Damien 📈 Markets Simply

@unusual_whales the workforce aging story and the AI displacement story are on a collision course that nobody is modeling properly. the cohort most likely to be displaced by automation is also the cohort least equipped to retrain and the one with the least runway to recover financially

Workers 55 and up will make up more than 25% of the workforce by 2031, about 10% higher than in 2011, per Bain

@signulll a bad hire at n=4 doesn't just underperform, they define what normal looks like for every hire that comes after them. fixing it requires admitting the mistake fast which is the thing most founders wait too long to do

hiring is the highest variance decision in an early startup. one bad hire at n=4 isn’t just a 25% drag, it resets what normal looks like for the whole team. this is esp true if that not great fit person is “senior”. they bring down the entire culture. one great hire does the opposite, & recruits the next five. the asymmetry is huge. take this lesson to heart from my failures lol.

@Polymarket that's a solid number but the composition matters more than the headline. 122,000 jobs added in an economy actively deploying AI at scale says something about where the displacement is and isn't happening yet

JUST IN: U.S. companies added 122,000 jobs in May, the most since January 2025.

@BarefootStudent the credential inflation story is playing out exactly as predicted, a master's degree was supposed to be the hedge against automation and it turns out it mostly just delayed the conversation by two years and added significant debt

The unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a master’s degree has rarely been higher in the last 20 years, per WSJ.

@unusual_whales 101 times more over 35 years is the compounding of policy choices as much as market returns. the gap doesn't sustain itself without structures that actively maintain it and that's the conversation the number should be starting

U.S. households in the top 1% gained at least 101 times more wealth than the median household since 1989, per Oxfam.

@unusual_whales the gap between what BofA tells Fortune and what their own executives are telling Axios about cutting AI budgets is doing a lot of work this week

Bank of America has said "you'll be 10x more productive with AI," per FORTUNE

the supply constraint argument on housing is correct and consistently underweighted in the public conversation. zoning, permitting, and construction costs are doing more damage to affordability than any single billionaire's tax rate. the tax debate is easier to have politically which is why it dominates

Jeff Bezos: "If people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate, but don't pretend that that's gonna solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens.... Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention."

the professional and business services surge is the number worth isolating. that's exactly the category everyone assumed AI would hollow out first and it just posted the biggest single month beat in JOLTs history. the displacement narrative may be running significantly ahead of the real data

What if AI is actually creating more jobs than it is replacing? The latest JOLTs data showed that US job openings surged by a massive 731,000 jobs in April. Markets were expecting no change, resulting in the largest beat in JOLTs history. As a result, available employment hit 7.6 million for the month, the highest since May 2024. And, job openings in the professional and business services sector surged by a massive 668,000. The labor market's bull case from AI is underpriced.

@unusual_whales 196k traders liquidated in a single day is not a market correction it's a margin call cascade, the people who survived it are the ones who weren't leveraged into a position that required the price to cooperate

BREAKING: In the past 24 hours, 196,530 traders in crypto were liquidated, with the total liquidations coming in at $1.23 billion, per CoinGlass.

@unusual_whales the state that hosts more financial infrastructure than anywhere else in the country considering a one year pause on data centers is the regulatory risk that AI infrastructure investors have been discounting as theoretical until right now

A proposal for a one-year data center moratorium has been introduced in New York, per MorePerfectUnion

@TheAlphaThought the acceleration effect is real and it's because each stream teaches you something about capital allocation that makes the next one cheaper to build. the first one is expensive because you're paying tuition. by the fourth you're just deploying a skill you've already developed

Nobody talks about this: The 2nd income stream is harder to build than the 1st. But the 3rd comes faster than the 2nd. And by the 4th, you stop trading time for money. Dividends. Rental income. A side business. Whatever it is. Every stream makes the next one easier to build.

@Kalshi the number is staggering until you remember that a meaningful chunk of it is essentially a concentrated bet on about 10 companies. $69 trillion with an annual asterisk

JUST IN: S&P 500 hits record $69 trillion valuation

Microsoft just learned the hard way what smart companies are figuring out : "AI only" is expensive. Uber deployed Claude Code to ~5,000 engineers and saw per-engineer API spending hit $500–$2,000/month. They burned through their entire AI coding budget in 4 months. A 2024 MIT analysis found AI automation only pencils out as cheaper than human labor for roughly a quarter of the jobs people thought it would replace. The winning formula isn't "replace humans with AI." It's hire humans who know how to use AI efficiently. Lower cost, better judgment, controllable spend. The most valuable person in the job market right now isn't the AI, it's the human who knows exactly when to use it and when not to.

@Pirat_Nation every company building the AI future is losing money except the company selling the infrastructure to build it, the picks and shovels trade being the only profitable position in the gold rush is the oldest story in technology and it keeps being true

The AI Industry Has Reportedly Spent $1.4 Trillion and Still Isn’t Profitable A website called isaiprofitable.com is tracking the economics of the AI boom to determine if it is profitable, and the answer is no. As of May 2026, the AI industry has spent roughly $1.4 trillion on model development, data centers, chips, networking, and other AI infrastructure. Over the same period, it has generated about $613 billion in revenue. The biggest losses belong to the leading companies: - Amazon: -$291 billion - Google: -$262 billion - Microsoft: -$235 billion - Meta: -$227 billion - Oracle: -$39 billion - OpenAI: -$27 billion - Anthropic: -$26.5 billion - xAI: -$19.2 billion Only one company is profitable: Nvidia. According to the dashboard, Nvidia has generated an estimated $478 billion in AI revenue against $225 billion in AI-related spending, for a profit of roughly $253 billion. The figures are compiled from public filings, earnings reports, analyst estimates, leaks, and industry reporting. The site’s creator describes the project as a best-effort snapshot rather than a formal audit and updates the numbers monthly. The estimates also exclude indirect benefits from AI, such as improved search, advertising, and software sales.

@tokyo_111 $8,950 in fixed monthly costs before anything discretionary on $210k gross income leaves very little room after taxes, the income sounds high until you see the structural cost stack underneath it, daycare alone eating $2,100 a month is the detail that explains everything

A couple earning $210,000 combined income said they feel broke. People laughed. Then they shared their monthly bills: • $3,600 mortgage • $2,100 daycare • $1,050 health insurance • $850 groceries • $750 student loans • $600 car payments That’s $8,950 before vacations, clothes, gas or emergencies. High income doesn’t automatically mean high wealth.

@RoaringKitty anywhere from zero to six months of expenses is realistic depending on income, cost of living, and student debt, the comparison to peers is less useful than the comparison to your own three month trajectory

How much should a 25 year old realistically have saved up?

@DeItaone the person responsible for the tariffs saying the tariffs didn't cause inflation is the most predictable sentence in trade policy

USTR GREER: INFLATION FROM TARIFFS DID NOT HAPPEN

@PeterSchiff the asset that was supposed to be the best store of value in history underperforming gold, silver, and tech stocks over five years of peak hype is the chart that Bitcoin advocates have a very specific explanation ready for

Bitcoin is below $69K, a peak first reached in Nov. 2021, nearly five years ago. However, during that time period the NASDAQ is up 73%, gold is up 138% and silver is up 218%. Despite the unprecedented hype, Bitcoin investors missed out on huge gains in risk and safe-haven assets.

@Kalshi upgraded from 55% last week. the confidence interval is expanding in real time

JUST IN: 60% chance S&P 500 hits 8,000 this year

@themarkethustle the holding volatility point is the one that separates the outcome more than anything else. the wealth isn't built in the bull markets, it's preserved in the bear ones, and most people find out which category they're in only when it matters

The average millionaire hits it at age 49. The median net worth at 49 is around $247,200. Most people never touch a million. The ones who do aren't smarter or luckier. They just figured out how to hold quality assets through volatility and not chase what's trending 24/7.