The S&P 500 jumped 14% in Q2, its strongest quarterly gain since 2020, driven by easing Iran tensions, falling oil prices and booming AI earnings. The rally suggests the index could sustain momentum into H2, but valuation and policy risks remain.
Gold is on track for its weakest quarter in over a decade as the retail frenzy that drove its record rally fades. Higher‑interest‑rate expectations, stoked by the Iran war, are draining safe‑haven demand, leaving the metal vulnerable to a sharp sell‑off.
Nate Silver’s guest post shows the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey has become unreliable after shifting to online polling and over‑sampling Democrats. Adjusting for these biases would lift the index far above Great‑Recession lows, meaning Americans aren’t as pessimistic as the headline numbers suggest.
In a 6‑3 ruling, the Supreme Court tore down a 91‑year‑old precedent, allowing the president to fire Federal Trade Commission commissioners at will. The decision leaves the Federal Reserve's independence intact for now, but signals a new era of politically driven regulation that could destabilize markets and consumer protections.
OpenAI has floated giving the U.S. government a 5% equity stake, valued at about $42.6 billion, to blunt political pressure. CEO Sam Altman says the move would let Americans share the upside of AI and could be replicated across other major AI firms via a sovereign‑wealth‑fund vehicle. The proposal targets the Trump administration and signals a new public‑private partnership model for AI.
Ant Group led a 500 million yuan ($73.6 M) pre‑Series A round in Zeroth, its 12th humanoid‑robotic investment since early 2025. The deal ties Ant’s AI‑ready Alipay platform to Zeroth’s companion robots for elder‑care and education, which claim >30,000 orders and a 600% revenue jump in H1.
Dish DBS, the EchoStar satellite TV arm, filed for Chapter 11 in Houston after a $20 billion AT&T spectrum sale stalled. The pre‑packaged restructuring, backed by 88% of its bondholders, aims to keep operations intact and emerge by Q3. The delay forced the company to confront a looming $2 billion debt payment.
A new NYT analysis shows that over the past 100 years, almost every top‑performing investment is a tech firm, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and even the brief appearances of Tesla and SpaceX dominate the list. The findings shatter the old belief that diversified, non‑tech assets are the safest long‑run bets.
A recent NYT‑cited study finds that almost every stock topping the century‑long performance list is a tech firm, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and even short‑lived Tesla and SpaceX entries. This overturns the long‑held notion that diversified, non‑tech assets are the safest long‑run bets.
The seven mega‑caps shaved $2 trillion in June, driven by soaring AI capex that cut free cash flow and ended years of buyback‑fuelled returns. With AI spending projected >$700 bn this year, investors worry growth may lag earnings, pressuring valuations and potentially reshaping the tech‑stock landscape.
China now hosts over 400 private space firms, from methane rockets to satellite constellations, reshaping the global launch market. The surge, spurred by SpaceX's reusable‑launch model, gives Beijing a rapid‑innovation ecosystem that Western observers have largely ignored, threatening U.S. dominance in space commerce.
AI is turning the firm into a one‑person operation. By automating market analysis, coding, marketing and sales, AI lets founders launch and run businesses without hiring, accelerating the rise of "solopreneurs" and shrinking the need for traditional outsourcing. This could reshape corporate structures and labor markets as AI models become mainstream.
Semgrep’s benchmark shows Zhipu AI’s open‑weight GLM‑5.2 model hit a 39% F1 on IDOR vulnerability detection, beating Anthropic’s Claude Code and nearing the performance of proprietary pipelines. At roughly one‑sixth the cost per bug, the result signals China’s home‑grown AI can now rival top U.S. models in cyber‑security tasks.
You’re caught up.
That was all 13 stories in the 2 July issue.