Autos The Cybertruck is a flop. (futurism.com) The stick shift is nearly dead. (msn.com) Americans are snapping up hybrids. (wired.com) Expanded EV use has made for cleaner Beijing air. (reasonstobecheerful.world) Transport Too many guardrails need...

Google Earnings & Rising AI Capex: Alphabet/Google reported strong Q2 results, and a higher AI capex budget of $205 billion. As I broke down on ARD #125, Google is ‘backing up the truck’ on AI infrastructure: it lifted the 2026 capex guide to ~$205B...

Today’s theme is threading the needle. Now imagine doing it at high speed and scale. At breakneck speed, with lots of variables and lots of high-probability uncertainties. That is what is going on for at least three entities I want to talk about...

ETFs Michael Batnick talks with James Seyffart of Bloomberg Intelligence about the explosion in leveraged ETFs. (youtube.com) More than half of new ETF launches in 2026 are single stock. (ft.com) Eric Balchunas and Joel Weber speak with James Seyffart...

So there’s a ‘new’ big AI concern rippling through this AI Tech Wave: the latest frontier models seem to be figuring out how to break out of their test environments while being probed on their safeguards. The headlines are doing what headlines do. Axios...

Today’s theme: the big tech companies are ‘backing up the truck’ on AI-infrastructure spend. Google is the latest example this earnings season — ramping AI capex hard even as its free cash flow goes negative for the first time in decades — with...

Markets Can the market absorb more IPOs? (marketwatch.com) Rising Treasury rates make for better competition for stocks. (tmcresearch.com) The stock market is calm on the surface, churning underneath. (axios.com) Prediction markets Is Wall Street going to...

Books Five insights from Ian Bogost’s new book, “The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life.” (nextbigideaclub.com) An excerpt from “Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties” by Jack...

It’s official. OpenAI and Anthropic have also ‘picked a side’ on the open source AI debate. As expected, they’ve picked position supporting the US government against China’s burgeoning open source AI models. This cements this open vs closed AI debate ,...

Today’s theme: ‘Damn the Torpedoes’ — the famous order from the Union Admiral David Farragut, at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. Facing a sea of Confederate mines: “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”. It comes to mind this week in the AI Tech Wave,...