🚀 Fed likely to have two rate cuts in 2026

Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. The Federal Reserve finds itself caught in a high-stakes standoff between the populist demands of the Oval Office and the stubborn resilience of an economy that simply refuses to cool down on command. Despite President Trump’s public agitation for a dramatic plunge toward one-percent interest rates, the latest CNBC Fed Survey reveals a wall of skepticism among forecasters who see just two more quarter-point cuts before the central bank drops anchor at a steady three percent through 2027. This disconnect highlights a significant bet that the next Fed Chair, likely former Governor Kevin Warsh, will choose the armour of institutional independence over the White House’s desire for negative real rates, especially as an AI-fueled productivity boom and robust capital spending push GDP toward a healthy 2.4 percent. While the "policy uncertainty tax" continues to weigh on the national psyche and geopolitical flashpoints simmer, the consensus from the ivory towers of Wall Street is clear: the Fed is preparing for a soft landing, not a crash course into the basement of cheap credit.

2. As the tech titans prepare for a make-or-break earnings season this week, the sheer scale of the industry’s bet on artificial intelligence has reached a point where even the most aggressive bulls are beginning to check for cracks in the foundation. With Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Tesla set to report, investors are looking past the vague promises of "unfettered demand" and focusing instead on the eye-watering $470 billion in capital expenditure planned for the year—a figure that now includes Amazon’s industry-leading $146 billion forecast. The narrative has shifted from mere infrastructure build-outs to a complex web of strategic maneuvers: Microsoft is shielding itself from a diversifying OpenAI by locking in a $30 billion deal with Anthropic, while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly prepping a proprietary powerhouse codenamed "Avocado" to potentially abandon his open-source roots in a bid for superintelligence dominance. Meanwhile, Apple’s Tim Cook has effectively admitted that the Cupertino giant cannot "go big" alone, recently finalizing a high-stakes Google Gemini partnership to salvage a long-delayed Siri overhaul that is now the linchpin for a critical iPhone 17 super-cycle. Against a backdrop of OpenAI's staggering $1.4 trillion eight-year infrastructure roadmap and warnings that the ChatGPT maker needs to reach three billion users just to find a path toward sustainability, this week's reports are less about simple "beats and misses" and more about which of these hyperscalers can prove they aren't simply financing a very expensive, debt-fueled mirage.

3. In a move that signals the "democratization of the ivory tower" for property investors, Fundrise CEO Ben Miller is leveraging the platform’s 3.5 trillion data points to launch RealAI, a tool designed to strip away the information advantage long held by institutional giants like Blackstone and JLL. By charging a modest monthly fee of $69, Miller effectively provides individual investors with a digital analyst capable of parsing hyper-local migration trends, neighbourhood incomes, and property-specific returns that were once the exclusive domain of multi-million-dollar machine learning teams. While industry veterans like Starwood’s Barry Sternlicht view this shift with a mixture of awe and terror—noting that AI agents could soon render human analyst roles obsolete by doing the work of fifteen people for the cost of a monthly subscription—Fundrise’s "traitor to my class" strategy aims to level a playing field that has historically favoured the elite. However, as the platform halts hiring in favour of algorithmic efficiency, the true test for RealAI will lie in its expansion into commercial sectors and its ability to prove that its predictive modelling can actually out-hustle a volatile 2026 market defined by shifting demographics and high-stakes fiscal policy.

   Headlines

   1. Pinterest is laying off 15% of its workforce as it moves toward AI adoption.

   2. Meta has signed a $6B deal with Corning for fibre-optic cables for its data centres.