The country, perhaps tired of waiting for the future to arrive on its own, has teamed up with xAI – Elon Musk’s pet project or possibly his pet rocket – to unleash Grok, a language model so clever it might start questioning the very concept of school itself, on unsuspecting students.
According to the announcement, the OCC has issued a conditional approval to five national digital currency banks. Voilà! These five nouveau institutions join the ranks of 60 other trust bank charters, because why stop at one when you can have a whole bouquet? 💐
On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve, playing the role of a fickle landowner, delivered a 25-basis-point interest rate cut. The crypto markets, ever hopeful, bounced like a rabbit in a dust storm, only to realize the cut was “widely expected and pretty much priced in,” as CoinEx’s chief analyst, Jeff Ko, dryly noted. 🥕🐇
The shares, currently priced at $487.93 with the vigor of a terrier chasing a postman, have outperformed the S&P 500 by a positively indecent 54.81 percentage points over the past year. Yet all is not sunshine and crumpets in the CyberArk orchard. The stock, which had been prancing about like a debutante at her first ball in October, promptly tripped over its own petticoats in November, dragging down Prelude’s portfolio value by some 5% since quarter-end. A situation not unlike discovering one’s finest dancing shoes have sprouted holes at the most inopportune moment.
In a plot twist that would make a Florida Man proud, prosecutors in the Sunshine State have snatched up $1.5 million in cryptocurrency after tracing it back to a July 2024 scam in Citrus County. The victim, who probably thought they were investing in the next big thing, ended up losing $47,421 to what was essentially a digital mirage. 🌐💨
Such ventures align with the current trend among crypto wallets to wear many hats-stablecoins, perpetuals, stocks, and now the charming pastime of betting on everything-surely to make life more interesting and slightly more hazardous.
Without further dithering, I present, in order of magnitude from most to least influential, my top-10 stock holdings as we navigate the treacherous waters of 2026:
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve, in their final FOMC meeting of the year, delivered a rate cut for the third consecutive time. Yet, discord reigns supreme among the officials, torn between the spectres of inflation and the labour market. Chair Powell, whose tenure is as fleeting as a summer breeze, must navigate this ship through stormy waters. With only three more meetings to his name, the Fed faces a dilemma not seen since the “stagflation” era of the 1970s. Oh, the irony of history repeating itself! 🌪️
Silver, that volatile minx, achieved a new zenith on Thursday, surpassing $64 per ounce on the COMEX. Since its December awakening, this metal has been a prima donna, ascending despite the naysayers’ cries of “overbought!”-a term as tiresome as a Chekhovian protagonist’s existential sigh.
Rather than waiting for the industry to catch up, DTCC has seized the reins and declared itself the architect of tokenized settlement. A No-Action Letter from the SEC-a document so rare it could double as a relic-grants DTCC’s subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company (DTC), the liberty to conduct a three-year tokenization experiment. One imagines the SEC’s typewriter clacking furiously as it drafts this historic missive. 📜
