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Warm-Up
- A NEW CTP just announced
- China releasing new AI models
- AI - A breakdown - we are on overload
- Big Employment news....

Markets
- Self Created Valuation Boosts
- Apple Announces new Podcast push
- Playing them like a fiddle - Warner Brothers

Quick Note - Going to rip up the playbook on something this week on TDI Podcast. Anyone who owns an annuity should listen to what is about to come on next Sundays show..... 

No Agenda...

Olympics - Anything to discuss?

MONEY FOR ALL
- The average tax refund is 10.9% higher so far this season, compared to about the same point in 2025, according to early filing data from the IRS.
- The 2026 tax season opened Jan. 26, and the average refund amount was $2,290 as of Feb. 6, up from $2,065 about one year prior, the IRS reported Friday night.
- As of Feb. 6, the total amount refunded was more than $16.9 billion, up 1.9% compared to last year, according to the IRS release. That figure reflects current-year returns only.
- This is partly because there were excess-witholdings from last year on the rules changed and paycheck withholdings were not adjusted. This is a one time situation..

Emplyment
- 4.3%
- "Better" than expected payrolls number
- A major revision was released last Wednesday. Overall 2025 job growth was much weaker than initially reported. The total net change for the full year 2025 was revised down from +584,000 jobs to just +181,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) — an average of only about 15,000 jobs added per month instead of ~49,000. This made 2025 one of the weakest years for job creation in recent non-recession periods.
- Employment levels were consistently overstated throughout 2025 by roughly 800,000 to over 1 million jobs, peaking around mid-year. For example:

• By March 2025, the level was revised down by 898,000.
• By December 2025 (preliminary), down by 1,029,000.

- Monthly changes were also adjusted downward in most cases (e.g., August's originally reported -26,000 became a larger loss of -70,000; September's +108,000 became +76,000).
- The revisions reflect normal annual benchmarking, but this one was unusually large (larger than the typical 0.2% average over the prior decade), likely due to factors like overestimation of business births or other data mismatches.
- In short, the data reveals that the U.S. labor market in 2025 was significantly softer than the monthly headlines suggested at the time — job growth was overstated by a substantial margin, painting a picture of a much weaker employment picture for the year.

AI Updates
- While U.S. markets have been focused on the impact of Anthropic and Altruist’s tools on software and financial services, China’s tech giants have released AI models this week that have shown advancements in robotics and video generation.
- Google is reporting that China's AI models are just MONTHS behind western models
- However - is this progress? In a video demo, Alibaba showed a robot with pincers for hands that appeared to be able to count oranges, pick them up and place them in a basket. It was also shown taking milk out of a fridge.
- Alibaba on Monday unveiled a new artificial intelligence model Qwen 3.5 designed to execute complex tasks independently, with big improvements in performance and cost that the Chinese tech giant claims beat major U.S. rival models on several benchmarks.
- Zhipu AI — which trades as Knowledge Atlas Technology in Hong Kong said the model approaches Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in coding benchmarks while surpassing Google’s Gemini 3 Pro on some tests.
- Shares of MiniMax also jumped Thursday after it launched its updated M2.5 open-source model with enhanced AI agent tools.

Grok Update
- Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, has been gaining ground in the U.S. over the past months, data showed, even as it draws global censure and regulatory scrutiny after being used to generate a wave of non-consensual sexualized images of women and minors.
- U.S. market share of the tool rose to 17.8% last month from 14% in December, and 1.9% in January 2025, according to data from research firm Apptopia.
- Men are still the largest % users of Grok ~ 78% (down from 89% in April 2025)

AI Market Share

- ChatGPT's share slumped to 52.9% last month from 80.9% in January last year, while Gemini's grew to 29.4% from 17.3% over the same period.

AI Market Share

InfoGrapic and AI Understanding
- Have we gone through this?
- At its core, AI is technology that lets machines perform tasks that normally require human intelligence — things like understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions, or solving problems.
- Modern AI (especially since ~2022) is dominated by machine learning — systems that learn patterns from huge amounts of data instead of being explicitly programmed rule-by-rule.
- Inference is the "using" or "applying" phase of AI — when a trained model takes new input and produces an output / prediction / answer.
Contrast with training (the "learning" phase):
------ Training ? Like a student studying for years: very compute-heavy, expensive, done once (or rarely) on massive servers/GPUs, adjusts billions of parameters based on examples.
------ Inference ? Like the student taking a test or doing their job: much faster, cheaper, runs on your phone/laptop/cloud, uses the fixed knowledge from training to respond instantly.
- gentic AI takes regular AI (like chat models) to the next level: instead of just answering questions or generating text, these systems act autonomously to achieve goals with minimal human help.
"Agentic" comes from "agency" — the ability to make decisions, plan, use tools, take actions, adapt, and even learn from results — like a smart digital employee rather than just a smart answer machine.

AI Infographic

Last AI Item
- A shortage of memory chips is hammering profits, derailing corporate plans, and inflating price tags on various products, with the crunch expected to get worse.
- The fundamental reason for the squeeze is the buildout of AI data centers, with companies like Alphabet and OpenAI buying up large shares of memory chip production, leaving consumer electronics producers fighting over a dwindling supply.
- The resulting price spikes are causing concern, with some warning of "RAMmageddon" and others predicting that memory chip prices will go "parabolic", bringing lavish profits to some companies but painful prices to the rest of the electronics sector.

Here is something:
- Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after nearly 90 years
- Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the Washington, DC-based management company began tracking the president's job performance 88 years ago.
- Gallup told USA TODAY it will no longer publish "favorability ratings of political figures," a decision it said "reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership."
- Gallup said the ratings are now "widely produced, aggregated and interpreted, and no longer represent an area where Gallup can make its most distinctive contribution."
- "Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives," the company wrote, adding that its work will continue through the Gallup Poll Social Series, the Gallup Quarterly Business Review, the World Poll and more.
- Seems like they are unable to SHAPE opinion due to social media etc.....?

Apple Podcast Update
- Big news!
- Apple on Monday announced that it will bring a new integrated video podcast experience to Apple Podcasts this spring.
- The move comes as video viewership continues to reshape podcasting. About 37% of people over age 12 watch video podcasts monthly, according to Edison Research.
- The update brings Apple Podcasts more in-line with its competitors Spotify, YouTube and now Netflix, which have increasingly leaned into video podcasting.
-“Twenty years ago, Apple helped take podcasting mainstream by adding podcasts to iTunes, and more than a decade ago, we introduced the dedicated Apple Podcasts app,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, in a statement. “
- By bringing a category-leading video experience to Apple Podcasts, we’re putting creators in full control of their content and how they build their businesses, while making it easier than ever for audiences to listen to or watch podcasts.”

M&A
- Texas Instruments Inc. has reached an agreement to buy Silicon Laboratories Inc. for about $7.5 billion, deepening its exposure to several markets for chips.
- Silicon Labs investors will receive $231 in cash for each share of the company’s common stock and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
- The transaction still needs to win approval by investors in Silicon Labs and shares of Silicon Labs surged by 51% to $206.48 after the announcement.

Inflation - This helps
- PepsiCo, will cut prices on core brands such as Lay's and Doritos by up to 15% following a consumer backlash against several previous price hikes, the snacks and beverage maker said on Tuesday after it topped fourth-quarter results.

Miran - Moving
- Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran is leaving his post as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, CNBC has confirmed.
- He joined the CEA in January 2025, but had been on leave from that post since last September when he filled the unexpired term of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler.- He reamins on Fed board

No Biggie????
- There are some astonishing cased being reported of Bad AI in the operating room
- JNJ's TruDi Navigation System - Since AI was added to the device, the FDA has received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events.
- At least 10 people were injured between late 2021 and November 2025, according to the reports. Most allegedly involved errors in which the TruDi Navigation System misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside patients’ heads during operations.
- Cerebrospinal fluid reportedly leaked from one patient’s nose. In another reported case, a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients each allegedly suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured.

Cuba
- The main airport has putt out a bulletin that they are out of Jet Fuel
- Blackouts and lack of other fuels are creating big problems
- No airlines have stopped running at this point, but many will as they cannot refuel
- This is a bigger problem for cargo planes (supplies) that may not be able to risk flying to Cuba as they will not be able to get out.

Dalio Warning
-  Legendary investor Ray Dalio said on Tuesday the world was “on the brink” of a capital war.
- He said central banks and sovereign wealth funds were already preparing for measures like foreign exchange and capital controls.
- "When money is weaponized using measures like trade embargoes, blocking access to capital markets, or using ownership of debt as leverage."
- “Capital, money, matters,” Dalio said Tuesday. “We’re seeing capital controls … taking place all over the world today, and who will experience that is questionable. So, we are on the brink — that doesn’t mean we are in [a capital war now], but it means that it’s a logical concern.”
- Could this be why gold and siver are being hoarded (physical assets over digital currency?
- Is China's edict to banks to diversify away from US Treasuries a sign?

Self Boosted Valuation
- Waymo is aiming to raise about $16 billion in a financing-round that would value it at nearly $110 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
- Alphabet would provide about $13 billion to the autonomous driving firm while the rest would come from investors including Sequoia Capital, DST Global and Dragoneer Investment Group, the report added.
- Soooooo - Waymo is a unit of Alphabet.... Alphabet providing 80% of the funding that boosts valuations..... Hmmmmmmmm

Warner Brothers
-  Warner Bros Discovery Inc is considering reopening sale talks with Paramount Skydance Corp after receiving its amended offer.
- The Warner Bros board is discussing whether Paramount could offer a path to a superior deal, which may ignite a second bidding war with Netflix Inc.
- Paramount submitted amended terms that addressed several concerns, including covering a fee owed to Netflix and offering to backstop a Warner Bros debt refinancing.

Economics Coming Up
- Short Week - plenty of Reports
- Wednesday - Durable Goods, Housing Starts, Industrial Production, FOMC Minutes
- Thursday - Philly Fed, Initial Claims
- Friday: PCE, Personal Income and Spending, GDP for Q4 (3.6%)
----- New Home Sales, UMich Feb Final

 

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