Happy Thursday. Inflation continued to cool, investor housing sales hit a new high, CRE is outpacing residential, and an AI startup went from $1.5 billion to zero. Let’s dive in!
🎫 Attend: Today at 11 AM ET join Elon’s Empire to dig into navigating investment opportunities across Musk’s expanding set of companies.
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📈 DAILY MARKETS
*as of 6/11; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, GOLD
📊 CPI REPORT
(CNBC)
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of inflation, increased by 0.1% in May and is now up 2.4% on an annual basis. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy costs, also rose by 0.1% monthly and 2.8% annually, below expectations. Shelter costs are up 3.9% annually, which is the lowest rate of growth since 2021.
➨ TAKEAWAY: Analysts have been expecting inflation to rise due to tariffs, but that has not surfaced in the data yet as the economy has proven resilient. It’s possible that the tariff effects could still be coming, as retailers are using existing supplies and buyers have been increasing purchases to get ahead of tariff-induced price hikes. Still, both President Trump and Vice President Vance used the positive report to call for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
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📺 UPCOMING EVENT
Today at 11 AM ET, join Slava Rubin of Vincent, Jan-Erik Asplund of Sacra, and Christine Healey of Healey Pre-IPO for a discussion about investment opportunities into Elon Musk's empire of companies, and how to access shares of his private startups.
🏡 INVESTOR SALES
Investors accounted for 10.8% of all homes sold in 2024, the highest proportion on record, and the total number of their sales rose by 5.2% year over year. In contrast, the total number of homes bought by investors stayed flat, and outpaced the number sold by 101,300, which is actually the smallest margin since 2019. The metro areas where net investor activity was highest were Miami, Pittsburgh, and New York, while the lowest numbers came in Sacramento, Minneapolis, and Portland.
➨ TAKEAWAY: Another interesting trend was that investors who have purchased fewer than 10 homes accounted for a record 59.2% of all investor purchases, as large investor purchases fell by 8.7% year-over-year. This could be because rents have flattened out nationally, making rental homes less attractive to big funds and corporations. This change in the investment landscape could benefit smaller investors who will have less competition to bid against.
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📰 NOTABLE NEWS
🏢 Commercial outpacing residential: The rebound in the commercial real estate market is taking place at the same time the housing market is slumping, leading to a reversal of the past few years. Forecasts are trending positive for CRE, while most forecasters are expecting housing prices to fall over the rest of 2025.
🤖 Glean finalizes fundraise: The AI startup raised a $150 million Series F at a valuation of $7.2 billion, 56% higher than its last valuation in September and more than triple its valuation from early 2024.
🪙 Crypto fund record: There were more than $7 billion in net inflows to crypto funds in May, bringing the total assets under management to a record high $167 billion, with the bulk of that coming into Bitcoin funds, as the original crypto’s price rose more than 15% over the past three months.
🥃 Pre-prohibition whiskey auction: Today at noon ET, Sotheby’s is auctioning off more than 130 rare American whiskeys, including a number from the early 1900s and several sets of Pappy Van Winkle releases.
🏡 Best lake house markets: Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri leads this list of the best places to buy a lake house, which also includes Lake Tahoe, The Finger Lakes in New York, and the Southwest Lake Erie region.
💵 Yale selling PE stakes: The Ivy League university has been trying to sell $6 billion worth of shares in private equity and venture funds, and is close to completing a sale for around half of that at a modest 5% discount on their values. This comes as returns have fallen and liquidity has been increasingly more difficult to find in the asset class.
🤖 AI CORNER
The AI startup Builder.ai just filed for bankruptcy even though the company had raised more than $450 million from investors and reached a valuation of $1.5 billion. The company had pitched itself as a place to easily build an app using AI, but it turns out they were “AI-washing,” a relatively new term to describe a company making claims that a product was AI-generated when it was not. In this case, Builder.AI is accused of using cheap developers from India to build the apps with no actual AI being used. It may not be surprising to learn that a company willing to stretch the truth on their product is also being accused of lying about their revenue and not paying bills, and that it is on its way to being out of business.
