HigherIQ — Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Good morning...welcome to HigherIQ. It's Tuesday, January 27th, 2026. Here's a thought to start your day: research shows the biggest happiness boost from a vacation doesn't come from taking it—it comes from planning it. People with a trip on the calendar report being happier up to eight weeks before they leave. Today happens to be National Plan a Vacation Day, so if you're feeling stuck, maybe the move isn't to scroll through more news—it's to open a new tab and start daydreaming about where you want to go. Anticipation, it turns out, is its own reward. But first, let's talk about what's happening in the world—including a precious metal that just crossed a number nobody expected to see this soon. Gold blew past five thousand dollars an ounce yesterday for the first time ever, briefly touching fifty-one hundred before settling back down. To put that in perspective, gold was trading around two thousand dollars just two years ago. It's now up more than 80 percent over the past twelve months—on pace for its best year since 1979. So what's driving the surge? A cocktail of anxieties. Investors are nervous about persistent inflation, concerned that government debt levels are unsustainable, and worried that stocks might be overvalued. Add in tariff threats, geopolitical tensions, and a bond market that's offering lower returns after recent rate cuts, and suddenly gold looks like the safest place to park money. Central banks around the world have been buying aggressively, and so have regular investors. Here's the HigherIQ angle: gold doesn't pay dividends. It doesn't generate earnings. Unlike stocks or bonds, it doesn't do anything. So why do people pile into it? Because it can't be printed. When governments run up debt and central banks create money, currencies lose purchasing power over time—that's inflation. Gold, being a finite physical thing, tends to hold its value when paper money doesn't. Bloomberg calls what's happening right now the "debasement trade"—investors are retreating from currencies and government bonds because they're worried about fiscal sustainability. Central banks themselves are buying gold at nearly four times the rate they did before 2022. When gold rips like this, it's a signal: a lot of smart money is betting that the chaos isn't going away anytime soon. If you own a target-date fund or balanced 401(k), you probably already have some gold exposure. But understanding why it moves like this makes you a sharper investor—even if you never buy an ounce yourself. Jury selection begins today in Los Angeles for what could be a landmark case against social media. A 19-year-old woman is suing Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, alleging that design features like infinite scroll hooked her as a minor and fueled depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. The companies deny the allegations and say they've invested in safety tools. This is the first of likely many times social media giants will answer to a jury for addiction allegations. There are more than 3,000 similar lawsuits pending in California alone, and over 2,000 federal cases against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube. Snap actually settled last week on undisclosed terms—their CEO was supposed to testify. Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are both expected to take the stand during the six-week trial. The comparison being made is to Big Tobacco and Big Pharma—companies that were eventually found to have knowingly concealed risks. Plaintiffs say they'll present internal documents showing the companies knew their products could be addictive. Meanwhile, the world is moving: France may ban social media for kids under 15, Britain is considering a ban for under-16s, and Australia already passed one in December. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found 71 percent of Americans support restricting social media for minors. The industry's argument that parents should decide may be running out of runway. Speaking of things that feel like a time warp—GameStop is back in the news, and so is Michael Burry. If you saw The Big Short, you know Burry as the guy who predicted the 2008 mortgage crisis and made a fortune betting against it. Well, he just revealed on his Substack that he's been buying GameStop stock. This comes right after GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen bought 500,000 shares for about 21 and a half million dollars. Cohen now owns more than 42 million shares in the company. It's been five years since GameStop became the original meme stock, and here we are again—hedge fund legends and internet culture colliding in the same stock. What's the play? Burry wrote about wanting to see Cohen "investing and deploying the company's capital and cash flows." GameStop has been sitting on a pile of cash since the meme stock frenzy, and some investors think there's actually a business to be built. Whether you think this is genius or nostalgia, it's a reminder that markets are weird and getting weirder. Oh, and GameStop just had to shut down an "infinite money glitch" that let people exploit a loophole on their website to amass store credit. So there's that. Nike announced it's cutting 775 jobs, mostly at distribution centers, as it rolls out more automation. The company said the cuts are part of a broader effort to streamline operations and deploy robots to handle warehouse tasks that humans currently do. This is the kind of story that often flies under the radar but affects a lot of people. Distribution center jobs are some of the most common entry points into the workforce—they don't require college degrees, they pay reasonably well, and they exist in communities all over the country. When a company like Nike says it's "deploying automation," what it really means is those jobs are going away permanently. The bigger picture: this isn't unique to Nike. Amazon, Walmart, and basically every major retailer is moving in the same direction. The warehouse of 2030 will have far fewer humans and far more machines. If you're in this industry or know someone who is, the window to reskill is now. And if you're investing in companies touting "automation efficiencies," it's worth remembering that those efficiencies come from somewhere—usually payroll. Remember Neom? Saudi Arabia's insanely ambitious plan to build a futuristic city in the desert? The one with "The Line"—a 100-mile-long mirrored structure designed to house 9 million people with zero carbon emissions? Well, it's getting scaled back. Significantly. According to the Financial Times, the $1.5 trillion project is being "reimagined" because costs spiraled out of control. The Line will be "radically" reduced in scope. A collection of luxury hotels called Magma is now on hold. And a ski resort called Trojena that was supposed to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games? Those games are now postponed indefinitely. Here's what's interesting: instead of futuristic residential utopia, The Line might become a hub for data centers as Saudi Arabia pivots to becoming a global AI player. It's a very 2026 plot twist—the city of tomorrow becomes a server farm. The project has already laid off several hundred of its 6,000 workers, with more cuts expected. When even the sovereign wealth fund that paid Phil Mickelson 200 million dollars to play golf decides it needs to tighten its belt, you know the cost overruns must have been serious. Here's your dinner party intel for the day. You know how a lot of plastic packaging now says "BPA-free"? BPA—bisphenol A—is a chemical that's been linked to hormone disruption, so companies started replacing it with alternatives. Turns out those alternatives might not be much better. Scientists recently found that several BPA substitutes used in grocery store price labels can seep into food and interfere with vital biological processes. The chemicals migrate from the labels into the packaging and then into what you eat. The study, covered in ScienceDaily, suggests that "BPA-free" has become more of a marketing claim than a safety guarantee. This connects to something we talked about yesterday—the Cambridge study that found 168 common chemicals damage gut bacteria. The broader pattern is that our chemical safety evaluations often don't account for how substances actually interact with our bodies. Until regulations catch up, the best you can do is minimize exposure where possible: avoid heating food in plastic, be skeptical of labels, and when in doubt, go with glass or stainless steel. That's your briefing for this Tuesday. Gold's surging, social media's on trial, and apparently the best thing you can do for your happiness today is book a trip you won't take for months. The science checks out. Stay informed, stay curious, and we'll see you on Wednesday.