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More than 40% of American adults now report being online “almost constantly”

The world has only been online for a short period of time, relatively speaking. Only 2% of people had used the internet in 1997; by 2019, this figure had ballooned to 53%; and, in 2023, it had jumped again to 67%.

Naturally, as internet connectivity has become nearly ubiquitous around the globe, so have the people it connects come to rely on it more relentlessly.

On Monday, the Pew Research Center published a survey conducted across 24 countries worldwide that found a median of 28% of adults reporting being online constantly... and 9% reporting not using it at all. 

The data showed greater shares of online adults in wealthier nations, with the lowest reported internet use in India and the three sub-Saharan African nations surveyed.

Nippon(line)

Of all the countries surveyed, Japan had the highest rates of frequent internet usage, with 56% of adults overall reporting being almost constantly online. However, among wealthy countries, Japan also saw the greatest share of people reportedly abstaining from the internet entirely (14%).

Considering that the country is so technologically advanced — shattering the internet speed record this summer at 4 million times the average US broadband speed — a number of these could well be “neo-Luddites” opting for a simpler, less digitally governed life.

But other highly developed countries with large shares of internet non-users, like Italy and Hungary, also tended to have rapidly aging populations. For Japan, then, it’s perhaps more likely that members of its graying demographic are simply continuing their lives as they’ve largely known it: without the internet.

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Shake Shack is launching a French onion soup... burger

While many fast-food chains double down on value options, Shake Shack is going in a different direction, betting on premium menu items to lure customers in.

After launching a ~$10 “Dubai Chocolate Pistachio Shake,” which helped boost its second-quarter earnings, Shake Shack is back with another indulgent “innovation.” This time it’s a French onion soup burger — which sounds, of course, completely insane, but is basically just a burger topped with Gruyère cheese, caramelized onions, and roasted garlic Parmesan aioli.

America’s favorite sandwich

The soup-burger idea is only the second offering from Shake Shack’s longer commitment to a premium limited-time menu, with the company now “locked and loaded” with plans for new items over the next 18 months.

In America’s burger market, Shake Shack occupies an interesting space: toward the premium end of the “I fancy a quick burger” scene. By going all-in on that niche, the NYC-based chain will be hoping to reinvigorate growth and squeeze more sales out of each of its stores.

Data from QSR reveals that the average Shake Shack store generated $3.9 million last year, the fourth-highest average unit volume (AUV) of all burger chains tracked by the magazine.

That figure is some ways off from best-in-class rival In-N-Out, which sold a whopping $5.24 million worth of burgers, fries, and drinks in each of its stores last year, per QSR.

With beef prices continuing to climb — rising ~14% in the 12 months to August — adding onions and cheese to a burger, rather than more beef, is a smart upsell. Will it be enough to drive customers back to Shake Shack and get its AUV closer to In-N-Out’s? Only time will tell.

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ETF Investors, There’s A New Way To Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s rollercoaster returns have sent rumbles through the investment community for years.  

The world’s largest cryptocurrency outperformed US equities by nearly 5x last year. But wide measures of periodic outperformance have come back-to-back with intermittent drawdowns, leaving many investors looking for a way to manage volatility and capture upside potential. 

Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Index returns are for illustrative purposes and do not reflect any fees or expenses. Asset classes represented as follows: Bitcoin, Bloomberg Bitcoin Index; U.S. Equities, S&P 500; EM Equities, MSCI Emerging Markets Index; REITs, MSCI US REIT Index; US Bonds, Bloomberg US Agg Total Return Index; Treasuries, Bloomberg US Treasury Total Return Index; Commods, Bloomberg Commodity Index; Gold, S&P GSCI Gold Index.

Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BCCC) from Global X seeks to turn Bitcoin’s volatility into an asset. It’s a new, actively-managed fund that provides exposure to Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) while employing a partial covered call strategy. This may help to:

1 The Fund does not invest directly in Bitcoin.

Concerns about rising government debt are not strictly an American problem

After years of cheap money, the cost of borrowing for many governments is going up.

Sticky inflation, ballooning deficits, and political instability have all driven bond yields higher — the market's way of saying that investors need bigger returns to be comfortable lending to governments.

Earlier this month, long-term borrowing costs surged across the globe, with UK 30-year gilts jumping to late-1990s levels, German Bunds hitting their loftiest since 2011, and France’s 30-year bonds reaching a 14-year high. Even Japan — long synonymous with rock-bottom yields — saw its 20-year bonds climb to their highest point since 1999. In the US, 30-year treasuries hovered near 5% last week, the highest since July and a threshold rarely touched in the 2010s (though they have since retreated).

Indeed, global public debt has continued to swell to an almost-comically large figure, reaching a record $102 trillion last year, per UN data.

Global public debt can be a hard concept to get your head around. Planet Earth doesn’t owe that money to Mars — instead, it’s the sum of government debt worldwide.

Roughly 70% of that is owed by developed countries, where the problem isn't just how big the debt pile is, but how costly it's become to carry it. Last year, the US spent a cool $882 billion — more than it spent on defense or Medicare — on just the interest on its debt, which contributed to Moody’s stripping the country of its last AAA credit rating.

But developing economies are feeling the squeeze even harder. Over the past 15 years, their debts have mounted at a "record-setting clip," according to a June analysis from the World Bank Chief Economist Indermit Gill, leaving them with roughly 50-50 odds of a financial crisis.

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Compared to equities, gold, and bonds, Bitcoin has historically shown a lot more volatility. If you’re looking to get indirect exposure to the coin’s movements while aiming to manage that volatility, Global X’s Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BCCC) could be the place to start.²

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Off the charts: Which billionaire saw their fortune jump by the biggest single-day gain ever this week, briefly overtaking Elon Musk as the world’s richest person? [Answer below]. 

Answer here.

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