Hello there.

The topics of the day are housing affordability and tariffs. Apparently, the White House is trying to take the housing crisis seriously… Only problem is that they aren’t addressing the root issue. Also, tariffs are maybe working somehow?

This week, we’ve got:

Let’s get crackin’.

In partnership with Masterworks

That’s 3 sales this quarter. 26 sales total. 

And the performance?

14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8% → The three most representative annualized net returns.
(See all 26 at Masterworks.com)

Masterworks is the biggest platform for investing in an asset class that hasn’t moved in lockstep with the S&P 500 since ‘95.

In fact, the market segment they target outpaced the S&P overall in that time frame.*

Not private equity or real estate… It’s contemporary and post war art. Crazy, right? 

Masterworks investors are typically high net worth, but the point is that you don’t need to be a capital-B BILLIONAIRE to invest in high-caliber art anymore.

Banksy. Basquiat. Picasso and more. 

80+ of the world’s most attractive artists have been featured.

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_{*Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd}

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Trump just picked a fight with one of Wall Street’s favorite asset classes. This week, he said he plans to block large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, arguing that houses are for families, not spreadsheets. Markets heard that loud and clear. Shares of big rental players and private equity-linked housing names slid fast after the comments, proving once again that nothing spooks investors like policy risk with populist vibes. The reaction was swift after Trump said he would move to ban big investors from snapping up homes.

Here’s the nuance investors are chewing on: Institutional buyers only own about 1% of US single-family homes, even if they loom larger in cities like Atlanta and Dallas. So banning them probably won’t magically fix affordability. Housing costs are high because supply is tight, not because Blackstone owns your neighbor’s ranch house.

Still, the threat alone matters. It pressures publicly traded landlords, injects uncertainty into housing ETFs, and signals that real estate is now a fair game for political point-scoring. Bloomberg summed it up well when housing stocks slid on Trump’s trial balloon.

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Six months after Trump’s “liberation day” duties kicked in, the US trade deficit just shrank to its smallest level since 2009, with imports dropping faster than economists’ confidence in their old models. According to the Commerce Department, exports are climbing, imports are cooling, and the deficit clocked in at a tidy $29.4 billion for October, a number we haven’t seen since flip phones were cool. That data point alone has tariff hawks doing a victory lap, and you can see why when you look at how Trump’s tariff push reshaped the trade balance.

Turns out, tariffs might not just be a sideshow. Productivity is ripping, labor costs are easing, and layoffs are still historically low. Wall Street hates when policy experiments work just enough to muddy the narrative. A smaller deficit boosts GDP math, but it also hints that higher prices and tighter global trade might stick around longer than anyone hoped. For investors, this keeps the spotlight on US manufacturers, exporters, and automation-heavy firms that can do more with fewer workers, which is exactly why productivity gains are suddenly the economy’s secret weapon.

“I am not too sure about ‘awesome’ but it’s not going away and is growing like crazy. Why not go with the flow?”

“The smartest people in the world say AI will probably be what kills all humanity.”

Elected officials have had a tremendous amount of success in the market recently.

We want to keep you updated on what they’re trading and when so you can leverage that intel as you plan out your own portfolio.

Data provided by AltIndex.

Remember to always DYOR.

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake with Invested Inc.