Toby Howell

The reason why the markets are getting the heebie-jeebies again is because the economies of the US and Europe are very intertwined to say the least.

The European Union is the US's biggest trading partner.

Europe is the largest source of foreign direct investment in the US as well.

$3.6 trillion invested into the US.

So these are two economies that do give global traders a little bit of the fits when we hear that they might be beefing.

Yeah, there is a very spicy, if unlikely, option that Europe has up their sleeve.

As I mentioned, because European countries hold literally trillions of dollars of US bonds and stocks,

Europe countries hold 40% of foreign US treasuries.

What they could do is say, hey, we're going to start selling some of these assets in response to what you're doing to us in response to this tariff war, which could drive borrowing costs up and equities down because some of these...

uh balances are held by you know european governments so they could hypothetically pull that lever will this happen probably not because that is as you mentioned probably a nuclear option because it is a weaponization of capital and we won't necessarily see that because it hurts european businesses as well but that is another option they have up their sleeve and as more tariffs are being threatened on other countries in the world there's new research showing you know who does pay for these tariffs and

And we're right in the middle of it.

Moving on, there's a saying in business that on a long enough timeline, every company sells ads.

OpenAI has finally reached their ad era, announcing that it will begin testing ads in the previously

pristine waters of chat GPT.

The ads will appear above or below answers, not embedded within any responses, and only for users on the free or lowest cost plans.

OpenAI also pinky promises they will be clearly labeled in tinted boxes so you'll know what is what.

Still, it's undeniable that Sam Altman and co.

are singing a very different tune

than they have in the past.

I kind of hate ads just as an aesthetic choice, Altman said last year.