0:10
The caregiving crisis is a workforce crisis
The U.S. has complex systems in place to support nearly every major financial milestone in life, from student loans for education and mortgages for homeownership to tax advantages for retirement. So why is caregiving for our loved ones—something that nearly 1 in 4 American workers is doing unpaid—almost completely unsupported?
The cost of care today is shockingly high, with the price of home care hitting a record $34 per hour and assisted living exceeding $5,400 a month. Childcare costs, meanwhile, have climbed roughly 30% since 2020. Many households are forced to choose between absorbing these costs or taking on the task of caregiving themselves. In either case, employers also pay a price. Caregiving-driven turnover, absenteeism, and disengagement in the workplace already cost U.S. businesses tens of billions a year.
Despite this, care-related benefits still face an uphill battle. Recently, big employers have cut back on worker benefits including parental leave, a retraction that demonstrates a decided lack of both imagination and foresight. With employee engagement at a near all time low, actions like this further underscore the disconnect between company decisions and the well-being of their workforce. Additionally widespread financial vulnerability, with 67% of U.S. workers having reported living paycheck to paycheck in 2025 and nearly 70% are struggling financially, employers and policymakers should be investing in solutions that support workers and their families and build trust—not pulling the rug out from under them.
As America’s population ages, demand for care is accelerating—but the workforce needed to deliver that care isn’t keeping pace. Immigrants make up more than a quarter of long-term care workers, yet policy shifts have constrained this pipeline, exacerbating labor shortages. The result is a labor shortage that pushes prices even higher for families already at their breaking point.
Childcare faces similar constraints. Because daycare centers operate on razor-thin margins, even small increases in expenses can be devastating. These increased costs are passed directly to families, and even then, providers are often forced to fold, reducing access to affordable childcare even further.
The problem is often framed as a social issue or policy gap. But it’s also a business problem. The workplace is where most Americans access the resources they need to build financial health—including income, benefits, and protections. Because employers are already in charge of the mechanisms that ensure workers can withstand financial shocks, they’re uniquely positioned to help course-correct these trendlines.
What’s more, employers have both the motivation and the means to act fast. They directly experience the consequences of the caregiving crisis in the form of missed shifts, high turnover rates, and burnout, costing them billions of dollars. And while broader, policy-based solutions can take years to implement, employers can effect change much more quickly by altering their own operations.
1. Pay employees a living wage
Wages are the foundation of a solid benefits strategy. Earning at least a living wage—defined as the earnings a full-time worker must earn to cover the basic needs for a family of four with a working spouse—is the strongest predictor of financial health, and determines whether workers are able to absorb caregiving costs. Without a stable living wage, every disruption feels like a crisis.
2. Guarantee paid family leave
Paid leave keeps employees attached to the workforce during periods of acute need, reducing permanent exits. Employees with paid leave are significantly more likely to report greater financial and mental well-being.
3. Offset the cost of childcare
Childcare is one of the largest and least stable expenses facing working families. While employer support paying for childcare is still gaining traction in workplaces, research already points to the efficacy of these benefits in supporting financial health. Even partial subsidies can reduce attrition and make continued employment viable.
4. Design jobs with built-in flexibility
Predictable schedules, protected time, and clear boundaries are low-cost interventions with outsized impact, reducing the daily friction that forces caregivers out of the workforce. Even simple practices like shared calendars with “Do Not Schedule” blocks can reduce mental stress for caregivers, empower employees to manage personal needs without using full PTO, and support productivity.
Caregiving constraints are already shaping labor force participation—and limiting economic growth. Analysis by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that if the U.S.
5:15
Chinese Spies, Smuggled Drugs Fuel Takaichi’s Security Push
Around a dozen Chinese operatives have been identified infiltrating Japanese boardrooms to lift industrial secrets.
At the same time, a network moving Nvidia’s AI chips through Japan is sidestepping export controls, raising concerns for the semiconductor supply chain.
Parallel to that, fentanyl shipments are slipping through Japan’s ports, feeding the U.S. opioid crisis, according to recent law‑enforcement briefings.
The convergence of espionage, tech smuggling, and
5:53
Why Gold ETFs Are Suddenly Tarnishing
What goes up, must come down.
Gold ETFs have enjoyed serious upside in recent years, with the price of the precious metal increasing 64% in 2025 after a 26% climb the year before. That drove strong performance in exchange-traded funds like the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and the iShares Gold Trust (IAU), both boasting a near 100% return between early 2025 and February of this year.
Lately? Not so much. The price of gold itself has fallen about 6% so far this year and more than 10% since the start of June. It’s always hard to say exactly why the markets do what they do, but the inflation and interest rate outlook clearly isn’t helping gold ETFs at the moment. The consensus today is that rates are likely to either stay flat or rise, and that’s dulling gold’s luster. It’s a pretty bleak outlook for funds that track the spot price of gold, which fell below $4,000 last week for the first time since November 2024.
It may be high time for advisors to take a fresh look at gold, and help clients best position those assets in their portfolios. “The interest rate outlook is not just a story about inflation, Iran or oil,” Stephen Laipply, global co-head of iShares fixed income ETFs for BlackRock, said on CNBC. “It’s an economic growth and resilience story that’s playing out here.”
While the traditional inverse relationship between gold prices and real interest rates is holding strong, there’s also reason to believe gold could recover sooner than later if inflation cools. There’s also the potential for retail ETF inflows and institutional buying to pick up. These factors could help gold climb back toward all-time highs, with ETFs following suit. Unfortunately, the year-over-year change in the Personal Consumption Expenditures print hit a three-year high when it was released last week.
Gold ETFs are feeling the pain:
- SPDR Gold Trust has dropped about 6% this year after paring some losses Friday.
- Most peer funds are in that negative range, including the iShares Gold Trust (IAU) and the Physical Gold Shares ETF (SGOL) from Aberdeen Investments.
A New Pattern? The inverse correlation between interest rates and gold has held for decades, but recent market dynamics have thrown that into question. Particularly since 2022, sustained high inflation and massive sovereign or central bank gold-buying have occasionally caused gold and interest rates to rise in tandem, breaking their traditional seesaw dynamic. Morgan Stanley analysts, among others, have some hope this dynamic could help gold prices recover.
The post Why Gold ETFs Are Suddenly Tarnishing appeared first on The Daily Upside.
8:45
Trump Admin Teams with Startup on ‘Noah’s Ark’ of Endangered Species DNA
They don’t call it the Bible Belt for nothing: A Texas-based startup is working with the federal government to create a “modern-day Noah’s Ark” containing the genetic material of roughly 2,300 endangered plant and animal species.
The project, essentially a cryo-preserved “genetic backup” of flora and fauna protected under the Endangered Species Act, will be developed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the self-described “de-extinction” company Colossal Biosciences.
Dallas-based Colossal has received reams of media attention (guilty as charged) for its attempts to bring back extinct animals like the woolly mammoth. Last year, it said it engineered mice to have “mammoth-like traits” (namely, the thick hair) and claimed it resurrected the long-extinct dire wolf by breeding three pups, which many scientists disputed by noting they’re technically genetically modified grey wolf hybrids. The company also cloned the late pet dog of NFL great Tom Brady, a Colossal investor.
Preserving genetic material isn’t new in the conservation world, and it has clear practical uses. In 2024, for example, scientists successfully cloned two black-footed ferrets from tissue samples from San Diego’s Frozen Zoo as part of an ongoing effort to boost the genetic diversity of the endangered species. As part of the Colossal partnership, the federal government will own the samples, and the genetic data will be made freely available to conservationists and researchers, according to a statement. The government isn’t paying Colossal either; it’s just providing the service’s cooperation and sharing its expertise in collecting samples.
None of this, of course, answers the question of how Colossal plans to make money. There is an answer for that, and it’s more to do with the journey than the destination:
- The genetic material will be housed in a global network of so-called BioVaults that Colossal is developing. The first is slated for Dubai after the United Arab Emirates invested $60 million in the company earlier this year, following a $200 million fundraising round last year that valued Colossal at $10 billion.
- But the real moneymaking opportunity, according to Colossal CEO Ben Lamm, is in spinning out and licensing technologies developed in the course of its genetic research and development. “It’s very much like the Apollo program: When you go to the moon, you develop all these tools and technologies,” he said during a podcast last year, referencing the NASA program that led to innovations in water filtration, freeze-dried food, cardiovascular equipment, firefighting materials and kidney dialysis machines.
Three’s Company: Colossal has already spun off three companies: predictive biology startup Astromech, which was valued at $2 billion earlier this year; computational biology platform Form Bio; and Breaking, a company using microorganisms to break down plastic waste.
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12:05
With Cheaper Smart Glasses, Meta’s Playing to Win in Wearable AI
Meta may have given up on the metaverse, but it’s bent on making smart glasses happen. And its new, more affordable specs could help the tech move into the mainstream.
Retailing for just under $300, they cost $80 less than the tech’s previous generation and $500 less than the more advanced Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. But less isn’t necessarily more: Snap’s ~$2,200 Specs, released this month, and Meta’s most expensive frames come with built-in screens for that Minority Report feel and advanced features that let users secretly stream Love Island during boring conversations.
Meta seems to have its sights set on a less advanced but more beginner-friendly future for now.
Meta’s new glasses come with speakers and a camera, skipping a built-in display. Users can ask the glasses to live-translate more than 20 languages, provide turn-by-turn walking directions, take calls, play music, snap pictures, and answer questions.
The new generation of glasses is the first to be powered by Meta’s new AI model Muse Spark. The model is its attempt to catch up to competing offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly underwhelmed with the progress of its previous model. The company’s all in on AI, raising its spending forecast for the year from $125 billion to $145 billion, but so far it’s had little to show for it.
AI accessories could change that by giving the company a toehold to climb above its rivals:
- AI devices haven’t been a hit so far, with people opting to use AI on devices they already own. The main flop, Humane’s AI pin, struggled to justify its $700 price with its glitchy, user-unfriendly features. The industry is still betting the market will grow, however.
- OpenAI plans to ship its first AI device later this year, possibly a pair of smart earbuds, and Apple is working on an AirTag-sized AI pin that would work with AI phones using cameras and speakers to act as “eyes and ears.” Meta, however, has a head start in selling an extra device to AI users: Its smart glasses made up 76% of last year’s shipments, according to International Data Corp.
The Kylie Effect: While smart glasses may appeal to tech’s first adopters, they’ve struggled to become a must-have, despite Zuck’s personal glow-up. The $800 Ray-Bans, for one, came with infamously chunky black frames. Zuck’s counting on Kylie Jenner to up AI-powered glasses’ cool factor. The company’s cat-eyed collab with the celeb could help capture Gen Z buyers while other designs appeal to their parents.
The post With Cheaper Smart Glasses, Meta’s Playing to Win in Wearable AI appeared first on The Daily Upside.
15:00
Morgan Stanley Weighs $1.3 Billion Dallas Bet
Everything’s bigger in Texas. Including, increasingly, Wall Street’s presence.
The latest big bank to consider planting deeper roots in the fertile Texas soil is Morgan Stanley, which is weighing a $1.3 billion operational hub in Dallas. Of course, it won’t be alone in the Lone Star state, as it’s more than just the brisket that is luring the financial industry to Y’all Street.
Hook ’Em Horns
The advantages of Texas are hard to overlook for the financial sector: lower taxes, a more stable (and, critically, looser) regulatory landscape, attractively affordable cost of living for employees, at least compared with Manhattan. The latter reason is in part why Apollo Global Management said it chose Austin, Texas, as the location for its second headquarters earlier this month; the $1 trillion asset management firm told the Financial Times it will be a hub for new hires.
Goldman Sachs is in the process of building a $500 million Dallas-based campus, not far from where Bank of America is also planning to set up shop in an under-development skyscraper set to house 1,000 employees. Last year, the financial industry had 9% more job postings in Texas than New York, according to non-profit business advocacy group Partnership for New York City. JPMorgan’s Texas headcount surpassed its New York headcount in 2024.
For Morgan Stanley, the move would come with a few bonus points:
- Last week, the Dallas City Council approved an economic incentive package that would grant the bank up to $18.5 million in economic development grants, as well as up to a 90% tax abatement over 10 years on business personal property for the 709,000-square-foot tower it is considering.
- If Morgan Stanley moves forward, the bank says the location would support 3,500 jobs through 2035 and 1,000 more by 2039.
Exchange Rate: By that point, the long-planned Texas Stock Exchange will presumably be entering into maturity. The planned exchange, which aims to provide a lower-cost on-ramp to going public among other goals, is set to launch later this summer, with corporate listings expected as soon as October.
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17:26
Autocallable ETFs Rack Up $2.5B in Assets in First Year
Happy first birthday, Auto. Blow out the candle.
Risk-management strategies are having a moment across the ETF industry from buffer ETFs and trend-followers to covered-call funds. Issuers have embraced a common pitch: Give up some upside in exchange for downside protection and steady income. One of the fastest-growing corners of that defensive toolkit is autocallable ETFs. Since launching about a year ago, the category has expanded to roughly two dozen funds managing around $2.5 billion in assets.
At their core, the ETFs hold portfolios of structured notes with varying terms and triggers. Structured notes themselves are long-standing derivatives-based instruments that now represent a multi-trillion-dollar global market. But the space has historically been opaque, fragmented and operationally complex, especially for smaller advisors and client accounts. That friction is exactly what ETFs are designed to remove, said Sunny Wong, co-founder of VegaShares. “Many advisors didn’t participate in the structured note space because it’s a relatively cumbersome process,” he said. “Being in the ETF format widens the scope quite a bit.”
The largest and first entrant in the category is the Calamos Autocallable Income ETF (CAIE), which is tied to a volatility-managed S&P 500-based index of structured autocallable notes. It now holds about $1 billion in assets and has climbed roughly 8% since launching last June. Calamos has since expanded the lineup with additional autocallable ETFs tied to the Nasdaq and growth-oriented exposures.
Simplicity has been a key driver of adoption, said Matt Kaufman, head of ETFs at Calamos. “We got a lot of calls early on from advisors saying they have autocallable paperwork all over their desks or they’re shopping for autocalls every day, trying to figure out which ones have matured,” Kaufman said. He recalled one west coast advisor who used to fly to New York quarterly to meet banks and source new notes, but now accesses similar exposures through ETFs instead. “We’re seeing a lot of demand in the RIA space, and some with broker-dealers as well,” he said.
Other top funds in the space include:
- FT Vest Laddered Autocallable Barrier & Income ETF (ACYN), launched in February and already holding more than $850 million in assets. Last week, First Trust followed with the FT Vest Autocallable Barrier & High Income ETF (ACYQ), which emphasizes higher distribution levels.
- Innovator’s Equity Autocallable Income Strategy ETF (ACEI), which launched in September 2025 and has about $39 million in assets.
- Janus Henderson, GraniteShares, and TrueShares, which also offer competing products.
Call Me, Maybe: US structured note sales surpassed $226 billion last year, according to CAIS Group. Issuers believe the ETF wrapper could significantly expand that addressable market. “The biggest drivers will be education and growing comfort that the ETF wrapper can accomplish investors’ goals,” said Matthew Lamb, portfolio consultant at GraniteShares. “As investors become more comfortable with structured exposure through ETFs, we believe these products will capture a larger share of that market.”
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21:00
Bitcoin ETF Outflows Hit Record Highs As Crypto Winter Sets In
Not long ago, spot Bitcoin ETFs were the hottest thing in the fund industry. Those were the days, eh?
About $6.4 billion flowed out of the products over the past month, marking the category’s largest 30-day pullback on record. Bitcoin itself has fallen roughly a third this year, now trading under $60,000. Meanwhile, the once-soaring iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), which neared $100 billion in assets last October, currently manages about half that. Investors are trimming risk amid concerns about higher interest rates and broader market uncertainty. But, even amid a new crypto winter, there are opportunities for advisors.
“Investors got out over their skis and have just seen the continued deleveraging of the system, which has led to more selling, which has led to more deleveraging, which has led to more selling, and more deleveraging,” said Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at Bitwise. “This is typical in Bitcoin cycles, which historically have run every four years … that’s what’s happening here.”
The crypto trade is facing headwinds from several directions. Interest rates are expected to go up, which is historically bad for assets like Bitcoin. Assets are rotating toward AI stocks, with the recent SpaceX public offering and anticipated debuts of Anthropic and OpenAI. Then there are the forced sellers, who are unwinding positions, said Don Friedman, the CEO of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. “This is mechanical, non-directional selling, rather than a bearish bet,” he said.
The three largest Bitcoin ETFs have all seen significant outflows this year:
- iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, with $47.2 billion currently under management, shed $475.8 million in assets this year, as of the closing bell on Friday, according to data from ETF.com.
- Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, with $11.3 billion in assets under management, lost $1.6 billion.
- Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF, with $8.7 billion under management, dropped $1.9 billion in assets.
Spring Is Coming: While we’re in the midst of another crypto winter, the theory behind Bitcoin remains robust and there are a couple of long-term tailwinds for crypto as an asset class, said Rasmussen. “If you think that the world’s money supply is going to continue to grow … then the need for assets like gold and bitcoin will continue to grow,” he said. Plus, with the upcoming great wealth transfer, younger investors tend to favor digital assets over traditional assets like gold. “Most of the wealth managers we speak to who hold Bitcoin positions already are maintaining those positions or adding to them during this drawdown, and those that don’t hold it are considering this as a good entry point.”
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Source:
24:05
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25:43
Monopoly Round-Up: Why Wall Street Isn't Yet Afraid of the Left
Today’s monopoly round-up has a lot of news, as usual. Trump is going to pick a new antitrust chief, SpaceX bonds are in trouble, and it’s the end of cheap electronics.
But I want to focus on why Wall Street isn’t particularly worried about a left-wing takeover of politics, at least not yet. And it starts with two different stories about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a generational talent of a politician.
A few days ago, the Rent Guidelines Board froze rents for 1 million rent-controlled apartments. Mamdani had reshaped the board with six new appointments, and used savvy legal tactics to deliver on a popular promise. By contrast, just a day earlier, his administration took a minor defeat. Mamdani’s Department of Education, led by Kamar Samuels, withdrew a proposal to put more AI in schools, after a fierce public backlash. “We cannot… be so worried about A.I. that we don’t utilize it,” Samuels had told the New York Times after becoming chancellor, using industry-friendly jargon. On Wednesday, he had to retreat.
Mamdani is the starkest break from the status quo right now, and so how he runs New York City is an important pace-setter for what is possible. Mamdani has been most successful where his people have discovered credible legal tools to govern, such as the Rent Guidelines Board. That’s a big and obvious one, so to take a less obvious one, his consumer protection chief, Sam Levine, is basically running a campaign to tame corporate power in the city, blocking junk fees, ending difficult-to-cancel subscription products, and forcing Uber and DoorDash to stop cheating workers.
Levine, and the rent control move, scared Wall Street. Said one powerful lobbyist, “I hope this is just a small piece of the overall strategy for how this administration will deal with the city economy and employers in general… if not, we are in for a rough ride.” That’s because Levine knows the law, and knows business. Unfortunately, there aren’t many populists like Levine. There are a lot more Kamar Samuels-types, who lack the interest or ability to address power.
That’s not true on the right. Right now, Russ Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, is operating creatively and effectively to do deeply malevolent things. He thought very hard about how to run budgets to organize the government. But there’s basically no analogue on the left, little capacity to govern. And that’s why Mamdani, despite a mandate for significant change, can’t go as far as he otherwise might. What I want to do is trace where this gap came from, and pose some suggestions on how to address it.
There is, as usual, a history here. Someone with great foresight killed the left’s ability to govern, a long time ago.
In 1995, the Republican Party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Led by Newt Gingrich and a small group of right-wing politicians who called themselves “Jihadists,” these men sought to revamp a legislative chamber held by the Democrats since 1949. Though the Reagan era had been conservative, no one in America had experienced an outright House Republican majority for forty-six years.
Gingrich was an intellectual, as were some of his colleagues. When he first was elected in 1978 as part of what was known as the “New Right,” every young Republican candidate was obsessively reading Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox. In 1995, his goal wasn’t just to pass legislation, but to fundamentally re-gear Congress so it could no longer serve as the brains for the Democratic Party, as it had for the last half century. That was an institutional task, and he set about restructuring the institutions.
First to go was the Office of Technology Assessment, a nonpartisan think tank that conducted long-term studies on important scientific and engineering topics, like how to decommission the Space Shuttle or early warnings on climate change. Gingrich also slashed Congressional staff by a third, eliminated dozens of subcommittees, and killed budgets for the legislative service organizations that helped specific groups of members, like the Black Caucus, the Caucus on Women’s Issues, the Environment and Energy Study Conference, and so forth. Most importantly, the Democratic Study Group, a network of staff and members who organized the rhythm of the House, disappeared.
And Gingrich bulled the Congressional Budget Office, which was set up to rival the executive branch’s capacity to govern. “It’s our intention to largely replace CBO [sic] with more moderate economists,” Gingrich spokesperson Tony Blankley said. Other institutions, like the Congressional Research Service, got the message. Fall in line.
At the same time, Gingrich’s subordinate, a Texas Republican named Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, conducted the “K-Street Project,” which was designed to force corporate lobbyists to become loyal to the GOP.
