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Charles’ Note: It was a GREAT business while it lasted. A New York City taxi medallion – which gave legal permission to operate a taxi in the city – was a licence to mint money. And they were in short supply.

In 2014, New York taxi medallions sold for $1.3 million each.

Today? 

They sell for about $130,000.

They’ve lost 90% of their value in a little over a decade.

So, what happened? 

What killed the cabbie business in the Big Apple?

In a word, Uber. 

The emergence of ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft upended the profitable and established business of carting people around. 

Now, imagine you were the poor sucker who paid $1.3 million for a medallion at the peak. 

You’re ruined. 

You’re never going to get that money back. 

Your business model is permanently compromised.

But let’s not cry for New York’s cabbies. They had been running what amounted to a mafia cartel for decades with the blessing of the city. 

This is a fine example of how technology can utterly wreck an established business. 

And as AI continues to disrupt the economy, what happened to New York’s cabs is only the beginning. AI is creating a chasm in which the winners will get unimaginably wealthy while the losers see their world turned upside down. 

My Freeport Society friend Eric Fry has been at the cutting edge of AI since the beginning, alerting his readers to the potential of AI stocks a full year before they went mainstream. 

Eric Fry’s unique “macro” approach is what powers his analysis. By looking for big-picture trends that drive huge, multiyear moves in entire sectors of the market, he’s able to extract and exploit the moneymaking opportunities a regular Wall Streeter would miss.

In professional circles, Eric is known for his extraordinary long-term track record, which includes numerous “10-bagger” calls, like buying Asian stocks during the depths of its late-90s currency crisis, buying Russian stocks during its debt-currency crisis, buying commodities in the early 2000s, right before their historic rally into 2007, and buying stocks in 2015 that would benefit from the Electric Vehicle boom, just at those stocks were gaining big momentum.

Now, he’s issuing a new warning, alongside colleagues Luke Lango and Louis Navellier, both of whom are legendary investors in their own rights.

You’ll want to hear what Eric has to say. It just might make the difference in what side of the technochasm you end up on.

Take it from here, Eric! 

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America’s Wealth Gap Is Growing — and Jamie Dimon Just Sounded the Alarm 

By Eric Fry, Senior Global Macro Investment Analyst, InvestorPlace

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

• Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The American economy is a tale of two realities…

The rich are getting richer, bolstered by AI-driven stock market gains and asset appreciation…

The poor are falling further behind.

Now, Jamie Dimon, the head of America’s largest bank, is warning that the gap is widening at an alarming rate. 

Speaking at Adobe’s annual summit in Las Vegas last week, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase warned that while the economy is still in its “soft landing” phase, turbulence is mounting, and it’s hitting low income Americans the hardest.

“The bottom 20% [of earners in the U.S.] didn’t get a pay raise for 25 years. They’re dying younger,” he said. “Their schools aren’t good, and they live in crime-ridden neighborhoods.” 

Meanwhile, he noted, wealthier Americans have benefited from decades of soaring stock and home prices.

Dimon’s warning highlights a stark truth: The wealth gap in America is widening at an accelerating pace. 

According to an October 2024 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the top 10% of wealthy Americans now control 60% of the nation’s wealth. The poorer half of the country holds only 6%.

As inflationary pressures mount, geopolitical instability rises, and tariffs threaten to shake up trade, the growing economic divide is deepening.

If you’re not positioning yourself on the right side of this divide, the risks are only getting bigger. 

So, in today’s issue, let’s review everything you need to know about the growing wealth gap (and its real cause)…

How AI is supercharging this decades-old phenomenon…

And ways to ensure your financial future doesn’t get left behind.

The Vanishing Middle

Decades ago, we were a country with relative wealth equality. We boasted a vast and robust middle class. 

Today, that middle class is shrinking… Millions of folks are sinking below the poverty line.

As this massive socioeconomic shift continues, a shrinking sliver of our population controls an ever-larger portion of our national wealth. 

According to a 2014 study at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in 2012 wealth inequality reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. 

Since the early 1980s, according to the study, the share of household wealth owned by America’s top 0.1% increased from 7% to 22%. In 1980, the richest 1% of Americans owned about 30% of all household wealth in the country, while the bottom 90% owned about 24% of all household wealth. 

I wish I could tell you this situation will be resolved soon… but it won’t. 

If you want to avoid getting crushed by the force expanding this wealth gap, you’ll have to take action yourself… and you’ll have to do it now. 

Don’t Get Blockbustered

In the spring of 2000, a man named Reed Hastings traveled to Dallas with a big business idea. 

Hastings approached the management of movie rental giant Blockbuster with a proposal. He wanted Blockbuster to buy his small business for $50 million. 

At the time, Hastings’ company – Netflix – had a promising business model. It allowed people to rent movies through the mail. 

Blockbuster laughed Hastings out of the room. 

You know the rest of the story…

Netflix secured investment from other sources and built a hugely popular mail-order DVD rental business. Around 2007, it began transitioning into America’s No. 1 video “streaming” service. This innovation crushed traditional brick-and-mortar rental companies like Blockbuster. 

In 2002, Netflix had less than 3 million subscribers. As of late 2024, the company boasted 302 million subscribers and its stock had reached a market valuation of nearly $400 billion. 

Blockbuster’s market valuation? $0.

The destruction of seemingly strong and dominant businesses by innovative technology-focused upstarts is a story we see over and over…

Uber Technologies is demolishing the “old” taxi industry while making its founders billionaires….

Shares of Amazon soared more than 2,000% while dozens of old-school brick-and-mortar retailers were driven into bankruptcy. 

The rate at which these huge disruptions occur will speed up over the coming decade.

They will make the wealth gap grow ever wider. 

And they’re why my InvestorPlace colleagues and I call this gap “The Technochasm.”

If you’re on the right side of the Technochasm, you’re virtually guaranteed to make a fortune. 

If you’re on the wrong side, you could lose your job and the value of your portfolio could crater. 

Don’t become a victim when you can be the hero…

AI: The Next Wave of the Technochasm 

AI is turbocharging the Technochasm.

Consider…

• AI will automate up to 70% of office work in the next decade, according to Goldman Sachs. 
• Companies like Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and Meta (aka Facebook) are cutting tens of thousands of jobs to replace them with AI-driven automation. 
• AI-driven companies are growing exponentially—AI chip developer Nvidia’s stock has surged over 1,000% in the last five years, while AI-powered software companies like Palantir and Twilio have also skyrocketed. 

But here’s the most important point: We’re still in the early stages of AI’s impact. The biggest opportunities — and the biggest Technochasm risks — are yet to come.

That’s why on Thursday, March 27, at 10 a.m. ET, I’m going on camera with my fellow InvestorPlace Senior Analysts Louis Navellier and Luke Lango to share a groundbreaking AI announcement that could make or break investors moving forward. You can save your seat for that free by going here.

During that broadcast, Luke, Louis, and I will show you the three critical steps you must take now to stay on the right side of the Technochasm. 

We’ll also explain how a trillion-dollar flood of money could soon surge into AI, thanks to moves by President Donald Trump.

We are at an inflection point — those who act now will reap the rewards. Those who ignore this shift risk being left behind. 

Learn how to get on the right side by joining us on Thursday, March 7, for our urgent AI briefing. Sign up here.

Good investing.