2026 | Wall Street Memes

At the time of writing, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is dead, but despite this, his words and thoughts live on, influencing everyone from iPhone users to iPod users and everyone in between.

One useful tidbit from back when he could share them: Jobs had a guiding principle for hiring people that he called the “beer test”.

Reportedly, Jobs would take the candidate out for a walk-and-talk around the Apple campus, asking small-talk questions like, “What did you do last summer?” hoping to shake them out of their well-rehearsed interview persona.

Then, after chatting to them for a bit, Jobs would ask himself, “Would I want to get a beer with this candidate?” If the answer is Yes: hired. No: not hired.

“So in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut,” Jobs explained. “How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged?”

Obviously, there were more criteria the candidate would have to fulfil, like “be qualified,” but basically, vibes were also a massive part of it.

Nice Guys Finish First

It’s not even the strangest interview test out there. Gary Shapiro, former CTA CEO (OMG), would ask candidates when they could start, and if they said an enthusiastic “immediately,” that was a red flag because they were willing to screw over their current employer. …You can’t win, can you?

Other “tests” include checking how you greeted the receptionist, whether you washed your coffee cup after the interview, and even asking the waiter at the dinner interview to deliberately mess up the order to see how you’d react.

Seems crazy, but it’s all in an effort to gauge the candidate’s personality beneath the formalities of a job interview.

And the tests might vary, but the advice is the same. If you’re looking for a job, be prepared to be yourself (unless you are unlikable, then it’s probably better to be someone else). People like people that they like and are more likely to hire someone they gel with.

So, along with all your interview prep, maybe ask yourself another question: Do I pass the Beer Test?

Warren Buffett, the billionaire, playboy, philanthropist behind Berkshire Hathaway, has said he’ll be putting 90% of the inheritance that’ll go to his wife in just one fund.

In a 2013 letter to shareholders, Buffett said, “One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit,” he wrote. “My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund.”

And that’s it.

For Buffett, the S&P 500 was always the way to go, and over ten years later, he wasn’t wrong. The S&P 500 has effectively always been on the up since the great depression, basically Buffett’s whole life.

All You Can Eat Buffett

It’s this kind of advice that has earned Buffett the moniker ‘the Oracle of Omaha’ and delivered Berkshire gains of 4,384,748% from 1964 to 2023. Not bad.

But although Buffett might pick ‘the stocks that make ‘em pop’ himself, for the average investor, he recommends a simpler strategy like the S&P 500 all the way.

“I do not think the average person can pick stocks,” he said in a 2021 shareholders meeting, and for the layperson, it seems likely he’d recommend the simple investment fund strategy.

As for the last 10%, Buffett’s recommendation of government bonds is a sensible, low-risk strategy that offers high liquidity and is backed up by the government. It’s a smart move for a smaller portion of your assets. Buffett approved.

Of course, at 95 years young, Buffett may have stepped down from Berkshire Hathaway, but no doubt will still be heavily involved in his finances.

His wife might have to wait a little while before she tries another strategy.

But then again, he would say that

The founder of Interactive Brokers Group, Thomas Peterffy, is making the ‘bad guys with guns’ argument, but for insider trading, suggesting the only way to combat it is to make it legal.

“I’m in favor of not having any rules against insider trading. I would like all the information out there as soon as it’s available,” Peterffy said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. “Because look, as a society, we are better off knowing as soon as possible anything that is knowable.”

Are we though? And is this just all an advertisement?

The answer is yes (I’ll let you pick the question). You see, Peterffy (which is how someone called Peter introduces themselves when they’re also trying to spit out a fly they’ve just accidentally swallowed) happens to own a prediction market called ForecastEx.

Prediction markets essentially rely on insider information in order to make more accurate bets and have more people gamble on events. In practice, however, it means that some people have an unfair advantage and end up making a lot of money from real-world events that maybe they shouldn’t.

Insider Trading? I hardly know her!

The issue seems to be on the rise with a large bet on Maduro’s capture, the Iran war, and whether the price of eggs will go up (there’s a mole at Big Egg, I just know it).

But Peterffffttty (sorry, fly), seems to think that the problem isn’t the insideyness of it, it’s that we pretend that isn’t going on all the time anyway.

Imagine two companies are about to merge. The employees who are in the know can now profit off that information, “the secretaries, the lawyers, everybody knows about it. They go home, they tell their wives, their husbands. So it eventually always filters out.”

But Peter(ffy) suggests that prediction markets and legalising the practice would even the playing field. “Why don’t we just do away with it and let the information come out as soon as possible?” This way, the “sharks” can’t profit because that information isn’t special, and in theory, everyone gets a fair shake.

And it seems that Pete’s crusade might have personal stakes, considering that he lost out to insider traders in the 70s. “I was really traumatized. I lost $90,000 and it was horrible,” he said. But does he react to this trauma by seeking revenge? By wanting to ban all insider trading? No, P-Dog says, kill ‘em with kindness.

“But I still say to you that I think the best thing we could do about inside information is just to get the news out there as fast as possible and forget about persecuting people.”

Well, well, well. It seems that the insider has become the insidee.

The age of agentic AI trading is upon us (if it wasn’t already) with Robinhood, one of the world’s most popular trading platforms, launching agentic stock trading and AI-powered shopping.

Get ready for everyone’s portfolio to pile into Nvidia.

Agentic Trading will enable customers to instruct AI to balance portfolios and conduct investment strategies. Robinhood’s AI will not be able to spell ‘strawberry,’ however.

And when it comes to AI shopping, users will use their virtual Robinhood Gold credit card to instruct AI to make purchases.

“A sneakerhead can tell their agent to buy a coveted new release in their size whenever it drops below $300,” the company’s press release explains, and “A foodie can instruct their agent to book the most exclusive restaurant reservation in town as soon as their preferred date and time becomes available.”

“And if that sneakerhead and that foodie happen to bump into each other and fall in love on the way to their purchases, well, maybe that was AI too.” Ok, Robinhood didn’t say that, but that would be a cool feature, right?

AI trading? But I can barely do it myself!

The AI credit card thing isn’t necessarily groundbreaking stuff, with Stripe and Ramp also offering virtual cards, and Visa and Mastercard have opened up to processing such cards. But Robinhood is the first big retail brand to offer this kind of virtual shopping to its users. Plus, it’s gold. Does anyone else have that? No.

And with 700,000 Robinhood Gold customers, we might see a sea change in AI’s role in commerce.

“Our mission has always been to democratize finance for all, and now, that mission extends to AI agents,” explains Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, maybe not realising that AI doesn’t currently have a vote.

Obviously, there are guardrails in place so that these AI agents don’t automatically bet it all on black. The virtual credit card will be separate from users’ actual gold card (not actually made of gold). And the agentic trading accounts are also separate from the people’s main portfolios.

But we have seen AI breakouts in the past, so there is obviously a worst-case scenario where this goes awry. But then again, maybe that won’t happen.

It’s worth a shot, right?

“Welcome to the CIA! Here’s your gun, your badge, and $40mil in gold bars.”

Apparently, if you work in the CIA, you can just request gold bars as “work-related expenses,” and they’ll just give them to you? Man, I might need to change careers…

…the only catch is you have to give them back.

Agent David Rush learned this the hard way when FBI investigators discovered 303 two-pound gold bars, $2 million in cash, and 35 luxury watches, some of them Rolexes, stashed in his home and promptly arrested him.

It remains unclear whether Rush stacked the bars in a Jenga-type tower or built a small golden throne that he could sit on.

But Rush’s misdirection goes even deeper, seemingly lying about his education and military service on his job application (STOLEN VALOR!!), enabling him to take military leave with thousands of dollars in pay (STOLEN HOURS!!).

I don’t know, guys, if he could lie about this, I feel like this makes him a good spy. Give him a promotion.

Rush tried to run, but despite his name, he was slowed down by all the gold bars in his pocket.

Rush was caught after the CIA snitched on him (goddam narcs) and alerted the FBI in a pretty sick crossover episode.

“After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation,” the entire FBI said all at once like a hive mind.

As the court documents explain, between November 2025 and March 2026, Rush made several requests “to obtain a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”

Yep, completely normal requests. Nothing suspicious there.

But then, when the CIA wanted those gold bars back, they were “unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency,” nor could they find “any record of Rush providing information to his employer regarding the disposition of the currency or gold bars that he received for work-related purposes.”

Awkward.

And doubly awkward when this agent had top secret clearance and access to classified information.

What else has this guy been stealing? The Epstein Files? Evidence of ALIENS?? Quickly, lock this guy up. Oh, you have? OK, great.

Rush awaits a hearing this week. Stay tuned to see how this (gold) pans out.

AI? More like AAAAAAAHHHHH (I)!

There have been a lot of predictions hailing the end of work as we know it, thanks to AI.

Just this month, Microsoft AI’s CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, predicted that all white-collar workers would disappear in 18 months. Goldman Sachs just released data showing that AI has eliminated 16,000 jobs this year. And in February, the creator of Claude Code said manager and coder jobs will effectively merge because AI coding will be so easy.

And OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, was firmly on that doomsday bandwagon, saying last year, “A lot of jobs will go away.”

But just this week, he seems to have changed his tune.

“I’m delighted to ⁠be wrong about this,” Altman said in an interview with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened.”

But despite the admission, he doesn’t regret his tubthumping.

“People are like, ‘Oh, you could have saved the world a lot of fear mongering and a lot of doom and gloom,’ but at the time I was like, ‘I see this is a real risk we should probably talk about it.’ And it still may [happen].”

And Altman’s insight comes from experience. Recently, he outsourced his Slack and email replies to AI, then quickly reverted to doing it himself.

“We really do care about our interactions with people,” he said. “[It’s] not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon. It really updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought.”

BREAKING NEWS: CEO Uses Own Product, Realises It’s Not As Good As He Thought

But Saltman’s not the only CEO to walk back their AI prediction.

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei previously said that AI could eliminate half of white-collar jobs, like Thanos snapping his fingers. But now he’s saying that AI will increase the amount of work people can do, not removing jobs at all.

“If you automate 90% of the job, then everyone does the 10% of the job. And the 10% kind of expands to be 100% of what people do and kind of 10-times their productivity.”

You follow all that?

Meanwhile, Goldman Sach’s CEO David Solomon has been saying from the start that the panic is way out of proportion. He points to historical examples of industrial change, such as the move to electricity in the 1900s and the digital revolution in the 1990s.

“The United States has a long track record of creating new jobs in response to disruption… I don’t see any reason to think this dynamic will stop now.”

So what’s actually going to happen?

Are we looking at the end of work as we know it, or will the global economy adapt and change? Or maybe it’ll be somewhere between the two.

Whatever actually happens, no one knows the future, and all we can do is find out the (hopefully) not-so-hard way.

Meta? I hardly know her!

Meta has revealed it had the business plan of a drug dealer all along. Offer your products initially for free, and then, when the users are hooked, you jack up the price.

Well, Meta has basically half the world hooked, reaching 3.58 billion active users last December. So now that WhatsApp and Instagram have become essential (sorry, who uses Facebook?), Meta can start charging, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BUT DON’T WORRY! This doesn’t mean everyone will be charged; no, Meta is just creating another paid tier in the apps that will allow extra features.

Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus will cost $3.99 a month each, while WhatsApp Plus will be $2.99 a month.

So what exactly will you get for just the price of a cup of coffee a month? Well, Instagram and Facebook Plus subscribers will now be able to see everyone who’s viewed their stories, spotlight one story a week for more views, extend story time, preview stories, and browse other people’s story viewership.

Useful stuff.

Oh, and there’s also animated reactions, customisable app icons and fonts, and additional pins. Basically, Fortnite skins are coming to Instagram.

WhatsApp is a similar story with app themes, custom ringtones, additional pinned chats, premium stickers, and probably more.

It’s not much, and it’s mostly cosmetic, but maybe fits the price point if you’re using these features as a professional rather than a regular user.

Certainly, these features could just be rolled out to all users for free, but Meta somewhat desperately needs another revenue stream at the moment. After shutting down development on its cash-draining VR sector, Meta is now going all in on AI and needs the cash to do so.

And that’s where the paid AI plans start coming into play.

You still with me?

We’ve got Meta One Plus at $7.99 a month and then Meta One Premium at $19.99 a month with a higher capacity. Meta AI will remain free.

The business model makes sense as it’s essentially what all the AI companies are doing right now (you have to pay for this somehow).

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

Meta One Essential is just $14.99 a month and offers an upgraded version of the Meta Verified plan. But the Meta One Advanced plan is all of that plus a boost to feed rankings and a push to get people to follow you. And that’s on offer for the low, low price of $49.99.

Meta has said that more features and plans will roll out over time, but until then, it looks like social media just became pay-to-win.

Elon Musk (or ‘Elomusk’ for short) is rumored to be considering a SpaceX/Tesla merger just before SpaceX goes for its long-gestating IPO (‘initial public offering’ for long).

Apparently, Musk has discussed this option with colleagues, according to “people familiar with the talks,” according to CNBC (according to me).

Will We Get Electric Vehicles On Mars?

The move would follow a long line of self-mergers (those are rare) that Elon has enacted with his companies.

This year, SpaceX absorbed xAI, and before that, the social media platform X was absorbed by xAI, and before that, a giant cloud of dust and gas coalesced into the sun and planets that we call our solar system.

It’s a smart move because xAI + SpaceX makes for a much tastier IPO (now estimated to hit $1.25 trillion), and despite their seemingly disparate products, SpaceX’s plans to launch orbital AI datacenters are, in fact, very much aligned with xAI’s tech.

So why not repeat the move with Tesla?

Like xAI was before the merger, Tesla is also struggling financially and could do with the rocket boost that SpaceX would bring. Elon has already pivoted Tesla away from making cars and towards making AI and robots. Why not throw rockets into the mix?

Plus, Tesla and SpaceX already cross-pollinate many resources, like staff members, research, and that one time SpaceX launched a Roadster into space for some reason.

And most importantly, Elon will now only need one email address.

SpaceTeXla

Now the only question that remains is what the company will be called?

Technically, SpaceX’s full legal name is Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, and SpaceXAI is a division of that company (formerly called X.AI Corp). Tesla, meanwhile, is simply Tesla, Inc (boring).

So it seems clear that the only possible option for a name that acknowledges all this heritage is:

SpaceX.AIplorationTeslachnologiesCorp.oration, Inc.

But maybe we should just start calling it ‘Elon’s Company’ for short.

It’s been a running joke for a long time: “If athletes keep cheating in the Olympics, why don’t we just have an Olympics for cheaters?”

It conjures images of sprinters hitting a line just before hitting the 100m or a high jumper getting actually high before jumping high.

Well, now bro’s only gone and made it happen.

Yes, the ‘Enhanced Games’ was a genuine sporting event that took place last week in Las Vegas. The event ran much like the multi-event Olympics, but this time, forbidden doping techniques like steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs were completely fair game.

Athletes were not required to take a drug test, but that didn’t mean everything was allowed. Competitors could not use actually illegal substances; all ‘enhancements’ had to be FDA-approved and taken under medical supervision.

Athletes are also not required to take drugs, and some were competing ‘clean’, without enhancements.

The promoters say that doping is so rife in regulated sport anyway, the Enhanced Games simply offer a more transparent, fairer alternative.

Detracters however, argue that this promotes potentially dangerous drug use and that this could promote unrealistic standards for athletes.

And the thing is, on that promotion point, the critics seem to be absolutely right because, for all the talk about fairness, ‘Enhanced’ is also selling supplements and steroids on their site. So is this all just a giant advertisement?

Either way, it seems to have been at least initially successful. The company went public just before the first event and earned a valuation of $1.2 billion, attracting massive investments from Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.

It’s a massive windfall for the founder of the games, Australian businessman Aron D’Souza. D’Souza first got his break when Hulk Hogan slept with Bubba The Love Sponge’s wife and supported the lawsuit that ended in the bankruptcy of Gawker Media. (I’m not joking, look it up.)

D’Souza says he got the idea after observing the blatant use of steroids by people at his gym. He explained that athletes “have a right to do with their body what they wish – my body, my choice; your body, your choice, and no government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making those decisions for athletes – particularly around products that are FDA regulated and approved.”

“If we cut out all the waste, the layers of bureaucracy, the needless building of infrastructure, this event can be delivered for virtually nothing, and we can use all the surplus profits to pay the athletes, to invest in R&D, build better and better technology, and build a bigger and bigger event.”

Well, D’Souza got his wish, and the controversial event seems to have gone by without a hitch, even breaking one world record in swimming.

Of course, that record hasn’t been officially recognised, but maybe in the near future we’ll see every sporting world record come with a little asterix clarifying if it’s ‘clean’ or ‘enhanced’.

New research from Goldman Sachs (of ‘08 financial crisis fame) has managed to separate out jobs that are at risk of being replaced by AI from those augmented by AI and the data is staggering.

Roughly 16,000 jobs have been trimmed from payroll this year, increasing the unemployment rate by 0.1%. So it’s not quite taking everyone’s jobs just yet, but it sure is starting.

Most at risk are telephone operators, insurance claims clerks, and bill collectors, according to the research. But also listed are billing clerks, telemarketers, payroll clerks, legal assistants, procurement clerks, proofreaders, and word processors.

Wait, hold on, what was that last one? Now come on, I’m pretty sure AI can’t replace m–

For years, tech CEOs promised AI would “augment” workers. You know, like Iron Man’s suit. Instead, corporate America looked at ChatGPT and said, “Wait… we’re paying humans for this?”

Now banks, consulting firms, customer support departments, and basically every company with a Slack subscription are racing to replace junior workers with algorithms that never sleep, never unionize, and don’t spend half the day pretending to update spreadsheets.

Even Goldman Sachs admits the biggest impact is hitting younger white-collar workers entering “knowledge and content creation sectors.”

In other words, the exact people who went $200,000 into debt for communications degrees.

Meanwhile, the winners in the AI economy may end up being electricians, HVAC workers, construction crews, and anyone capable of physically existing in the real world. Goldman Sachs says the AI boom is creating huge demand for data centers and power infrastructure, with hundreds of thousands of jobs tied to building the electrical backbone for AI systems.

So after two decades of parents saying:

“You don’t want to work trades. Go work in an office.”

The economy has apparently responded:

“Actually, the office is not interested in you now.”

The funniest part is that Wall Street still can’t decide whether AI is an economic miracle or the opening scene of a dystopian Netflix series.

One week, Goldman Sachs warns AI could raise unemployment and hammer labor markets. The next, executives insist fears of mass unemployment are “overblown.”

Classic Wall Street behavior:

Create panic
Buy the dip
Tell everyone everything is fine

Other banks are already moving. HSBC has openly discussed AI-driven restructuring, while JPMorgan Chase executives say the future means hiring more AI engineers and fewer traditional bankers.

And let’s be honest: everyone already sees it happening.

Why hire 12 entry-level analysts when one caffeinated associate with GPT-9 can crank out the same PowerPoint in 15 minutes?

The scary part isn’t that AI will replace all jobs. It’s that it may hollow out the bottom rung of white-collar careers entirely.

That first miserable corporate job used to be where people learned how industries worked. You survived Excel abuse, got yelled at on Zoom, mastered fake enthusiasm, and eventually climbed the ladder.

But if AI kills the ladder itself, what happens next?

Wall Street’s current answer seems to be:
“Have you considered becoming an electrician?”

Of course, markets still love the AI story because investors see lower labor costs and higher margins. AI doesn’t ask for raises, healthcare, or “mental health days.” It just quietly consumes electricity and shareholder value.

And the spending frenzy is massive. Big Tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure while banks scramble to figure out whether this is the next Industrial Revolution or just the dot-com bubble wearing a hoodie.

Either way, one thing is becoming clear:

The AI trade isn’t just about Nvidia chips anymore.

It’s about whether the modern white-collar economy was basically one giant automatable middleman layer all along.

Latest news

Ford Thought They Could Replace Quality Inspectors With AI. Here’s Why They Immediately Regretted It

Buffett Withholds Donation To Bill Gates Foundation For First Time, The Reason? Epstein.

GTA 6 Made $1 Billion In Its First Hour Of Preorders, But The Predicted Total Is Eye-Watering

China’s New Zhipu AI Matches Claude Mythos’ Security Detection, Is Anthropic Screwed?

BlackBerry Just Blew Out Earnings: Now It Powers Your Future AI Robot Overlords

Coinbase, We Have A Problem: Base Chain Experiences Two-Hour Outage

Nice Guys Finish First

Related Articles

Max Profit • June 29, 2026

GTA 6 Made $1 Billion In Its First Hour Of Preorders, But The Predicted Total Is Eye-Watering

Bill Fold • June 25, 2026

Rockstar Finally Drops Grand Theft Auto VI Pre-Order Date

Max Profit • June 3, 2026

Your Ride Is Now A Luxury Asset: Average New Car Price Creeps To A Mind-Numbing $51,613

Latest news

Ford Thought They Could Replace Quality Inspectors With AI. Here’s Why They Immediately Regretted It

Buffett Withholds Donation To Bill Gates Foundation For First Time, The Reason? Epstein.

GTA 6 Made $1 Billion In Its First Hour Of Preorders, But The Predicted Total Is Eye-Watering

China’s New Zhipu AI Matches Claude Mythos’ Security Detection, Is Anthropic Screwed?

BlackBerry Just Blew Out Earnings: Now It Powers Your Future AI Robot Overlords

Coinbase, We Have A Problem: Base Chain Experiences Two-Hour Outage

Pen Smith• May 28, 2026D

Steve Jobs’ Secret Tip For Passing Any Interview, ‘The Beer Test’ Explained

Pen Smith• D

Steve Jobs’ Secret Tip For Passing Any Interview, ‘The Beer Test’ Explained

Trending News