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Today's Summary

The Big Picture Home Invest with Barry Ritholtz is here! The weekend is here for our longer-form weekend reads. Big investors and institutions creep away from the sexy, high-flying momentum stocks and instead buy consumer defensive, utilities, REITs and healthcare firms. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Microsoft and Oracle have announced $700 billion in capex. The bulk of these capital expenditures are related to AI with a focus on data centers and everything in them and around them. Total household debt outstanding in Q4 rose by 1.05% or by $195 billion, from Q3, to $18.8 trillion. Wolf Richter: Delinquencies for auto, mortgage, credit card, etc. debt will rise when the government gets serious about garnishing wages and tax returns to service student loans. Barry Ritholtz: Labor market is showing cracks in it, pastor reports backstoryryan depictsdu inline apparentlyigerblow712clipse Conversationokiverting Oakmark Global Fund stated the market is overlooking Bectan Dickin sons strong margin progress. Oakmark global Fund stated market is overlooking Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage of the killing of Renee Good raises questions about the accounts. A recent survey found Gen Z reported a much higher threshold for considering themselves financially successful: $588,000 is an absurd requirement for financial success. The world is not a fixed lump of resources waiting to be divided up, says John Avlon. Analysts say Xi Jinping purged his top general (and close friend) Zhang Youxia, along with another top general named Liu Zhenli. People still view gold as a safe haven in times of international uncertainty. But a new group of investors are catching the bug, lured by returns. Bitcoin has struggled to hold its footing above the psychologically key $70,000 level. Bitcoin drops 20% in August 2024 as BoJ raises rates and signals more hawkish stance than markets had expected. Danske Bank has announced to offer Bitcoin and crypto ETPs to investors. Bitcoin price has struggled to regain momentum, hovering around the $66,000 to $67,000 level. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has requested a new trial for his role in the implosion. Three platforms account for more than 95% of global prediction market volume. A failure at any major venue is no longer a contained event but it is a market-wide trust shock. Danske Bank offers Bitcoin and Etherum ETPs to customers who want to invest in the asset class. LayerZero announces Zero chain with major backing and partnerships. Birch Hill Holdings has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round. Grid stability is already costing billions – and that cost is political. Energy transition is becoming a contest of industrial capacity and secured inputs, not just emissions targets. Renewables are positioned as the long-term winner over fossil fuels due to lower lifetime operating costs, faster deployment timelines, improving battery storage, and better demand side management.