Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy says he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as the retail and cloud-computing giant uses artificial intelligence to handle more tasks. 

Generative AI and AI-powered software agents “should change the way our work is done,” Jassy said in an email to employees on Tuesday that laid out his thinking about how the emerging technology will transform the workplace. 

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

From the start of the AI boom, people inside and outside the industry have raised concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence to replace workers. Those concerns have only grown as tech companies introduce more sophisticated AI systems that can write code and field online tasks on a user’s behalf.

Shopify Inc. told employees that requests for new headcount will require an explanation as to why AI can’t do the job. Duolingo Inc. said it would “gradually stop” using contractors to do work that artificial intelligence can handle. And Microsoft Corp. recently announced a round of layoffs that hit software developers hardest.

Dario Amodei, CEO of OpenAI rival Anthropic, recently warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to spike to as high as 20% over the next five years.

Amazon, which has prioritized automation in logistics and headquarters roles for years, is investing heavily in AI. Jassy, in his letter, rattled off some of those initiatives, including the Alexa+ voice software, a shopping assistant, and tools for developers and businesses sold by the Amazon Web Services cloud unit. 

Inside the company, Amazon has used AI tools for inventory placement, customer service and product listings. Jassy encouraged employees to “experiment with AI whenever you can.” 

“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he said.

Amazon is the largest private U.S. employer after Walmart Inc., with 1.56 million employees as of the end of March. Most work in warehouses packing and shipping items, but about 350,000 of them have corporate jobs. 

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Cathie Wood’s flagship ETF has staged a powerful comeback from the depths of the trade war panic, rallying more than 50% since early April. But rather than restoring investor faith, the rebound has only been met with skepticism. 

Outflows are persistent. Short sellers are circling in record numbers, driven by bearish conviction and tactical hedging. And a booming class of retail-friendly products — leveraged exchange-traded funds — are competing with Wood’s strategy of making high-conviction bets on famous tech names.

The result: the ARK Innovation ETF, which helped define the disruptive tech story during the pandemic, is delivering performance without inspiring confidence. 

According to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners, short interest in ARKK has climbed to a record of roughly 37% of free float — surpassing even pandemic-era peaks. In June alone, bearish traders would have incurred over $300 million in mark-to-market losses. Monday’s 4.4% surge in theory added another roughly $93 million to the tab.

Wood’s “funds have gone on great runs, but I wonder if investors who piled in during 2020 and 2021 are still feeling the effects of that rush and decline,” said Todd Sohn, senior ETF strategist at Strategas. 

“Perhaps they’ve moved on to other areas like crypto or levered single stock funds too,” Sohn added.

The short-selling also reflects firms offsetting long bets in large-cap technology names, a strategy that can endure even as those positions rack up mark-to-market losses, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners.

ARKK’s speculative tech holdings like Tesla Inc., Roblox Corp., and Coinbase Global Inc. have rebounded from tariff-volatility induced lows alongside the broader stock market as President Donald Trump has walked back some of his most extreme trade proposals and corporate earnings have been resilient. 

While bets on Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle company have proved volatile, the company, which is ARKK’s top holding, has outperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 21 percentage points from early April. 

Still, the doubters haven’t budged. On Thursday, ARKK recorded its largest single-day outflow since 2022, contributing to over $840 million in outflows so far this year. It has seen net redemptions for five consecutive weeks. A spokesperson for ARKK did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

To Bloomberg Intelligence’s Athanasios Psarofagis, it’s not just the fund’s poor performance that has investors shunning the ETF, it’s that they can now build arguably better-performing portfolios with single-stock ETFs.

While Wood rose to fame because she offered retail investors access to her high-conviction stock picks — many of which initially fared extremely well — new ETFs on the market are making it easier than ever for investors to place their own concentrated bets on stocks, without relying on managers, he writes in a note. 

Take single-stock ETFs, which offer amped up exposure to a single company like Nvidia Corp. or Tesla. Such funds have grown to command nearly $21 billion in assets since regulators green lit the structure in 2022. 

“With leveraged and inverse ETFs available or in the pipeline for almost all of ARKK’s top holdings, investors can replicate or enhance the strategy sans active management,” Psarofagis writes. “As these products proliferate, flagship thematic ETFs like ARKK risk becoming obsolete, as investors go straight to the source.” 

Underscoring how investors are hungry for double or triple the total return of newly traded stocks, ETF issuers have raced to file plans for funds that would provide leveraged exposure to newly public company Circle Internet Group Inc. 

Aside from more competition, poor longer-term performance also helps explain why short sellers have been so steadfast in betting against Wood. While the fund has rallied over the last few months, it has returned essentially zero over the last five years, compared to the S&P 500’s more than 100% total return. 

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Electric cars are losing their appeal for new drivers in Western nations, even as existing owners report increasing satisfaction with their battery-powered vehicles, according to a survey conducted by Shell Plc. 

The findings show that high upfront cost remains a significant barrier to electric vehicle adoption, with drivers of gasoline-powered cars in both the US and Europe reporting declining interest in making the switch, the survey showed.

“While current EV drivers are feeling more confident, the relatively high cost of owning an electric vehicle, combined with broader economic pressures, are making it a difficult decision for new consumers,” Shell’s Group Executive Vice President of Mobility and Convenience, David Bunch, said in a statement on Tuesday. In Europe, 43% of non-EV drivers cited affordability as an issue.

The growing divide in attitudes toward electric cars emerged in a Shell survey of more than 15,000 drivers across China, Europe and the US. The level of interest in switching to an EV among internal combustion engine drivers in the US was 31%, compared with 34% in 2024, according to the survey. Interest from non-EV drivers in Europe decreased to 41% from 48% last year. 

Of the countries surveyed, only China saw major gains, with single-vehicle owning EV drivers rising “from 72% to an impressive 89%,” Shell said. The country stands out globally for its significant advances both in the technology and the cost of battery-powered cars.

Globally, nine in 10 current EV drivers indicated they would consider a similar purchase for their next vehicle. About 60% of EV drivers said they worry less now than a year ago about running out of charge, while three-quarters said availability and choice of public charging points has improved, according to the survey. 

While Shell has retreated from some of its low-carbon ventures, the company remains committed to EVs and has more than 75,000 charge points across the world. “More must be done to stimulate demand and ensure no one is left behind in the shift to cleaner transport,” Bunch said.

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(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. keeps writing bigger checks in pursuit of its artificial intelligence strategy, and traders keep cheering it on, encouraged that the expensive bets will keep paying off.

The stock is back near record territory after soaring about 45% from its April low. Last week, Meta finalized a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, whose leader is joining a team being assembled by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to pursue artificial general intelligence. That came just after Meta raised its capital spending forecast for 2025 to as much as $72 billion.  

“The amount of spending might give some pause, but we’re confident Meta can use AI to drive revenue and accelerate growth,” said Jake Seltz, who manages the Allspring LT Large Growth ETF. “This shows Meta is committed to making the investments it needs to maintain its leadership, and while the stock has had a nice run, we’re still bullish on the long-term opportunity.” 

Shares rose 2.6% on Monday. Earlier, the company said it would begin showing ads inside of its WhatsApp messaging service.

Meta’s rally has coincided with a resurgence in trader appetites for AI-related stocks, after the earnings season alleviated fears that Big Tech companies might rein in spending on expensive computing gear. The rebound marks a shift from earlier in the year, when stocks such as Nvidia Corp. tumbled on concerns about AI models developed on the cheap in China.

An exchange traded fund that tracks AI stocks including Amazon.com Inc. is up 32% from a low on April 8, the day before US President Donald Trump paused tariffs on trading partners, sparking a broad relief rally in stocks. Over that period, the Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF has outperformed the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which have gained about 20% and 27%, respectively, as of their last close.

Allen Bond, portfolio manager at Jensen Investment Management, bought Meta shares for the first time in recent weeks, in part because of the company’s aggressive spending on AI. He also cited improved operational efficiencies and the shift away from the so-called metaverse, which prompted the company to change its name from Facebook in 2021.

“Using AI to optimize the data it has on users for revenue is a clear application, one that allows Meta to play offense while Alphabet is playing defense,” Bond said, referring to concerns that the Google parent could lose market share in the lucrative search business to AI services like ChatGPT. “While AI is expensive, there is good evidence that it is really paying off so far.” 

Meta’s return on invested capital hit a record high of 31% in the first quarter, more than double the levels from 2023 when the company’s metaverse ambitions were driving higher spending.

Meta uses AI to improve ad targeting and increase engagement across its apps, which also include Instagram and WhatsApp. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Meta is looking to fully automate ad creation, using AI technologies. 

Dan Salmon, an analyst at New Street Research, estimated that generative AI creative tools could boost Meta’s annual ad revenue growth by 1% to 2% over the next several years, and as much as 4% by the end of the decade.

Still, long-term tailwinds from AI are widely expected, raising the question of how much further the stock can rally in the near term. Shares trade at 25 times estimated earnings, cheaper than other megacaps, but still above its own average over the past decade of about 22 times.

While Wall Street is broadly optimistic — nearly 90% of the analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying — Meta shares are just shy of the average price target, suggesting limited expectations for additional gains.

“It is still in the buy range, since you’re getting pretty strong growth for a pretty reasonable price,” said Greg Halter, director of research at the Carnegie Investment Counsel. “Still, rallies like this don’t continue forever, and it certainly isn’t the screaming buy it was not too long ago.”

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Standard Chartered Plc said it would maintain a flexible attitude toward its employees’ working arrangements, bucking a trend among some of its Wall Street rivals that are ordering workers to return to office five days a week.

After a recent assessment, the London-listed lender concluded that keeping the “current approach, with strong guardrails, remains right for us,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News.

“There are many reasons to join and stay at Standard Chartered,” Winters wrote to the bank’s 81,000-strong workforce. “This element of our increasingly differentiated employee value proposition is undoubtedly one of them.”

The current hybrid work policy at the lender has remained largely unchanged since the pandemic led businesses around the world to embrace work from home. However, in recent years — after the end of the global health crisis — competitors including JPMorgan Chase & Co. have told their employees to return to the office five days a week. HSBC Holdings Plc recently told its UK retail banking staff to expect smaller bonuses if they failed to show up in office frequently enough.

Calling such mandates as “prescriptive policies,” Winters however added that while technology has enabled collaboration effectively from anywhere, it still cannot fully replace the unique benefits of face-to-face interactions.

Winters cautioned that for the current hybrid policy to be maintained would require “real commitment” from the company’s staff and that workers who failed to come to the office for extended periods of time could face action from their managers.

“The underlying principle is clear; flexible working and in-person collaboration are complementary, not mutually exclusive,” Winters wrote.

The memo was first reported by Financial News.

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India’s deadliest plane crash in more than decade is set to send shock waves through the aviation insurance industry and trigger one of the country’s costliest claims, estimated at around $475 million.

“This aviation insurance claim could be one of the biggest in India’s history,” said Ramaswamy Narayanan, chairman and managing director at General Insurance Corporation of India, one of the firms that has provided coverage for Air India.

The claim for the aircraft hull and engine is estimated at around $125 million, according to Narayanan. He estimates additional liability claims for loss of life for passengers and others will be around $350 million. The sum is more than triple the annual premium for the aviation industry in India in 2023, according to GlobalData.

The financial repercussions of the crash that killed 241 people on board and others as it fell in a densely populated part of Ahmedabad in western India on Thursday will ripple through the global aviation insurance and reinsurance market. It’s also likely to make insurance costlier for airlines in India.

Insurance premiums across the aviation industry are expected to rise in India, either now or at the time of policy renewals, according to people familiar with the matter. 

On the Air India insurance payout, totals could climb, since there were foreign nationals killed in the accident, and those claims will be calculated according to the rules in their respective jurisdictions, the people said, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

A spokesperson for Air India did not immediately reply to request for comment. 

Insurers will first settle the hull claim followed by liability claims, according to Narayanan. “It will take some time for liability claims to be settled,” he said. 

The impact on the domestic market will be partly mitigated by the fact that both companies only generated about 1% of their total insurance premium from aviation, and ceded most of it to global reinsurers, according to GlobalData’s insurance data.

Broadly, domestic insurers have offloaded more than 95% of their aviation insurance direct written premium, or DWP, to global reinsurers. 

Due to this, “the financial burden will predominantly fall on international reinsurers, leading to the hardening of the aviation reinsurance and insurance market,” said Swarup Kumar Sahoor, senior insurance analyst at GlobalData in a release on Monday. 

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Germany’s economy will return to growth in 2025 after two years of contraction, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg who are a little more upbeat on the country’s near-term prospects than other forecasters.

Respondents see gross domestic product in Europe’s largest economy rising 0.2% this year — a rosier outlook than the stagnation they predicted in May’s poll. For 2026 and 2027, as sharply higher government outlays on infrastructure and defense kick in, they project expansion of 1.1% and 1.7%.

“Some measures in the new federal government’s emergency program do point in the right direction,” said Dennis Huchzermeier, senior economist at the Handelsblatt Research Institute. At the same time there are “significant burdens” such as the jump in the minimum wage and a “looming explosion” in social security contributions, he said.

Germany made a good start to 2025 with stronger-than-expected growth, though that was partly down to businesses and exporters attempting to get ahead of expected US tariffs. That could yet reverse.

The Bundesbank this month predicted stagnation for the year as a whole, downgrading its December call for a 0.2% increase in GDP as firms grapple with trade uncertainty. That view is in line with many national forecasters and global institutions, including the International Monetary Fund.

In a slightly more optimistic take, though, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said Monday that the recent upward revision to first-quarter output data could push the figure for 2025 above zero.

“A slight increase in overall economic output therefore seems quite possible on average,” he said in a speech in Frankfurt.

For 2026, Germany’s Ifo Institute last week raised its growth projection by 0.7 percentage point to 1.5%, citing more fiscal spending. The IfW in Kiel expects expansion of 1.6%.

Ifo President Clemens Fuest said Friday that 2% growth – a goal Chancellor Friedrich Merz has discussed – is achievable, so long as policymakers implement reforms.

“Money alone isn’t enough,” Fuest said. “There are too many stumbling blocks. Germany needs a willingness to reform in several areas.”

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With Federal Reserve officials signaling an extended hold on interest rates, investors and economists will look to Chair Jerome Powell this week for clues on what might eventually prompt the central bank to make a move, and when.

A fourth straight meeting without a cut could provoke another tirade from President Donald Trump. But policymakers have been clear: Before they can make a move they need the White House to resolve the big question marks around tariffs, immigration and taxes. Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear sites have also introduced another element of uncertainty for the global economy.

At the same time, the generally healthy, if slowly cooling, US economy has few expecting a rate move any time soon. Investors are betting the central bank won’t lower borrowing costs until September at the earliest, according to pricing in futures contracts.

“The safest path to take in that situation, when there is no urgency to cut rates right now, is to just sit on your hands,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.

Policymakers gather June 17-18. They’ll release a statement at 2:00 PM Washington time, and Powell is scheduled to take questions from reporters 30 minutes later.

Difficult Choices

The president’s tariffs are widely expected to raise prices and slow growth, risks that officials flagged in their last post-meeting statement. That could eventually force the Fed to make a difficult choice as the economy pulls them in opposite directions.

“I don’t think at this point there’s anything to be alarmed about,” said David Hoag, fixed income portfolio manager at Capital Group. “But the longer we have uncertainty — for the consumer, for companies in terms of planning — the more concerned I’ll get about the fundamentals of the economy deteriorating.”

So far, however, the economy isn’t flashing warning signs that would prompt the Fed to intervene.

The unemployment rate has held steady for three months even as job growth has slowed, in part because a sharp decline in immigration is also lowering the supply of workers. The longer the jobless rate remains stable, the longer the Fed can hold rates as a defense against potentially higher inflation.

Yet price data has also provided little to worry about. Underlying inflation rose by less than expected in May for the fourth straight month. Treasuries rose last week on the news, bolstered by wagers on more than one rate cut this year. The yield on two-year notes, most sensitive to the Fed’s policy, declined by more than seven basis points on the week to 3.96%.

Still, officials are likely to wait for additional months of data to understand how much of the tariffs are being passed on to consumers. Israel’s airstrikes on Iran will raise additional questions. Fed officials traditionally look through energy price moves, but an oil price shock could affect inflation expectations.

Fresh Projections

Fresh economic forecasts and rate projections this week could provide helpful guidance to how officials are thinking. They’ll be the first since Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of sweeping tariffs on April 2.

As analysts ponder the results, the range of possibilities is unusually large. 

If officials predict that unemployment will rise this year meaningfully above the 4.4% they forecast in March, that would suggest policymakers may cut rates before the fourth quarter, said Shah.

Some Fed officials, including Governor Christopher Waller, have already signaled an openness to cutting because they believe policymakers can view the expected impact of tariffs on consumer prices as temporary — as long as inflation expectations remain anchored. That aligns with market-based measures suggesting traders also believe the tariff price bump will be short-lived.

But should officials raise their expectations for inflation, that could reduce the number of cuts they project this year to one, from the two seen in March, said Matthew Luzzetti, chief US economist for Deutsche Bank. Strategists at Barclays warned of just such a “hawkish” surprise in a note to clients.

Officials might also consider the substantial uncertainty over the final state of Trump’s policies and simply leave their projections unchanged.

“I’d be surprised if the dots move much,” said Zachary Griffiths head of investment-grade and macroeconomic strategy at CreditSights. “It’s been a roller-coaster ride” since the Fed last released projections in March. “On net, I think we’re probably in a somewhat similar situation,” he said.  

Late Support

Some economists say the timing of the Fed’s next moves will eventually come down to how long it takes for Trump’s policies to show up in the economic data — and how strongly that raises concerns about a downturn.

In a Bloomberg survey of economists conducted June 6-11, 42% of respondents predicted the Fed will hold rates steady until there’s more concrete weakness in the economy.

Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives and a former Fed economist, said she expects rate cuts beginning in October or December in response to the more notable labor-market slowdown she estimates will materialize by then.

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President Donald Trump said that it’s possible the US could become involved in the Israel-Iran conflict.

“It’s possible we could get involved,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday. He noted that the US is “not at this moment involved.” 

The US has jet fighters, ships and ground-based air-defense systems positioned near the warring countries to help counter any Iranian attack on American assets or people. It has not yet openly assisted Israel in its strikes, but has helped the country defend itself.

In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump said that many calls were taking place and that “we will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran!” 

Referring to a phone call between Trump and Vladimir Putin on Saturday, the president told ABC he would be “open” to having the Russian president mediate the conflict. 

“He is ready. He called me about it. We had a long talk about it,” Trump said.

Russia is a strategic ally of Iran. The two nations worked against the US in wars in Syria and Iraq. 

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President Donald Trump earned $57.7 million from token sales by the crypto firm he and his sons helped launch last year, according to his required federal financial disclosure forms.

The financial disclosure, released Friday by the Office of Government Ethics, provided details on his sprawling empire, including hundreds of millions of dollars in income from his hotels, golf resorts and cryptocurrency ventures.

The $57.7 million came from sales by World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm launched last year before the election. Trump and his three sons, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, are among the company’s founders, according to its website. 

That haul wasn’t the largest source of the president’s income from private holdings. Trump Endeavor 12 LLC, a Miami-based company that owns golf courses and a resort, produced $110 million. His Mar-a-Lago Club generated more than $50 million in resort-related revenue.

Trump, who’s worth an estimated $4.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, valued 22 assets at more than $50 million, including Mar-a-Lago, his Turnberry, Scotland, golf resort and his stakes in World Liberty Financial and Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which owns his Truth Social platform. Officials disclose the values of their holdings in broad ranges with “over $50 million” the highest, which means that they can’t be used to calculate an individual’s net worth. Trump Media, for example, is currently worth $2.2 billion.

Fight Fight Fight LLC, which sells Trump’s meme coin, was launched in January and wasn’t included in the disclosure, which covers 2024. The company hosted a dinner that Trump attended for the 220 largest holders of the $TRUMP coin in May. The event, when announced in April, caused the coin’s price to shoot up 56%.

CIC Digital LLC, the entity that earns money through licensing Trump’s image on nonfungible tokens, produced income of $1.1 million in 2024. It also holds a wallet holding Etherium worth at least $1 million.

The 234-page disclosure also lists hundreds of trademarks Trump owns across the world, including in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Venezuela and other countries, and details his personal investments that aren’t part of his business empire, as well as first lady Melania Trump’s holdings.

Trump listed 11 outstanding debts on the form, including two judgments against him won by author E. Jean Carroll involving allegations of sexual assault and defamation and one owed from the criminal fraud case for which he was convicted of 34 felonies. Those debts were stayed pending the outcome of appeals Trump has filed. 

He did not list any outstanding debt to lawyers or law firms stemming from the criminal and civil cases. Save America, his leadership political action committee, has paid most of those fees. 

Trump had seven outstanding real estate loans, including mortgages in amounts of more than $50 million on Trump Tower, Trump National Doral and 40 Wall Street. He also listed debt on his American Express credit card of at least $15,000. 

Vice President JD Vance also disclosed assets for him and his wife, Usha Vance, worth at least $6.5 million.

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