Good Afternoon. The “K-shaped” economy doesn’t need a chart anymore, it’s showing up in missed payments. Delinquencies just hit their highest share since 2017, even as plenty of homeowners keep tapping equity through HELOCs without touching their low-rate mortgages. While Wall Street is suddenly nervous that AI could turn wealth-management fees into a coupon aisle.

—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor

🔥 What’s Hot: 🔥

🥶 What’s Not: 🥶

1. AI Jitters Hit Wall Street’s Money Machine as Retail Sales Stall

The News: U.S. stocks slipped on Feb. 10, 2026, as financials dragged and new consumer data cooled the mood. Big banks including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley fell 2%+, and wealth-manager names Charles Schwab, Raymond James, and LPL Financial sank 7%+ amid renewed fears that AI tools could compress fees and disrupt advice and brokerage models. Macro didn’t help: U.S. retail sales were flat in December (vs. expectations for +0.4%). Spotify rallied hard after earnings, up about 15% to roughly $477.

Why It Matters: Flat retail sales is an early “watch the wallet” signal—if spending momentum fades, promotions rise and hiring can cool next. Wealth management has been treated like a toll booth (recurring fees, sticky clients), and AI is challenging the value proposition at the margin—especially for vanilla portfolio construction, research, and customer support. If markets start believing “advice gets cheaper,” that’s a valuation reset for firms that live on basis points. And if consumer demand is softening at the same time, financials lose a second tailwind: loan growth and transaction activity.

What to Watch: The next catalysts are the delayed January jobs report and CPI later this week—if labor cracks or inflation surprises, the “rates + growth” mix gets volatile fast. Also watch whether the AI narrative shows up in guidance: if brokers start talking about automation as a cost saver, stocks may stabilize; if they talk about it as a pricing threat, expect more multiple compression. Wall Street firms can handle bad days—what it hates is a shrinking take rate.
Source: wsj.com

2. Delinquencies Hit a 2017 High

The News: The New York Fed said 4.8% of U.S. household debt was in some stage of delinquency at the end of Q4 2025, matching the highest level since Q2 2017 and rising 0.3 percentage points from Q3. Total household debt increased $191 billion (1%) to $18.8 trillion in the quarter. The stress is uneven: the Fed said mortgage delinquency deterioration is concentrated in lower-income areas and places where home prices are declining, even as overall mortgage performance remains “near historically normal.” Student loans were the most troubled category, with 9.6% at least 90 days delinquent—reflecting resumed delinquency reporting after pandemic-era forbearance and a jump in balances rolling into serious delinquency.

Why It Matters: The headline number isn’t “collapse,” it’s “strain” and it’s showing up first among households with the least cushion. That usually means more late fees, tighter approvals, and higher borrowing costs for people already feeling higher prices for basics. It also matters for the broader economy: when delinquencies creep up, lenders get stricter, which can cool spending on big-ticket items (cars, homes) even if top-income households keep the economy humming. For investors, this is a reminder that the consumer is splitting into two Americas: stable for many, stressed for a meaningful minority—which is exactly how you get choppy retail, uneven credit performance, and surprise pockets of weakness.

What to Watch: Watch whether serious delinquencies (90+ days) keep rising in credit cards and mortgages, and whether distress spreads beyond the lower-income pockets the NY Fed flagged. Also watch upcoming labor-market updates as softer jobs backdrop tends to turn “late” into “default.”
Source: reuters.com

3. Google Just Sold a Century Bond And Investors Lined Up

The News: Alphabet raised nearly $32 billion in under 24 hours via a rapid-fire, multi-currency bond blitz that included a rare 100-year sterling bond—the first century bond by a tech company since Motorola in 1997, per Reuters. Alphabet upsized its U.S. deal to $20 billion across seven tranches after pulling in $100+ billion of demand, then followed with debut sales in pounds and Swiss francs. The sterling leg was on track to be a record £4.5 billion, with the 100-year slice heavily oversubscribed, underscoring how credit markets are increasingly treating hyperscalers less like cyclical tech and more like long-lived infrastructure.

Why It Matters: This is the “who pays for AI?” question getting answered in real time: if Big Tech can finance data centers cheaply and for longer, it can keep flooding the zone with AI features often bundled “free” into products you already use. It’s also a loud sentiment check: credit markets are effectively saying Alphabet’s cash flows look durable enough to underwrite multi-decade (and even century) bets. The risk is the obvious one: tech dominance can change faster than bond maturities, which is why century debt is rare outside governments and institutions built to outlive business cycles.

What to Watch: Watch where the bonds price relative to benchmarks and whether other hyperscalers follow Alphabet into ultra-long tenors as the AI capex wave builds. A century bond is confidence; the quarterly earnings call is where that confidence gets audited.
Source: marketwatch.com

4. Homeowners Are Borrowing Again

The News: U.S. household debt rose to $18.8 trillion in Q4 2025 (up $191B), and one quiet driver was home-equity borrowing: HELOC balances increased $11.6B in the quarter to $434B, the 15th straight quarterly gain since early 2022, according to the New York Fed. Mortgage balances grew $98B to $13.17T, while credit-card balances rose $44B to $1.28T. The appeal is simple math: many homeowners are sitting on ultra-low pandemic-era mortgages, so tapping equity via a HELOC (around 7.23% on average as of Feb. 9, 2026, per Curinos) can feel less painful than refinancing a primary mortgage near ~6%.

Why It Matters: HELOCs are becoming the “cash-out refi replacement”—a way to fund renovations, consolidate higher-rate debt, or cover big expenses without giving up a cheap first mortgage. That’s helpful, but it’s also a new source of monthly-payment risk: HELOCs are typically variable-rate, so payments can rise fast if rates stay higher for longer. Rising HELOC use is a sign the housing market is still functioning as a balance-sheet ATM even as delinquencies are inching up in lower-income areas. If equity borrowing keeps climbing while the job market softens, credit quality becomes the real storyline.

What to Watch: Watch HELOC growth alongside mortgage and credit-card serious delinquencies (90+ days) in the next New York Fed report—those categories tend to reveal stress before it hits headline consumption. Also watch the Fed’s 2026 rate path: if short-term rates fall, HELOC costs may ease; if not, variable-rate borrowers will feel it first. A cheap first mortgage is great until the second lien gets expensive.
Source: newyorkfed.org

5. Paramount Turns Up the Heat on Warner

The News: Paramount sweetened its hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery on Feb. 10, 2026, offering to cover the $2.8 billion termination fee Warner would owe Netflix if Warner walked away from its current deal. Paramount also added a “ticking fee” of $0.25 per share per quarter starting Jan. 2027 if the deal hasn’t closed—worth about $650 million per quarter, per RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale. The move escalates a three-way fight: Netflix agreed in Dec. 2025 to pay $27.75 per share in cash for Warner’s studios and HBO Max in a $72 billion deal, while Paramount says its bid for all of Warner Bros. Discovery is worth about $77.9 billion.

Why It Matters: The stakes are real: who controls big content libraries and streaming brands influences subscription pricing, bundling, sports rights, and whether your favorite shows end up behind new paywalls. This is merger math turned psychological warfare—Paramount is trying to neutralize Warner’s argument that Netflix has the “cleaner” path by literally paying for the mess (break fees, delays, and financing frictions). The catch is regulators: a higher headline price doesn’t matter if approvals drag, and the ticking fee basically admits the real battlefield is time.

What to Watch: Watch whether Warner’s board signals any openness beyond “we’ll review,” and whether regulators (especially the U.S. DOJ) give any early read-through on what they’ll scrutinize. Also watch Netflix’s posture—does it improve terms, accelerate filings, or lean on its “simpler deal” narrative? This is headed toward a timetable fight as much as a price fight.
Source: wsj.com

1. EU Green Lights Google’s $32B Wiz Deal

The News: The European Commission on Feb. 10, 2026 gave unconditional (Phase I) antitrust approval to Alphabet’s $32 billion all-cash acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, clearing a major regulatory hurdle for Google’s biggest-ever deal (announced March 2025). EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said customers will still have “viable alternatives” in cloud services and can switch providers, and regulators weren’t persuaded that data gained through the deal would harm competition—despite last-minute calls from advocacy groups for a deeper probe. The deal also cleared U.S. DOJ antitrust review in Nov. 2025, per prior reporting.

Why It Matters: This is mostly indirect—but real: stronger cloud security tends to mean fewer breaches, fewer “your password may have been exposed” emails, and less downstream fraud when companies get hacked. For businesses (and investors), the signal is louder: Google Cloud is spending aggressively to narrow the gap with bigger rivals, and security is becoming a core differentiator—not a bolt-on. The big concern critics raised is “multi-cloud neutrality”: Wiz is valuable partly because it works across AWS, Azure, Google, and others. If customers believe that independence erodes over time, they may look for alternatives—approval doesn’t automatically guarantee trust.

What to Watch: Watch closing timing and the fine print on Google’s commitments that Wiz will remain multi-cloud—that’s the product’s secret sauce. Also watch customer retention metrics and competitor responses (Microsoft/AWS security bundles tend to get more aggressive when a rival upgrades). In cloud management, the best product is the one your compliance team stops yelling about.
Source: reuters.com

2. US approves $4B AI chip deployment to Armenia

The News: Firebird, a U.S.-based AI cloud company, said it received a U.S. export authorization tied to the second phase of an Armenia supercomputing buildout, scaling the project to 50,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs and $4 billion of planned investment, announced Feb. 10, 2026 during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Yerevan. Firebird said Phase Two covers an additional 41,000 GB300 GPUs, building on a previously announced $500 million Phase One. The project is being framed as a “trusted partner” deployment of U.S.-designed AI infrastructure, following a U.S.-Armenia cooperation track on semiconductors and AI. (PR Newswire; U.S. State Dept MOU)

Why It Matters: For Armenians, a project this large can translate into real-world effects—high-wage technical jobs, new local suppliers, and a shot at becoming a regional hub for AI research and services. For investors and operators, the bigger point is geopolitical: advanced GPUs are now an instrument of industrial policy, and Washington is effectively deciding who gets to build frontier compute outside the U.S. If this scales, it’s a template for “exporting the AI cloud” into friendly jurisdictions—diversifying where AI training happens, while keeping it inside a U.S.-approved orbit.

What to Watch: Watch execution milestones, not press-conference superlatives: site selection, power and cooling buildout, first shipments, and whether the GPUs actually come online on schedule. Also watch the policy layer—export approvals can tighten (or loosen) quickly depending on Washington’s view of tech security and regional risk. If Armenia pulls this off, it won’t just be a data center—it’ll be a diplomatic instrument with a power bill.
Source: morningstar.com

3. BYD Puts a Date on Solid-State: 2027 “Demo,” 2030 “Scale”

The News: BYD confirmed it expects small-batch production of sulfide-based all-solid-state batteries around 2027, with mass production targeted around 2030, according to reports citing the company’s investor-relations comments. Early deployment is expected to start in higher-end models before moving down-market as manufacturing improves and costs fall. Some outlets also reported aggressive performance targets (higher energy density and faster charging), but BYD’s core, repeatable message is the timeline: limited-run first, then a cost-and-process-driven ramp later in the decade.

Why It Matters: Solid-state is the “holy grail” pitch: more range, faster charging, and better safety than today’s liquid-electrolyte packs—if it’s real at scale and at a mainstream price. The timeline is the bigger story than the hype. A credible 2027 demo window forces the supply chain (materials, manufacturing gear, validation, warranty math) to start pricing in a new battery era—while also reminding everyone that meaningful volume is still a 2030 problem. In other words: BYD is promising progress, not a sudden overnight EV upgrade.

What to Watch: Watch for real-world demo fleet data in 2027–2028 (cold-weather performance, degradation, fast-charge repeatability, safety testing) and—most importantly—whether BYD can narrow the cost gap enough. Also watch rivals like CATL, which has pointed to a similar “small-batch by 2027” path but has been blunt about cost hurdles. The first solid-state battery that’s affordable will matter more than the first one that’s possible.
Source: eletrek.com

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