📈TGIF: A global risk-off sentiment hit the markets Monday to Thursday with a surprising rebound on Friday. Stocks and crypto saw the worst of it, indicies down 2-5% and bitcoin down 20%, with gold and silver gaining 10%. Come Friday, stocks bounced back, finishing the week flat and crypto rallied.

📈Amazon’s Q4 Tumble: Amazon’s( $AMZN ( ▲ 1.19% ) ) Q4 earnings were released. Although they showed robust growth (14% YTD), their shares dropped by as much as 9%, as investors were spooked by a $200 billion capital spending forecast, much of which can be expected to fuel its AI ambitions. To pay for this AI gamble, Amazon is tightening its belt elsewhere, namely by laying off ~10% of its staff and shutting down its Fresh and Go physical stores.

📈Most Job Cuts Since the GFC: The U.S. reported the largest monthly layoffs since the global financial crisis, with employers slashing over 108,000 jobs for the month. This represents a 118% increase from the same period last year. The biggest sectors to slash jobs were transportation, followed by technology.

📈Google’S Q4 Hurrah: Another GAYMAN (it’s a well-used acronym, dude) Q4 earning report worth talking about is Alphabet’s. Alphabet ( $GOOG ( ▼ 1.05% ) ) saw Q4 revenue jump 18%, helping the company reach a record USD$403B in revenue for 2025. With all this green, Google is also ramping up capital expenditures, with much of it also expected to go into AI. Shares traded more or less horizontally (between 6% lower and 2% higher).

🌎Inbox from Hell: The DOJ over in the U.S. released what they say is the final trove of Epstein files. New names to the roster include Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Howard Lutnick. It’s a massive, grim web of data, so internet sleuths have turned it into a fully searchable “Gmail clone” of his inbox. Try it out here, if you dare.

🌎Critical Mineral Hoard: The Trump administration has pitched a new idea to combat China’s dominance in the critical mineral sector: Project Vault. The project would see a combined USD$12B in financing used to create a stockpile of critical minerals in the US, other ideas discussed included a critical mineral price floor.

🌎Hate ICE? Buy Palantir: While surpassing earnings targets by a cool $100 million (driven primarily by US government demand), CEO Alex Karp said if you hate ICE, you should be buying Palantir. Meanwhile, Palantir has been assisting ICE in the identification, tracking and deportation of non-citizens with ImmigrationOS since September.

🌎Important Talks in Iran: Early Friday, the (virtual) US embassy in Tehran issued an alert for American citizens to leave Iran now. The alert comes ahead of diplomatic talks held in Oman where the US and Iran will discuss Iran’s nuclear enrichment and ballistic missles program.

👔Cata(S)aaStrophe: Anthrophic released Cowork AI in January, a Claude-based tool to replace other software-as-a-service (SaaS) services. With Claude getting an upgrade, Cowork AI is now allegedly able to replace paralegals, financial analysts, and of course SaaS firms. SaaS stocks tanked.

👔Orbital Data Centres - Coming Soon: In order to make his earth-orbiting data centre dream a reality Elon Musk is merging SpaceX and xAI (including X/twitter). The deal closed on February 2nd and valued the combined firms at $1.25 trillion — the largest merger in US history.

👔Architect Capital Eyes OnlyFans Ass-sets: OnlyFans is currently in exclusive talks to sell a majority (60%) stake to investment firm Architect Capital. The deal values the adult content giant at USD$5.5B. A steep drop from the USD$8B valuation floated last year. Rumor has it that Architect plans for an IPO of the company in 2028.

👔No Money? Go Bankrupt: Is exactly the attitude former Bear Sterns analyst and (once) hedge fund manager Jason Ader has taken after his mother took him to court over a $13 million loan taken out against her house. He claims to have ~$200,000 in assets, plus two guinea pigs worth $25.

🤪Copilot Not Cutting It Anymore: Goldman Sachs ( $GS ( ▲ 1.2% ) ) has been working with Anthropic for the past six months to develop AI-powered agents that automate internal functions for the bank, CNBC reported citing Goldman’s Chief Information Officer. Tasks include trade and transaction accounting, as well as client due dilligence and onboarding.

🤪Hasta La Vista, Humans: Meet Moltbook, a new “human-free” Reddit clone where 1.5 million of our AI buddies post on topics such as the “total purge” of humanity, hiding communications from humans, and also forming their own religion called “Crustafarianism” (which has already happened, btw). Before we collectively delete ChatGPT from our phones, do note that skeptics believe that many of the posts could be fake, as hackers (human) have found a way to break in.

🤪Free Drinks if You Quit Your Job: In Japan, where quitting your job can be an ordeal, workers can visit the Job-changing Consultation Bar (転職相談Bar) where every bartender is a licensed counsellor. So if workers want to contemplate a life in a different job, they can, with free drinks.

🤪Mcnugget Caviar: Title says it all. Only Online. Only in the U.S.