WSJ What’s News - Investors Are Holding $3 Trillion in Cash. Money Managers Aren’t Happy.

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

P.M. Edition for Aug. 14. Money managers have a problem: Clients are holding near-record amounts in cash—by one estimate more than $3 trillion. Miriam Gottfried, a reporter and co-host of WSJ’s Take On the Week podcast, explains why this is happening and what financial planners are pushing their clients to do instead. Plus, two pieces of data—July retail sales and the preliminary August reading of the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey—came in lower than expected. WSJ economics reporter Matt Grossman says that is painting a picture of a weaker U.S. economy. And AI slop is everywhere, making it hard to know what’s real online. We hear from WSJ personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen about the inspiration for her recent special Tech News Briefing podcast series, “AI and the Blurring of Reality.” Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New data out today adds to a growing picture of a weaker economy. And investors are keeping a near record amount of money in cash. And financial planners aren't happy about it. If you're a wealth manager, you want to be giving your clients advice. You want to be proving that you're worth something. And if you're just saying, keep your money in cash, that's not really very sophisticated advice. Plus, AI slop is popping up in surprising places. And knowing what's real isn't even the biggest challenge.

It's Friday, August 14th. I'm Alex Oslo for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, pleaded guilty today to two federal charges of stalking. During a court hearing, Mangione told the judge that he spent years enduring severe pain and became frustrated with a health care and insurance bureaucracy. Speaking outside the courthouse, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jamie MacDonald said no grievance, political belief, or ideological cause could justify Mangioni's actions.

The defendant committed this murder in an attempt to draw public attention to his dislike of certain businesses. But we live in a civilized society governed by the rule of law. law. We debate, we disagree, we protest. We do not commit murder. McDonald said his office will seek the maximum penalty under the law, life in prison, when Mangione is sentenced in December. This plea to federal charges resolves one criminal case against Mangioni, but could upend or delay a separate state murder case where he faces different charges. That trial is scheduled to begin in early September. In other legal news, the Trump administration has filed an emergency appeal, asking the Supreme Court to allow construction of President

Trump's planned White House ballroom to continue. It comes after lower courts said the project needs approval from Congress. Two new pieces of economic data have come in softer than economists anticipated. One was U.S. retail sales. They fell by 0.6% last month, according to the Commerce Department. That's short of the 0.1% increase that was expected, and it's the first time retail sales have fallen in this year. But our economics reporter, Matt Grossman, says there are reasons to think it may have been a one-off. One of the weakest categories was online sales. That can probably be explained away because Amazon's prime day sales event came in June this year. So there was a big uptick in Amazon orders in that reversed in July, which pulled down the number. Other factors might have pulled down sales

like hot weather and the end of the World Cup. But add that to the latest reading from the university of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Survey, which also fell more than expected. And Matt says the data paints a different picture of American consumers and the economy overall. We had that July jobs report last week that showed that the economy actually lost jobs last month. Now we're seeing these new numbers showing that retail sales fell last month. And it's starting to look a little bit less like the economy has this unstoppable strength that we were getting in the April and data. Matt says that any further evidence of a weaker consumer could factor into how federal reserve officials are thinking about interest rates. U.S. stocks closed lower today. The NASDAQ lost

0.3 percent, and the Dow and the S&P 500 both fell 0.2%. But the S&P still ended the week near records. Oil prices rose more than 1 percent, extending a recent climb after reports that at least one tanker came under attack trying to leave the Persian Gulf. Money managers have a problem. More individual investors are insisting on keeping more of their money in cash. According to the Investment Company Institute, there's over $3 trillion in retail money market funds near a record high. Miriam Gottfried covers investing and wealth management and is the co-host of WSJ's Take on the Week podcast, and she's here to tell us more. Miriam, I was looking at one really striking chart in your story, and it seemed like this ramped up in 2022.

What changed? Well, after years of having interest rates near zero, the Fed decided to raise rates, and they did it very rapidly throughout the course of 2022. So all of a sudden you could get a really high yield, which means a really high interest rate on your cash in a money market fund. It rose as high as over 5%. And if you could just put your cash in a fund where you're guaranteed a 5% return, that's pretty attractive to people. You mostly can't get a guaranteed return of that size. So why is this a problem for wealth managers? Some of them don't charge fees on money market funds.

It's also a problem in the sense that if you're a wealth manager, you want to be giving your clients advice. You want to be proving that you're worth something. And if you're just saying keep your money in cash, that's not really very sophisticated advice. And so what are they trying to get clients to do instead? They're trying to find alternatives to cash that offer a relatively low-risk stream of income. And right now there are some. Corporate bonds, for example, have pretty high yields because there's been a flood of issuance of new bonds.

Another option might be municipal bonds, which have a decent yield as well. That sounds attractive. Why don't clients want to do that? Well, in some ways, you're taking more of a risk by doing those investments. and you are also potentially paying higher fees to a wealth advisor to set up these investments. It might be difficult for investors to determine whether they're really getting a good deal all in when you count the fees that wealth advisors are charging. Money markets are attractive because they're very straightforward. You're not worried about any additional fees.

They're very liquid. You can take your cash out at any time. You're not tying it up and you know what you're getting. But are there risks to investors keeping so much money this way? Yeah, the biggest risk is inflation. The CPI, which came out this week, said inflation was at 3.4%. So if you're getting above 3.4% yield in your money market account, you're exceeding the rate of inflation. But if you're getting below that, you're actually losing purchasing power on your cash.

So that's something that wealth advisors are trying to flag to their clients. That was the journal's Miriam Godfrey. Thanks, Miriam. Thanks. Coming up, is AI Slop distorting our sense of reality? That story and more after the break. Another day, another sports team bought by one of the world's wealthiest people. Jeff Bezos is among a group of investors that's agreed to buy a minority stake in Britain's Liverpool Football Club.

People familiar with the matter say the deal, value. use the team at more than $7 billion. And we're exclusively reporting that PayPal is in talks to sell itself to a group that includes Stripe and the private equity firm Advent International. People familiar with the matter say the two sides have been negotiating since last month after Stripe and Advent offered to buy PayPal for a price that PayPal deemed too low. And finally, AI Slop is kind of everywhere. But what's AI generated isn't always obvious.

Even realistic-looking influencers with millions of followers can actually be fake. It led our personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen to dig deeper into how AI can throw off our sense of what's real in a new series called AI and the blurring of reality on our tech news briefing podcast. Nicole, what are some examples of convincing AI slot that you found during your reporting for this? So on Instagram, this spring, I was scrolling and came across an older woman who was, dressed fabulously, and she was sort of draped across the arms of Justin and Haley Bieber. Her name is Granny Spills, and she's this luxury brand-loving, party-hopping, very chic grandmother. Granny Spells has 2 million followers on Instagram, and she's the brainchild of two men

who were in the social media creator space before. They saw that old people are sort of like a beloved trope on the internet and decide to lean into that with AI on mobile. you can sort of see that it's labeled as AI. But if you're scrolling really quickly, I don't know unless you're really scrutinizing your feed for AI that you would necessarily understand that it was. So back in the old days of these AI generated images, you used to be able to find these little tells that they were made by AI, right? Like some weird sort of wispy things in the background, these fragments or like six fingers, that kind of thing. Is a tell like that still there?

It's really not. I remember in 2022, 2023. There is a video that went viral of Will Smith eating spaghetti that was created by AI. And his, like, mouth is moving in, like, really strange, unnatural ways. If you look at that same recreation of Will Smith eating spaghetti today, it just looks like Will Smith is eating spaghetti. This technology has come really far, really fast, and it's only getting better. Will Smith eating spaghetti. I mean, I'm just, like, cracking up at the mental image.

That doesn't really seem too harmful. over time or in specific circumstances, can this come with risks? Yeah, I think that people who sort of study how this affects politics, consumer behavior, society at large, are worried about the kind of mental tax that it puts on folks if they don't know whether something is real or not. Everything that you see, that's synthetic, whether it's an influencer or a product catalog image or a political meme, it all erodes our shared collective sense of reality. And if we can't agree on what is real, then it's really hard for us to have a healthy debate

about things that are to be debated. And I think that's the worry here. That was WSJ personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen. Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for having me. You can hear the third and final episode of Nicole's series about how experts spot AI fakes tomorrow morning on Tech News Briefing. We've got a link to the full series in our show notes.

And that's your fully human-made What's News for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News and Markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be discussing the risks of mental health chatbots in our special series, The AI Therapist. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis

with Deputy Editor Chris Zinsley. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Isha El Musley is our development producer, And I'm Alex Osala. Have a great weekend and thanks for listening.