funding: -0.0139%
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Zbieżność czasowa, nie dowód przyczyny — sprawdź sam.
Mortgage rates go to the top and may never ever stop... September 26, 2026 Presented By Warmest of welcomes. Hidden Valley is releasing its first-ever seasonal product—a black Spooky Ranch salad dressing that comes in a glow-in-the-dark bottle. The company said that the creamy white dressing was turned black using fruit juice and cocoa. Your move, blue cheese. —Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Adam Epstein, Holly Van Leuven In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: US mortgage rates topping 7% The nor’easter pummeling the East Coast A juicy AI book scandal Markets Nasdaq 27,068.72 +0.48% S&P 7,743.41 +0.51% Dow 51,828.62 +0.93% 10-Year 5.184% +2.0 bps Bitcoin $83,989.57 -0.44% Costco $922.76 +2.93% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks swung up yesterday, with the Dow in particular rebounding as investors were hopeful once again that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be coming. Elsewhere, Costco was thanking God it was Friday after it spiked on the news of an earnings beat. FOR SALE? MAYBE NOT Mortgage rates are soaring, with little relief in sight Illustration: Shannon May, Photo: Adobe Stock Home financing costs are doing the part of the Cha-Cha Slide where they bring it to the top like they’ll never ever stop. Amid ongoing inflation, economists are wondering how high average 30-year US mortgage rates will go after topping 7% this week for the first time since early 2025, according to Freddie Mac. The surge comes after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last week for the first time in three years, a decision that markets saw coming: Before the rate hike, mortgage rates and Treasury bond yields—which generally move in tandem—spiked in anticipation. Forecast: “There’s no reason to think that the rout [in bonds] couldn’t continue, and rates get closer to 8%, or even higher,” the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics told Barron’s. But… This worst-case scenario—as another economist characterized it to Barron’s—would require “significant deterioration” in the US dollar’s safe-haven status and a continued Treasury bond sell-off . Those factors hinge largely on the Iran war and its inflationary impact on the prices of energy and general goods. Alongside rising federal debt, this has rattled investors’ appetites for government bonds (and not just in the US ). Researchers thought this year would go differently Mortgage rates fell below 6% in February for the first time since 2022, giving housing experts hope that market activity might return to normal this year…until the Iran war started, and the spring home-selling season flopped . Now, economists expect that mortgage rates surpassing the psychologically significant 7% threshold will have a chilling effect on home sales. For context, homeowners who locked in ~3% rates during the pandemic could pay thousands of dollars more per month if they moved and got a new mortgage for the same amount. Already… high mortgage rates contributed to a 2% month-to-month dip in existing home sales last month, according to the National Association of Realtors. They’re also leading some borrowers to opt for riskier, adjustable-rate loans. —ML Sponsored By Zoom When context breaks down, work breaks down Knowledge workers now spend 57% of their time on communication (email, chat, and meetings). That leaves just 43% for the work they were actually hired to do. The problem is context that doesn’t travel with the work. Zoom’s guide to operational resilience breaks down what high-performing organizations do differently, including: how connecting context across the tools and systems your teams already use reduces the manual effort that slows work down what it looks like when AI reduces follow-through friction while keeping people in control of what happens next how IT leaders can show that collaboration investments are actually delivering, not just how often people log in Build momentum instead of reconstructing the past. Read the guide . World Tour de headlines David L. Ryan/Getty Images 🌀 A powerful nor’easter is battering the East Coast. Per NBC News, coastal flood alerts are in effect for 33 million people along the Eastern Seaboard, including the New York metro area. Heavy wind and rain are expected to hit states ranging from Virginia to Rhode Island throughout the weekend, intensifying as it moves north. The severe weather could cause power outages and travel delays: A number of major US airlines have already waived change fees for the weekend. The rain could continue into next week, but the wind is likely to weaken as the tempest spins away from the coast on Monday. —AE 🤖 Microsoft announced sweeping changes to Copilot. The tech giant is repositioning its flagship chatbot as the “AI built for work,” rather than trying to continue competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude as a personal consumer bot. Accordingly, Microsoft is turning Copilot into a unified “ super app ” that will host Office products, like Excel and Word, directly inside of it. For instance, users can now ask the chatbot to modify a Word document without leaving the Copilot platform. Microsoft’s strategy shift comes as Meta’s new Muse personal assistant has surged to the top of app charts. —AE 🎥 Trump bans CNN from Air Force One, reviving hostilities with press. Yesterday, the weeklong standoff between the White House and the Washington press corps seemed to end when the former let CNN film an event with President Trump and Xi Jinping at the National Archives, and the TV press pool resumed its coverage. But last night, a CNN spokesperson said that the network had been barred from joining Trump on Air Force One to cover an event in Tennessee today. An email sent by the White House last night outlined details of the trip but did not name a primary TV press pool representative, according to the New York Times, making it unclear if the other pool members w
Plus: Who ever said math was easy has never calculated RMD. September 26, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. The players are on the field, but what’s the game plan? Americans are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence with financial questions, but that doesn’t mean they fully trust the answers. In fact, it may push them to seek a second opinion. Some 82% of Americans who have asked AI tools financial questions rated the answers at least “good,” according to a New York Life survey. Yet, most still sought validation elsewhere, including through additional internet searches, friends and family. More than a quarter said using AI has motivated them to seek help from a financial professional. Think of it like football: AI might move the chains a little, but advisors are still the ones scoring touchdowns for clients. PRESENTED BY PONTERA Your Tech Stack Has an Expiration Date AI, connected data, and broader asset coverage are shaping the demands of tomorrow. Is your tech stack ready? On October 21, join leaders from Orion, GeoWealth, Compound Planning and the Financial Planning Association, and Pontera for a roundtable on the modern RIA stack: what’s changing, what’s becoming obsolete, and how leading firms build adaptable systems without added complexity. The next generation of wealth management is here. Save your seat. This Week’s Highlights INFLATION & PRICES Treasury Yields Touch 20-Year Highs, Fueled by Sticky Inflation, US Debt TAX TIPS Even Good Calculators Have Trouble With RMD Math INDUSTRY NEWS For Sale: What Asset Managers Want in Indie ETF Shops Catch Up on More Headlines THIS WEEK ON THE ADVISOR UPSIDE SHOW Sun, Sand and Shop Talk. The Daily Upside Managing Editor Emile Hallez joins John Manganaro fresh off the beach at Future Proof to share his takeaways from the festival, including how acquirers now rank organic growth among the top drivers of an RIA’s value and how the data center buildout is straining the grid. Plus, why this year’s record pace of ETF launches raises a question of innovation versus “slop.” Listen to this week’s episode here. Edited by Emile Hallez . Written by Griffin Kelly , John Manganaro , Lilly Riddle , and Quinn Waller . Advisor Upside is a publication of The Daily Upside. For any questions or comments, feel free to contact us at advisor@thedailyupside.com . Our Other Newsletters The Daily Upside | ETF Upside | Retirement Upside | CFO Upside 55 Union Place, #253 Summit, NJ 07901 Copyright © 2026 The Daily Upside, LLC All rights reserved.
An old Disney beef gets new attention... September 25, 2026 Presented By Pour yourself a cup of ambition. Cities across the US and the whole state of California have declared today Dolly Parton Day (it’s 9/25, get it?). So today, in honor of the late icon, consider taking your boss hostage. Hope your day isn’t all takin’ and no givin’. — Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: News outlets returning to the White House after a legal fight Oracle’s data center issues The quarterback giving financial advice Markets Nasdaq 26,939.37 +0.01% S&P 7,704.13 -0.03% Dow 51,349.98 -0.31% 10-Year 5.162% +5.0 bps Bitcoin $84,311.01 -0.29% Darden $207.24 -3.02% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: The Dow had its third down day in a row yesterday, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq ended mostly flat. But it could have been worse: Stocks fell early in the day as investors warily watched rising bond yields, but pared some losses amid hope for a potential deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Stock spotlight: Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, fell after investors weren’t as impressed with the company’s quarterly results as diners are with their breadsticks. START THE PRESSES Reporters return to White House after weeklong ban Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images President Trump can’t keep CNN, MS NOW, and Politico off his US taxpayers’ lawn, at least for now. Nearly a week after he barred them from the White House, journalists from these outlets regained access yesterday following a judge’s early morning order to temporarily block Trump’s ban. To refresh: Trump announced last Friday that he was revoking White House credentials for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico (Politico and Morning Brew have the same parent company, Axel Springer), initially saying it was “a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” but later calling their reporting a national security risk. The outlets sued to get back in. Now, things are looking up for the press: “The Court is skeptical—at least on this record—that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation” of the outlets’ press passes, US District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote : Kelly granted the outlets a 14-day restraining order against Trump’s media ban, while their First Amendment lawsuit challenging it progresses. The administration’s examples of “objectionable reporting” by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were “so vague it hardly does the trick,” Kelly’s order said. The judge added that the outlets have a good shot of proving in court that the administration violated their constitutional due process rights. The judge issued his order in the wee hours of yesterday morning, but reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were still turned away until around noon, though it wasn’t immediately clear why. No eyes on Xi CNN’s TV pool peers—ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC—suspended their White House video coverage all week in solidarity with the excommunicated outlets, which meant that no American network aired live footage yesterday when Trump hosted China’s President Xi Jinping, who’s here to discuss AI, Iran, and Taiwan. Looking ahead… the networks have said they won’t resume presidential pool coverage until the administration reassures them that CNN will not only regain White House access, but also be readmitted to the pool. —ML World Tour de headlines Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images 🏛️ At state dinner, Xi said he and Trump reached “common understanding on many issues.” China’s president started the day with good news, announcing that a new pair of pandas would arrive at Zoo Atlanta in the coming days. The leaders held bilateral talks in the Oval Office yesterday before their much-anticipated state dinner. The guest list was heavy on business and tech executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Today, Trump is expected to take Xi to the National Archives to tour an exhibit of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights before China’s leader heads home.— HVL 🏠 Mortgage rates hit 7% for the first time since January 2025. Abstaining from avocado toast probably won’t be enough to help you buy a house: The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 7.03% on Thursday, Freddie Mac said yesterday. That’s up from 6.3% a year ago and represents the first time mortgages have breached the psychologically significant 7% mark in 20 months. That’s likely to hit the already stagnant housing market hard. With inflation remaining elevated and the war in Iran driving up oil prices, the bond market—which mortgage rates tend to follow—has seen large yield spikes. The 10-year bond, which is closely tied to consumer borrowing costs like mortgages, leaped above 5%, and yesterday the 30-year bond had its highest yield since 2004. —AR ⚖️ New York accuses Polymarket of running an unlicensed gambling operation. If you had money on New York suing Polymarket about two months after it went after rival prediction market Kalshi, it’s time to cash in. The lawsuit filed against Polymarket US yesterday is similar to the one the state lodged against Kalshi, asking a judge to block the platform from operating in the state and order it to pay fines because it’s not licensed by New York’s gambling regulator. Prediction markets have argued that they’re not subject to state gambling regulations because they instead fall under the federal regulation of the CFTC (and the agency agrees), but the question is being put to the test in multiple lawsuits. Polymarket plans to fight the suit. “We believe in New York and we’re staying here,” its chief legal officer said. —AR Spons
Why accuracy, connectivity and advisor expertise matter more than ever September 25, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. Wealth management firms spent years buying systems for their tech stack, and rather less time getting them to talk to each other. Client records sit in one system, the plans in another, the tax and estate work somewhere else. They’re each usually pretty confident in their own expertise, and when they disagree about the same client, you tend to find out with the client sitting right there in front of you. Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at Wealth.com, thinks the fix starts with accuracy that has been engineered rather than prompted. A general-purpose model asked the same estate planning question three times will happily produce three answers, each delivered with the poise of a tenured professor, which is charming in a chatbot and considerably less charming when a client is asking who makes their medical decisions if they can’t. Wealth.com builds deterministic systems underneath its AI so the answer holds still, then invests heavily in APIs so the neighboring platforms tell the same story. The company works with more than 2,600 firms and raised $65 million in Series B funding this spring. Here are the highlights from our conversation with Tim at Future Proof Festival 2026. PRESENTED BY WEALTH.COM The New Standard for AI in the Advisor’s Tech Stack Photo via Damon Butler The Daily Upside: AI tools are multiplying. What separates a tool that serves advisors from one that actually changes the wealth management equation? We went to market with our own AI, Ester, several years ago, before generative AI went mainstream. Our background came from machine learning and AI. What we were able to do with our technology was read existing plans, take that workload and build efficiencies for these firms and these advisors. What we’ve seen over the last several years, especially with these FutureProof events, is there are so many awesome technologies coming out. The big thing is this. We need to understand exactly the day-to-day of advisors. You need to sit with the firms, you need to sit with the advisors, understand their problem statements and come to them with solutions. The firms we work with, and today we partner with over 2,600, are really pushing the innovation of Wealth.com. The Daily Upside: You’re known for the work you do in estate and tax planning. Where are you taking the platform from here? We just completed our Series B, and how we’re deploying our dollars is a real focus on engineering, AI and design. We have a very rigorous roadmap, but we always like to say we did not buy estateplanning.com, we bought Wealth.com. There are some areas we’re really excited about, but we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, because those are areas we will be heading very soon here. We’re teeing up to launch them at our own event in January. The Daily Upside: AI can be confidently wrong. How do you handle that in a category where being wrong is expensive? Everyone has access to their own LLMs. Ask the same question three times, you’re going to get three different answers. What is unique about Wealth.com, especially in estate planning and tax, is how we built out these sophisticated deterministic systems. They are in place to make sure that accuracy is there. So when you ask that question the first time, the second time, the third time, you’re getting the same accurate answer. That’s what’s been really important for us in building the brand, because there’s been so much incredible word of mouth, and that’s been a big driver in our marketing. Accuracy is everything. We live and breathe it, and it’s a pillar of our company. The Daily Upside: How much does a firm’s data infrastructure determine what it can get out of these tools? Data is incredibly important, and clean, actionable data. It’s a layered approach, from how you are managing your data lakes all the way to the systems and partners that you have, that they’re interconnected and that they’re talking with each other. That’s an important piece. One thing we do pride ourselves on is those partnership relationships. We are not only an application solution, but we really put a lot of energy behind our APIs and the relationships we’ve built within this ecosystem. You have to have these systems talking to each other, because if you have one system saying this and another system saying the opposite, that client conversation is going to get really awkward really fast. The Daily Upside: Where does AI actually earn its place in an advisor’s day? I absolutely love it. It builds efficiency, allows them to serve their clients at scale, but also with better outcomes. I think about it a lot with healthcare today. What AI is doing in healthcare, being able to source cancer or disease early on and giving those tools to doctors and physicians, that’s the same way I look at advisors. We’re not replacing advisors. That relationship is too important, but let’s give you the tools to be a superhero. The Daily Upside: Some voices in the industry say AI will replace advisors eventually. You don’t buy it. I am betting against that. We believe that client relationship is too critical. I’ve lived through life, you’ve lived through life, and that personal relationship and that trust, you’re never going to replace that. It is such a core part of that family dynamic. I’m a big believer that advisors are only going to be able to do more in this new era. The Daily Upside: If we sit down a year from now, how will the advisor’s world have changed? I think it’s going to be all about connectivity. That’s going to be the true unlock. You’re going to see a lot of different players rise to the top, and there’s some consolidation with some of the technologies you’re seeing today. Being a part of that best-in-class ecosystem is going to be a big part of what you see over the next several years. Watch the full Q&A with Tim White. Our Other Newsletters The Daily
Plus: The world loves U.S. stocks | Friday, September 25, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Sep 25, 2026 😻 Friday. It seemed this day would never come. 🧘🏽♀️ The stock market is managing to maintain an eerie calm despite the tumult in the bond market (more on bonds below). The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 5.19% yesterday, but stocks ended the day essentially flat. 📈 This morning, stock futures are slightly higher, Treasury yields have steadied, and oil prices have retreated, helped by Iran's proposal for a seven-day ceasefire . 🗓️ Today, we look at a booming segment of the bond market — AI debt — where Oracle has rekindled questions about the potential perils of the data center borrowing binge. And foreign investors: They love us! They really love us! Well, they love U.S. stocks and other non-government investments, as new data shows. Let's do this: 1,264 words, a 5-minute read. 1 big thing: This Oracle situation has everything By Emily Peck Data: FactSet, Tradeweb; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips The risks of the ballooning AI borrowing binge rose to the surface yesterday, courtesy of Oracle. The tech giant, which is up to its ears in AI-related debt, is trying to put off paying its lease commitments on a much-delayed data center project. Why it matters: Oracle is the weakest of the hyperscalers, with the lowest credit rating and a stock that's down 30% for the year — but with AI investment driving much of the economic growth in the U.S., its wobbles mean a lot. Where it stands: Oracle sent the developer of a data center project in New Mexico known as Project Jupiter a notice citing force majeure — reserving its right to delay payments in the event something major goes down. (Axios' Nathan Bomey has more on that .) By the numbers: Markets aren't loving it. Oracle bonds set to mature in 2055 are now trading at 77 cents on the dollar, according to data from PitchBook. Another stress signal: The cost of buying a type of bond-market insurance, known as a credit default swap, on Oracle debt rose yesterday. (See the chart above.) News of the maneuver rippled through the ballooning ecosystem of data center-related debt yesterday morning, with spreads on notes financing AI infrastructure bonds in which Oracle would be a tenant briefly blowing out — typically seen as reflecting rising worries among investors — before re-tightening somewhat by the end of the day. (See chart below.) Data: Tradeweb; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Between the lines: The force majeure notice doesn't mean Oracle's obligations to pay the lease are canceled — it's like an FYI to the developer. The notice "signals the company's own risk assessment has shifted enough to warrant legal cover," per a note yesterday from RBC Capital Markets. Oracle says Project Jupiter remains on schedule. Follow the money: The move may make stock investors anxious about their expectations for Oracle's future revenue. But the idea that the hyperscalers can back away from data center commitments should give bond investors some comfort that these companies have some leverage. "You don't want to be making lease payments on a project that doesn't currently exist and you're not earning anything from it," says Johnathan Owen, a portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management who covers investment-grade debt. The big picture: The Oracle situation hits all the boxes on the AI investment bingo card: Bond binge. Oracle helped kick off a scramble among the hyperscalers to borrow money when it issued a long-dated bond last year, John Atkins, who covers bonds for PitchBook, wrote in a note. Off-balance sheet debt. Beyond bonds, the hyperscalers have also committed billions of dollars in future payments for data centers that haven't been built yet . Think of it like signing a lease for a vacation home that a contractor says he'll have done by 2030. Oracle's commitment to lease the New Mexico data center, as part of a massive buildout called Stargate, helped get the developers some $18 billion in loans from about 20 banks in 2025. Circular financing. A lot of the AI players are extremely interconnected . Stargate was spearheaded by OpenAI and SoftBank and announced by President Trump on his first full day back in office last year. Data center backlash. New Mexicans have been fighting this project since at least 2025, as the New York Times detailed. This summer, the state land commissioner rejected part of the project's plans, forcing delays. That setback and others led to Oracle's notice. It's as if your vacation home contractor had to put down tools and wait for permits — you might balk at making rental payments. The bottom line: Force majeure? More like zut alors! 2. Bond sell-off continues as 10-year yield hits 5.19% By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Another day, another tough session in the bond market, with yields on U.S. government debt continuing to push toward levels seldom seen in decades. The latest: The yield on the 10-year note rose to roughly 5.19% in late afternoon trading in New York, the highest closing level since July 2007. Driving the news: It's the same old story. The Iran war and associated energy shocks — diesel at about $6.50 a gallon and regular gasoline at $4.50 a gallon , according to AAA — are feeding what seem like serious inflationary pressures. As a result, traders are growing more confident that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next two meetings. Elsewhere, the deteriorating profile of the U.S. government's finances and competition for bond investor dollars from AI are adding to pressure. What we're watching: If and when the stock market will start getting indigestion as rates keep climbing. What they're saying: JPMorgan market analysts recently looked at the relationship between key interest rates — like the yield on the 10-year — and the valuation of the S&P 500. "Based on ~80 years of historical analysis, there is an inverted 'U' relationship between the
Plus: Absent AI guardrails, a stampede to cybersecurity firms. September 25, 2026 PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Good morning and happy Friday. You didn’t need insider knowledge to see this one coming. The state of New York sued Polymarket Thursday, painting it as an illegal, unlicensed gambling operation. It’s the fourth case Attorney General Letitia James has brought against prediction market operators this year, with Kalshi, Coinbase and Gemini facing similar accusations. Operators and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have argued event contracts should be considered a derivative subject to federal regulation. But federal appeals courts are split. The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the CFTC and platforms in an April case brought by New Jersey, but last month, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against prediction markets in a Nevada case and ordered them to stop offering sports event contracts. This could set up a Supreme Court showdown: Traders on Polymarket currently put the odds of the nation’s top court taking up a sports event contract case by the end of the year at 22%. Just remember, if you have a sudden, uncontrollable urge to take that bet, you’re hooked on derivatives, not gambling. MARKETS S&P 500 7,704.13 ▼ -0.02% DJI 51,349.98 ▼ -0.31% ORCL $139.54 ▼ -3.47% Stock data as of market close on September 24, 2026. INFLATION & PRICES Treasury Yields Touch 20-Year Highs, Fueled by Sticky Inflation, US Debt Photo via Xinhua/Sipa USA/Newscom You know the deal by now. US bond yields are rising because investors are worried about persistent inflation , fueled by higher oil prices , which could drive up interest rates. At the same time, the rationale for rate hikes has been strengthened by a surprisingly resilient American economy that looks like it can absorb them. Meanwhile, the rapidly growing, supersized US debt pile means the Treasury has to keep issuing large amounts of bonds, whose higher yields could lure investors at the expense of equities. On Thursday, this bundle of macroeconomic forces drove yields to the highest in decades. The 10-year US Treasury yield surged more than 10 basis points to 5.223%, the most in 19 years, while the 30-year yield hit 5.501%, the most since 2004. The Yield Appeal This week offered new evidence that the US economy has the wherewithal to withstand higher interest rates, a key tool for the Federal Reserve to curb inflation. S&P Global released data showing US business activity surged at the fastest rate in more than five years in September. That strengthened the odds that the Fed will raise interest rates in October to about 70%, up from 55% a week ago, according to CME FedWatch. Bond yields tend to track interest rates, and there are concerns about what a 5% or higher yield on the 10-Year Treasury means for markets. Because Treasurys are backed by the US government, they’re considered virtually risk free. When yields surge, investors are forced to rethink their rationale for choosing between stocks and bonds. Equities with 5% to 6% annual yields, which aren’t guaranteed and are subject to stock market volatility, are suddenly a lot less appealing to long-term investors who can lock in guaranteed returns through higher bond yields. The resulting concern is that investors are incentivized to move money into the Treasury market at the expense of stocks. In reality, it may not be so simple: Investment bank Jefferies forecasts earnings at S&P 500 companies will climb 35% this year. Growth like that is more than enough to keep investors from decamping for bond yields. For small-cap companies, which are sensitive to higher rates because they are much more reliant on short-term bank loans and floating-rate debt, the road ahead looks much steeper. Unlucky Number Seven: While the US economy remains resilient, there is one notable weak spot. The 10-year yield strongly influences consumer borrowing rates, and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 7.03% on Thursday, the highest in 20 months, according to Freddie Mac data. The annualized pace of US home sales had already slowed for the past three months, and it’s hard to imagine people lining up for 7%+, 30-year mortgages. Written by Sean Craig PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Reporting That Goes Beyond the Press Release Major corporate calls often arrive pre-explained: the acquisition is strategic, the CFO exit is mutual, the layoffs are a restructuring for growth. The real reasons rarely make the announcement. We’re launching CFO Upside to report the story behind these calls and everything that influences them, surfacing the news and intelligence the modern finance leader needs to stay ahead. Every week, you’ll get insights on deals and capital raises, comp negotiation, board dynamics, the technology rebuilding finance functions, and the policy shifts that reach the numbers. From the team behind the briefing you are currently scrolling, CFO Upside is built for finance leaders who cannot afford to just track the headlines but need to understand what comes next. BIG TECH Google Takes Data Centers to the Stars to Solve Earthbound Problems Photo via Stanislav Kogiku / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Newscom Google has famously branded its high-risk, high-cost megaprojects moonshots. That label applies almost literally to its latest one. The tech titan yesterday announced plans to launch a satellite into space that will attempt to process AI queries above the Kármán Line. Eventually, the goal is to launch dozens of satellites that together will act like an AI data center. The lofty ambitions are grounded in harsh realities down on the ground, as tech companies fight for data-center real estate and vast amounts of water and electricity — and as a growing number of constituencies fight them off. The Brave Little Refrigerator Google’s satellite, roughly the size of a refrigerator, contains four AI chips called tensor processing units that together have about as much compute power as a single server at a da
Hot growth killed the easy-Fed story, and BTC is still taking the institutional bid. Global Bond Yields Are Ripping While BTC is Holding its Own Hot growth killed the easy-Fed story, and BTC is still taking the institutional bid. Sep 25 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . GM Investors Global bond markets are flashing red across every major economy today. The entire United States yield curve is going completely parabolic. The benchmark 10Y yield punched straight through 5% this week. At the same time, #0Y mortgage rates climbed to 7.45%. Economic expansion is accelerating rather than cooling down under restrictive conditions. The S&P Global United States Composite PMI jumped 2.4 points to 58.4 in September. Yet, crypto is behaving like an entirely independent asset class. Bitcoin is currently tracking green for three consecutive months. Institutional capital poured $2.3 billion into spot exchange-traded funds through Thursday alone. Investors are fleeing long-dated paper to secure provably scarce digital collateral. Traditional macro correlations between bond yields and risk assets are shattering in real time. Liquidity is seeking safety where balance sheets cannot be diluted by government spending. Here’s what our desk is watching. This Is The Only "Buy The Dip" That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn't fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don't fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register Macro Trading and Fed Policy: Global Yields Ripping Across Equities The sovereign bond rout is no longer an isolated American phenomenon. Our research reveals synchronized yield spikes across every tier-one developed economy. Global investors are aggressively dumping sovereign paper at an alarming pace. 10 year forward government bond yields in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are surging rapidly. Similar violent spikes are unfolding across France, Italy, Canada, and Australia. Bondholders are demanding higher term premiums to fund endless government budget deficits. In the United States, the entire Treasury yield curve is ripping vertically. The thirty-year bond yield reached 5.40 percent, while benchmark ten-year yields crossed five percent. This historic curve steepening reflects raw fiscal anxiety rather than sustainable economic optimism. Macro trading desks received another jolt from resilient domestic business activity this week. The S&P Global Composite PMI jumped to 58.4 in September, marking its highest reading since July 2021. That unexpected economic expansion completely upends baseline expectations for upcoming Fed policy. Tighter monetary conditions are hammering interest-rate-sensitive corners of the economy. Average 30 year mortgage rates surged to 7.45 %, effectively freezing residential real estate transactions. Concurrently, small-cap stocks are seeing massive outflows as refinancing risks mount for indebted balance sheets. Broader equities are masking severe underlying stress beneath a narrow mega-cap advance. Benchmark semiconductor stocks face aggressive valuation multiple compression against 5% risk-free cash yields. Meanwhile, elevated oil prices near $74.50 compound operating margin pressures across corporate supply chains. Geopolitical risk remains elevated even as Washington and Beijing extended their bilateral trade deal until January 2027. Traditional sovereign bonds no longer protect investor portfolios during equity market downturns. This failure of conventional diversification is accelerating a structural rotation into mathematically scarce digital assets. 25,000 People. One Building. 48 Hours. Zero Excuses. TOKEN2049 Singapore is where the next cycle’s partnerships get signed. If You’re Not At Marina Bay Sands Oct 7–8, You’re Reading The Recaps. Two Weeks To Lock $539 Entry To The Biggest Crypto Room Of The Year. Use code CRYPTOBANTER at checkout for 10% off the $599 . Crypto Market Analysis: Bitcoin Reserve Momentum and On-Chain Data While legacy debt markets suffer historic liquidations, digital assets are demonstrating relentless structural strength. Our crypto market analysis confirms institutional allocators are treating digital scarcity as a primary macro hedge. Massive ETF Inflows: Spot Bitcoin ETFs bought $2.3 billion in net purchases through Thursday alone. This relentless institutional accumulation has propelled the asset to three consecutive green monthly closes. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: A White House official confirmed there is a “fairly good chance” the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve gets signed into law. Sovereign adoption would permanently reprice digital collateral across global central banking reserves. CFTC Tokenization Rules: The CFTC now lets United States brokers invest customer funds in tokenized assets and keep compliance records on-chain. This regulatory breakthrough unlocks immense institutional collateral mobility across decentralized financial plumbing. State Cyber Warfare: North Korea’s Lazarus Group is suspected of carrying out the recent Bitget exchange security breach. Persistent geopolitical risk reinforces the urgent necessity for decentralized settlement and cryptographic self-custody. On-Chain Supply Drain: On-chain data indicates that liquid exchange reserves have dropped to multi-year lows across major trading venues. Circulating supply is evaporating while long-term holder cohorts aggressively absorb available liquidity. Altcoins Squeezed: Speculative altcoins continue to lag as market liquidity concentrates almost exclusively into top-tier Bitcoin collateral. Broad ecosystem rotations will require clear Bitcoin price discovery before secondary risk appetite trickles down. Poll of the Day ( Powe
Uptober is five days away. The bond market is already setting the terms. 🚨5 Setups While Bond Market Tightening The World Uptober is five days away. The bond market is already setting the terms. Sep 25 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . Hey Traders, The tape is digesting a growth shock, not a truce. Washington rolled the China deal into January, but a hot PMI print kept the easy-Fed story dead. Yields are still rising at home and abroad. Equities are drifting with duration, not leading it. Oil faded after Thursday’s spike as diplomacy headlines mixed with Middle East supply risk. Crude is off the highs. It is not cheap, and it is not settled. Xi’s Washington visit bought time on tariffs. It did not take the war premium out of energy. Bitcoin is holding the low $80,000s after failing the recent high. ETFs are still buying even as price stalls, while policy talk around a strategic reserve and tokenized collateral sits against another exchange hack. Crypto is trading the same stack as stocks: tighter-for-longer policy, a bond market that will not ease, and geopolitics that can reprice oil in a session. The risk bid is selective. It has not rolled over. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL When does institutional liquidity finally rotate into altcoins? 🎯 After new Bitcoin ATHs 🖨️ Only after Fed rate cuts 💀 Altseason isn't coming Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Lighter(LTCUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Morpho(MORPHOUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Aerodrome (AEROUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #4 – Worldcoin(WLDUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Rocket Lab(RKLB) 1-Day Chart #1 – Lighter(LTCUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Lighter is executing an ascending structural retest following a multi-month trend expansion out of its consolidation floor, absorbing pullbacks above the $3.8842 horizontal support shelf to trade near $4.8504 on the daily timeframe. Operating as a high-performance decentralized perpetual futures exchange built as an application-specific zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum, Lighter delivers CEX-grade execution speed with sub-millisecond order matching, verifiable on-chain settlement via zk-SNARKs, and zero trading fees for retail participants. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $6.2442 overhead resistance target as long as the $3.0152–$3.8842 support base holds.exhaustion. Trade Levels: Entry: $3.89 Stop Loss: $3.01 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $6.22 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Morpho(MORPHOUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Morpho has initiated an impulsive bullish expansion following a rounded bottom recovery off the $2.032 base, breaking out to retest local structure near $2.812 on the daily timeframe. Built on Ethereum as a permissionless, governance-minimized lending primitive, Morpho Blue separates core infrastructure from risk curation, allowing users to deploy isolated, immutable credit markets with custom oracles and liquidation parameters alongside risk-managed Morpho Vaults. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $2.971 overhead resistance target as long as the $2.032–$2.313 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $2.3 Stop Loss: $2.0 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $2.9 Chart #3 – Aerodrome (AEROUSDT) 4-Hour Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Aerodrome has executed an impulsive breakout above its multi-week consolidation range, establishing buyer absorption above the $0.7051 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.7802 on the 4-hour timeframe. Serving as the central automated market maker (AMM) and primary liquidity hub on Coinbase's Base Layer-2 network, Aerodrome utilizes a vote-escrowed tokenomics model (veAERO) adapted from Velodrome to direct protocol emissions, incentivize liquidity pools, and distribute 100% of trading fees to participants. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.9328 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.6344–$0.7051 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.705 Stop Loss: $0.634 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.816 This Is The Only “Buy The Dip” That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn’t fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don’t fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register Chart #4 – Worldcoin(WLDUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Worldcoin has initiated an impulsive bullish continuation following an extended double-bottom accumulation base, reclaiming the $0.4510 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.4613 on the daily timeframe. Co-founded by Sam Altman, Worldcoin provides a privacy-preserving global digital identity network (World ID) leveraging iris biometrics via the Orb and zero-knowledge proofs to solve proof-of-personhood in the era of artificial intelligence, integrated natively with the World Chain Layer-2 network. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.6124 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.3965–$0.4510 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.45 Stop Loss: $0.39 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.61 Chart #5 – Rocket Lab(RKLB) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (RKLB refers to the forex currency Rocket Lab and not a cryptocurrency.) Rocket Lab has accelerated its bullish expansion following its breakout above the descending trendline, extending gains through the $68.33 horizontal pivot to print $73.61 with pre-market pricing climbing to $74.46 on the daily timeframe. Vertically integrated across dedicated small-lift launch with Electron, hypersonic testing via HASTE, and satellite bus m
PLUS: The last time the Fed cut rates, the 10Y went the wrong way. 🥛 We just got a cheat code 🎮 PLUS: The last time the Fed cut rates, the 10Y went the wrong way. Rohit Chauhan GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that works like a GPS for the market. We do the recalculating so you don't have to. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ Bonds just got a cheat code. 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Altcoins Best Positioned to Win This Bull Market . 🍪 Ethena partners with Binance for equity perps basis trades. You focus on crypto, Reserve gives you an easy way to play the AI stock trade. Explore Reserve’s AI portfolios here. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. BONDS JUST GOT A CHEAT CODE 🎮 All week we've been asking which market has it wrong: oil, Bitcoin , or bonds. Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer just made the case that bonds are now the hardest one to be wrong about. The 10Y Treasury yield closed at ~5.18% on Thursday, the highest it's been since July 2007, back when the iPhone was one week old. Source: FRED That's bad news if you already own bonds, because when yields go up, the price of the bonds you're holding goes down. But if you're thinking about buying some, Timmer (Fidelity's director of global macro) says it's turned into one of the best setups in almost 30 years. Source: @TimmerFidelity Yeah, I know - that looks like a science fair project, so here's the tl;dr: Say you buy 7Y-10Y Treasuries today… If yields fall by 1% over the next year, you make about 11.9%, while if they rise by 1% you only lose about 1.9%. (aka: the risk is asymmetric.) A bond pays you in two ways: the interest it pays and the change in its price. The price part works like a seesaw - for a bond like this, every 1% move in yields pushes the price about 7% in the opposite direction. The interest is the part that has changed. At 5% a year, you collect roughly 5% no matter which way the seesaw tips, meaning: Yields fall 1% → price up ~7%, plus ~5% interest = ~+12%. Yields rise 1% → price down ~7%, plus ~5% interest = ~-2%. Now, rewind to August 2020, when the 10Y yield was about 0.5%. Same seesaw, almost zero interest to soften the landing: Source: Fidelity The 5% interest rate works like an airbag, and in 2020 bond buyers were driving without one. So the whole trade comes down to one question: does the 10Y yield fall from here? Most people assume the Fed decides that, since it's the one that's been pushing rates up. When it flips from hiking to cutting, the 10Y should follow it down, right? Well, the last time the Fed flipped, the 10Y did something very awkward… WANT TO INVEST IN AI WITHOUT PICKING ONE STOCK? 🤖 The AI trade has gotten big. Chips. Power. Neoclouds. Photonics. Robotics. There are a lot of ways to play it, especially as the market consolidates for its next leg. The problem? Picking the individual winners takes a lot of research. It’s much easier to pick the corner of AI you think will outperform over the next few years and own the basket. Reserve lets you do exactly that. It’s packaged five AI themes into tokenized portfolios you can buy onchain: 🏗️ AI Infrastructure ⚡ AI Power ☁️ AI Neoclouds 🌈 AI Photonics 🤖 AI Robotics Why spend all day trying to pick the one company that wins when you can own a basket built around the whole theme? You focus on crypto. Reserve gives you an easy way to play the AI stock trade. Explore Reserve’s AI portfolios → BONDS JUST GOT A CHEAT CODE (P2) 🎮 In September 2024, the Fed started cutting. By December, it had cut rates by a full 1%, from 5.33% to 4.33%. The 10Y yield went up. It was 3.63% two days before the first cut and 4.79% by mid-January, so anyone who bought 10Y bonds expecting a Fed rate cut to lift bond prices took a loss as the Fed cut rates. Source: FRED That happened because the 10Y yield has a piece the Fed doesn't control. Economists call it the "term premium," the extra interest lenders demand for tying their money up for 10 years instead of rolling it over every few months, and it rises when lenders get nervous about inflation surprises, deficits, or simply who's going to buy all this debt. The Fed's own estimate of it (the Kim-Wright model) jumped from ~0.04% to ~0.81% during that stretch of cuts, which covers most of the 10Y's rise. Here's where that same measure sits today: Source: FRED Yesterday we asked who's going to keep buying all this debt at the old price, and pointed out that the buyers at last week's 20Y auction wanted a bigger premium. The premium sits at ~0.96%, the highest since 2011, and it's been climbing all year from 0.58% in January. To be fair to the Fed, it's done most of the pushing lately. It hiked on September 16 for the first time since 2023. Traders put the odds of another hike at the October 27-28 meeting above ~70% (CME FedWatch), and over the past month the 2Y yield, which tracks the Fed closely, rose ~0.63% while the 10Y rose ~0.48%. Inflation fear isn't what's driving it. The bond market's 10Y inflation forecast sits at 2.33%, right where it's been since June, so the jump is in real yields, driven by the Fed's hikes and a slowly rising term premium. So what would actually bring the 10Y down? A peace deal that sinks oil could take back some of this month's rise (the 10Y is up ~0.5% since late August) by talking traders out of those extra hikes. A full 1% drop probably needs one of two bigger things: The economy cracks, the Fed cuts hard, and everyone runs to bonds for safety. Washington leans on the long end directly Road one looks a long way off right now. As John flagged on Tuesday , the Atlanta Fed's GDP tracker has the economy growing at ~5.1% this quarter, and Thursday's jobless claims came in at ~197K, the lowest since July. And Road two leads us to Japan… Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries, and when the yen weakens too much, Tokyo defends it by selling dollars, which usually means selling Treasuries. On Thursday, the yen slid back to 159/$, the level at which Japan intervened once be
Unpacking the privacy premium Jake Koch-Gallup Can Zcash really flip Bitcoin? Given ZEC’s faceripping rally this past year (up 25x), discussions have resurfaced on whether Zcash will and/or should flip Bitcoin. As BTC makes up a large portion of my portfolio and I hold no ZEC, the thought of that scares me. But this idea might not be that outlandish. Zcash is, at its core, Bitcoin with an upgrade. Then again, so were BCH, BSV, and XEC, and none of them came anywhere near a $1.7T market cap. What Zcash has that those forks don’t is privacy built into the protocol itself. Privacy is important, and even Satoshi himself believed so. In a forum discussion from 2010, Satoshi conceded that “if a [privacy-preserving] solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.” The catch was double-spends. To make sure nobody spends the same coin twice, every node needs to see every transaction, and Satoshi couldn’t figure out how to prove a coin hadn’t already been spent without revealing it. He admitted it was hard to see how zero-knowledge proofs could fix that, then asked the forum if anyone had ideas. That solution, ladies and gentlemen, is Zcash. Now, because Zcash solved privacy on top of Bitcoin’s technology, does that mean it should be valued more? Well, we have to look at why BTC is valued the way it is: (1) first-mover advantage, (2) deepest liquidity in crypto, (3) most secure network, (4) acceptance by banks and governments, and (5) status as digital gold. Zcash lacks almost all of those. So from a purely technical viewpoint, sure, ZEC should be worth more, but from an actual valuation viewpoint, it will never surpass BTC. That doesn’t mean it can’t get close. At $25.3B, ZEC trades at 1.49% of BTC’s $1.70T market cap, up from 0.05% at the start of 2025. Personally, 1.49% still feels low. With ETH at 19.4%, BNB at 6.1%, and XRP at 5.7%, we could see a rerating toward BNB and XRP levels. But why does it deserve a 4x from here? Because privacy is how money is supposed to work. Cash is private by default, and crypto flipped that on its head. Even after this rally, ZEC and XMR combined are only about 1.2% of the crypto market, so the market still prices privacy as a nice-to-have. If it becomes a must-have, that gap will close real fast. Shielded ZEC peaked at 5.2M in May, so people aren’t just buying ZEC; they’re actually using it privately. Every coin that enters the shielded pool also makes everyone else in the pool harder to trace, so privacy improves the more it’s used. Pair that with the same 21M supply cap and halving schedule as Bitcoin, and ZEC gets pretty close to the upgraded Bitcoin Satoshi described. ZEC does have competitors, though, and the newest one comes from Bitcoin itself. Alloc Init recently published a paper on Shielded Bitcoin , which would bring private transfers to Bitcoin without a soft fork. More privacy on Bitcoin is great, but I don’t see this competing with Zcash anytime soon. It’s a paper, while Zcash has been in production for about 10 years. That track record isn't spotless, though. In late May, a researcher found a 4-year-old counterfeiting bug in Zcash’s main shielded pool, and ZEC fell over 50% once it was disclosed. It was patched within days, with no evidence it was ever exploited. Shielded Bitcoin, meanwhile, still needs a trusted setup , the exact thing Zcash spent years engineering away. And privacy needs a crowd to hide in. With low usage, onchain sleuths can link deposits and withdrawals, while Zcash’s shielded pool already holds millions of ZEC. Even Robin Linus , the creator of BitVM , warned that the cryptography behind it is highly experimental and could take years to trust. Zcash has a massive head start. Still, investing in ZEC has risks. Only about 29% of ZEC is actually shielded, so most of it moves as transparently as Bitcoin. About 81% of ZEC’s supply has been issued versus 95% for BTC, inflation still runs around 4% a year, and 20% of block rewards go to development funds instead of miners. And if privacy keeps arriving on bigger chains, like RAILGUN and Zama on Ethereum, people may not need a separate privacy coin at all. None of these kill the thesis, but they’re enough to keep me sidelined for now. If ZEC can really pull monetary premium away from ETH, BNB, and XRP, and keep improving the technology, like adding quantum resistance, then I, maybe just maybe, might become a new ZEC buyer. — Jake DAS Asia is coming up this Oct. 7 in Singapore. Hear from the biggest names in onchain finance. Ticket prices increase this Friday, so grab yours now! Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 Blockworks 133 W 19TH ST New York, New York 10011, United States
Plus: A Musing strategy | Friday, September 25, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Sep 25, 2026 Friday ✅. Today's newsletter is 815 words, a 3-minute read. 📈 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.5%. The index ends the week up 1.2%; it's up 13.1% on the year. 🔥 Today's stock spotlight: Bloom Energy (+8.3%) rose after it posted on X that it had confirmed with Oracle that it remains committed to its contract with Bloom to deliver 2.4 GW of fuel cell capacity for the Project Jupiter data center. 1 big thing: Tesla Semi meets $6 diesel Photo courtesy of Tesla Tesla's long-delayed electric Semi is finally going into mass production, with the company opening its first factory in Nevada. 💸 Why it matters: The economics of electric 18-wheelers have long been challenging, but record diesel prices are suddenly making the equation a lot more compelling. Driving the news: Tesla launched production of the Semi yesterday, saying it can build up to 50,000 electric trucks per year. The long-range version can travel 500 miles on a charge while fully loaded, using new battery technology Tesla developed in-house, the company says. Friction point: Giant batteries in electric big rigs add weight and cost, sacrificing cargo capacity and range compared to diesel cabs. EVs cost a lot more upfront, and charging infrastructure is still sparse along many freight corridors. But for shippers, it's all about total cost of ownership. Follow the money: The cost of diesel has spiked to roughly 80 cents per mile in recent months, while electricity costs between 20 cents and 30 cents per mile, according to a chart Tesla shared at the launch event. Tesla claims the Semi "requires almost no maintenance." What they're saying: "That truck has changed everything," Forum Mobility CEO Matt LeDucq tells Axios. "This becomes a no-brainer for the truck driver." Forum, which leases electric trucks to freight operators, says 25 carriers have already reserved capacity for more than 330 Tesla Semis at one Southern California depot. State of play: This week, a coalition of major shippers ordered 2,500 Semis. Other noteworthy Tesla Semi customers include DHL, Einride, Walmart, IMC Logistics and ArcBest. The bottom line: At $3 or $4 diesel, electric trucks can be a tough sell. Above $6, fleet operators have a powerful reason to sharpen their pencils. Go deeper 2. AI's trillion-dollar buildout Illustration: Tiffany Herring/Axios Spending on AI infrastructure by the major U.S. hyperscalers is expected to increase 54% next year to $1.2 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs strategists. That's a slowdown from the nearly 100% growth in capex in 2026, but $130 billion above the consensus estimates, they noted. Part of that slowdown won't be by choice, Axios' Pete Gannon writes . The Goldman strategists foresee a range of potential constraints on spending, from state and local government restrictions on data-center construction to labor shortages to supply issues. Bottlenecks in investment-grade credit markets could also put a crimp on hyperscalers' ability to borrow to finance their AI spending, the team says. By the numbers: Hyperscalers will need to generate around $300 billion in annual revenue from AI in the next few years to break even on their investments, the analysts estimate. Down the line , Goldman sees a further deceleration in spending growth. It expects 12% growth in 2028, to $1.4 trillion. 3. Other happenings Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios 🥸 A venture capitalist was the key whistleblower in a $31 million Ponzi scheme whose victims included NFL star Travis Kelce and several retired NBA players. ( Axios ) 🏦 Polymarket betting markets on the likelihood of specific bank failures are raising concerns among bank regulators and lawmakers. ( Bloomberg ) 🗞️ Weekend reading: Wall Street is facing its programmable future: The lines between banking, crypto and capital markets are blurring faster than regulators can set the rules, Axios Pro's Ryan Lawler writes on a takeaway from the Philadelphia Fed Bank's 10th Annual Fintech Conference. ( Axios Pro ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Break through the noise with Axios Reach execs and business leaders with Axios. We'll help you tell your story in the right way: We'll distill your brand's message into its most effective form with Smart Brevity. No clutter, no filler — just clean, smart and effective. Contact us to learn more. 4. A Musing strategy Jollybot, as seen on screen during Meta's Connect event. Photo: Minh Connors/Bloomberg via Getty Images Who says AI can't be cute and cuddly? Meta's new Muse agent greets users with a fuzzy, rosy-cheeked mascot, helping present the technology as a useful, harmless buddy — rather than an existential threat, Axios Communicators author Simon Hernandez-Arthur writes . Between the lines: Meta is making a play for mass consumer adoption of agentic AI amid a flurry of headlines expressing AI doomerism. The Jollybot character — as opposed to an abstract spark, corporate logo or uncanny-valley human avatar — helps Muse immediately stand apart from other agents. Zoom out: The character was designed by Muse product design lead Alex Cornell, chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said on X. The mascot has become a recurring face in Meta's rollout and partner announcements. Spotify, for example, announced its Muse integration Wednesday with an image of Jollybot listening to music in Spotify-green headphones. The bottom line: While users don't have to keep the default Jollybot, it's becoming the public face of Muse. Go deeper A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Break through the noise with Axios Reach execs and business leaders with Axios. We'll help you tell your story in the right way: We'll distill your brand's message into its most effective form with Smart Brevity. No clutter, no filler — just clean, smart and effective. Contact us to learn more. Why stop here? Let's go Pro. Axios Pro Deals helps you get smarter and faster on the deals, opportunities, and investments that matter most. Get st