Clive Capital

10/29/2026

The Fed’s rate is about 3.9%. The 2-year Treasury pays 4.81%. When those two numbers are that far apart, the bond market is betting rates go up, not down.

The 2-year yield is the market’s forecast of where the Fed takes rates over the next two years. If investors expected cuts, they would rush to lock in 4.81% for two years, and that buying would push the yield down. It stays near 4.81% because they expect cash to pay about that much on average.

The 10-year yield, 5.13% on October 21, 2026, reflects the market’s view of long-run inflation and growth. Mortgages usually run about 2 points above it. The 30-year averaged 7.32% in Freddie Mac’s October 22 survey.

The gap between the two is the famous recession signal. When the 2-year rises above the 10-year, the curve is inverted, and that happened before every US recession since 1978.

Then the signal broke. The curve inverted in July 2022 and stayed that way until late summer 2024, the longest stretch on record. In the last four recessions, the curve turned positive again two to six months before the downturn. It turned positive in 2024, and the economy kept growing. GDP grew at a 2.2% annual rate in the second quarter of 2026.

On October 21, the 10-year was 0.32 points above the 2-year. That reads as rates staying high for longer, not a crash.

What that means for your money:

1. Money market funds and T-bills track the Fed’s rate, so cash keeps paying well if the market is right.
2. HELOCs and other floating-rate loans follow the Fed too, so they cost more if hikes come.
3. A mortgage refinance needs the 10-year to fall first, and the bond market is not pricing that in.

10/27/2026

Private credit is about a third of our investors’ capital. In August, it paid out more than half of the cash.

Here is what our monthly investments paid investors in August:
Private credit: $54,772
Oil and gas: $39,650
Real estate: $368
Total: $94,790

Three things stand out.

First, the share of money you put into an asset is not the share of cash it pays you each month. Private credit pays interest every month on the money that has been lent out. Oil and gas holds 46% of our investors’ capital but paid 42% of August’s cash. That is because a large part of its benefit comes as a tax deduction in the first year, and the cash builds as more wells start producing.

Second, an oil and gas check is a look in the rearview mirror. It usually pays for oil pumped two to four months earlier, so August’s checks reflect spring production at spring prices.

Third, this is not the whole picture. Most of our real estate pays quarterly, and those payments are not in this number. That is why real estate shows only $368.

The takeaway: before you invest, ask when each asset pays you, not just how much. Some pay every month, some pay at tax time, and some pay once a quarter. Build your portfolio around when you actually need the money.

10/25/2026

San Jose home prices fell 5% in a year. Rents rose 8.3%. If visa rules were pushing tech workers out of Silicon Valley, both would be falling.

San Jose's median sale price was $1.35 million in September 2026. Typical rent is $3,812, and Zillow's measure of rental demand there is up 82.5%, the biggest jump of any large metro. Demand has not left. It has moved from buying to renting.

The rules have tightened. Since May 2025, H-1B, L-1 and F-1 holders cannot get FHA loans. A $100,000 fee on new H-1B hires from abroad now runs to 2027, though courts have paused collection.

Nationally, this group is too small to move prices. Visa holders and recent immigrants bought 37,600 homes in the year to March 2026, under 1% of US sales. Locally, they matter because they cluster near the same campuses. The median H-1B salary in San Jose is $184,772 before stock, so two earners can still afford the median home without FHA.

Prices are down mostly because of borrowing costs. Nearly 80% of US mortgages are below 6%, so owners are not forced to sell at a 7% market. That points to a slow correction, not a crash.

The real risk is concentrated. An H-1B worker who loses a job has about 60 days to find a new sponsor, change status or leave. Layoffs at a few big sponsors would push sellers in the same zip codes to list at once.

If you own near a tech campus, watch rents and layoffs at the largest visa sponsors. Both move before prices do.

Sources: Redfin; Zillow, Oct 15 2026; HUD ML 2025-09; Proclamation, Sept 18 2026; NAR 2026; DOL via Manifest Law; Fed Gov. Barr, Sept 2026; 8 CFR 214.1

10/18/2026

Nobody asks us whether they should buy a house. What we see instead is people quietly choosing a house over every other use of their money, and never running the comparison at all.

So here it is, step by step.

Start with the easy part. If this is a home, buy the home. Somewhere you are raising kids. Somewhere you want to be in fifteen years. Somewhere that means something. That is not a spreadsheet decision and it should not be.

The rest of this is for everyone buying because it feels like the responsible thing to do with savings.

Step one. What does borrowing cost now? The 30 year mortgage is around 7.5%. A year ago it was 6.4%. On a $600,000 loan that is about $409 more a month, roughly $4,900 a year, for the identical house.

Step two. What is the total? Over thirty years at today's rate, that loan costs about $896,000 in interest. You pay roughly $1.5 million for a $600,000 house.

Step three. What is the down payment doing? This is the step everyone skips. The government currently pays about 5.3% a year on its ten year bond, and you can sell it any day. A $120,000 down payment sitting inside a house is $120,000 not earning that.

Step four. Put it together. Borrowing costs more than it has in years, while the safest alternative pays more than it has in two decades. Both sides moved against buying at the same time.

So is a better time coming?

Honestly, nobody knows, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing. What can be said is that mortgage rates follow the bond market, not the Fed, and the bond market is currently pricing stubborn inflation. Rates fall when that changes. Not before.

The thing to watch is not house prices. It is the gap between what a mortgage costs and what safe money pays. That gap is what makes the decision, and it is the narrowest it has been in years.

Nearly half of Americans now say it is a bad time to buy. Twice as many as say it is good.

So if you are about to buy: is it a home, or is it an investment? Those are two different decisions and they deserve two different answers.

10/17/2026

Right now the US government will pay you about 5.3% a year to lend it money for ten years, and you can sell that bond any day you want. It is about as close to a sure thing as exists.

So when a private credit fund quotes you a yield, the only number that matters is how much more than 5.3% it pays. Not the headline. The gap.

That gap is paying you for four separate things.

One. The borrower might not pay you back. The government will.

Two. You cannot get your money out. It is locked up for years.

Three. You have to work out whether the loan is any good, with no price on a screen to help you.

Four. Someone else is making the decisions with your money.

Two percentage points over a government bond is not obviously enough for all four. Much more might be. The point is this is arithmetic, not a feeling.

Two questions before you commit to anything here.

Does the yield move when rates move, or is it fixed? Loans written at 2021 rates have not caught up, and somebody is absorbing that difference.

And can you see what it actually paid, month by month, for the last few years? Not the target.

The record. A target is a hope.

Do you know your gap? Not your yield. Your gap.

10/16/2026

It is October, which means there are about ten weeks left to change your 2026 tax bill.

Here is the thing almost nobody gets right about timing.

Most of what lowers your tax bill stops working on December 31. Not April. December 31.

People assume April is the deadline because April is when they write the cheque. April is when you report. December is when you decide.

So, the calendar in plain terms.

December 31 is the wall for almost everything. Selling an investment at a loss to offset gains. Charitable giving. Most strategies that involve putting money into something. If it has not happened by midnight on the 31st, it does not count for this year.

January 15 is when the fourth estimated payment is due, if you make them.

And there is one real exception, which people get wrong in the other direction. You can still put money into an IRA or an HSA for this year right up to the April filing deadline. Those two genuinely run past year end. Almost nothing else does.

One more, and it is the one that saves high earners the most grief.

If your income jumped this year, the amount you need to have paid in to avoid an underpayment penalty is not based on what you will owe. It is based on a safe harbour: generally 100% of last year's tax, or 110% of it if your income was over $150,000. Hit that number and you are protected even if you owe a lot in April.

Most people have never heard of the 110%.

Ten weeks. What is still on your list?

10/15/2026

We have written before about why oil and gas gets a tax break that real estate does not. The follow-up question is the better one. So what happens to my real estate loss?

Usually nothing. Not this year. Here it is in plain English.

The tax code sorts your money into two buckets.

Bucket one is money you work for. Salary, your business, consulting.

Bucket two is money that arrives without you working for it. Rent from a property someone else manages. Your share of a fund you invested in.

The rule is one sentence. A loss in bucket two can only cancel income in bucket two.

So when your fund sends a K-1 showing a big paper loss, that loss cannot reach your salary. It sits in bucket two, waiting for bucket two income.

There is one exception and it is small. Own at least 10% of a rental and make real decisions about it, and you can use up to $25,000 of the loss against bucket one. But it shrinks by 50 cents for every dollar you earn over $100,000, and it is gone entirely at $150,000. If you are allowed to invest in private funds, you are already past that.

There is a bigger exception for full-time real estate professionals. It takes more than half your working hours and more than 750 hours a year. With a real job you do not qualify, whatever someone told you at a conference.

The loss is not destroyed. It waits. It gets used when you have bucket two income, or when you sell.

The deduction is real. It just does not arrive when the pitch implied it would.

10/14/2026

The extension deadline is tomorrow, October 15.

Here is the most expensive misunderstanding about it.

Most people think the extension gave them more time to pay. It did not. It gave them more time to file the paperwork. If you owed money in April, interest has been running since April.

And the two penalties are not the same size.

Not filing costs you 5% of what you owe per month, up to 25%.

Not paying costs you 0.5% per month, up to 25%.

That is ten times the penalty, for the same month.

So if you cannot pay the whole thing tomorrow, file anyway and send what you can. You will have avoided the penalty that is ten times larger. People do the opposite constantly, because not filing feels like hiding and filing feels like admitting it.

Second thing. There is no second extension. October 15 is the end of the line for individual returns. If you have been assuming you can push it again, you cannot.

Third. If you are stuck waiting on a K-1, you are not imagining it. A K-1 is the form a fund or partnership sends showing your share of its income, and they run late constantly. It is the most common reason anyone files at the last minute.

Now the uncomfortable part.

Almost nothing you do tomorrow changes what you owe. The decisions that set this number happened before December 31 last year.

Tomorrow is paperwork. The part that actually moves the number is open right now, for next year.

10/13/2026

If you rent, your negotiating position just got better. If you own apartments, it just got harder.

Here is what changed, step by step, because almost nobody is explaining the mechanics.

Immigration into the US fell about 82% in 2025, which John Burns Research calls the lowest level in more than 40 years.

First question. Does that mean houses are hitting the market?

No, and this is the part people get wrong. New arrivals overwhelmingly rent. Harvard's housing centre found that immigrant households in the country five years or less own at a rate of about 16%.

So the effect does not show up in home listings. It shows up in apartment buildings.

And it already is. In John Burns' survey, 40% of apartment developers and investors said immigration policy was hurting leasing and occupancy. In Florida, two thirds said it.

If you are an American renting right now, that is straightforwardly good news. Fewer applicants per unit means more leverage than you have had in years. If your lease is up, this is a year to negotiate rather than accept.

Second question, and this is the one investors should be sitting with.

Who fills those units over the next decade?

Harvard projected that by 2040, foreign-born households would be the primary source of new housing demand in this country. If that source is smaller, demand has to come from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is young Americans forming households.

Right now that pipeline is thin. One in four Americans aged 25 to 34 has delayed forming a household and still lives with parents or roommates. Births are at a 40 year low.

Which means the most important number in US housing over the next fifteen years is not immigration at all. It is whether young Americans can afford to move out, pair up and buy.

That is an affordability question and a wage question, and it is worth getting right regardless of where you land politically.

So if you own residential real estate, stop watching migration headlines and start watching household formation among 25 to 34 year olds. That is the number that decides what your asset is worth in 2040.

10/13/2026

We are opening Iron Horse Energy Fund III, and we are doing a live session on Thursday.

We will chat through the honest version of why oil and why now, because 'prices are up' is not a reason to invest in anything.

Oil has run hard. Brent was near $104 at the start of October, up about 57% from a year earlier. That part everyone can see.

Here is the part that matters more.

Expensive energy is one of the reasons long term interest rates just hit a 24 year high. The ten year Treasury closed at 5.29% on September 30. When energy is expensive, inflation stays sticky, and when inflation stays sticky, borrowing costs stay high. Energy is not sitting off to the side of this economy. It is one of the things driving it.

That cuts both ways, and we will say so on the call.

A high price today tells you almost nothing about whether a specific well is a good investment. What matters is the price the deal was underwritten at, and what your return looks like if oil goes back to $65. Anyone looks brilliant at $104.

So here is what Thursday is actually for.

We are going to walk through how our existing oil and gas deals are performing, not only the new one. Most sponsors open a new fund and hope you do not ask about the last one.
Then the new fund. Then questions, until we run out of them. Bring the hard ones. Bring the ones that feel awkward to ask a sponsor. That is the entire reason we do this live instead of emailing a deck.

Thursday, October 15. 6:00 to 7:00 PM Eastern.

Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XrAnnDa2Sgiaq3G4oSRGpw

Cannot make it? Register anyway and we will send the recording.

Join us as Clive Capital Co-Founder Keshav Kolur, alongside Courtney Moeller and Alexis Hildebrand, walks you through one of the most compelling energy investment opportunities of 2026 and explains why the window to act is closing fast. In this webinar, we will unpack the geopolitical and macroecono...