1. $140B Flows to U.S. Equities November Dwarfs Previous 3 Years

2. History Of 200 Day Moving Average
Liz Ann Sonders-Schwab:

3. More China Stimulus….But Fresh Lows In Chinese Bond Yields

4. Will South Korea Follow Japan With Stock Market Reforms
Per Bloomberg, South Korea’s oligarchs have held near unchallenged power over almost every aspect of the economy for half a century. They run the biggest companies, command political clout and engineer arcane business deals that enrich themselves, often at the expense of their shareholders.
Now, regulators and investors are fighting back. And the potential ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol after his short-lived declaration of martial law is likely to supercharge the process.

5. Equal Weight Tech Index Hitting New Highs

6. U.S. Stocks Are At All-Time High In Global Stock Market Cap

7. Germany: A Country Losing Economic Ground

8. The FED Has Shed 43% Of Its Assets Since 2022 QE

9. U.S. Adults Are Getting Worse At Reading And Math
From Morning Brew: Americans are increasingly flustered by words and numbers, according to a test that measures adult literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills in 31 industrialized countries.
The report card revealed an expanding gap between the most and least adept Americans in their ability to handle everyday tasks—from calculating an average to understanding a government email.
See me after class: The 2023 assessment of 4,600 US adults showed:
- The share of Americans scoring at the lowest level (1 out of 5) or below in literacy rose to 28% from 19% in 2017.
- And 34% scored at the lowest numeracy level or below, compared to 29% six years prior.
That means that over a quarter of Americans can reliably gauge info only from a simple text, while more than a third might struggle to perform tasks beyond basic arithmetic.
But the decline wasn’t even: The 90th percentile score didn’t drop for literacy and numeracy but the 10th percentile score for both decreased.
The US isn’t alone: Average literacy and numeracy scores dropped in 20 and 11 countries, respectively, which some researchers blame on less reading and more scrolling, though some of it could be due to aging populations and language difficulties stemming from increased immigration. Finland ranked No. 1 in both literacy and numeracy, while sharing first place with Japan in problem-solving.
10. MasterClass Is Introducing AI Mentors, Including A Mark Cuban Chatbot
From Inc.: MasterClass is bringing its famous teachers into the AI arena.
The online learning platform known for its wide variety of celebrity instructors is launching MasterClass On Call, a standalone product that will allow customers to chat with AI-powered duplicates of the platform’s teachers. The cost will be $10 per month or $84 per year.
MasterClass founder and CEO David Rogier says the company has been experimenting with the concept of AI versions of its instructors since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-3 in 2022. He sees the technology as the key to unlocking a feature that MasterClass customers have been requesting for years: the ability to ask its celebrity instructors for advice. Big names like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and yes, Mark Cuban, have already inked deals to collaborate with MasterClass on these AI personas.
With the rise of generative AI, Rogier says a shift toward on-demand learning is underway. “If I’m negotiating a business deal, I need advice right now,” he says. “I don’t want to sit through an eight-hour class. Just tell me what to do.”
Subscribers to MasterClass On Call will gain unlimited, on-demand access to a collection of AI personas designed to be artificial mentors. For example, Rogier says that aspiring entrepreneurs could ask Cuban’s AI to help improve a pitch and role-play as a potential investor. Cuban said in a statement that the new product is “going to be an important tool for entrepreneurs and something I’m excited to be a part of.”
In an exclusive demo, Inc. got access to AI versions of sleep expert Matt Walker and Black Swan Group founder and former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, the first two personas currently available in the public beta. The AI voices are remarkably similar to their human counterparts, with natural-sounding cadence and fast response times. When asked for help with a hypothetical salary negotiation, the AI-Voss discussed how to approach the conversation, provided tips on how to strike a balance between confidence and humility, and drafted an initial outreach email.
Future updates will bring new in-development personas, enable the AI mentors to remember previous conversations, and give users the ability to upload documents (like pitch decks) for the AI instructors to review.
Creating these AI mentors is no easy feat. MasterClass chief technology officer Mandar Bapaye says that the company links together “an orchestra of multiple AI models” to handle individual components, like providing the mentors’ knowledge base or transforming text into speech.
The knowledge model is trained on information contained in the mentors’ already-existing MasterClass courses, along with a curated selection of writings and audio recordings. In addition, MasterClass holds extensive interviews with mentors to gather both voice samples and data regarding how they respond to a wide variety of questions. Mentors also give periodic feedback to continuously improve the AI’s performance, like choosing which of two responses to the same question is more accurate to the advice the mentor would actually give.
When MasterClass began internal tests of On Call, Rogier was surprised by how comfortable people were talking to the AI mentors. Early testers felt more comfortable sharing with the AI because they didn’t feel any judgement or pressure to impress anyone. They were empowered to ask the “dumb questions” they might be embarrassed to ask otherwise, says Rogier.
MasterClass On Call is now available in beta with access to Voss’s and Walker’s AI personas. More mentors, including fashion designer and Queer Eye style expert Tan France, superstar chef Gordon Ramsay, and legendary feminist writer Gloria Steinem are expected to be added over the coming months.
Take a look at a short video about the new feature here.