Hello, Quartz members, and welcome to Sunday Reads!
Spirit may stay in the sky, Donald Trump’s economic team is taking shape, and the Fed is still on course for an interest rate cut next month.
But it’s Sunday, and time to shift your gaze to some hand-selected reads. Here are some of our favorite Quartz stories from the week, plus a sneak peek at one story coming next week to get your day started.
Enjoying this newsletter? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
5 things we especially liked on Quartz
🏠 Mortgage rates are doing what? When the Fed cuts interest rates, mortgages are supposed to get cheaper. But that’s not happening. Instead, investors fearing that Trump’s economic policies will reignite inflation are driving up 10-year Treasury yields and with them, mortgage rates. Rocio Fabbro explains.
🕵️Secret (AI) agent: AI product rollouts are pointing to a shift toward developing ever more helpful AI-powered assistants — or as some in the tech industry are calling them, AI agents. Unlike chatbots, agents promise a future where they can complete work that was previously impossible to do with automation. Britney Nguyen has the deets.
👨⚕️ The wonderful world of Oz: Mehmet Oz, the surgeon and TV personality tapped by Trump to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, may have some conflicts of interest. The job oversees government healthcare programs and billions in payments to healthcare providers. But Oz may own a lot of healthcare stocks, according to disclosure forms from his Pennsylvania Senate race in 2022. William Gavin looks at his holdings.
🪙 Psst! Wanna be a crypto millionaire? There are plenty of ways to get rich with cryptocurrencies, and not all of them involve buying or selling the digital instruments. Vinamrata Chaturvedi walks you through five ways to make from crypto without owning it.
👨🦲 Cyberspat of the billionaires: Elon Musk is picking a fight with his rival for title of the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos. In a post on X, Musk claimed Bezos was urging people to dump Tesla stock because Trump would lose the election. But Bezos called the claim nonsense. William Gavin takes us inside the Big Boys’ playground.
1 sneak peek
📺 It all ads up in the end. Streaming was made to escape ads. Now they’re back with a vengeance, as a combination of cord-cutting and a plethora of streaming channels battle for eyeballs. Faced with declining revenue ,many streaming operators are adding free options that force viewers to sit through commercials. Bruce Gil has more, so visit qz.com on Monday morning for a look at the future of everything.
What we’re watching this week
- Tuesday: CrowdStrike reports earnings after the bell.
- Wednesday: Quarterly updates on gross domestic product, indicating overall economic health.
- Thursday: U.S. markets close for the Thanksgiving holiday.
- Friday: Black Friday.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with comments, questions, feedback, joy, or the secret correspondence between Musk and Bezos. Sunday Reads was brought to you by Peter S. Green.