Trustage's Rick sees inflation at 3.2%+, but no recession in '26

Steve Rick, chief economist at TruStage, says he expects inflation to rise to roughly 3.2 percent early in 2026, and says that increase — a long-awaited after-effect of tariffs — to mute the impact of interest rate cuts and other policies. Still, he stopped short of calling for a recession, noting that he thinks the market can overcome extremely high valuations to move forward modestly. He does think the economy may be moving into a period where it supports flat or slow growth for several years, but said it can avoid a crash or a bubble popping if it can avoid nightmare scenarios that he says currently look more hypothetical than threatening.

Kerry Pechter, editor and publisher at Retirement Income Journal, discusses his recent piece on what he calls "The Private Credit Instability Hypothesis," which looks at how the growing popularity of private-credit investments could be setting up a future fall akin to the subprime mortgage situation that presaged the Great Financial Crisis. Pechter is concerned that insurance companies — buying private credit to generate higher returns on annuities — will wind up holding the bag on bad paper if there is a breakdown in private-credit markets, and he believes that private credit markets will keep expanding and experiencing more demand up until the point "when something breaks."

Vicken Yegparian, executive vice president at Stack's Bowers Galleries, discusses the upcoming auction of an 1804 coin — considered to be "the king of the dollars" — that stunned coin collectors because it involves the 16th version of a coin where only 15 copies were known to exist. He explains how the coin was authenticated and why it may draw more than $5 million on the auction block.