Dear Reader,
Todd Phillips has spent 30 years studying safe-money income.
And he says there’s one question that separates real retirement income from everything pretending to be income:
Can it promise the same income – to the dollar – every year for life?
Dividend stocks can’t.
Any board can cut their company’s payout.
REITs can’t.
Tenants leave. Rates move. Property values change.
Covered calls can’t.
The income depends on the market.
Even CDs can’t.
They mature… reset… and force investors back to the window hoping the next rate isn’t worse.
That’s why Todd came charging into my office three weeks ago.
He had found what we now call the 10.3% War Bond.
Not because it trades on Wall Street.
Not because it rises and falls with the market.
But because it’s designed to do what income investors want most:
A locked-in income stream that stays the same…
Year after year…
For LIFE.
Todd says the current 10.3% income rate for this war bond is in his opinion among the highest available anywhere.
But he does not believe this window will stay open long.
Click here now to see the 10.3% War Bond Blueprint.
To the future,
Roger Michalski
Publisher, Eagle Financial Publications
China’s Last Data Read Before the Shenzhen Summit
Monday morning delivers the data point traders in Chinese equities have been waiting for. Before the U.S. open, Beijing releases October retail sales, industrial production, and fixed-asset investment figures, the final macro read before Trump and Xi meet face to face in Shenzhen on Thursday.
Market Snapshot
Trump and Xi are preparing to meet in Shenzhen, testing whether their personal diplomacy can deliver progress on trade and AI risk management. The two leaders will also hold a one-on-one meeting and a working lunch Thursday afternoon. Against that backdrop, every data miss or beat carries extra political weight this week.
Washington extended U.S. tariff exclusions tied to China trade talks, pushing the deadline out to January 10, 2027. That date is now the hard boundary for any trade framework to emerge from Shenzhen.
Stocks in Focus
- BABA / FXI / MCHI: China ETFs and large-cap names trade on headline risk more than fundamentals this week. Any signal from Shenzhen on tariffs or critical-minerals controls will move these before Friday’s close.
- JD.com (JD): JD reports Q3 earnings Tuesday before the market opens. The October retail data landing Monday sets the demand context for how the market reads that result.
- BYD: NEVs took a record 67.5% of China’s passenger car retail in October by shrinking more slowly than everything else, with NEV retail falling 13.7% from a year earlier to 1.109 million units. Meanwhile, passenger NEV exports jumped 144.7% to a record 582,000 units in October. BYD trades on both sides of that ledger.
What the October Numbers Are Expected to Show
China’s retail sales rose 1.1% year on year in September, picking up from a 0.4% increase in August. Forecasters expect October total retail sales growth to ease to 0.8% year on year from September’s 1.1%.
Investment is the harder story. Fixed-asset investment fell 7.2% year on year in the January-September period, matching the decline recorded in the first eight months of the year. High-tech remains the offset: equipment purchases rose 9.7% and high-tech industry investment grew 4.9% in the January-September window.
Catalyst Calendar
- Sunday night / Monday pre-market: China October retail sales, industrial production, fixed-asset investment (NBS)
- Monday pre-market: Baidu Q3 earnings
- Tuesday pre-market: JD.com Q3 earnings
- Tuesday-Wednesday: APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen, November 18-19. Trump-Xi bilateral and a planned trilateral meeting with Putin on the sidelines.
- Friday: The PBoC kept its key lending rates unchanged in October, with the one-year LPR at 3.0% and five-year at 3.5%. Friday’s decision is expected to hold again, but any surprise cut would change Chinese credit pricing across the board.
Risk Radar
The January 10, 2027 tariff-exclusion deadline is a temporary line, not a resolution. If Shenzhen talks stall, markets will look for retaliation risk to show up first in trade policy and supply-chain controls. FXI and MCHI carry that exposure directly through their industrial and materials holdings.
The industrial side of that exposure has its own internal split. Chip-driven exports have been carrying China’s trade surplus even as domestic demand stays soft, which means supply-chain controls targeting semiconductors carry outsized risk for any portfolio long Chinese industrials.
The Cheat Sheet
- Top Market Theme: China’s economy is growing at two speeds, exports and high-tech accelerating while domestic consumption and investment stay soft, and this week forces markets to price that contradiction against summit optimism.
- Stock to Watch: JD.com. It reports Tuesday into the October retail read and carries direct exposure to China’s consumer demand, the Double 11 season outcome, and any Shenzhen trade development.
- Sector to Watch: China consumer and EV names. BYD’s domestic sales continue to shrink year on year even as its export volumes hit records; a consumption number that misses 0.8% will pressure the domestic case further.
- Biggest Risk: Shenzhen produces goodwill language but no binding extension or follow-through on the January 10, 2027 deadline, sending materials and defense-supply-chain names lower into the week’s close.
- Biggest Opportunity: A retail sales beat paired with positive summit signals could send FXI and MCHI sharply higher. Both have underperformed year to date and are sensitive to even modest positive catalysts.
- One Thing to Remember: The PBoC has kept the loan prime rates unchanged for an extended stretch. Friday’s decision matters less for what it does than for what any change in language signals about how Beijing views the post-summit economic environment.
