The Trillion-dollar Interest Bill Nobody Votes On

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is InvestTalk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Justin Klein.

**Justin Klein** (0:17)
Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome back to another edition of InvestTalk. It's our Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 edition.
It was a red day in markets. I've been talking for a few days now. I'm getting that... That's...
The hair is standing up in the back of my neck. Say that. When it comes to the market, I'm gonna do this for 25 years. You know, you kind of know the patterns, you feel the patterns, you absorb the patterns that you see in markets, and then you're digging into kind of the... You know, we have a million different tools that we use for managing portfolios, rebalancing portfolios in a timely manner, etc. And a lot of it is about market structure. It's so much about market structure today, both the option markets, index flows, all of that. It's almost a new vertical of analysis that is difficult because it's so new, you know. Indexing has only been around for a short period of time, relatively to market history. And then option volume has exploded since COVID. And so these are new variables that you have to bring in to your analysis. And that's what we're here to help with. We do this professionally. We do this for clients every single day. So we're bringing that expertise, we're bringing that perspective, we're bringing that data to you.
And usually as data is, that data is applied to our particular portfolios that we're running for clients. So we don't know what your portfolio looks like. So that's why it's always good for you to call, ask your question, get our perspective based on your particular situation. So I encourage you to give us a call 888-99-CHART is the number to get through any time of day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now in just a bit, we'll talk about today's Mark Performance and run down the show Topics for the hour. But as usual, we'll tackle this first caller question now. Here we go.

**Kyle** (2:19)
Hi, Justin and Luke. This is Kyle from Michigan, a long time listener.
I was just calling about ticker symbol CRDO, Credo Technology Group. And I want to know if it was a good buy or not. All right, thanks. I'll be listening to your answer on the podcast. Bye.

**Justin Klein** (2:41)
Looking at Credo Technology Group, CREDO is the symbol, spelled C-R-E-D-O.
This is, let's see, it provides technology services. That doesn't help me very much. They have different pieces of software that give me summaries. Some are shorter than others. Other one says, development of connectivity solutions and products for the data infrastructure market. So clearly, these are, this is a business that's doing well because of AI. They built integrated circuits, active electrical cables, et cetera. So their business is booming. They lost money in 2021, then five cents in 2022, then nine, then 70 cents. Last year, $2.51. Then this year, $6.18.
Next year, it's a certain $9.15. So very, very tied to the AI data infrastructure. And when I say the hair on my back, my neck stands up, it's around these type of names. Is anything that is related to AI data centers, I think is already peaked. And so, it's a name to watch, see if it can actually produce $9 in earnings next year. And if it can, anything, you know, sub 200 would be a pretty decent price to pay. Right now, it's at 245 So the technicals are okay, but certainly weakening, the momentum is weakening, like a lot of the names in the space.
So I would hold on to, hold off on it, because I think the whole space is just about to go through a deeper correction than what we saw in the month of July. Could be wrong, but I don't think this is over. And today is a good example. This stock itself was down 14%. It's down another 1.7% after hours.
So the whole space to me is set to fall apart in the short term, and that's why I would stay away from it. Now, we have a lot of great, we have a great show, or we had a great show yesterday, actually. We do have a great show today, but we had a great show. We looked into global shipping under siege. Talk about the supply chain bottlenecks that all the hostilities in the Middle East are causing, what that means for different sectors and your portfolio. We also answered a listener question on the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, and if you happen to miss it, go check it out. That's the way to get every show to fall in InvestTalk wherever you get your podcast. I have a lot of ground to cover over the next 45 minutes or so, and time permitting, we'll get to all of it. Our main focus point today concerns the story, the trillion-dollar interest bill nobody votes on. Federal government will spend about a trillion dollars on interest this year alone. Roughly what it spends on national defense, and every rate increase makes that number larger. We'll explain why the government's own borrowing costs now shape monetary policy, and what that means for long-dated bonds, and why central banks around the world are buying gold at the fastest pace in years. So we'll look at that topic. In addition, the world's largest car makers, they're looking to avoid some pain and some supply chain issues by switching the type of oil they're using in your car.