key reason NGG has drawn mixed opinions from analysts recently.

As of this writing, NGG shares trade around $80.82, and the stock carries a consensus price target of $85.50, roughly 5.7% above current levels. That's a modest near-term forecast, reinforced by Wall Street's current consensus rating of Reduce.

Where NGG earns its spot on this list is on the income side. The stock pays an annual dividend of $4.31 per share with a yield of about 5.30%, comfortably ahead of both the utility sector average and the broader market.

The payout is supported by a roughly 71% payout ratio, and National Grid has maintained its dividend streak for 19 consecutive years. For investors willing to look past lukewarm analyst sentiment in exchange for a well-covered, high-yield payout tied to two of the developed world's biggest grid modernization efforts, NGG is a smart play on the "boring but beautiful" theme.

American Tower Stock Gets a Boost From 5G and Data Centers

Many investors are coming back to the 5G trade, and American Tower (NYSE: AMT) is a leading name to consider.

American Tower is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns, operates, and develops wireless and broadcast communications infrastructure.

In AMT's case, a significant part of the bull case comes from data centers. That's what management highlighted in the company's Q2 2026 earnings report as it raised its full-year 2026 outlook for the second time.

Institutional investors own more than 90% of the stock's float and have significantly increased their buying since the fourth quarter of 2025. But the stock price hasn't caught up yet. AMT is down nearly 40% over the last five years and more than 15% over the trailing 12 months.

However, the stock is now trading about 23% below its consensus price target of $215.14. In addition, the stock's attractive dividend yield of roughly 4.13% represents an annual payout of $7.16 per share.

Crown Castle Could Benefit From Growing Data Center Demand

Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI) is another REIT to consider in the infrastructure trade.

Like American Tower, Crown Castle reports that its tower business is benefiting from a growing data center tailwind. The opportunity is that the market doesn't appear to have priced in that growth.

Institutional ownership of CCI stock is above 90%, and buying was strong in the second quarter of 2026. However, that hasn't meant much for the stock, which is down nearly 16% in 2026 and more than 61% over the last five years.

Much of the stock's recent underperformance followed a mixed first-quarter report in which Crown Castle beat earnings expectations, but revenue still declined nearly 5% from the prior year.

But like AMT, CCI is trading about 27% below its consensus price target of $95.13. Investors can also tap into the company's high-yield dividend of about 5.69%, which means they can get paid to wait for the market to reprice the stock.