Are you dollar cost averaging? If your broker won't accommodate that for you, you need another broker.

Article states that China's nuclear ambitions far outpacing the rest of the world.
Comment section of the article is worth a read.

Actually, the United States is the global leader in the construction of cheap, safe, powerful nuclear reactors. They just happen to all be owned and operated by the United States Navy (563 reactors over the past 75 years, at last count.) So if the Navy and China can build reactors, but US power companies can't, we should probably look at why that is.
One obvious reason seems to be that neither the US Navy, nor the Chinese nuclear program needs to satisfy shareholders. Since they don't have to constantly cut costs to drive up stock price, they can instead focus on good design and safe operation. (I would have loved to see a Navy bean counter try to tell Admiral Rickover that there wasn't any money in the budget for something he wanted.)
It's unrestrained capitalism that causes the problem, not the technology.

https://nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/22/climate/china-us-nuclear-energy-race.html

Another scream of “Doom!” because fear sells clicks and keeps the base scared. But the kids (and the adults) are catching on: the monster under the bed is just a sock puppet.
Ah, "Ms. Pier" lands again—gotta love the autocorrect rebellion. If you're firing shots at Karine Jean-Pierre's fresh-off-the-presses memoir Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines (dropped October 21, 2025), you're not alone in calling it a tall tale wrapped in a pity party. As Biden's ex-press secretary, she spent years at that podium swatting down questions about his obvious decline like they were gnats. Now, post-loss, she's flipping the script: DNC betrayed Joe! Party's broken! I'm an independent now!

It was early last month when observers noticed ominous cracks in the facade of one of America’s most important financial markets. Tricolor, one of the largest used-car retailers in Texas and California, abruptly declared bankruptcy. Federal investigators are reportedly looking into whether the company committed fraud by promising the same collateral to multiple lenders.
Shortly after Tricolor cratered, something similar happened to First Brands, a company primarily known for making car parts. Its investors discovered roughly $2 billion in loans not on its balance sheet. That’s when things started getting scary. Fifth Third, a regional bank, said it had lent Tricolor $200 million, nearly all of which it now expected to write off as a loss. Same at JPMorgan Chase, which reported it was out $170 million that it will presumably never see again. At Barclays the figure is nearly $150 million. They’ll survive the loss, but the incident cast into sharp focus a risk that had otherwise lurked in the shadows, growing year by year: a cascade of bankruptcies that triggers a widespread financial crisis.
Tricolor and First Brands had also borrowed from a breed of nonbank financial firms known collectively as private credit, whose workings are much more opaque. Giving voice to a widespread sense that the losses had only just begun to pile up, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, warned, “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”
The 2008 financial crisis occurred in part because banks and other financial institutions were offering too many mortgages to borrowers who couldn’t plausibly repay them. When enough bad loans began caving in at the same time, they sucked big banks and the rest of the economy into the sinkhole along with them.
Banks today are subject to stricter regulations, which have largely functioned as intended, keeping banks from making as many risky loans. Filling the void has been private credit. Today, firms like Apollo, KKR and Blackstone that manage and invest huge pools of money have gotten into the business of making direct loans, and they’re doing so at staggering rates. Now an approximately $2 trillion market, it is a leading option for many companies and consumers alike.
Private credit firms say they can offer better terms than banks because they are not reliant on depositors who can withdraw their money and flee. But these firms are broadly exempt from the post-crash regulations that were imposed on the banking industry, so they are more able to make the kind of risky loans that brought down the economy the last time around. And they’re not exempt from the damage when those loans go south.
The problem is that often the funds they rely on are not their own. They’re drawn from the money that has been entrusted to them by insurance companies, pension funds and, soon, 401(k)s. As was the case in the run-up to the big crash, these potentially risky ventures may therefore be fueled with the money of ordinary people who have no idea how it’s being deployed.
Another troubling similarity: These not-bank banks, also known as shadow banks, do a lot of what’s known as financial engineering. That means packaging up a whole grab bag of debts — loans to corporations, leases on A.I. data centers, bills from plastic-surgery patients, car loans, anything, really — which are then sliced up and sold as new kinds of investment vehicles.
Because the private and public credit markets are so closely connected, cockroaches in one part of the house will always spread to the other. Lending to risky borrowers has been on the rise for years. It is inevitable that after a period of excess, cases of insufficient due diligence by lenders and indeed fraud will pop up in public and private credit markets alike.

I have one account that I tell myself is a safe spot, but is it really?
Equal amounts in the following funds.
RPHIX
CBLDX
ICMUX
RSIIX
DHEAX
NRDCX
RCTIX
SWVVX

According to CMS, Medicare Advantage drug plan premiums for 2026 are holding steady at considerably lower levels than stand-alone drug plans, on average, with many plans charging zero premium for drug coverage in 2026, as in previous years.

A comprehensive KFF analysis will follow in the future, but it appears that substantial premium increases for PDPs across the board didn’t materialize, even as the Trump administration scaled back the level of support for additional PDP premium subsidies through the temporary Part D premium stabilization demonstration established by the Biden administration in 2024. ...
In fact, for all but one of the 10 PDPs that were offered nationwide in 2025 and that will continue to be offered on a national or near-national basis in 2026, Medicare Part D enrollees in a number of states will see lower monthly premiums in 2026 than in 2025. This is consistent with CMS’s projection that the average monthly PDP premium will decrease by a few dollars in 2026.

Those (inflation) numbers do not comport with my own experience. It feels greater than what the BLS has published. Some time ago I cited a replacement window identical to one purchased 7 or 8 years earlier. The price had jumped from $400 to over $700 while the delivery time had increased from 3 days to 6 weeks. Your experience may differ.
Then there are the lumber prices you were quoting a few years ago. In May 2018 (7½ years ago), lumber was at $600. It's now at ... $600. And forget about Covid, when everyone was sheltering in place and renovating. Prices topped out above $1600.
I sound like a broken record here, but people tend to notice bad financial data (higher prices, losses in the market) more than the notice good financial data, like rising markets. That's why we have metrics like Sortino ratio and ulcer index. And why understanding behavioral finance is important to be aware of when investing.