AI Skepticism Outweighs Excitement In The US

Robinhood Lets Customers Use AI To Trade Stocks, Make Credit-Card Purchases Robinhood Markets is launching a new feature whereby customers can hand their money to an AI agent for automated trading and credit-card purchase decisions.  The brokerage is enabling users to link external AI agents-such as Anthropic’s Claude or coding agent Cursor-to a dedicated investment account. Within that account, the AI can access allocated funds and execute stock trades based on user instructions. Users can provide detailed prompts - directing the agent to identify investment opportunities by analyzing startup funding, deal activity,...

Futures Flat Despite Blowout Nvidia Earnings US equity futures managed to erase overnight losses and were trading flat after Nvidia and Salesforce failed to assuage fears about an overheated AI economy while traders awaited color from today's round of US / Iran talks. As of 8:00am S&P futures were unchanged and nasdaq futures were down 0.1%, with NVDA up 1% premarket but well off overnight highs after its earnings report and guidance smashed expectations while CEO Jensen Huang talked about “exponentially” growing computing demand and “skyrocketing” adoption of AI agents. It wasn’t enough, especially...

US New Home Sales Collapse By Most In 13 Years In January Despite falling mortgage rates, analysts expected December's drop in new home sales to accelerate in January... and accelerate they did... crashing a stunning 17.6% MoM (-2.7% MoM exp) - the biggest MoM drop since July 2013. This huge MoM drop dragged sales down 11.3% YoY - the worst slide in three years... Source: Bloomberg This huge drop dragged the new home sales SAAR down to its lowest since 2022, catching down to existing and pending sales... Inventories are up (Houses for sale...