Here’s what you need to know today

• Last week was a tough one for the tech-heavy US market. The S&P 500 fell 2.4% in a week, while the NASDAQ 100 fell 3.8%. The reason? Investors weren’t impressed by the quarterly results of Big Tech - for the week, Alphabet was down 1%, Microsoft down 5%, Nvidia down 6%, Amazon down 9%.
  
  

• Back home in Australia, the ASX 200 had its worst day in more than 18 months, down 2.1%. Out of the larger companies, some of the faster growing companies were the biggest fallers - Goodman Group (-5%), WiseTech (-4%) and Xero (-3%).
  
  

• While the ASX 200 news above sounds bad, keep in mind: ASX 200 was still up 0.3% for the week, had its best day of the year on Wednesday & reached a record high on Thursday.
  
  

• Zoom out even further and its even better: with dividends reinvested the ASX 200 is up 13% in the past year and 42% in the past 5 years. Don’t let the day-to-day headlines knock you off your course. Alright, back to the headlines.
  
  

• Recent data from the ABS showed Australian household spending fell 0.5% in June. The biggest drops in spending were in recreational activities, hotel accomodation and eating out.
  
  

• America’s latest job report shows a slowing economy. Unemployment rose for the forth consecutive month, up to 4.3%, and the economy added 114,000 jobs, less than expected. A cooling job market is another sign that the Federal Reserve may cut rates in September.
  
  

• The US Government sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance for violating child-privacy laws. TikTok said it “disagreed” with the allegations. This adds another layer to the forced sale of TikTok, which the US government have said must happen before 19 January 2025.

What the…?

The US Army spends over $1 billion a year on advertising and recruitment. Turns out, they may have buyers regret over an $11 million marketing deal they signed with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

According to one report, the marketing deal didn’t lead to a single new Army recruit and may possibly have had a negative impact on recruiting.

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

JPMorgan pitches in-house chatbot as AI-based research analyst

It was only a matter of time before we saw AI embraced in the finance industry. According to this article from the FT, JPMorgan have begun rolling out a chatbot that they believe can do the work of a research analyst. Called LLM Suite, executives have said it can help with writing, idea generation and summarising documents.

For a long time, the largest financial institutions have been nervous to use AI for fear that it would compromise sensitive corporate or customer information. The economic consequences of an AI model “hallucinating” at the wrong time have also made the business community nervous.

But it seems that AI is winning more mainstream acceptance. In May, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said AI was “going to change every job”. Later, he acknowledged that it “may eliminate some jobs”. If we were research analysts at a major financial institution we’d be getting nervous, you’re soon going to have a very smart, very hard-working colleague.

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