The Beautiful, Dangerous Thing She Did
05/12/25 The Monday Blueprint: Late Afternoon Edition! Wall Street thinks peace is spelled "tariff truce" and between tears in the Walmart lot and a folk ballad I'm betting on chaos-rooted bloom.
Where the Wild Things Bloom and the Legends Begin
My daughter graduated from college this past weekend. I’m a little flabbergasted by the whole thing for a kid who repeatedly told her father that no way in the world was she ever going to attend college. And now, she has whispered to her mother, “Don’t tell Dad, but I’m considering graduate school.”
If I found out she was considering graduate school, I’d probably do something wildly inappropriate like publish the announcement in a very open and public way for everyone to see—even people she doesn’t know.
Seriously, this is not a humble brag. This father is unhinged. Somewhere between my fourth coffee and wiping away a mysterious tear in the Walmart parking lot, I realized my daughter is subverting her own teenage proclamations like a plot twist in a prestige HBO series.
And if she actually follows through? On our annual family trip to Old Orchard Beach, I’m hiring one of those tiny airplanes to drag a banner. Tourists will tan awkwardly beneath the words, “ABIGAIL BARGDILL, GRAD STUDENT, BOW BEFORE HER, FEAR HER INTELLECT.” I’ll commission a folk song. Pay a barbershop quartet. Fund a fireworks display off the coast.
Just something, you know?
Also, this week I’m putting an offer on a commercial retail building. This is a zero-money-down offer. The likelihood the sellers consider the offer is, of course, slim. But with the current market conditions, I still have a pretty good chance at a yes. Most real estate deals like this happen in the dark. You don’t get a heads-up, no parade, no press release. One day, you drive by a building and suddenly there’s a new sign and a new business inside, and you’re left blinking at the sidewalk like—wait, when did this happen?
Or. Worse. You listen to one of those real estate bro podcasts where some dude says “value add” fifteen times, explains how to “leverage relationships,” and somewhere in the middle suggests cold-calling your grandmother to close a deal because fortune favors the relentless.
There’s a confidentiality clause in my offer to protect both the buyer (that’s me) and the seller. So yeah, I can’t say much here.
But what I can tell you about is a book: Pizza Tiger by Tom Monaghan, the dude who founded Domino’s. Defintely not high literature but enough ego to fill a few empty pizza boxes, hustle, Catholic guilt (he tried to start a town just for Catholics), and entrepreneurial delusion all rolled into one.
Back in 1960, Monaghan bought a pizza shop for $900 bucks. To give you context, that 1960s $900 dollars adjusted for inflation today is roughly $9000. Typical startups, even a small retail business in 1960, often required anywhere from $10k to $25,000—so today? You would be looking at a minimum of $100,000. And with that very small investment, Domino’s by the late 1990s was worth over $1 billion.
Pizza Tiger is a testament to what can happen when you start with almost nothing, then make a decades-long series of manic, messianic business decisions.
I’m not opening a pizza shop. I’m not trying to usher in the second coming. But I am trying to build something a bit more grassroots, more community-centered, something that matters in an era where the dollar is unstable, the stock market yo-yoing on trade policy, and Donald Trump can’t decide which version of economic apocalypse he wants to commit to this week. Meanwhile, mom and pops—the backbones of our Main Streets—are folding left and right.
You know, when I first read The Pizza Tiger back in the mid-1990s, I thought the days of scrappy entrepreneurship were over. No way could you buy a pizza oven for $900, let alone an entire shop. My used pizza oven cost $5,000, and before I even opened the doors, the bank foreclosed on the building and kicked me out. Thank you, 2008. I learned a lot back then. Lessons I didn’t think I needed, or even wanted, until now.
What I'm trying to build today doesn't survive chaos, but instead roots inside that very chaos.
River Roots is more than a bookstore.
River Roots is the corner table where someone finally starts the novel that’s been living in their heads for years. The shelf where a kid discovers the book that makes all the difference in the world. The kind of place where a person comes in for coffee and ends up in conversation about housing policy, grief, tarot, zoning boards, punk records, bread recipes, real estate ethics, climate anxiety, queer joy, neighborhood ghosts, and hope.
My daughter, who swore off college like a bad religion, walked across that stage like the amazing bad ass she is. If you have a kid around the same age who has accomplished something really big, really dangerous, really just really really like you don’t have the words, you will never have the words, then you know this soul-deep, too. And maybe grad school. Maybe not. But, whatever happens, I’m still renting the banner-dragging plane because the world needs to know what rooting inside the chaos and still blooming into your own legend looks like.
Will I soon be able to serve literary wisdom to the wandering stranger? Will I be able to get this building? I don’t know. The world is full of nos.
OFFICE HOURS
I’ll be holding open office hours this Tuesday at Breakaway Café from 10 AM to 1 PM. Schedule something official—or just walk in, grab a coffee, and drop into the chaos with me.
Let me be your first phone call. Or just grab coffee. No pressure. No sales. Just an open seat—and a one-on-one strategy session to help you figure out your next move.
LAST WEEK IN THE STOCK MARKET:
Tariff truce lit a fuse—tech soared, gold tanked, and Wall Street turned into a sugar-rushing Power Ranger, but don’t mistake a ceasefire for peace.
The US and China agreed to temporarily lower their tariff war weapons. US duties on most Chinese imports dropped from a scorching 145% to 30%. China responded by cutting its 125% tariff on US goods down to 10%.
S&P 500: 5,844.19 (▲ +3.26%)
Dow 30: 42,410.10 (▲ +2.81%)
Nasdaq: 18,708.34 (▲ +4.35%)
Russell 2000: 2,092.20 (▲ +3.42%)
VIX (Volatility Index): 18.39 (▼ -16.02%)
Gold: $3,241.60 (▼ -3.06%)
In short: tariffs dropped, and Wall Street Power Ranger sprinted like it heard there was free cocaine in the breakroom.
Earnings season is still in swing, and the split-screen is real:
Top gainers this week rode a strange cocktail of bioscience, energy, and AI optimism: Regencell (▲ +28.4%), WeRide (▲ +27.5%), and NRG Energy (▲ +26.2%) led the charge. If you squint, investors might be betting on a future where robots drive us to yoga, diagnose our anxiety, and power the lights.
On the flip side, gold miners took the L. EchoStar (▼ -16.6%) and Pan American Silver (▼ -16.1%) were among the worst hit—proof that when Wall Street’s chasing growth, no one wants to hear about your precious metals portfolio.
The Magnificent Seven?
And yes, the Magnificent Seven morphed back into form like Wall Street’s own Power Rangers—Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Nvidia all lit green. Turns out, nothing unites the team like the promise of slightly cheaper imports. Zordon would be proud.
Bottom line:
Tariffs dropped, tech rallied, and Wall Street threw a full-on risk party. But this is a 90-day truce, not a treaty. The sugar high is real, and tomorrow’s CPI could still summon Rita Repulsa.
Big Themes to Watch:
1. Tech Is Acting Like the Storm’s Over—But the Chips Aren’t Safe
Semiconductors surged. AI rebounded. The Power Rangers reassembled. But underneath the rally, the export bans on Nvidia’s H20 chips remain, and Trump hasn’t ruled out new semiconductor tariffs. Big Tech is dancing on a wire—buoyed by speculation, vulnerable to policy whiplash.
➡️ Watch for: Sudden pullbacks in Nvidia, TSMC, and Apple if tariff headlines shift. Leveraged ETF inflows spiking. And earnings calls where guidance is laced with diplomatic vagueness.
2. The Fed Just Lost Its Excuse
The tariff pause kills the “trade uncertainty” crutch. If CPI comes in hot, Powell will have to own inflation again without blaming geopolitics. The market’s already walking back rate-cut bets, and the bond market’s flirting with full inversion denial.
➡️ Watch for: Fed officials using “data dependent” like a spiritual mantra. Inflation print reaction whiplash. And the bond market betting on no cuts by year-end—again.
3. The Bullwinkle Bullwhip Effect Just Got Triggered
With the sudden tariff drop, companies are racing to flood supply chains before the truce ends. That means port congestion, shipping cost spikes, and a pile-up of goods that might not match future demand. Shortages are about to become gluts—just in time for a fall panic.
➡️ Watch for: Container freight rates rising fast. Inventory bloating in consumer retail. Earnings calls with weird overstock explanations. And a Q3 where pricing collapses look like “sales.”
Looking Ahead:
1. May 14—CPI Report: The Hangover Test
Tuesday’s Consumer Price Index drop will show whether this market rally has legs or if it’s just running on sugar and hope. A hotter-than-expected read and the Fed’s “wait-and-see” becomes “oh-shit-maybe-not.” A cooler one, and we might actually get rate cut chatter back on the table.
2. May 16—Jobless Claims: Canary, Still Twitchy
Last week’s claims dipped, but just barely. If they rise again, especially alongside soft hiring signals, you’ll hear the labor market narrative shift from “resilient” to “fraying.” At this point, bad data won't be brushed off—it’ll be baked into recession probabilities.
3. May 16—PPI Report: The Inflation You Don’t See Coming
Producer Price Index data lands Thursday and matters more than usual this month. Wholesale prices drive future retail prices—so if input costs are accelerating again, the consumer isn't far behind. And that makes CPI just the warning light, not the engine.
4. Any Day—Tariff Fallout and Trump-Xi Call Timing
Trump says he might talk to Xi “by the end of the week.” That’s not just diplomacy—it’s a headline grenade waiting to go off. Markets will hang on every leak, tweet, and whisper. Any sign that the 90-day pause is not going well could unravel this entire rally.
OUR FEATURED BUSINESS
