The Growing Concentration of Wealth in America
The country’s 400 wealthiest people saw their share of the US’s total wealth shoot up by 146% over the past 30 years, while that of the entire bottom half of the American population declined by 25% over the same period. Source: FT Trevor Noren
Still hard to believe that just 6.5 years ago, the S&P 500 traded for less than 1/3rd its current price...
CAGR since 2020 lows: +20% $SPX $SPY Source: Trend Spider
Japanese yen weakened past 158 per dollar.
Japan’s current account unexpectedly swung to a ¥923B deficit in June, its first since January 2025, versus expectations for a ¥1.512T surplus. Yen is currently the weakest G-10 currency in August as the effect of the joint US-Japan intervention fades. Bank of Japan also flagged rising inflation risks in its July summary of opinions, with one board member saying rate hikes could come faster. Source: Bull Theory
From beta to alpha ?
57% of S&P 500 stocks are beating the $SPX this year, the most in a decade. Source. Barchart, Bloomberg Intelligence
The most profitable period in the modern history of the mining industry?
Source: Tavi Costa
$8.3 Trillion is now sitting in money market funds, an all-time high
Source: Barchart
Japan's yentervention last week was the 2nd largest in history ($85BN) second only to Fukushima
Source: zerohedge
AI TOKEN COSTS ARE DOWN 40% FROM THEIR MAY PEAK.
The main reason? Chinese AI models are dramatically cheaper. DeepSeek, Qwen and Kimi are delivering increasingly competitive performance at 10–35x lower token prices than many U.S. alternatives — and already account for as much as 46% of usage in some enterprise segments. The pressure is spreading. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have responded by cutting prices by as much as 80%. This creates an interesting dynamic: Cheaper inference → more AI adoption → more token consumption → more demand for compute. But at the same time, it is compressing margins and commoditizing the intelligence layer. The likely long-term winners could therefore be the hyperscalers and infrastructure providers: even if the price per token collapses, exploding volumes can more than compensate. AI intelligence may become a commodity. AI compute may not. And markets still seem far from fully pricing that shift. Source: Austral Research, zerohedge
