Wealt Roundup #48

Good morning ??

Welcome to the new edition of Wealt Weekly Roundup. We hope you're enjoying the Summer bank holiday weekend and the beautiful weather that's come with it.

This week's highlights include SpaceX’s plans for a civilian spacewalk mission, Anthropic's Claude app success and lawsuit, Groq's improved AI model, acquisitions, layoffs, and potential interest rate cuts. We also examine how the 40/30/30 strategy outperforms the traditional 60/40 portfolio.

Stay informed with Roundup – your guide to finance and tech trends!

Highlights from Wealt

Exciting News! 1st Wealt Club Retreat in Portugal ????

We are delighted to announce the 1st Wealt Club Retreat, taking place from November 14-17 in the stunning city of Lisbon, Portugal. This exclusive 3-day unconference-style event will bring together our Club members and sophisticated investors from around the world for a truly exceptional experience of high-level discussions, elite networking, and cultural immersion.

Dates:?14-17 November

Location:?Lisbon, Portugal

What to Expect:

• Participant-Led Discussions and Workshops?focused on the latest innovations and strategies in alternative assets and wealth management.
• Exclusive Networking Opportunities?aboard luxury yachts as we sail along the Tagus River, with breathtaking views of Lisbon’s iconic waterfront.
• Cultural Experiences?immerse yourself in the rich heritage of Lisbon with exquisite local fine dining at spectacular venues, music that captures the soul of Portugal, and guided tours through the city’s historic sites, offering a deep dive into its vibrant history and culture.
• Personalised Sessions and Case Studies?designed to provide actionable insights for managing, growing and enjoying your wealth.

Given the exclusive nature of this event, spaces are limited to just 50 participants. Registration will be opening soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Perfect timing! This retreat is strategically scheduled right after the Web Summit, allowing you to maximise your time in Lisbon by attending both events seamlessly.

What next? Mark your calendars for the 2nd Wealt Club Retreat, scheduled for April in the exotic city of Marrakech. You won’t want to miss it!

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Join the Wealt Club community by downloading our app and to stay in the loop about all our exclusive events and updates.

Portfolio news

SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission will launch on August 27, 2024. It will feature the first civilian spacewalk and reach the highest orbit since Apollo. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, this private mission aims to test new EVA suits, conduct scientific experiments, and advance space exploration while raising funds for charity. It's the first of three planned Polaris Program missions.

Read more.

NASA is grappling with rescuing two astronauts from the ISS, complicated by incompatible spacesuits between Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon. This issue, stemming from NASA's Commercial Crew program, forces difficult choices between risky options and could impact confidence in Boeing's spacecraft if a SpaceX rescue is used.

Read more.

Anthropic's Claude app hit $1 million in mobile revenue after 16 weeks, outpacing some rivals but still far behind ChatGPT. The U.S. is its biggest market. While a milestone, Claude faces stiff competition, especially with Apple's planned ChatGPT integration for iPhones.

Read more.

Three authors (Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson) have sued Anthropic, claiming their books were illegally used to train the AI chatbot Claude. This lawsuit joins several others against AI companies over copyright infringement in training data. The case highlights growing legal challenges for AI firms regarding intellectual property rights in AI development.

Read more.

Groq has launched Distil-Whisper on GroqCloud?, a faster and 51% smaller version of OpenAI's Whisper model. Running at 240x real-time speed with a 2.4% Word Error Rate, it provides efficient English speech recognition for just $0.02 per hour, making it ideal for applications like chatbots and transcription systems.

Read more.

Market updates

• Klarna has acquired Laybuy's New Zealand assets and plans to relaunch the service soon, enhancing local customers' payment flexibility and user experience.
• Cisco has announced a second round of layoffs for 2024, cutting 7% of its workforce. However, employees will not know if they're affected until September 16, creating a tense work environment.
• Google Cloud Run now supports Nvidia L4 GPUs, enabling serverless AI inference, which allows organizations to run AI workloads only when needed, potentially reducing costs and enhancing efficiency.
• Microsoft has introduced the Phi-3.5 series of multilingual, high-quality small language models—including Phi-3.5-mini, Phi-3.5-vision, and Phi-3.5-MoE—which deliver enhanced performance, extended context support, and multimodal capabilities for Azure customers and the open-source community via Hugging Face.
• OpenAI has partnered with Condé Nast to access its content archive and provide the publisher with advanced AI tools, raising questions about the future of publishing as the media and tech industries collaborate more closely amid rapid technological changes.
• OpenAI's new fine-tuning feature for GPT-4o, offering 1 million free training tokens daily until September 23, allows developers to customize the model's performance and accuracy for specific applications while ensuring data privacy.
• Meta has launched a new web crawler, Meta External Agent, to collect large amounts of publicly available data for AI training, similar to OpenAI's GPTBot. However, many websites have yet to disclose or block it.
• OpenAI opposes California’s AI bill SB 1047, arguing it could hinder innovation and drive talent away from the state. Still, Senator Scott Wiener dismisses this claim as unfounded, noting that the bill's provisions are not specific to California-based companies.
• Fed Chair Jerome Powell signalled potential interest rate cuts ahead, stating that "the time has come for policy to adjust." However, he did not specify the timing or extent of the cuts, as the Fed shifted focus from inflation control to supporting full employment.
• The Bank of England is collaborating with the BIS Innovation Hub to develop Project Keystone, an analytics data platform for ISO 20022. The platform aims to enhance the payment data analysis to better understand economic conditions, system liquidity, and compliance.
• Mike Lynch, hailed as the UK's greatest tech entrepreneur, tragically died along with his daughter and five others when their luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.

Wealt blog spotlight

This week’s selected blog is Is 60/40 Portfolio Dead?

Over the past decade, the 40/30/30 framework has consistently outperformed the traditional 60/40 portfolio. This new approach, which includes alternative investments, has been shown to enhance returns while reducing drawdowns. During market volatility, such as the COVID-19 crash, portfolios using this framework demonstrated greater resilience. The post presents graphs showing the superior performance of the 40/30/30 strategy, particularly in protecting against sharp declines and offering better recovery during economic challenges.

Read more.

Stay ahead of the curve…

We will continue to be here every week. Stay tuned for more in your inbox or on LinkedIn. To learn more about wealth management and Wealt, join our community and drop us a ??.

With warm regards and enthusiastic spirits,

Wealt Team ???