HigherIQ — Friday, January 16, 2026

Good morning, it's Friday, January 16th and welcome to your daily HigherIQ briefing. Goldman set a Wall Street record, Trump's threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, and thirty-nine college basketball players just got caught point-shaving. We've got a lot to get through so let's get going, starting with the markets.

The major indexes edged higher Thursday, with the S&P nearing 6,950 and the Dow climbing about six tenths of a percent to just under 49 thousand 450. The story of the week has been the great divergence in bank earnings — and yesterday we finally saw Wall Street's heavy hitters separate from the pack. Goldman Sachs absolutely crushed it, posting an all-time Wall Street record in equities trading — 4.31 billion dollars in the fourth quarter alone. That's not just the best quarter Goldman has ever had; that's the best quarter any bank has ever had in equities trading. Morgan Stanley wasn't far behind, with investment banking revenue jumping 47 percent and wealth management continuing to print money. Both banks are riding a dealmaking renaissance, with Goldman's advisory backlog hitting a four-year high and expectations for 2026 looking even stronger. For anyone investing in financials, here's the takeaway: There's now a clear two-tier system forming. Goldman and Morgan Stanley, with their wealth management and advisory arms, are thriving in this environment. Meanwhile, JPMorgan, BofA, Wells Fargo, and Citi — the universal banks — are dealing with higher expenses, slower lending, and dealmaking revenue that's actually declining. JPMorgan's dealmaking fees dropped 4 percent in Q4, and Wells missed estimates entirely on weak mortgage lending. The wealth-focused Wall Street model is winning right now. If you're building exposure to financials, that distinction matters. Now let's talk AI, and it's getting dramatic. Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is in crisis. The twelve-billion-dollar startup — which raised two billion in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz just last July — has now lost three co-founders in under a year. This week, CTO Barret Zoph was fired amid allegations of sharing confidential company information with competitors. Within 58 minutes of Murati announcing his departure on X, OpenAI's applications CEO Fidji Simo welcomed Zoph, co-founder Luke Metz, and another researcher back to OpenAI. They'd been negotiating for weeks, apparently. OpenAI says they don't share Murati's concerns about Zoph. Murati says he was fired for misconduct. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but the bigger picture is this: The AI talent wars have reached a fever pitch. When co-founders are boomeranging back to former employers under ugly circumstances less than a year after founding a company, something is broken in how these startups are structured. For anyone watching the AI investment space, Thinking Machines was supposed to be the next big contender. Now it's fighting to prove it can survive. Speaking of OpenAI, Sam Altman is getting into the brain-computer interface business. OpenAI just became the largest backer of Merge Labs, a BCI startup Altman co-founded that raised 252 million dollars this week. The play here is non-surgical brain-computer interfaces using ultrasound and engineered proteins — no drilling into your skull like Neuralink. This directly puts Altman in competition with Elon Musk in yet another industry. The AI-to-brain pipeline is clearly where these companies see the future of human-computer interaction, and OpenAI is betting big that they can make it feel natural rather than invasive. Switching gears to Minneapolis, where the situation has escalated significantly. President Trump is now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that would allow him to deploy US military forces domestically — if Minnesota officials don't stop anti-ICE protests. The law hasn't been invoked since 1992, when George H.W. Bush used it during the LA riots at the governor's request. What's different this time is Trump would be sending troops against a governor's wishes to crush protests of the federal government's own actions. Here's the context: A week ago, an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. On Wednesday night, another federal agent shot a Venezuelan man in the leg during an arrest. There are now roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents on the ground in the Twin Cities — more than the combined police forces of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Protests have intensified, with tear gas and flash-bangs deployed on residential streets. Governor Tim Walz called it "an occupation" and asked Trump to end it. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says the city needs ICE to leave, not more federal troops. For anyone living in or traveling through the Minneapolis area, this situation is volatile and evolving. The ACLU has filed a class-action lawsuit alleging Fourth Amendment violations. School districts are offering virtual learning for students who don't feel safe coming to campus. Whether or not Trump actually invokes the Insurrection Act, the federal presence shows no signs of reducing. Now to a story that's going to have long-term implications for college sports. Federal prosecutors just unsealed one of the largest point-shaving indictments in basketball history. Thirty-nine players across seventeen Division I teams allegedly fixed or attempted to fix at least 29 games over the past two seasons. Twenty-six people have been charged, including current players, former players, and professional gamblers. The scheme started in 2022 with fixing games in the Chinese Basketball Association before moving to American college basketball. Here's how it worked: Gamblers recruited mostly smaller-school players who weren't making significant NIL money. They paid between ten and thirty thousand dollars per game for players to underperform — miss shots, commit turnovers, anything to keep their team from covering the spread. Some of the bets were staggering: 458 thousand on Towson to beat UNC A&T, 424 thousand on Kent State to cover the first-half spread against Buffalo. Four players named in the indictment played games this week. This is the third major gambling scandal to hit professional or college sports in recent months, following arrests involving NBA players and MLB pitchers. NCAA president Charlie Baker is now calling for states to eliminate prop betting on college games entirely. For anyone betting college basketball, the integrity question just got a lot more complicated. For anyone following the sports betting industry's expansion, this is exactly the kind of scandal that could trigger regulatory backlash. A few more stories moving fast: Taiwan and the US signed a landmark trade deal that cuts tariffs on Taiwanese goods from 20 percent to 15 percent. In exchange, Taiwanese chip and tech companies will invest 250 billion dollars in US production, with another 250 billion in credit guarantees. TSMC is boosting its capital budget to as much as 56 billion dollars this year and accelerating construction of its Arizona fab cluster. For anyone in tech or following the semiconductor reshoring trend, this deal provides significant clarity on where the industry is headed. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the goal is to bring 40 percent of Taiwan's chip supply chain to American soil. Spotify is hiking US Premium prices again — the third increase in three years. Starting in February, individual plans go from twelve to thirteen dollars a month. Duo plans jump to nineteen dollars, Family to twenty-two. That puts Spotify two dollars above both Apple Music and YouTube Music for individual plans. If you're paying for multiple streaming services, it might be time to audit what you're actually using. The average American household now spends 46 dollars a month on streaming subscriptions. And finally, if you're planning a ski trip: Wait. Vail Resorts just reported skier visits are down 20 percent season-to-date, with some of the lowest snowpack in thirty years. Vail Mountain recorded its worst snowpack since 1978. The company is cutting its earnings outlook and hoping conditions normalize by Presidents' Day weekend. For anyone with ski plans in the Rockies, check conditions before you book — most resorts have less than half their terrain open. That's your Friday briefing. Big bank divergence, AI drama, Insurrection Act threats, and a college basketball scandal that's just getting started.

Stay informed, stay curious, and we'll see you on Saturday.