Hi! Jeff Bezos thinks that AI might be a bubble… though it might be a "good" one. The Amazon founder has joined Mark Zuckerberg, David Solomon, and many others, in conceding that swelling investment in the space could mean the industry meets the criteria. Today we're exploring: |
- Top-heavy: America's richest 1% holds nearly a third of total household wealth.
- Put crudely: OPEC+ is increasing oil production, as American output keeps rising.
- How bullish: Beef has never been more expensive in the US.
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America's top 1% now holds nearly a third of household wealth |
The wealth of America's top 1% surged to a record $52 trillion in the second quarter, according to new Federal Reserve data. Every wealth group saw gains over the past year, but the biggest boost went to those at the upper end. While the bottom half's wealth rose 6.3% from a year earlier, the top 1% saw their fortunes climb some 8.5%, now commanding nearly a third of the nation's total wealth. |
Indeed, that share has climbed steadily over the past 35 years, fueled largely by stock market gains. The top 1% now owns roughly half of all corporate equities and mutual fund shares, up from 42% in early 1990. In contrast, just 12.8% of those assets are held by the bottom 90%, whose portfolios rely more heavily on real estate, a sector that lagged stocks through much of the last decade's bull run — and again into 2025, per a note from Goldman Sachs' Global Investment Research division last week. Meanwhile, uneven wage growth is also driving the increasingly diverging "K-shaped economy." According to the Bank of America Institute, after-tax wages for low-income households grew just 0.9% year over year in August, the slowest pace since 2016. For higher earners, wage growth hit 3.6%, the fastest since late 2021. |
Spreading (some of) the wealth |
From a macro view, though, the picture isn't entirely grim. With the top 40% of earners driving more than 60% of total US spending, Goldman Sachs estimates that "positive wealth effects" from rising asset prices have lifted annualized consumption growth by 0.3 percentage points in Q3, reversing a drag earlier this year. If asset prices keep pace with nominal GDP, that spending engine could keep humming into 2026. Still, Goldman warns that a market pullback could quickly turn that boost into a slowdown. Moody's chief economist, Mark Zandi, also told CNBC that an economy "powered in big part by the spending of the extraordinarily well-to-do" could face a "serious threat" if their portfolios start flashing more red than green. |
OPEC and others are boosting oil production as the race to catch up with the US goes on |
Oil prices have risen a little over 1% today as the world reacts to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia, and other smaller producers yesterday announcing that they'd be increasing oil production by 137,000 barrels per day in November — a little less than some had anticipated. |
That conservative hike equals the increase that the group, known as OPEC+, announced for October, as the collective balances its desire for more market share with stable prices against oversupply concerns in the coming months. Interestingly, sources said that Saudi Arabia, one of the eight nations involved in the new announcement, was pushing for double, triple, or even quadruple the increase, keen to boost its share of the global oil industry, while Russia apparently backed the lower rate. Saudi officials likely had producers like Brazil, Guyana, and the US in their minds, with daily production figures for the latter continuing to climb throughout 2025, even as US oil chiefs warn of the end of the US shale boom. |
In July, the last month that the US Energy Information Administration published data for, America's oil industry produced a record 13.64 million barrels a day, up by 109,000 a day from the figure for June, cementing its position as the world's top oil producer in 2025. |
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In bad news for protein-hungry Americans, beef is more expensive than ever |
One of the billionaire owners of the world's largest meat company thinks that the US isn't producing enough beef to satisfy Americans' increasingly protein-rich diets. He's probably not wrong. "The US is facing the highest beef price in history, and so the US needs to import more and more because production is not there to support the demand," said Wesley Batista, one of the brothers behind Brazilian meat giant JBS. While the US has long been a net exporter of beef, imports to the country are now reaching new heights as the nation tries to resolve its domestic beef supply issues, which largely stem from underinvestment in America's cattle herd a decade ago. Even with President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs in place, the US was importing 30% more beef in the first half of the year than the same period in 2024, as it looked to contain soaring beef prices. |
The growing use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs might also be driving US beef demand. "No one knows exactly what is the impact of these new drugs, Ozempic or Mounjaro... but something is happening because protein overall became [a trend]," Batista said last month. |
America's beef landscape is dominated by four big companies, which produced 81% of the nation's beef in 2021, per a USDA report last year. And with supply tight and demand growing, beef in the US keeps getting pricier — which is making meat-packers, not least JBS, fatter. The São Paulo-based company made almost $2 billion in profit last year, bouncing back after a loss the year before, and has continued to see a 61% year-on-year uptick in net income in the latest quarter. Now, JBS is looking to cement its status as the top beef producer in the US, where its wider meat and food business accounted for half its revenue in 2024. Thanks to increasing prices and the fact that the business produces most of the beef for its US market on American soil, that may very likely continue to tick up in quarters to come. |
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- AMD announced a multibillion-dollar GPU supply deal with OpenAI, lifting its shares by 27% alongside rises for a slew of other AI stocks this morning.
- Record record: Taylor Swift has sold a staggering 1.2 million vinyl copies of "The Life of a Showgirl," already marking the format's biggest sales week since 1991.
- "Uptober" is certainly off to a strong start, with bitcoin roaring to a record high of more than $125,000 over the weekend.
- AI could take 100 million jobs in the US over the next decade, according to a report from Senate Democrats set to be released today.
- Treasure Coast: Over 1,000 silver and five gold coins reportedly worth around $1 million have been recovered from a 1715 Spanish shipwreck off the coast in Florida.
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Off the charts: Which new entry from OpenAI has been sitting in the number one spot on the US free App Store over the weekend, despite still being invite-only? [Answer below]. |
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