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Here’s what you need to know…

1. The US economy slowed a bit in August.

2. Mortgage rates are higher than they’ve been in 23 years.

3. The housing shortage has people snapping up new homes.

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S&P 500: 4,436.01
1Mo: -3% | 1Yr: +7% | 5Yr: +54%

The market drifted higher today in hopeful anticipation of the earnings announcement from AI giant Nvidia. Artificial Intelligence hype has been fueling the enthusiasm for the tech industry.

The economy slowed a bit in August. S&P Global’s PMI index, measuring manufacturing and service sector business activity, declined in August by the most in over nine months. Growth seems to be stagnating as new orders declined and employment increased only slightly.

The most expensive mortgage rates in over 23 years have made a mess of the real estate market. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported the lowest mortgage activity in nearly three decades last week, with 30% fewer new home applications than a year ago. The average 30-year mortgage is 7.31%, up from 5.65% a year ago.

High mortgage rates have homeowners hanging on the sidelines, forcing buyers into new homes. People wanting to hang on to their cheaper mortgages has cut the available supply of existing homes nearly in half. The Commerce Department reported sales for newly constructed homes soared in July, up 32% from last year.

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• Match Group’s Hinge, Tinder, & more lose background checks

• Abercrombie & Fitch’s rebrand proves very successful

• Coinbase partners with Circle to promote USDC stablecoin [🤓]

• Sweetgreen shakes up its menu as it pushes into the Midwest

• Peloton keeps bleeding as it fights to recover

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What is a stablecoin?

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, like one coin should always be worth $1. Most cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, have very volatile pricing, making them difficult to use when trying to pay, transfer, or store a specific value. However, constantly converting your crypto into real-world fiat money defeats the purpose of crypto. Stablecoins offer the benefits of digital currency (like fast transfers and decentralization) with the price stability of real-world fiat money.

As with most things in the crypto world, it’s essential to understand who’s behind the crypto you use and how it works. Maintaining a stablecoin’s peg to a particular value, like $1, can be accomplished through complex algorithmic trading, collateralizing it with more crypto, or backing it with an equivalent amount of real-world fiat money stored in a bank or vault somewhere. The traditional fiat-backed stablecoins are the biggest and most trusted but aren’t error-proof.

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