America's Middle Class Under Assault; General Malaise and Poor Sentiment Strikes Wall Street; Oil, Interest Rates Spike

Four days into the current earnings season, sentiment has shifted from a case of the market could do no wrong to taking profits at the earliest occasion and selling off losers before the bottom falls out.

Through Thursday's closing bell, the Dow Industrials have lost 84 points, the NASDAQ is down 400, and the bellwether S&P 500 has shed 41 points. All of this is becoming a bit unnerving for the investor class, as if they're about to be catching down to the pain and loathing of the bottom 80%. Those, the vast bulk of the U.S. population that has lesser exposure to stocks but is more attuned to the ravages of inflation or even unstable prices and even more unstable political leadership, is worn out, tapped out, using credit cards for everyday expenses, and growing more and more unsettled by the day.

Two earners with full-time jobs and kids are barely able to make ends meet these days, what with high food and energy prices, ballooning house prices and attendant mortgages, property taxes increasing far beyond normal inflation and just about everything else costing 20-40% more than just a few short years ago. Unsustainably high housing prices with attendant food and energy inflation is bringing the national economy to a standstill, with any excess going to the oligarch monopoly corporations like Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Ebay, and Microsoft, all of which are facing severe headwinds as the world struggles through 2026.

Appetites for high fees, high taxes, and high levels of propaganda are growing slim. It's enough to see the government take 25% or more out of everybody's paycheck, but the financial squeeze becomes unbearable facing skyrocketing prices for services like insurance, car repairs, and medical expenses. The bone-crushing weight of excessive price acceleration has turned the country into little more than an open wage-slave plantation.

Wall Street may have profited well from this condition up until now, but the bloom has come off the rose and it's beginning to affect stocks in very disturbing ways. Thus far, just days into second quarter earnings breakouts, companies reporting solid results are seeing share prices drop. Those not meeting or exceeding expectations are feeling even more pain. Take, for example, Netflix (NFLX), which reported in-line Thursday night, though internals continued to crumble. The stock is sliding 11 percent in the pre-market as the pre-eminent streaming service is caught between an inability to raise prices in a fiercely competitive environment, declining subscriptions, and a round of poorly-received original content. The company, though still profitable, is on its knees when it comes to consumer satisfaction. Nobody seems willing to pay premium prices for sub-standard offerings.

Alongside the general malaise in consumer-facing companies is the growing perception that AI is not nearly able to justify the expensive, expansive buildout and investors are being shaken out from positions in the headline users and chip-related concerns.

After the shearing stocks suffered on Thursday, Friday's open portends outright spillage, as tensions and fighting escalated for a sixth straight day in the Persian Gulf, oil prices are spiking higher (WTI crude futures above $80/barrel) and Friday's stock futures are tanking. Dow futures are down 330 points, NASDAQ futures are off 550, and S&P futures are cratering, down 70 points with 45 minutes until the opening bell.

Yields are also chiming in, with the 10-year note hitting 4.59% and the 30-year at 5.12% Thursday.

It's not helping that the Northeast and Midwest are being blanketed with smoke from Canadian wildfires.

Realistically, there's no good way out from the global conditions that have been set down by political and economic policies of the past. The debt explosion that borrows from the future is beginning to be reflected in the present.

At the Close, Thursday, July 16, 2026: Dow: 52,552.97, -105.67 (-0.20%) NASDAQ: 25,881.95, -387.28 (-1.47%) S&P 500: 7,533.77, -38.63 (-0.51%) NYSE Composite: 23,952.27, +79.74 (+0.33%)