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|  |  | Tuesday, November 25, 2025 | |  | | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, Wall Street is pacing out its holiday nerves, ETFs are selling the dream of one-click enlightenment, DOGE is bowing out of its big-cut promises, and Thanksgiving groceries are testing how far a dollar can stretch. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Trump accepts Xi’s invitation for an April
meeting. A Beijing visit (and a reciprocal U.S. invitation) marks the clearest sign of movement after tariffs, boycotts, and stalled talks have left both sides looking for an off-ramp. | The president is weighing Nvidia’s China chip request. The restricted H200 has become a geopolitical pressure point, with Huang lobbying to resume sales while Washington debates Beijing’s AI hardware access. | DOGE has disbanded. The dissolution caps a year of feuds, disputed figures, and missed targets, leaving Trump and Musk’s project with
inflated claims and little evidence of the sweeping cuts it once promised. | The AI-generated internet is hitting a wall. Platforms are rolling out escape hatches after two years of
tuning algorithms around generative output, and the shift reflects users’ demand for feeds that feel human again. | | | SPONSORED | Unknown Number Calling? It’s Not Random | The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking.
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| | THANKS FOR NOTHING | Wall Street is headed into the holiday stretch with the kind of mood you’d expect from a table where the turkey’s late
and the cousins are arguing about rate cuts. Tech just finished a rough stretch, Nvidia delivered knockout numbers that rattled more nerves than they soothed, and the rally that has leaned (hard) on AI all year suddenly looks like it’s checking the exit signs. Investors spent the week trying to figure out whether this is a wobble or a real hint that the AI boom is walking on stilts.
Now, that question is shaping the entire mood of this shortened week. The Nasdaq and S&P pointed
higher on Monday morning, though that didn’t erase the slide that took the Nasdaq down nearly 3% percent and the S&P down almost 2%. Meta and Microsoft carried most of the weight as traders wondered whether AI-driven capex can keep doing the heavy lifting forever. Alphabet floated above the turbulence thanks to Berkshire Hathaway’s debut in the stock, though it only made the rest of the board look more uneasy. Hiring keeps losing steam. Housing keeps sagging. Everyone keeps looking toward the Fed as if a December cut can settle a market
that has started second-guessing its own optimism.
The data lineup doesn’t make the week feel any sturdier. Investors finally get delayed reads on September producer prices and retail sales, along with a fresh consumer-confidence snapshot from the Conference Board. A new estimate of third-quarter GDP lands later in the week. Retailers deliver earnings right as the Black Friday sprint kicks off. Others add their own tech-side reads. This is a thin week with a heavy calendar, and every
twitch feels louder now that the AI story, for the first time all year, might be catching its breath. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on why
markets might be acting as if they’ve overserved themselves. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | Trusted by c-suites and Wall Street.
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| | | TAKING STOCK | The ETF boom used to look like a simple preference shift — a cheaper wrapper, a tidier interface, a way for Main Street to
dodge the meme-stock lottery. Now, it’s edging toward a worldview. A new Schwab Asset Management study finds that 62% of ETF investors expect to put their entire portfolios into funds (yes, you read that right), and half say they could get there within five years. That’s a striking turn for a product many of them only discovered recently; 66% started buying ETFs in the last five years, lured in by low fees, easy access, and the promise of diversification without all of the homework.
Younger investors are carrying the charge. Single-stock disasters have become modern folklore, and the quieter stories about patient, boring gains rarely make it past the algorithm. So newer investors look for products that protect them from the spectacle. And in a world where people outsource dinner reservations to AI, the idea of analyzing 20 or 30 companies feels like a niche hobby. A fund that outsources that labor — and spreads the risk — starts to feel like the rational
option.
Still, a fund-only future has its own problems. The more people outsource their choices to bundles, the more capital tilts toward the same big names. Research desks thin out. IPO incentives warp. The market’s texture turns uniform, even as ETF menus balloon into thousands of flavors promising exposure to every theme from commodities to “whatever Cathie Wood is thinking today.” Experts urging restraint warn that a wrapper can simplify the process, but it won’t be able to
replace judgment. Investors tempted to go all-in still have to understand which stories they’re buying and which ones they’re leaving behind. Quartz’s
Brian O’Connell has more on the rise of portfolios built by default rather than design. | | | SPONSORED | Keep Your SSN Off The Dark Web | Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: companies target you
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