Daily Market Briefing: The Golden Age of Anxiety
Sunday, January 25, 2026 | Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul
1. The Macro Narrative: Fiscal Dominance & The Melt-Up
The screens this Sunday tell a paradoxical story. With the S&P 500 pressing 6,915 and Gold hovering at $4,987, we are witnessing the textbook definition of “Fiscal Dominance.”
Normally, stocks and gold diverge—risk-on versus risk-off. Today, they march in lockstep. Why? Because the market is no longer pricing “growth”; it is pricing debasement.
The driver is the sovereign debt mechanism. With interest payments now crowding out discretionary spending, the market anticipates that the only way out is monetization—printing the difference.
Deutsche Bank and Bank of America predicted this $5,000 Gold target, not as a celebration of the metal, but as a vote of no-confidence in the currency.
Simultaneously, capital is fleeing into “hard” equities (Tech/AI) to escape the melting ice cube of cash, pushing the SPX toward 7,000 despite a slowing real economy.
Geopolitical Friction: Beyond the charts, the supply chain is re-wiring under duress. Tensions in the South China Sea have moved from “drills” to implicit blockades, acting as a reciprocal response to U.S. pressure in other theaters.
We are entering a period of “fragmented trade,” where inflation is structural, not transitory.
2. The Aquinas View: Inflation as Moral Disorder
While the algorithms chase momentum, we must apply the distinction of the Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana (1536–1624).
He taught that currency debasement is a hidden form of theft. When the Sovereign dilutes the money supply to pay debts without the consent of the governed, it is not “policy”; it is a violation of the Seventh Commandment.
The current “wealth effect” of 6,915 SPX is largely illusory—a nominal expansion masking real purchasing power destruction.
The Thomistic realist sees this clearly: Price is not Value. The soaring numbers are not a measure of human flourishing, but of the feverish attempt to preserve value in a system unmoored from reality.
We advise caution. Do not mistake the fever for health.
3. Value Proposition
In this noise of nominal highs and moral lows, Aquinas Intelligence provides the signal.
While others sell you the “FOMO” of the melt-up, we analyze the causal structures beneath the price—distinguishing between genuine productivity (AI) and monetary illusion.
We do not just track the market; we judge it against the standard of Truth.
