The US and China go head to head in the AI race. September 20, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning and happy Sunday. Wealth managers explain the fundamental considerations for clients evaluating risks and opportunities in the shifting artificial intelligence market. But first, a word from our sponsor, MFS . There’s expensive, and then there’s AI-capex expensive. This year, the four largest US hyperscalers are guiding more than $700 billion in capital spending to fuel AI build-outs. 1 But all this spending raises an awkward question: will it pay off? After all, technological adoption and profit do not always move in the same direction, and while many client portfolios hold the AI builders, what stays unsettled is which turns spending into durable margin. Here are three things worth pressure-testing in clients’ AI holdings before they ask: Frontier AI is not asset light . Costs may climb with usage, eroding the leverage that made software profitable. Customers pay for what is good enough , which may cap what anyone can charge. Cost savings may not reach the bottom line . Competition tends to pass them on to customers via lower prices. Winners and losers come down to who captures the value AI creates. MFS’s latest article traces where it lands. Read the full analysis. WEALTHTECH How Is China Changing the AI Game for Advisors? The ongoing artificial intelligence race between the United States and China is no longer just about the uncanny evolution of Will Smith eating spaghetti , as designed by ChatGPT and its legions of competitors over the years. It has global implications. First, there’s the balance of power, technological and economic, between the world’s two largest economies. Then there’s the risk of models going rogue and creating an existential threat to humanity, as industry leaders have acknowledged in recent weeks. Combined with the supersonic pace of the technology’s development, that creates daunting choices for financial advisors and their clients. “China is a huge understated problem,” Heritage Financial president Paul Schatz said. “If the US is the Wild West, which it is, I can’t even articulate what China is going to do by allowing their AI to go rogue,” he added. “This probably leads to one of the grand market blowups by 2030.” Like Warren G and Nate Dogg said: Regulate The newest warnings about the threats posed by singularity, or the runaway advancement of AI that learns to self-improve beyond human comprehension, have prompted leaders in the market — OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and X’s Elon Musk — to call for swift regulation. While there is bipartisan support for rules to keep AI from advancing too quickly, Congress as a whole appears unprepared to act, which is a problem, Schatz said. “The risks are everywhere, which is why the rewards are potentially so incredible and can lead to huge boom-and-bust cycles.” Presently, the US market has an advantage over China’s, with domestic AI models scoring better, said Jake Miller, co-founder and chief solutions officer at Opto Investments. “Every frontier model since 2023 has been American, and Chinese models trail by roughly seven months on average,” Miller said. “Seven months is a large gap in a field moving this fast, and it has not closed.” But a challenge in the US is the resistance to data center construction, which he said is a real political issue but not much of a substantive one. In part, that’s because estimates of data centers’ water and energy consumption may be exaggerated, he said: Data centers accounted for 1.5% of global electricity in 2024, he said. “Google’s own measurement puts a median Gemini prompt at 0.24 watt-hours and 0.26 milliliters of water,” he said, “which means somewhere between 25,000 and 45,000 prompts use as much water as it takes to grow a single California almond.” X recently reported removing about 200,000 accounts it suspected of being part of a Chinese influence operation that included messaging about data centers raising electricity bills, he said. Public Affairs The wave of AI companies heading toward the public equity markets also represents a risk, said Christian Francaviglia, wealth manager at Arena Private Wealth. “An IPO usually tells you two things: Private owners want liquidity, and the checks required have gotten too big for private markets to write on their own,” he said. “That isn’t bearish by itself, but I believe public investors are being asked to fund the next leg of the buildout, and public shareholders tend to be less patient than the last set of owners were.” When it comes to AI investments and managing client expectations, Francaviglia starts by showing clients how much AI exposure they already have. “Most people are more concentrated than they realize once you count the index funds,” he said. “For most families, the right move isn’t a wholesale exit — it’s stopping the accumulation.” Index and Chill a Little. Charles Failla, founder and chief executive of Sovereign Financial Group, is also essentially letting the diversification of the broad indexes handle AI exposure in client portfolios. “We’re not making an AI bet,” he said, adding that the biggest AI investing risk right now is concentration . “Two of the three biggest tech IPOs ever could price within a few months of each other … That’s a lot of AI paper hitting the market at once, and if you own a total-market index fund, you’ll be buying it whether you meant to or not.” That poses a more worrisome issue, at present, for advisors and their clients than international competition, some experts say. “The China risk is overstated, and the concentration risk is real and has nothing to do with China, because a handful of names are a large share of the S&P 500 and their valuations assume capex earns a return,” said Miller, of Opto Investments. “The robustness of American capital markets can provide a durable unfair advantage to companies who can use that capital to maintain their lead,” he said. Written by Je

Automakers grapple with a crowded market for a critical component. September 20, 2026 PRESENTED BY SPROTT Good morning and happy Sunday. Surging gas prices are giving electric vehicle makers a chance to regain traction in the US market, but taking advantage of it won’t be easy. Before we dive in, though, a word from our sponsor, Sprott . Copper may spend its life hidden inside walls, electric motors, and transmission lines, but recent commodity market shifts are making it hard to miss. The red metal has risen 44% over the past year , 1 and hit a record $14,334 per metric ton on August 10. It comes as power grids, defense programs, and substations needed for AI data centers pull at copper for major industrial builds, creating immense structural demand . Meanwhile, supply is tightening, as Chile, the top producer, posted its weakest first-half output since 2018, and new mines to support rising demand can take 15 to 20 years to build. Getting direct exposure used to mean picking a specific miner or riding the futures curve. Thankfully, this coil has unraveled: you can now hold copper as a ticker through the Sprott Physical Copper Trust (SCOP) , the world’s first physical copper fund**, backed by 14,808 metric tons in secured storage. Unlock a direct position in the metal at record highs with SCOP. AUTOS Re-Energized EV Market Grapples With Growing Drain on Profitability Photo illustration by Connor Lin / The Daily Upside Electric vehicle makers are hunting for buried treasure, but not the kind you probably think. Instead of gold, they want its decidedly less glamorous cousin, copper. The base metal, commonly found in the now-discontinued US penny, is critical to production of the vehicles, which are regaining popularity as the US war with Iran drives gas prices to an average $4.47 a gallon, according to AAA, up roughly 40% from a year ago. More than half of US drivers surveyed for a recent report by HERE Technologies and SBD Automotive said they’re more open to considering EVs than they were a year ago, and 57% of drivers said gas prices influenced their interest. In a mid-year review of the market, Cox Automotive found that 56% of shoppers say rising gas prices have made them more likely to consider a hybrid or plug-in hybrid car. The EV Explosion It’s a pivot with built-in challenges, since US carmakers had pulled back on electric vehicle production. Any ramp-up would require buying large quantities of copper, whose price has climbed as much as 20% this year amid concerns that the US will impose tariffs on imports of the widely used metal. While Earth has abundant copper deposits, hence its designation as a base metal, locating them and extracting the ore is an expensive proposition. Spiking demand, meanwhile, has outpaced currently available supplies. “The story with copper is really one of supply and demand being out of balance, and the fact that there’s just such a long road between the start line and the finish line for a copper project and that we’re not really seeing people even off to the races,” Doug Daley, portfolio manager at Core Commodity Management, told The Daily Upside, referring to both exploring for copper and starting mining operations. “Everyone knew this was coming. It’s kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion.” As a result, electric vehicle makers face pressure to raise price tags that were higher to start with than those on cars powered by traditional combustion engines. US buyers paid an average $54,813 for new electric cars in August, a premium of 9.4% compared with the market as a whole, according to Kelley Blue Book . The price differential, exacerbated by the expiration of Biden-era federal tax credits, has limited buyer interest enough in the past to prompt a course correction for large American automakers. Ford, for example, said in December it would take a $19.5 billion writedown after scrapping plans to build larger electric vehicles and focusing instead on gas-powered and hybrid cars. Global sales continued to accelerate, however, as drivers in China, Europe and elsewhere look to ditch trips to the gas pump, and analysts say conflict in the Middle East revived interest in used EVs in the US. Copper is a huge part of EVs’ present and future. In fact, electric mobility will be the most important source of growth for copper demand in the next decade, contributing 32% of incremental demand, according to Eleonor Kramarz, global head of critical minerals and energy transition consulting at S&P Global Energy. By 2035, EVs and hybrids could be contributing close to 6 million metric tons of copper demand, more than double current demand levels, she added. Within the broad electrification theme, EVs will contribute almost as much to demand as the electrical grid requirements. Alt Metal? Kramarz said that EVs use 2.9 times more copper than gas-powered cars. “In contrast with the typical gas engine, the EV needs to store and distribute electricity from the battery to the electric motors, for which copper is fundamental given its conductivity, thermal performance and footprint compared to other materials.” It begs the question: Can we simply use another material? Today’s EV keeps evolving, and there are several pathways to reduce copper intensity per vehicle, Kramarz said. Automakers are exploring lighter and more cost-effective electrical architectures, including the use of aluminum conductors in some applications. But while aluminum is lighter and potentially cheaper, it’s restricted by its lower conductivity. Beyond a shift to aluminum, opting for higher-voltage architecture would use smaller copper cable cross-sections, impacting the total copper weight of the vehicle harness. “We expect differences to be incremental rather than transformative,” Kramarz said. Written by Mallika Mitra PRESENTED BY SPROTT The Red Metal Rush Could Be Underway Photo via Sprott As demand for copper outpaces short supply, everyone seems to want a piece. More than 200,000 metric

Spicy Take Sunday 🌶️ 🥛 The Treasury called the bottom 🏦 Spicy Take Sunday 🌶️ Rohit Chauhan GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that never sleeps on Bitcoin bottoms. Here’s a taste of this week’s menu: 🔥 The Treasury called the crypto bottom. 🥵 We’re not buying Dario’s ‘Pace the frontier’ argument. 🌶️ Crypto insiders had mixed feelings about CLARITY. HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥 Ethereum just beat the Singapore Stock Exchange on Volumes 🇸🇬 Binji (Founding Member, Ethlabs) dropped that tokenized stock volume on Ethereum just beat the Singapore Stock Exchange over the past month. Ethereum is winning tokenization not by being the fastest horse in the race - but instead, by being the most boring and credibly secure network on the planet. His argument: You can build a faster Nasdaq, but you can't build a faster Ethereum that's still Ethereum unless you're extremely careful about how! 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here . Former SEC enforcement pro says crypto insiders had mixed feelings on CLARITY 💀 Ashley Ebersole (Former SEC Enforcement and Co-founder and CLO at TX) is not panicking about the Senate tanking the CLARITY bill. He points out that GENIUS took roughly three years and flopped this exact way several times before becoming the law, so a first-year miss tells you nothing. He says there was real disagreement inside the industry over whether CLARITY was even desirable, with plenty of people backing it only because "some legislation" beats none at all. 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here . Treasury called the bottom on Crypto while CT was fast asleep 😴 Dan Tapiero (Founder and CEO of 50T) says the low is in, and crypto missed it because nobody in the space watches the Dollar/Yen anymore. Bessent and the BOJ ran a coordinated intervention when the Yen traded at 163 against the dollar to force the rate down. Gold bottomed at basically the same moment, and you could have picked up BTC in the low 60s days later while CT was busy writing obituaries. He says we've never had a better treasury/Fed pairing, and that fading two Druckenmiller alumni because of a newspaper column is laughable. Dan’s fund is modeling a $50T digital asset market with Bitcoin alone valued at $20T (a 10x for the largest crypto asset in the world). 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here . The brief 330K+ marketers actually read TLDR Marketing is the free daily brief that 330K+ growth marketers, performance marketers, and CMOs actually read. The most interesting stories in marketing, curated and summarized in 5 minutes. HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥 AI stocks are going through an earnings bubble 🫧 Brian Feroldi (Investor, Author, and Motley Fool Writer) says everyone is reading the AI bubble wrong. Price bubbles are easy to pin. The nastier kind is an earnings bubble where revenue, margins, and profits all look gorgeous because the demand behind them, though temporary, looks structural. It’s like Etsy selling homemade masks in 2020. His concern with the Microns and SanDisks of the world is that a capacity glut turns "5x earnings" into not cheap at all. Brian has skipped the whole trade and is now 25% cash, the highest of his career compared to the usual 5%. 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here . Melvin isn’t buying Dario’s “Pace the frontier theory” 🇪🇺 Melvin (Analyst at Milk Road) isn't buying the AI safety panic that gripped the markets this week and thinks it reeks of regulatory capture. His read: The safety rules being floated look suspiciously like the systems Anthropic has already spent years building, which lock in a duopoly while smaller labs drown in lawyer fees, audits, and outside testing. He also pointed out that the Wall Street Journal published a piece about that viral Anthropic resignation tweet BEFORE the tweet went out, which he says is hard to explain without coordination. His actual suggestion to Dario: if you want to slow down AI “Move the company to Europe, problem solved.” 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here . BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 NEAR rips 27% in 24 hours as Confidential Intents TVL crosses $70M. SEC grants temporary ‘Innovation Exemption’ for tokenized stocks. Seven Democrats join in support of CLARITY after Senate Cloture stall. RATE TODAY’S EDITION What'd you think of today's edition? 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛 F**king great 🥛🥛🥛 Meh, do better 🥛 You didn't bring the heat MILKY MEMES 🤣 Source: @boldleonidas Source: @ToolySOL This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? Sponsor Milk Road Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 ImpactDM Inc. operating as Milk Road 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada

Here’s your cheat code for the video game industry... September 20, 2026 Presented By Drew Shannon Editor’s note Press Start. Dust off your controllers and let the infinite money glitches flow. In today’s edition, we’re speedrunning one of the world’s largest entertainment sectors: gaming. Our campaign covers the industry’s digital overhaul, Hollywood’s pursuit of the IP loot, and, of course, a few side quests. Continue? CAN’T TOUCH THIS Gaming is dead. Long live gaming. Unsplash We’ve come a long way from the era when joysticks and single-player campaigns were seen as nothing more than fodder for basement-dwelling nerds. Nowadays, more than 3.5 billion people play some sort of video game, and the global industry is larger than music and movies combined. But there’s a catch: It seems that the bigger gaming gets, the less you own of the games you play. Goodbye, physical discs The days of holding a game in your hands are probably numbered. Cue “Slipping Through My Fingers” by ABBA: Sony will sell new PlayStation games as digital downloads only starting in 2028, the company announced earlier this year, partly because that’s how most people buy games now anyway, and partly because premium games are increasingly too large to cram onto a single CD. The biggest release of the decade, the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto VI , will also be digital-only . This practice angers gamers and consumer advocates because you can’t actually own a digital game—you’re buying a (revocable) license to play it. Sony is now facing a proposed class-action lawsuit that claims the company doesn’t make that distinction clear enough. Meanwhile, a cloud gaming surge is coming… …the CEO of Grand Theft Auto parent publisher, Take-Two Interactive, recently predicted . Cloud gaming lets you stream video games from practically any device. That’s helpful as the AI boom jacks up console prices via ballooning hardware and memory demands, but it also turns gaming into a subscription service that’s beholden to price increases or, say, Microsoft’s recent decision to impose monthly streaming limits for Xbox Game Pass . “We’re introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer,” Xbox said. Looking ahead… gaming companies might turn to in-game advertising to offset rising cloud costs and give players a way around usage caps. Xbox already started testing ad-supported game streaming in July. —ML Sponsored By Pendulum Scientists crack gut/GLP-1 connection Did you hear about the group of PhD scientists from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Stanford who walked into a lab—and left with a breakthrough probiotic in hand? These scientists cracked the gut/GLP-1 connection and figured out how to bring live Akkermansia muciniphila to the probiotics market. The final result of their work? Pendulum’s Metabolic Daily probiotic . This particular strain is so groundbreaking because it can strengthen gut lining, reduce bloating, and improve metabolic and digestive health .* In a recent survey, 91% of users reported fewer food cravings.** With more than 15k medical provider recommendations and loyal customers like Halle Berry, this stuff sure sounds promising. Try Metabolic Daily probiotic yourself and take 48% off . HSA/FSA eligible. screenwatching Hollywood thinks this is all a game Universal Pictures If at first you don’t succeed, take out the game, blow into the cartridge, and try again. That’s what Hollywood did after its mostly forgettable attempts at adapting video games for the big screen in the 1990s. Now, video game adaptations are big business, and the entertainment and gaming industries are fully in co-op mode. Collecting coins: In its never-ending quest for strong intellectual property, Hollywood has found that nostalgia for familiar video game characters can sell a lot of tickets, bringing in both gamers and people who wouldn’t know the difference between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (it’s the bow). Per Box Office Mojo: The fifth-highest-grossing film of the year so far is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie , which raked in more than $1 billion worldwide. Last year, A Minecraft Movie also landed in the No. 5 spot, grossing $960 million worldwide. The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has also made more than $1 billion at the global box office since 2020. The commercial and critical success of Fallout and The Last of Us has shown that video games can translate to TV as well. Side quests: Strong intellectual property can swing both ways. In June, Paramount unveiled its own gaming studio to turn its TV and film IP into video games. Warner Bros. Discovery, which Paramount is trying to acquire, also has its own in-house game studio. Different levels: The entertainment industry is working other angles, too—movies are being promoted inside video games; Amazon and Netflix have added games to their platforms; and when the latest GTA VI trailer debuted on Netflix, it attracted more viewers that week than any of the streamer’s titles.— BC WAIT, WHAT? People are using AI apps to vibe code video games Unsplash Not satisfied with what video game creators are providing? Thanks to generative AI apps, you’re only a few prompts away from vibe coding your very own game. While you can’t make an effortless version of Animal Crossing or Red Dead Redemption , apps like Meta’s Pocket let people create smaller interactive games that are published to a scrollable feed. There’s also Roblox’s AI app, Build, which gives users the power to build (get it?) basic games on their phones. A gateway to more vibe coding? There’s a steep learning curve to vibe coding new software, but “a small, browser-based game is a great way to get a taste of vibe coding,” according to Inc. reporter Ben Sherry. After an hour spent prompting Claude, this is what he created. There are some constraints. One person attempted to vibe code his own version of GTA to beat the new installment to market in November, but ran into enough technical and legal prob