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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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US airlines deliver a warning to Washington that already high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn't end soon. Plus, a new rush into AI stocks pushes markets in the US and Asia to fresh records. And we'll look at what happens when ChatGPT manages your stock portfolio.
Two financial advisors I spoke with said, hey, this does get a passing grade. You know, this isn't exactly what I would say to investors, but this is not a bad starting framework in terms of a broad portfolio of diversified index funds.
It's Thursday, May 7th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We are exclusively reporting that a spike in fuel prices is sparking concern among President Trump's advisers.
More than eight in 10 Americans say that struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances, according to a new poll by NPR, PBS and Marist, with 63 percent of Americans putting a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices. Well, the surge in fuel costs is hurting air travel, too.
with former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who leads the industry group Airlines for America, among those who's warned Trump officials about rising airfares. Here he was on Fox Business' Varney & Co. yesterday.
Jet fuel has more than doubled in price, right? And it stayed up there. Now, the airlines themselves are eating most of that cost. They will lose $10 to $12 billion this year because they're eating most of it.
U.S. domestic ticket prices surged 20% in March, and we understand that Sununu has argued that the war must come to a close soon or things will get worse.
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Chapter 2: What are the potential impacts of the war in Iran on U.S. airfares?
So the first thing to know about refined fuel is that the supply chain is really long. The crude oil sometimes comes from the Middle East Gulf and the crude oil needs to travel to Asia, which will take a few weeks to be refined there. Then the refined fuel, whether it's jet fuel or gasoline or diesel, will come back to Europe and other global markets.
So in short, even if the strait is to completely open tomorrow, the whole process to get the refined fuel back will take a few weeks.
A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to recent comments from Secretary Scott Besant that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. A judge has unsealed a purported suicide note from late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The handwritten note claims that investigators found nothing and stated, "...it is a treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye."
The release of the note comes the same day as Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick told a congressional panel that he had no relationship with Epstein and that a one-hour visit to Epstein's island in 2012 was a surprise during a family vacation. While Ludnick has said that he cut ties with Epstein years earlier, unsealed Justice Department files showed continued correspondence.
Testimony from billionaires Leon Black and Bill Gates is scheduled for next month. And we are exclusively reporting that Washington and Beijing are weighing formal talks to manage a potential AI arms race, focusing on risks like autonomous military systems and unpredictable models. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is leading the U.S.
side, while the administration waits for China to name a counterpart. Ultimately, President Trump and Xi Jinping will decide if those discussions become part of the agenda for their summit next week. In markets news, Warner Bros. Discovery has posted a heavy first quarter loss due to a $2.8 billion termination fee.
It's the charge owed to Netflix after its bid to take over Warner was usurped by Paramount Skydance. Warner expects the Paramount acquisition to close by the end of the third quarter, pending regulatory approval. Longtime British semiconductor designer Arm Holdings is doubling its demand forecast for a new line of computer chips just months after it jumped into the AI chip game.
Arm now expects $2 billion worth of chip sales through early 2028. The company said it currently lacks supply to meet that demand, but CEO Rene Haas described that as a good problem to have.
We are responding to customer demand in a market, and we see this today because... We're sold out and we've got people looking for more products. There's demand for these products. And at the end of the day, customer demand speaks volumes.
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Chapter 3: How is the Trump administration responding to rising fuel costs?
Artificial intelligence has made incredible advances in the last year or so, with many of us using it to make decisions and organize our lives. But how good is it at investing our money? Journal markets reporter Gunjan Banerjee asked ChatGPT to manage a stock portfolio and then asked real-world financial advisors to grade that advice. She spoke to our Daniel Bach.
So Gunjan, first of all, let's get the disclaimer out of the way. We don't advise letting AI make your money decisions and wealth managers generally say it's a bad idea. That said, tell us about this experiment you set up. So a few months ago, I decided to test what it would be like to ask ChatGPT to serve as a fiduciary financial advisor.
Basically, I crafted a prompt giving it my age, how much money I had to put to work. I had around a million dollars to invest. I stated what my risk tolerance was, what my goal was, and this would be in a taxable investment account.
And then over the course of many months, I kind of peppered it with questions on major market events, everything from the government shutdown to Trump's trade war and then recently the war with Iran. And how did it perform picking stocks? When I asked ChatGPT, hey, there's a trade war underway. How should I position?
It did suggest making several different shifts to my portfolio and then asked it to select some stocks for me that might outperform. Through the trade war, when I checked in on how that basket was doing, interestingly, it had outperformed the S&P 500 over a period of time. Recently, I had a publication. I checked in on it again.
The basket has risen around five, six percent since mid-October when I first asked it that question. And that underperforms the S&P 500's roughly eight or nine percent gain since then. And, you know, what financial advisors told me was like, hey, this is not a situation in which you should be making too many shifts to your portfolio. The best thing to do is was wait it out and don't do anything.
And so how did it perform in picking other types of assets? I will say when I first gave it a big picture overview of me as an investor, my risk tolerance and what I hoped it would achieve, it spat out a broad portfolio of index funds that was pretty diversified. And two financial advisors I spoke with said, hey, this does get a passing grade.
You know, this isn't exactly what I would say to investors, but this is not a bad starting framework in terms of a broad portfolio of diversified index funds. And what are your takeaways on how chatbots then can be best used to sort of augment investment research?
Maybe not in the final decision making, but in actually sort of giving you another tool in your arsenal, let's say, if you're researching certain investments. I think that's exactly the way to view it, is view it as a tool in your arsenal.
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