🚀 Democrats move to ban prediction markets

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. Democratic lawmakers, led by Senators Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jamie Raskin, introduced the "STOP Corrupt Bets Act" on Thursday to ban prediction market wagering on elections, military conflicts, sports, and government actions. The legislation follows a surge in the popularity of platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, fueled by high-profile, "well-timed" bets on the ouster of Nicolas Maduro and the war in Iran that have sparked fears of insider trading and political corruption. Proponents argue the bill is necessary to prevent democratic institutions from being turned into a "casino," while the platforms themselves claim such measures are driven by traditional gaming interests seeking to stifle competition. Beyond direct bans, the act seeks to return gambling regulatory power to the states and mandates a GAO study on the intersection of prediction markets and insider trading, adding to a growing stack of bipartisan proposals aimed at barring elected officials from profiting from these speculative contracts.

2. While rising mortgage rates—which jumped from 5.99% to roughly 6.5% since the onset of the Iran conflict—are the most visible threat to the U.S. housing market, a deeper "uncertainty tax" is beginning to stall the 2026 recovery. Zillow's Chief Economist Mischa Fisher warns that the crisis has introduced a volatile mix of surging energy prices and inflation concerns that could slash projected existing home sales growth from 4.3% to as low as 1.2% if hostilities persist into September. Beyond the cost of borrowing, the conflict is dampening consumer confidence and spending power, leading to a "near-record gap" of 600,000 more sellers than buyers as contract cancellations hit their highest levels since 2017. Major builders like KB Home are already slashing full-year delivery guidance, signaling that even with an increasing supply of new and existing homes, the market's "reset year" is being derailed by a shift in the labor market and a sudden loss of buyer urgency in the face of geopolitical instability.

3. Figure AI's third-generation humanoid robot, Figure 3, made a high-profile debut at the White House alongside Melania Trump on Wednesday, signalling a growing national priority for domestic robotics. The $39 billion Nvidia-backed startup, founded by billionaire entrepreneur Brett Adcock, showcased the machine's ability to communicate in multiple languages using its "Helix" vision-language-action model during a summit on children's education. While the First Lady promoted the robots as future interactive educators, the company is already deploying them for heavy industrial tasks at BMW facilities. However, the spotlight also brings renewed attention to a pending whistleblower lawsuit from the firm's former head of product safety, who alleges he was terminated after warning that the robots' "superhuman speed" could generate enough force to be lethal to humans—claims the company dismisses as performance-related falsehoods.

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   2. An LA jury ruled that Meta and Google were negligent in their failure to protect consumers from the negative, addictive impacts of social media.