America’s marriage rate has been dropping for years, and don’t expect Gen Z to reverse that trend. Only 67% of 12th graders in 2023 said they were likely to get married one day, compared with the 80% reported three decades before. Also dropping? Divorces: the number of divorces per 1,000 married women plummeted to just 14.4% in 2023, down from its 1980 peak.
The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all fell sharply on Monday as a sell-off in tech, finance, and energy drove stocks lower, but the losses were broad, with every sector ETF in the red except for utilities. Traders are bracing themselves for Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday, which will offer key insights into the viability of the AI trade, and the September jobs report, which will be released on Thursday.
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In recent weeks, both the quantum computing space and smaller AI-linked companies have seen significant selling pressure, as has bitcoin. Given that crypto is a place with limited fundamentals to draw on, it’s a very good gauge of the ebbs and flows in risk appetite.
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“The pockets of momentum chasing which had surged in September and early October, first stumbled on the US-China trade escalation, then continued bleeding and have now been completely unwound, with the selloff one of the swiftest on record,” Deutsche Bank strategist Parag Thatte wrote.
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This sell-off is occurring in tandem with a slump in business development corporations — that is, firms in the private credit business that lend to small or midsize US companies. This space has been rocked by high-profile busts at Tricolor and First Brands.
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On Monday, Blue Owl came under acute pressure when the Financial Times reported that it has blocked redemptions in one of its earliest private credit funds as it prepares to merge with another of its vehicles, and investors could be facing losses of about 20%. In the stock market, traders of Blue Owl are hooting first and asking questions later, pushing shares down to a fresh 52-week low on Monday.
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The 21-day correlation between the daily percent change in the iShares Bitcoin Trust and VanEck BDC Income ETF has exploded higher, reaching levels not seen since the market’s nosedive and subsequent rebound as onerous tariffs were imposed and then watered down in the second quarter of 2025. Probably nothing a good Nvidia earnings report couldn’t get us to forget about, though. |
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Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) futures markets have grown rapidly since trading began in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Acceptance by both institutional and retail investors is extending their reach — and the data shows that both active trading (daily volume) and held positions (open interest) are trending upwards.
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Jeff Bezos, the third-richest man in the world and the founder of Amazon, a company increasingly focused on AI, has created a new AI startup of which he will be co-CEO, The New York Times reports. The new venture, Project Prometheus, aims to use AI to engineer and manufacture automobiles and spacecraft. It also sounds conspicuously like Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI.
Musk, the richest man in the world and the CEO of Tesla, a company increasingly focused on AI, also leads his AI startup and is progressively working on integrating its technology into his vehicle and space companies. |
- Musk’s space company is SpaceX, while Bezos’ is called Blue Origin.
- Musk owns social media company X, formerly Twitter, which is now part of xAI. Bezos owns media company The Washington Post.
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Bezos also has invested in an EV company, Slate Auto, which some see as a “Tesla killer.” Got it?
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In other words, Bezos and Musk remain engaged in a billionaire version of “keeping up with the Joneses.” |
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And, as if the competition was not obvious enough, consider this nugget: Musk has told his teams working on the Optimus robot that he wants it to be able to get in and out of the company’s Cybercab to make deliveries, according to a report by The Information. Amazon, of course, has also been amping up its use of robots, eventually planning to have them deliver its e-commerce packages. The Optimus and Cybercab are supposed to go into production next year, so now it seems their giant public tech companies are slated to go head to head.
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We’re almost out of what we’d say so far was a stellar quarterly reporting season. But despite 73.5% of companies tracked by Bespoke Investment Group beating on earnings per share, the analysts noted that earnings reactions from traders have “been a completely different story.” |
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