Are You Partaking In The Biggest Wealth Divide In History? Government Shutdown Is Causing Liquidity Issues: LFG Daily - November 4, 2025

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If you want macro, financial planning, & tax planning info, look to Luke Lloyd's section of the LFG Daily. If you want more investment focus, scroll towards the middle for Colin Symon's Investment portion.

At Lloyd Financial Group, we’re constantly striving to give you more insight, more clarity, and more confidence when it comes to your money. Our Chief Investment Officer, Colin Symons, now delivers his own daily newsletter, offering deep analysis and a detailed outlook on the ever-changing investment world called Symons Says. Check it out and subscribe if you want a very detailed, daily analysis of the investment world. Colin has amazing content.

Meanwhile, the LFG Daily will continue to bring you quick, actionable summaries — blending market updates with financial planning and tax strategies to help you make smarter decisions every day. Together, they’re the perfect one-two punch: Colin brings the deep dive into Investments, we bring the daily edge.

Luke Lloyd, CEO Lloyd Financial Group

The Wealth Divide Isn’t About Money — It’s About Mindset (And Government Intervention)

There’s no shortage of outrage in America about inequality. Politicians talk about raising taxes. The media talks about “fair shares.” But nobody talks about the difference in mindset between those who build wealth and those who wait for someone else to fix it.

The truth is — the wealthy don’t play a completely different game. They just understand the rules.

The Wealthy Think in Systems — Not Paychecks

The average person trades time for money. The wealthy trade ideas for assets.

That shift changes everything. When you’re paid for your time, your income stops when you do. When you build or invest in assets — stocks, businesses, real estate, intellectual property — your money keeps working when you don’t.

Action step:

• Stop asking, “How much can I make?”

• Start asking, “What can I build or buy that pays me while I sleep?”

Even if it’s small — a dividend stock, a rental property, or a side business — the goal is to transition from earner to owner.

The Wealthy Study the Rules Others Ignore

Most people complain about taxes. The wealthy study them.

They know the tax code isn’t punishment — it’s an incentive system. It rewards certain behaviors: owning businesses, creating jobs, investing in housing, and funding innovation.

Action step:

• Learn the tax advantages of ownership: business deductions, depreciation, 1031 exchanges, Roth conversions, and tax-loss harvesting.

• If you don’t understand them, hire someone who does. It’s not “cheating” — it’s being strategic.

You can’t build wealth playing by emotional rules in a financial world.

The Wealthy Value Time Differently

Most people treat money as scarce and time as infinite. The wealthy flip that mindset. They outsource what they can, automate what they should, and focus their energy on high-value decisions.

Action step:

• Stop doing $10 tasks if you want to make $1,000 an hour.

• Automate your savings, investments, and bill payments so you can focus on bigger moves.

• Use your time to create leverage, not manage chaos.

Time isn’t money — it’s worth more than money.. to make more money.

The Wealthy Embrace Uncertainty

The poor and middle class crave security. The wealthy crave options.

They know risk is unavoidable — so they learn how to manage it rather than avoid it. They diversify, they plan, and they keep liquidity so opportunities don’t pass them by.

Action step:

• Keep an opportunity fund — cash ready for the next investment or business idea.

• Don’t confuse volatility with loss.

• Educate yourself about markets and economic cycles so you can invest with confidence when others panic.

Fear is expensive. Knowledge is leverage.

The Wealthy Surround Themselves with Winners

Your environment shapes your outcomes. If you’re surrounded by people who complain about the system, you’ll start believing you’re a victim of it.

Action step:

• Audit your circle. Spend more time with builders, investors, entrepreneurs, and forward-thinkers.

• Read books, listen to podcasts, and engage with ideas that challenge your comfort zone.

• Mentorship isn’t a luxury — it’s a shortcut.

You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your environment.

The Bottom Line

You don’t fix inequality by redistributing money. You fix it by redistributing mindset.

The wealth divide isn’t a conspiracy — it’s a choice between consumption and ownership, reaction and action, envy and education.

Capitalism rewards participation, not protest.

So start thinking like a capitalist:

• Own assets, not liabilities.

• Study the rules, not the rhetoric.

• Build something that lasts.

That’s how you close the wealth gap — one mindset shift at a time.

The Wealth Divide Is Widened by Government Policy — Not Just Personal Choices

It’s easy to blame capitalism for the wealth gap, but in reality, much of that divide has been engineered by government policy.

When the Federal Reserve prints trillions of dollars and keeps interest rates near zero for years, that money doesn’t flow evenly across America. It flows into financial assets — stocks, bonds, real estate — the things the wealthy already own.

That artificially inflates asset prices and makes the rich richer on paper, while the middle class gets squeezed by higher costs of living and lower purchasing power.

Then, when inflation spikes, the government tries to fix the problem it created by raising rates — crushing borrowers, small businesses, and younger investors trying to buy homes or build wealth for the first time.

It’s not capitalism that created this imbalance. It’s manipulation of capitalism.

Every time the government intervenes in the markets — whether through stimulus checks, corporate bailouts, or endless debt expansion — it distorts incentives. Instead of rewarding productivity and innovation, it rewards proximity to power and cheap money.

Action step:

• Protect yourself from policy-driven inflation by owning real assets — equities, real estate, commodities — things that benefit when the dollar loses value.

• Keep your debt smart and strategic — use leverage to buy appreciating assets, not depreciating liabilities.

• Don’t depend on the government to save you from economic cycles. Depend on your own preparation and adaptability.

The system rewards ownership — and ownership is how you fight back.

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

ISM Manufacturing was 49.1 vs. est. 49.5, with rising production but poor orders.

That upped production got the Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimate up to 4%, from 3.9%.

The US Treasury said they expect to borrow $569B in Q4, vs. the initial expectation of $590B and an ending balance of $850B.

Senate Republicans and Democrats are finally talking about a potential “off-ramp” to end the shutdown.

Returns yesterday were dominated by AI as the repo market was accessed even after month-end passed. If you’re wondering why liquidity-canaries like crypto died yesterday, it’s because the market just developed a liquidity problem as the Fed and Treasury liquidity have shrunk. Reopen the government or end QT and this disappears in a second.

That’s turned into a sea of red today as liquidity continues to struggle. Again, this should be a short-term problem, but how much damage can be done in that time?

I’d point out that we’re not seeing a bid for recessionary plays like bonds and staples. This is very much about liquidity running dry, not recession.

Obviously, AI has been a big winner this year, even driving ancillary business, such as nuclear energy and utility stocks to power all this demand. However, this also has created higher prices, increasing the need for the AI party to continue.

Will it continue? Maybe. For my part, I stepped back a bit from the AI trade a few months ago. If nothing else, I think people need to be careful and think about what they’re getting. The most important example of this is the big tech stocks. They’ve had many good years as pretty asset-light companies, making it much easier to churn out free cash flow.

With the AI race, suddenly that cash flow is moving away from buybacks and towards investment in data centers. Will there be a good return on investment, there? Hopefully, but the companies involved are mainly saying they can’t afford not to invest, for fear they’ll be left behind. To me, that sounds like maybe we should be dropping our return assumptions from AI. Look at something like META, that seems to be investing $70B to make an extra $4B in annual revenue. Is that worth it?

I do think the market remains very investable, with strong economic growth and liquidity. I will admit we’ve had some excitement of late, with some minor liquidity bumps, whether you look at auto markets or repo. However, the Fed is ending QT on Dec. 1st to help deal with trouble.

The fact that QT ends on Dec. 1st and not Nov. 1st may be some of why markets hit a speed bump, this morning. Some money is staying in the Fed’s repo facility even after the need for window dressing passed at the end of the month. While that’s definitely worth noting, this is also the last month with the QT constraint. Could this continue to be a problem as the month progresses? Possibly. I try to keep these things simple, but I feel like I need two charts for context.

First, above is a short-term one-month view of what’s been going on. The surprise, today, is that the quarter-end repo window-dressing didn’t more completely disappear. There seems to be some amount of funding stress, given continued QT and a shrinking Treasury balance. How big of a problem is this? We’ll have a better idea tomorrow, when we see what the repo operation looks like.

For context, below is what the repo market has looked like on a longer time horizon. We’re far from truly stressed levels. Honestly, considering it’s known that QT is ending soon, it starts to make more sense to utilize the repo facility. There may be no real problem at all.

Ultimately, once the government reopens, liquidity should come rushing back. It’s just a question of when that happens. Until then, how much will restrained liquidity hurt markets? I’d guess we’ve seen the worst of it already, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

For my part, it doesn’t bother be to continue holding liquidity canaries like crypto stocks. This should be a temporary problem that should be solved by the end of the month and hopefully sooner with the government reopening. As always, though, it’s good to understand what’s going on. Right now, the government shutdown is effectively starving the market of liquidity and that’s most obvious in the crypto space. Either the end of QT or the government reopening should fix that, we should just need some patience, and hopefully that wait isn’t too painful.

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

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