Imagine this scenario. You've just left your old job, but you still have a 401(k) retirement savings account at your former employer into which you had been making pre-tax contributions. You're ready to move that money into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) where you're thinking about rolling it over into a Roth IRA so it can grow completely tax free into the future. But if you do, you'll have to pay income taxes on the amount you roll over, which you'll have to have withheld out of the money that's in your pre-tax account because you don't have the cash to otherwise pay them.

How much of those pre-tax savings will you have to have withheld to pay those income taxes? And how long will it take you to recover that money with the tax-free growth of the post-rollover amount invested in the Roth IRA?

Believe it or not, these are questions that many Americans may find they need to answer several times during the course of their working lives. In 2025, about half of working Americans were contributing money directly from their paychecks to 401k-type plans through their employers, with most making their contributions on a pre-tax basis.

At the same time, about half of Americans will change employers after about four years on the job. If they've been making pre-tax contributions to their retirement savings, they'll have these exact questions.

Which is why we've built the following tool! Here, we'll need you to enter the amount of money you might be looking to convert from a pre-tax retirement savings account to a Roth IRA and your marginal income tax rate for the tax year in which you'll make the change, assuming the taxes withheld will have to come out of your accumulated pre-tax retirement savings. We'll then estimate the amount of taxes to be withheld and how long your tax-free savings will take to recover back to your pre-tax savings amount. If you're reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, click here to access a working version of this tool!

In using this tool, the marginal federal tax rate is the one that applies when you add the amount of pre-tax income you're seeking to roll over into a Roth IRA to your expected taxable income for the year. For our default example, we've set the marginal federal income tax rate to be 22%, which applies to the following taxable income amounts for the indicated income tax filing status:

• Single or Married filing separately: $48,476 - $103,350
• Married filing jointly: $96,951 - $206,700
• Head of household: $64,851 - $103,350

The expected growth rate of the tax-free investment is set at 9%, which is rounded down from the average rate of return for an investment in the S&P 500 of any duration in the years since January 1871.

With these defaults and a pre-tax amount of $24,000, the tool finds the amount of income taxes to be withheld is $5,280, which reduces the amount of funds being rolled into a Roth IRA down to $18,720. If it grows at an average of 9% a year, the amount rolled into the Roth retirement account would take 2.88 years to recover its pre-tax value.

Since those default values may be very different from ones that might be relevant for you, you're welcome to change them to ones that apply for whatever scenario you'd like to consider.

In Part 2, we'll use the same math to explore a different scenario for executing a pre-tax to Roth rollover that can lead to a potentially better outcome for investors considering executing this kind of strategy.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A digital art concept of a pre-tax retirement account being rolled over into a Roth IRA that shows income taxes being paid out of the pre-tax retirement account".

Three months ago, we presented a snapshot of how differently gold prices have come to behave since 16 March 2022, when the Fed finally acted to hike U.S. interest rates after allowing the inflation unleashed by the Biden administration to get out of control. In that update, we noted how the price of gold had effectively decoupled from the yield of 10-year inflation-indexed constant maturity U.S. Treasury. In the years since that date, it had come to rise and fall independently of how the Fed set interest rates.

We even likened it to "High Striker", the carnival game where a player seeking to show off their strength swings a mallet on a see-saw that launches a weight up a vertical rail as high as they can. The rising and falling weight was a metaphor for the escalating and plunging price of gold, which was happening without any change in the inflation-indexed Treasury.

Something other than expectations about inflation was obviously driving the price of gold. Today, we know that something else is the policies of central banks around the world.

We know that because of the plunge in gold prices that took place in March 2026, the cause for which has since been identified. A media report published on 26 March 2026 indicates Turkey's central bank acted to sell over 58 tons of its gold reserves to prop up the nation's currency over a two week period in March 2026. Their fire sale sent the global price of the commodity plunging.

Before that date, several nations' central banks had set out to aggressively buy up gold to stock their reserves, which had become a major contributor to the escalation in its price since March 2022.

But it's not just Turkey who has been a big seller in recent months. Russia's central bank similarly sold off a significant portion of its reserves in April 2026 to "fill a budget hole" to support its government's spending, contributing to the downward plunge in gold prices at that time.

Since mid-May, the price of gold has resumed falling, turning into a steep log flume carnival ride-like plunge in the last several weeks. The following chart updates our previous one.

Since 19 June is a U.S. holiday that doesn't affect trading in gold markets, but does affect whether the U.S. Treasury is open for business, we've set the yield of the 10-year inflation-indexed constant maturity U.S. Treasury to be the same as was recorded for the day before. What we find is that between 27 February 2026, just before the Turkish central bank's gold sale, and 19 June 2026, the price of an ounce of gold has fallen by $1,123 to $4,155, a 21% decline.

Meanwhile, we see the 10-year inflation-indexed Treasury yield has increased by almost half a percent to 2.21%. Although it has increased, it still falls well within the range it has swung since April 2024.

What we don't have yet is an explanation for why gold prices have resumed falling over the last four weeks, and especially since the start of June. That we don't suggests it may be another central bank cashing out their gold because those events are often reported well after they occur.

Or not. Sooner or later, someone will do the accounting that explains why gold prices have fallen so much during this period. All we know for now is that the old wives' tale narrative of higher interest rates acting to rein in inflation doesn't explain it.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear on a log flume ride called 'THE GOLD RUSH' that's heading downward where the bear is happy and excited but the bull is scared".

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) showed off the dueling forces of the ongoing AI boom and the rising likelihood of interest rate hikes affecting the direction of the U.S. stock market in the Juneteenth holiday-shortened trading week. Despite rising and falling during the week, the index ultimately ended up 0.9% at 7,500.58 as the prospect of gains from rapidly advancing AI technologies edged out the expected higher cost of borrowing for the firms making those big investments.

That outcome came after the a hawkish Fed sent stock prices falling on Wednesday, 17 June 2026 as expectations for two rate hikes in 2026 took hold. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool has moved up the expected timing of a quarter point increase in the Federal Funds Rate to a target range of 3.75-4.00% three months earlier, now expected the move to happen after the Fed meets on 16 September (2026-Q3). The FedWatch tool also now anticipates a second quarter point rate hike on 9 December (2026-Q4).

There was some good news, in that the FedWatch tool no longer suggests a bias toward rate hikes in 2027 and even sees the potential for a quarter point rate cut by October (2027-Q4).

With the end of 2026-Q2 now in the past from a dividend futures perspective, investors look to have shifted their forward-looking focus away from the effectively ended quarter of 2026-Q2 to the distant future quarter of 2026-Q4 in setting current day stock prices. The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows the trajectory of the S&P 500 is most closely paralleling the dividend futures-based model's projected trajectory associated with investors setting their attention on 2026-Q4.

There was one other market moving event that had outsize influence over the direction of stock prices during the week that was. The U.S. and Iran reached an agreement to continue their ceasefire into November 2026 while they continue negotiating, which provided the momentume for the market's gains on Monday. In the absence of other developments related to that geopolitical event, we anticipate its influence will continue waning.

Here are the market moving headlines for the week that was:

Monday, 15 June 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Iran, US agree to halt war and reopen Hormuz, sending oil prices tumbling
• Trump announces US and Iran have reached peace deal — here’s when the Strait of Hormuz reopens, and what happens next
• Treasury yields slide as Iran deal drives rethink on Fed interest rate hikes
• U.S. crude drops below $80 for the first time since March as Iran deal is set to open Hormuz Strait
• U.S. gasoline slips below $4 a gallon for first time since April
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China's Collapsing Job Market
• BOJ minions still gung-ho to hike Japan's interest rates, thinking about what more they need to do to bailout Japan's currency:
• Iran peace deal won't change BOJ's rate-hike plans, ex-central bank economist says
• Why an Iran peace deal won't pull the yen back from the brink
• ECB minions thinking they might need to hike Eurozone interest rates again:
• ECB needs to do more to contain inflation pressures, Kazimir says
• ECB's Nagel says no inflation relief in sight even if Hormuz Strait reopens soon
• ECB's Lagarde welcomes Iran deal but inflation fears linger
• Wall Street rallies, Dow ends with record on US-Iran deal, oil price slide
• Dow ends at all-time high as U.S.-Iran peace deal elevates optimism

Tuesday, 16 June 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US single-family housing starts slide to eight-month low; imported inflation increases sharply
• US import prices increase more than expected in May
• Oil prices fall 5% to 3-month low on hopes Strait of Hormuz will open
• Stocks of oil in US Strategic Petroleum Reserve falls to lowest since 1983
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• China's economic imbalance deepens as retail sales fall for first time in over three years
• China's new home prices fall at faster pace in May on soft demand
• China’s EV Price War Was Built On Cars Sold At A Loss
• BOJ minions act on long-held ambition to keep hiking Japan's interest rates:
• Bank of Japan raises rates to 31-year high, flags more to come
• BOJ Policy Shift: Rates lifted to 31-year high of 1.0% to counter war-driven energy inflation
• BOJ Deputy Governor Uchida's comments at news conference
• Bank Of Japan Raises Rates To 1% For The First Time In 31 Years, Will Stop Reducing Bond Purchases
• ECB minions getting excited thinking about next Eurozone rate hikes:
• ECB will be proactive against high inflation even after Iran deal, Lane says
• Price pressures may linger due to damaged energy assets, ECB's Makhlouf says
• Bigger trouble developing in the Eurozone:
• EU must tap trillions of euros in private savings to keep up with US and China, investors say
• Nasdaq and S&P 500 slip while Dow hits record close
• Wall Street ended mixed as SpaceX climbed and broader tech fell
• SpaceX vaults past Amazon's market value as options listing fuels surge

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US pending home sales increase to a six-month high in May
• "Late Spring Buyer Rush": US Pending Home Sales Just Surged By The Most In Almost 2 Years
• Container imports soar at busiest US port in May as buyers try to outrun rising fuel costs
• Oil rises 1% on US-Iran deal doubts; IEA warns of supply glut
• Cushing Stocks Crash To 'Tank Bottoms', Seasonally Lowest Since 2005; SPR Sees Another Huge Drain
• Trump Admits US Was Weeks Away From "Running Out Of Reserves" When Iran Deal Struck
• Fed minions hold Federal Funds Rate steady as expected, but sets expectation for rate hike later in 2026; new chief minion plans to shake up Fed's operations:
• Fed begins Warsh era by keeping rates on hold, sees one hike later this year
• Warsh-led Fed expected to hold interest rates steady
• Fed Holds Rates Unchanged (As Expected), 'Dots' Signal Hawkish Bias As Warsh Takes Over
• VIEW Fed holds steady in Warsh's debut, but hawkish shift fuels bond-market rout
• Traders now see Fed raising rates by September
• Nearly half of Fed policymakers see a 2026 rate hike in the cards
• Fed chief Warsh skips rate-path 'dot,' launches communications review
• Warsh flags new tasks forces to study Fed operations
• Investors brace for less predictable Fed as Warsh rewrites playbook
• Bigger stimulus developing in China:
• China to support IPOs by 'future industry' startups, large model companies
• BOJ minions worried about inflation/falling value of currency in Japan, fueling plan to keep hiking Japan's interest rates:
• BOJ deputy's brief moment at the helm reveals deeper inflation anxiety
• Japan's exports rise on weak yen, AI boom, but price-led gains mask weak volumes
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
• Mood darkens among German auto suppliers as investment, hiring fall, survey shows
• BMW lowers profit outlook due to China downturn, Iran war double whammy
• Volkswagen reduces production at German plant amid uncertain future for site
• Wall Street sinks on bets Fed will hike rates this year
• U.S. stocks erase gains, end lower as a hawkish Warsh raises concern among investors
• Indices Barely Move Ahead Of Fed Interest Rate Decision
• S&P 500 falls, yields rise following Fed announcement

Thursday, 18 June 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil falls to lowest since start of Iran war after ceasefire deal signed
• Investors brace for less predictable Fed as Warsh rewrites playbook
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China's mid-year shopping festival highlights weak demand, rising role of AI
• PetroChina forecasts Chinese oil consumption will drop 4.9% this year
• BOJ/JapanGov minions getting set to bail out Japan's currency:
• Japan vows to act 'any time' on yen as markets brace for intervention
• ECB minions getting excited thinking about more Eurozone rate hikes:
• ECB's Lane hints at higher rates even after Iran shock
• ECB wage tracker shows muted pay pressure despite war inflation
• S&P 500 closes higher, Nasdaq climbs nearly 2% as chips fuel comeback from Fed sell-off
• S&P 500 posts weekly gains as investors balance Fed concerns and AI optimism
• Wall Street ends higher as traders get past Fed outlook, U.S.-Iran deal lifts sentiment
• Wall St indexes advance with boost from chips, Iran optimism
• Intel surges 9% after Trump says company will partner with Apple on U.S. chip design

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's estimate of real GDP growth for the U.S. economy in the current quarter of 2026-Q2 dipped to +3.0%, falling back from the previous week's real growth estimate of +3.3%.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull wearing a T-shirt that says 'AI BOOM' and a bear wearing a shirt that says 'RATE HIKES' where the bull asks 'WHICH ONE OF US IS GOING TO WIN?'"

In 2004, biologist Jose Iriarte-Diaz conducted a legendary research project in Chile. Iriarte-Diaz wanted to study how dinosaurs moved, but their extinction some 66 million years earlier hampered his research. The closest he could come was to study how birds walk.

And there lay a new problem. Millions of years of evolution had so changed the anatomy of these surviving descendants of the dinosaur species of old that how they walk would be very different from how dinosaurs walked.

Take today's chicken for example. Here, evolution has conspired to significantly change the body of the species. Unlike their theropod ancestors, chickens lack long tails, which significantly changes their mass and center of gravity, which would have a big impact on how they move.

But then, Iriarte-Diaz hit on a genius idea. What if he could create a prosthetic tail for chickens, then train them to walk with it. He could then compare how both regular chickens and the prosthetic tail-wearing chickens move, where he hypothesized the prosthetic tail-wearing chickens would move like dinosaurs would have. Here's how a press release from the University of Illinois Chicago, where he finally published his research in 2014, described his experiment:

Studying a group of 12 domestic chickens, Iriarte-Diaz used modeling clay to attach a tail — a wooden stick — to the chickens two days after hatching. He changed the tail every five days as the chickens grew, then compared their movements to his control subjects, chickens without tails.

His research suggests that dinosaurs walked more like humans, with a vertical stance and most of the movement in the hips. Chickens without the experimental tails showed more horizontal movements, with the knees doing most of the work.

He also recorded video of the dinosaur tail-wearing chickens and uploaded them to YouTube:

In 2015, Iriarte-Díaz' and his colleagues' work captured the imagination of the Ig Nobel Prize committee, which awarded them the Ig Nobel Biology Prize for their published research.

But the story doesn't end there.

Flash forward to 2026. Allen Pan is a Science and Engineering YouTuber who has drawn popular attention for various devices he's created over the years. He wondered if it would be possible to build an articulated tail prosthetic device for a chicken that might be more realistically dinosaur-like than the static ones Iriarte-Diaz crafted for his biomechanical research. The next video presents Pan's development of the improved prosthetic dinosaur tail and the results from tests conducted with adult chickens:

Pan's 3D-printed articulating dinosaur tail resulted in a chicken almost immediately adopting the kind of dinosaur-locomotion methods it took the chickens that Iriarte-Díaz' and his colleagues' raised and extensively trained from hatched egg to adult bird to produce. It's not just a replication of the Iriarte-Díaz' dinosaur tail prosthetic, but a genuine improvement beyond it utilizing multiple levels of innovations.

In both cases, the dinosaur tail prosthetics represent a fantastic example of outside-the-box thinking.

Social Security's trustees released their 2026 report on what they expect for the future of the program. As with just about every one of their reports over the last decade, they foresee big benefit cuts when the program's Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund is depleted.

The main changes in this year's report affect the timing of when the trust fund runs out of money and how big the benefit cuts will be after it does. The year of reckoning moved up to the end of 2032 from sometime in 2033, which if they divert money from the program's Disability Insurance (DI) program to it, could last until 2034.

Meanwhile, the magnitude of retirement benefit cuts when the trust fund no longer has any legal claim to money it "loaned" to the U.S. government while it had a surplus will be less than previously projected. Those cuts still aren't small - anyone receiving Social Security benefits will take a 22% hit to them. If they divert the DI trust fund money to keep the retirement benefits train going however, the cuts will be reduced to 17%.

Here is the trustees' official grim outlook:

• The OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, one quarter earlier than projected in last year’s report. Upon reserve depletion in 2032, projected income is sufficient to pay 78 percent of scheduled benefits. This percentage declines gradually to 62 percent by 2100.
• DI Trust Fund reserves are projected to remain positive throughout the 75-year projection period, as was projected in last year’s report.
• The combined OASDI fund is projected to become depleted in the third quarter of 2034, the same quarter as in last year’s report. Upon reserve depletion in 2034, projected income is sufficient to pay 83 percent of scheduled benefits. This percentage declines gradually to 65 percent by 2100.

Social Security has been draining the OASI Trust Fund since 2010. The 2026 Trustees report indicates how big that deficit has been in every year from 2010 through 2025. We tallied up those deficits to find out how much the OASI Trust Fund has shrunk over those years, which we visualized in the following chart:

Through 2025, the OASI Trust Fund has cumulatively shrunk by $1.321 trillion. That's a lot of money, especially when you consider the U.S. government never had the cash to pay back the money it "owes to itself". Instead, it borrowed it, exchanging the debt it supposedly owed to itself for debt it owes to the public.

That raises a question. How much of the total U.S. national debt has gone from being counted as money the government owes to itself to instead be money the government owes to the public, which includes everyone from individual Americans who bought a savings bond to institutions like banks and insurance companies and foreign entities that loan money to the U.S. government by the truckload?

The answer to that question is visually presented in the next chart:

When you hear about Social Security's Trust Fund as being little more than an "accounting fiction", this transformation of debt from money the government owes to itself to be money the U.S. government owes to the public is what they mean. The trust fund debt is unavoidably becoming a general obligation of U.S. taxpayers, which is what it always was and is what it could only ever be.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of Uncle Sam pulling money from one of his pockets to put into another pocket while reaching behind himself to borrow money from a banker". From the looks of things, he's gotten himself really twisted up!