We were working through a project's sales strategy this week. Sitting with the developer, walking the math: volume, velocity, what it actually costs to move units in this market.
At one point he said something that stopped me.
"The worst commission you can pay is the one you didn't pay."
He meant it as a sales philosophy. But the line kept working in my head long after the meeting ended, because the same logic runs through everything I watch every week.
The Signal
The commission that never shows up on a statement
Every week I sit with Latin American families optimizing the wrong side of that equation. They don't invest because they don't want to pay the fee. They don't deploy because the tax bill scares them. They hold cash for years, protecting themselves from costs they can see. And they never count the cost of what they didn't do.
That cost doesn't show up on a tax return. It doesn't show up anywhere. That's why it isn't frightening. It's also the bigger number, always.
There's an idea I keep returning to from Charlie Munger: invert the problem. When everyone asks how to gain more, ask how to lose more. The families sitting in cash to avoid fees are protecting themselves from the wrong loss. The fee is one percent. The uninvested decade is one hundred.
Here is what the cash hides. Over the last thirty years the purchasing power of the dollar fell 53%. Over the same window, staying invested, adjusted for inflation, multiplied capital more than eightfold. Cash is not the absence of risk. It is a position. It is the one that loses most quietly.
Which is why the answer to inflation is not more dollars in an account. The dollar itself is the asset that bleeds. The answer is structure: real assets, with income, with contractual protection in the stack. That is the facet I evaluate first in any deal, before the return. Not "how much can this make," but "what protects me while the dollar loses."
The developer doesn't think of the commission as a cost. He thinks of it as the price of being in the game. He was right. Same with taxes, with fees, with everything you pay when you deploy capital. You only pay them when you're making money. That should be the relief. Not the burden.
The Evidence
Inflation has now run above the Fed's 2% target for 62 consecutive months, averaging over 4% a year since 2020 (via YCharts). That is the receipt nobody opens. The cost that doesn't frighten because it never arrives in the mail.
Real average hourly earnings turned negative year-over-year for the first time since April 2023, ending 35 straight positive months. Standing still used to feel free. It no longer is, even for someone earning a wage.
U.S. consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan, is at its lowest reading since the series began in 1952. People keep spending anyway: retail sales rose 5.2% over the year, 1.4% after inflation (UMich; Census). They feel the erosion. They pay it at the register without flinching. The one thing they won't touch is the cash sitting still.
The sophisticated capital already counts this commission. Argentina's private sector accumulated $4.07 billion in foreign currency in the first quarter of 2026 alone, more than it bought across the entire 2019-to-2023 control era, and it did so with reserves at a seven-year high and controls loosening. They weren't fleeing. They were paying to not stand still. Downstream, Latin Americans were 86% of foreign buyers of Miami new-development, 68% of them in cash.
And the favorite excuse just expired. The bond market has moved from pricing two Fed cuts at the start of the year to pricing a possible hike by the end of 2026, with the 30-year Treasury at 5.18%, its highest close since 2007. "I'll deploy when the Fed cuts" is no longer a plan. Waiting for the moment is also a position. And it's losing.
Ahmad’s Margin Note
This week, across the table from that developer, I understood something I already knew but had never said this plainly. I would rather pay taxes and make money than not make money and not pay taxes. The fee, the tax, the commission: you only pay them when you're winning.
One last thing. If you're sitting on a liquidity event and you catch yourself counting only the visible cost, reply to this email and tell me how you're thinking about it. I read every response and write back when I have something useful to add.
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Ryan Yockey is a serial founder and former executive at billion-dollar companies who walked away from the traditional corporate path to redesign the next chapter of his life on his own terms.