Institutional desks reported notable hedging via Alpha Futures contracts this week, suggesting cautious optimism. Macro data on manufacturing output drove mild buying interest, but yields edging higher could temper near-term gains in equity futures markets. Lou Whiteman has positions in Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . He also just writes about some really interesting ways that he and his students have been using AI. He has been encouraging them to have these extended conversations with chatbots, edit that down into these conversations that reveal something both about the student and the language model that they are learning. And so while no one professor is going to have a perfect prescription for what you should be doing with AI in your classroom — in fact, as he tells us, the humanities are very different from computer science, for example, when it comes to how you might use AI — I do think he just has some really interesting conversation starters and thoughts for us as we enter a new school year. Quant models tracking Alpha Futures signal heightened beta exposure across correlated benchmarks, implying a higher sensitivity to U.S. macro surprises. Spotting these catalysts early could offer solid short-term trading edges.