| WEEKLY ROUNDUP What To Do While Markets Soar and Households Struggle VIEW IN BROWSER Hello, Reader. The American economy of 2025 is both dazzling and disturbing. On the surface, stock markets have never been higher, billionaires have never been more numerous, and technological breakthroughs – especially in AI – have never possessed greater potential to transform entire industries. Yet beneath the surface, the average worker and household face a very different reality: slowing job growth, shrinking affordability, fading prospects, and declining confidence. This contradiction between abundance and anxiety is not a new feature of the American economy. But now, thanks to AI, the financial chasm between folks on the winning side of technological progress has become a massive, permanent landmark. I first identified this socio-economic divide five years ago and called it the “Technochasm.” As I correctly predicted back then, it is growing wider by the day and creating a growing roster of social and economic imbalances. The chart below brings the Technochasm into stark relief. It juxtaposes the S&P 500 Index against consumer sentiment over the last decade. The green line climbs inexorably higher, particularly from 2020 onward, fueled by AI-driven rallies in tech giants. The black line, representing how consumers feel about their own economic conditions, drifts downward, collapsing to lows not seen in decades. 
The picture is unmistakable: markets are soaring while households are souring. AI may be helping to create stock market wealth, but it is terrifying many American workers. The second chart below captures the psychological impact of AI’s encroachment into the workforce. It plots the percentage of Americans saying, “jobs are plentiful,” as well as the percentage saying, “jobs are hard to get.” The inflection point is noteworthy. At the end of 2022, when ChatGPT and its AI cousins burst onto the global stage, “jobs plentiful” readings began to tumble, while “jobs hard to get” readings began to climb. 
Of course, correlation is not causation. But the timing is suggestive. The launch of generative AI coincided with a broad wave of corporate experimentation in automation. Customer service departments began shrinking, replaced by chatbots. White-collar employers realized that AI tools could handle functions from writing to coding to design. By 2025, only about 30% of Americans said jobs were plentiful, while nearly 20% said jobs were hard to get. That represents a profound shift in confidence. In a healthy economy, workers feel they can quit and find new opportunities. In the current one, they are increasingly cautious, and upwardly immobile. It is important to note that the U.S. economy is still creating wealth, still generating innovation, still minting billionaires at an astonishing pace. But also one in which the average household finds itself sliding down the rungs of opportunity. No government agency, no Wall Street bank, no celebrity CEO will secure the future of your household. That task is yours, alone… but it need not be a daunting one. That is why I’m excited to share that our colleagues over at TradeSmith have channeled hedge-fund quality software into an easy-to-use tool – called The T-Line – that can help improve folks’ financial lives. Their proprietary algorithms monitor the direction of over 160,000 stocks and ETFs around the world, 24-7. From tech stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)… to index funds that track the S&P 500… to ETFs. Whatever stock you wish to know more about, this tool will show you. I’ll share how you can learn more about The T-Line tool below. But first, let’s take a look back at what we covered here at Smart Money this week… | 
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