Insider Finance - Business - Wall Street’s ugly new normal

"Mediocrity will be automated."

That was the verdict a top tech executive shared with me recently, describing the impact he predicted AI would have on the workforce. And while the phrasing might seem a bit harsh, there's growing evidence that he might be on to something.

More specifically, AI could disproportionately impact the middle class of white-collar workers — the folks who are mid-career, mid-ability, midlevel, and yes, in some cases, mediocre.

Academic research has found that AI tools disproportionately benefit the least experienced workers, helping them close the gap with more experienced colleagues. And it’s likely that AI tools will also help lower the barrier to entry for a whole host of more technical professions. 

Both of those dynamics are good for those early in their careers or hoping to enter a technical field. But they’re likely to be detrimental to the incumbents, who face fresh competition from more junior and less expensive colleagues.

Matt Onofrio had no experience in real estate, yet in a few short years, he'd raked in $35 million helping everyday people invest in the industry. Then he was indicted. 

His pitch reached everyone from doctors in California to wannabe entrepreneurs in the Midwest, but his indictment and former clients say his multimillion-dollar empire was built on bank fraud and duping people. 

The unfolding situation has the potential to cast Onofrio as a real-estate confidence man for the influencer age.

Read the full story.

Getting older comes with growing pains. While data shows the average American millennial is a parent, a homeowner, and has a net worth of $128,000, they still face a trifecta of hurdles. 

Over the past decade — and longer for some — many millennials have faced the high costs of housing and childcare, staggering student-loan debt, and the Great Recession's impact on the job market.

Welcome to “Millennial World,” a project by Insider that explores the state of the generation around the globe.

Meet the average US millennial. 

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Remember the stock market’s good ol’ days? Companies were talking about grand future plans, interest rates were at zero, and the US government was mailing checks everywhere. In that environment, any fool — or anyone on Wall Street — could buy almost any asset, sit back, and watch its value increase. Stocks didn't just go up, they soared. 

Wall Street is hoping that — and investing like — we're going back to that era sometime soon. There's only one problem with this hopeful story: It's completely backward.

The reality is that our new inflation era is by no means over, Insider’s Linette Lopez writes. Going forward, there will be pain in some pockets of the economy. The stock market will get choppy. And Wall Street's stock pickers may have to sweat a bit to make their clients happy. But that may not be a terrible thing — it's just the start of something new.

Read more here.

Online college classes boomed during the pandemic, often made possible by online-program-management companies, or OPMs, which partner with schools and provide everything from technical support and software to, in some instances, a curriculum.

In exchange for expanding course availability and bringing in new students, OPMs receive a big chunk of the tuition revenue from the online programs. But while the OPM model may seem like an easy win for colleges, many students find themselves shouldering a huge debt load from a program that turned out to be a pale imitation of the in-person learning experience.

Get the full story.

— A real-estate investor who hosted Matt Onofrio on his podcast in April 2021.

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