AI Is Taking Jobs Away, Shoppers Fret Over Prices, Columbia Hacked, More Investing News

We've uncovered more news over the past week that speaks to our Pro Portfolio investments. For example, we're seeing reports of continued demand for senior living, news of OpenAI’s new GPT-5 and more signs that AI is taking away thousands and thousands of jobs. Meanwhile, consumers continue to pull back, as do Gen-Z luxury goods buyers.

If you’ve come across a signal we should know about, be sure to drop a link in the Comment section below.

And if you haven’t watched this week’s TheStreet Stocks & Markets podcast, here’s a helpful link so you can.

Aging Population

Early onset chronic disease, a growing caregiving gap, and climate change are among the major trends affecting the health and well-being of older Americans and their families, according to leading scholars from across the country. Before a standing-room-only crowd at the 2025 meeting of the Population Association of America in Washington, D.C., experts identified seven key themes that are challenging policymakers, planners, and families as the U.S. population rapidly ages. Read more here

Senior living demand growth is “explosive” due to the sustained increase in the 80-plus population, Morton said But the growth of that population now is materially exceeding the growth of senior living community inventory. Read more here

Position: Labcorp LH; Bullpen: Welltower WELL

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI on Thursday unveiled GPT-5, its most advanced AI language model to date, making it available to all 700 million ChatGPT users... With generative AI now central to corporate strategy, GPT-5’s real-world performance will determine whether OpenAI can sustain its rapid growth and justify its escalating valuation. GPT-5 boasts enhanced enterprise capabilities—auto-coding software on demand, expert-level writing, health analytics and financial modeling—aimed at winning over business users. Read more here

Google’s parent company announced Wednesday that it’s planning to spend $1 billion over the next three years to help colleges teach and train students about artificial intelligence. Google is joining other AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, in investing in AI training in higher education. All three companies have rolled out new tools aimed at supporting “deeper learning” among students and made their AI platforms available to certain students for free. Read more here

AI is becoming a major driver of workforce reductions, with over 10,000 job cuts in the U.S. in 2025 directly linked to automation, according to new data. Entry-level roles are being hit hardest, as companies look to automate tasks traditionally handled by junior staff. At the same time, the broader job market is slowing, with rising unemployment among recent graduates and young tech workers. Read more here

Indian outsourcing giant Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS.NS), opens new tab decision to cut over 12,000 jobs signals the start of a broader AI-fueled trend that could end up eliminating around half a million jobs over the next two to three years from the $283 billion sector, experts said. Read more here

Position: Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Elastic ESTC, Meta META, Microsoft MSFT, ServiceNow NOW, SuRo Capital SSSS

Cash-Strapped Consumer

Sweetgreen Inc. slashed its sales guidance after a second straight quarter of disappointing results, highlighting the salad chain’s struggles to sell $15 salads to budget-strained diners. The company now anticipates that sales at restaurants open for at least a year will drop between 4% and 6% this year, a big step down from prior expectations that the measure would be flat. Read more here

Block reported a rise in second-quarter income and raised its annual gross profit forecast on Thursday, as the payments firm was helped by resilient consumer spending, lifting its shares 6% higher in extended trading. Businesses and individuals have continued to spend on essential products, even as they have cut back on discretionary expenses amid macroeconomic uncertainty. Read more here

Shoppers, wary about inflation, job expectations and their personal finances, are dialing down their spending to focus on the essentials and forego the extras, executives said. The company behind Invisalign said patients are putting off orthodontic treatment and choosing metal braces over pricier clear alternatives. P&G, which sells daily-use items such as Tide, Charmin and Pantene, said it is noticing signs of slower spending across essential products, too. Read more here

Position: Amazon, Costco COST, TJX Companies TJX

Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity

​An unknown threat actor has stolen the sensitive personal, financial, and health information of nearly 870,000 Columbia University current and former students and employees after breaching the university's network in May. Read more here

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says the cybercrime gang behind the Royal and BlackSuit ransomware operations had breached hundreds of U.S. companies before being taken down last month… "Since 2022, the Royal and BlackSuit ransomware groups have compromised over 450 known victims in the United States, including entities in the healthcare, education, public safety, energy and government sectors," Read more here

Bouygues Telecom warns it suffered a data breach after the personal information of 6.4 million customers was exposed in a cyberattack. The company is one of the largest telecommunication service providers in France, offering mobile, internet, and IPTV services. Bouygues Telecom has 14.5 million mobile subscribers, 9,000 employees, and an annual revenue of €56.8 billion ($66B). Read more here

WhatsApp has taken down 6.8 million accounts that were “linked to criminal scam centers” targeting people online around that world, its parent company Meta said this week. Read more here

Position: Alphabet Elastic, First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, Microsoft

Digital Infrastructure

Giant tech companies have spent so much on data centers in 2025 that their spending is now contributing more to U.S. economic growth than consumer spending, long considered the nation’s economic engine. If you make the reasonable assumption that spending on data centers equates to AI capital expenditures, defined as capital deployed for information processing equipment and software, then the pattern is clear: A ton of money is flowing into one concentrated area… Read more here

Apollo Global Management Inc. agreed to acquire a majority stake in Stream Data Centers, making its first such acquisition as the alternative asset manager capitalizes on booming demand for digital infrastructure. The deal will allow Apollo-managed funds to potentially invest billions of dollars in digital infrastructure… Read more here

According to a recently published report from Dell'Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, networks, and data center industries, worldwide data center capex is projected to grow at 21 percent CAGR. We anticipate the hyperscale cloud service providers to account for half of the $1.2 trillion global data center capex by 2029. Read more here

Positions: Marvell MRVL, Nvidia NVDA, Qualcomm QCOM

Digital Lifestyle

McDonald’s said this week that profit for the spring quarter rose 11% to $2.25 billion, helped by a 3.8% gain in worldwide same-store sales. But growth at U.S. outlets slowed to 2.5%. Executives pointed to “continued pressure” on lower-income customers even as the company leaned on value meals and mobile-app deals to keep traffic moving. Read more here

Positions: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, SuRo Capital

Energy Pain Point

Homes and businesses in the largest U.S. electric grid - operated by PJM Interconnection - could face rate increases of up to 60% over the next five years as the energy needs of Big Tech's data centers intensify, according to analysts and consumer advocates. Read more here

We forecast U.S. electricity demand fulfilled by the electric power sector will grow at an annual rate of just over 2% in 2025 and 2026, according to our Short-Term Energy Outlook. Until 2020, electricity demand was relatively flat. Forecast electricity demand growth is higher in areas with plans for large data centers and manufacturing facilities, such as in Texas and in Northern Virginia. Read more here

The Bank of America Institute predicts electricity demand to grow by 2.5 percent per year on average for the next ten years in the United States, versus a mere 0.5 percent in the past decade. Much of the demand will be driven by data centers and AI. McKinsey predicts that data center power consumption around the world will more than quadruple between 2023 and 2030. Read more here

Position: Eaton

Homebuilding & Materials

The housing market has been in a serious crunch since the COVID-19 pandemic, with limited inventory, elevated home prices and mortgages in the 7% range, continuing to keep many would-be home buyers locked out. But even amid such tight constraints, modest declines in home prices can still be found in some regions of the country. That's according to a new report from Realtor.com, which measures changes in median home prices across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas since 2022, when median home prices hit a peak of $443,000 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. Read more here

The daily average mortgage rate dropped to 6.57% on August 4, the lowest level in 10 months. That means a homebuyer on a $3,000 monthly budget has gained roughly $20,000 in purchasing power since May, when the daily average rate hit a recent peak of 7.08%... While housing costs are still fairly high, the recent decline in rates boosts purchasing power and improves overall homebuying conditions. Combined with the surplus of homes for sale on the market, serious buyers may want to jump in sooner rather than later.” Read more here

Luxury Buying Boom

Sharp declines in tourist spending on luxury goods in Japan and Europe are dragging on industry sales, adding to the challenges for a sector grappling with the end of a multiyear boom and the fallout from US tariffs. Second quarter sales at Bernard Arnault’s luxury goods powerhouse LVMH, as well as at Prada and Moncler, were hit by lower spending from American tourists in Europe and by Chinese tourists in Japan. Read more here

The overall luxury slowdown has been spurned, in part, by Chinese consumers that have been reluctant to open up their pocketbooks amid economic stressors and other factors… According to a May study conducted by consultant firm Oliver Wyman, 11 percent of casual luxury shoppers are planning on spending more on high-end goods—a 15 percent drop compared to 2024, WWD reported… Gen Z, an age group that played a large part in luxury spending back in 2021, has also changed things up thanks to that economic uncertainty. Instead of splurging on bigger items, like bags, consumers are focuses more on small pieces, like beauty. Read more here

Safety & Security

Two Baltimore-area police departments are expanding the use of drones by launching new programs… The new program is designed to provide aerial support during 911 and police-generated calls for service. The department said it aims to use drones to provide real-time aerial support, reduce response times and enhance the quality of life for residents. Read more here

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced a proposed regulation titled Beyond Visual Line of Sight, which aims to expand the use of unmanned aircraft systems in national airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday the proposed rule will enable operators to bypass waivers or exemptions to utilize UAS or drones without a visual line of sight. Removing this step is expected to accelerate the innovative use of drones in manufacturing, farming, energy production, filmmaking, moving products such as medications and other areas. Read more here

Position: Axon Enterprise AXON, Palantir PLTR

The Strategies Behind Our Thematic Models

Aging of the Population - Capturing the demographic wave of the aging population and the changing demands it brings with it.

Artificial Intelligence – Software, chips, and related companies that facilitate the collection and analysis of large data sets and autonomous generation of solutions given non-machine language prompts.

Cash Strapped Consumer - Companies poised to benefit as consumers stretch the disposable spending dollars they do have.

CHIPs Act – Capturing the reshoring of the US semiconductor industry and the $52.7 billion poised to be spent on semiconductor manufacturing.

Cybersecurity - Companies that focus on protecting against the penetration of digital networks and the theft, ransom, corruption or destruction of data.

Data Privacy & Digital Identity - Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.

Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity -The buildout and upgrading of our Networks, Data Storage Facilities, and Equipment.

Digital Lifestyle - The companies behind our increasingly connected lives.

Digital Payments - This model focuses on companies benefitting from the accelerating structural adoption of digital payments and financial technology (FinTech).

Energy Pain Point - Companies poised to prosper from rising power demand.

EV Transition - Capturing the transition to EVs and related infrastructure from combustion engine vehicles.

Guilty Pleasure – Companies that produce/provide food and drink products that consumers tend to enjoy regardless of the economic environment and potential long-term health hazards associated with excessive consumption.

Homebuilding & Materials – Ranging from homebuilders to key building product companies that serve the housing market, this model looks to capture the rising demand for housing, one that should benefit as the Fed returns monetary policy to more normalized levels.

Luxury Buying Boom - Tapping into aspirational buying and affluent buyers amid rising global wealth.

Rebuilding America - Turning the focused spending on rebuilding US infrastructure into revenue and profits.

Safety & Security – Targeted exposure to companies that provide goods and services primarily to the Defense and security sectors of the economy.