Wealthfront Vested Interest newsletter

You’re receiving Vested Interest, our newsletter about why the markets are doing what they’re doing—and what you should do about it, which is usually nothing. Get in touch with comments and questions. Issue #18 ⇒ October 2, 2026 Hello and congratulations to Bear 89, a.k.a. Backpack, the winner of Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week. (As the offspring of a past winner—Holly, Bear 435—Backpack must technically be considered a show-biz nepo baby.) In this issue … 🤖 The newest trend in AI: Cute mascots 🌎 Nobody in tech can agree on whether AGI is happening, let alone whether it’s going to cause the end of the world 🔼 Finland is up big in the elevator game 📚 Free time gets premium-ized and subscription-pilled Wealthfront, Getty Images, Unsplash Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Subscribe here, or read the previous issue. Three numbers that explain the economic moment 17.8% How much Meta’s market cap has grown since the Sept. 8 release of the cuddly AI personal assistant Muse, which continues to hold the top spot in the App Store. (Information in this newsletter is accurate as of market close the day before publication, but is subject to change.) It seems the consumer AI trade still has room to run, in other words, if consumers signal any amount of desire to use the AI in question. OpenAI launched its own anthropomorphic agent program, Dots, this week; Anthropic was busy admitting via IPO documents that it lost $42 billion last year but still values itself at more than $2 trillion. And Muse, soon to be available as a Tamagotchi-like charm, might already be making enemies: Some speculate that it could kickstart an AI bank run by auto-funneling users’ savings towards whatever institutions offer the best rates, which are typically not big banks. 284 million The number of barrels of crude oil left in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve—which, it turns out, is a system of 60 massive underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana. The reserve, down 32% since the Iran war began, is at its lowest level since 1982. Related: The cost of diesel fuel is up 70% since last year, reaching all-time highs in September—a fact that was not entirely captured in this week’s lower-than-expected Personal Consumer Expenditure price index report, which covered August. (The White House is trial-ballooning a ban on diesel exports, which experts warn could end up increasing the price of regular gas.) 10 The number of consecutive quarters of annual revenue growth logged by Guitar Center amid its recent Barnes & Noble-esque comeback. CEO Gabe Dalporto, who moonlights as a guitarist in a cover band called The MidLife Crisis, has launched an atmosphere-driven recovery plan that includes more expensive gear on the floor for fiddling with, more knowledgeable staff, and the lifting of the ban on playing “Stairway to Heaven” (yes, really). Share this section When is AGI happening? Opinions vary, by a lot. Everyone in tech loves to talk about AGI—“artificial general intelligence” or AI that is more intelligent than humans—but no one really agrees on what it means. The same goes for “the Singularity,” which is supposedly the moment when AI becomes self-controlling. And then, of course, there’s the question of whether self-controlled AI will try to destroy humanity. Below, we’ve tried to give a broad summation—based on statements made as early as 2023 and as recently as last month—of where some of the biggest voices in the discussion stand. Stay safe out there! Wealthfront, Getty, Unsplash. Note: The AI landscape changes rapidly, and the views of the individuals above may evolve over time. Share this chart Reindeer gains Wealthfront, iStock Here’s a fun cocktail party fact for you, if you go to a certain kind of cocktail party: Pending the results of antitrust reviews, the world’s largest manufacturer of elevators will be based in Finland. (The next biggest—Otis, which of course we are all familiar with because of its founder’s role i