Tomasz Tunguz is a venture capitalist with a very useful daily newsletter. He notes that knowledge workers need to raise their game, now that AI tools exist to improve our productivity.

Here's his point: "The familiar rhythms of work are shifting beneath our feet. For the past fifteen years, we've lived in a strange plateau, standardizing workflows and settling into predictable patterns. The tools remained largely the same, the processes became routine, and many of us found comfort in that stability. Many of these processes can now be automated, improved, and reimagined. Every workflow, every routine task, every manual process presents an opportunity. The tools exist. The small changes will compound into larger ones. Optimizing individual workflows have the potential to transform the way entire companies function. What will you reinvent today?"

That's a good challenge. Personally, I've only used AI to generate summaries when conducting research work, which is very basic.

So, I'll be doing a careful review of how I work in the days ahead, and looking for ways to save time and compress repetitive tasks. Then I'll go looking for the tools I'll need to deploy.

I often find myself thinking about how much has changed during my lifetime. I'm 38 years old and remember the era before mobile phones, the internet and social media. Now, it is hard to contemplate your day-to-day activities without the use of a connected smartphone.

What services and technologies will we all be using daily in a few years' time? As investors, identifying those trends ahead of time will be crucial.

I have no doubt that the future is full of AI-powered robots and self-driving electric cars but we may still have to wait a while for that, especially here in SA.

In the near term, I believe that there will be no place on earth where you cannot get an internet signal. Be it on an aeroplane flying over the Sahara Desert or trekking to the North Pole, our phones will connect via satellite internet systems, without the need for towers or modems on the ground. Being "offline" will be unthinkable.

Starlink is leading the charge but they are not alone, competition is intensifying. Even here at home, Vodacom and MTN have been testing satellite services.

If everything is going to be connected to AI, that connection needs to be everywhere first.

I chatted to a client yesterday who had recently retired. He asked if he needs to change his investment mix to be more conservative. Here is what I said to him.

You still have a few decades in the tank, so you don't want to leave it in products that barely beat inflation. I think the idea that your risk profile needs to change as you are in your 60s and 70s, is wrong. Market volatility is only a risk if you are a forced seller. Running out of money is a greater concern. If you face two or three decades of retirement, an investment that gives stable but low returns will also be undermined by inflation.

The stock market gives good returns, coupled with immediate liquidity. The only restriction is that you need to have a longer time frame to ride out some volatility. You never want to be a forced seller during a market downturn, which requires keeping a healthy cash buffer.

If you retire at 65 and live to 90, inflation is a much bigger risk to you than the occasional market downturn. Back when life expectancy was only 70 years, your retirement nest egg didn't need to last very long, so a stable low low-return investment was fine. Times have changed.

The Trump family's crypto empire is making headlines again. Their flagship vehicle, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), has struck a circular deal that could net the family more than $500 million.

World Liberty acquired a little-known payments firm called Alt5 Sigma, which then turned around and spent $750 million raised from outside investors to buy World Liberty's own WLFI tokens. The structure, while common in crypto, raises eyebrows given that the Trumps are effectively on both sides of the trade.

The family's paper holdings in WLFI were valued at over $6 billion, with President Trump himself owning two-thirds. Trading for the WLFI token went live on Monday, and it's down 23% so far, showing that these values aren't holding.

While past Trump-branded tokens have fizzled after initial spikes, the family has now firmly shifted its business empire from real estate to crypto, and the upside, at least on paper, looks enormous.

Of course, this is all unprecedented, and unseemly.

Problems in public healthcare aren't unique to South Africa. In South Korea, medical personnel have been striking due to plans to increase medical school admissions by 65% - Doctors return to work after 18-month walkout.

Parenting is not easy. You learn a lot about yourself, your spouse, and your kids - How to be an awesome parent.

Asian markets opened weaker today, mirroring Wall Street's overnight dip. The Japanese Nikkei slipped as political uncertainty in Japan weighed on sentiment. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's future remains unclear after a recent election setback and rising support for fringe parties.

In local company news, Shoprite delivered another record set of full-year numbers. Group sales of merchandise climbed 8.9% to R252.7 billion, powered by strong momentum in its Sixty60 app, where demand jumped 47.7% to R18.9 billion. Profit rose 18.8% to R7.39 billion as Africa's biggest grocer opened 281 new stores in the year to end-June.

US equity futures are flat. Tech stocks should trade higher later today thanks to the Google court case news.

The Rand is trading at around R17.73 to the US Dollar.

Go well.