Retail investors had the chance in 2025 to put their money directly on Donald Trump, in a way unlike any American presidency in history, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes.

• A couple of those bets didn't work out so well.

The big picture: Trump's vast, burgeoning business empire includes multiple tradable assets linked to him and his family — but two of those assets underperformed peers and broader markets in 2025.

• The primary way to "buy" Trump in 2025 was either the stock of his publicly traded media-finance-and-energy company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG, which has the ticker symbol "DJT"), or his cryptocurrency memecoin, Official TRUMP.

🧮 By the numbers: A hypothetical $1,000 invested in various stock and crypto assets on Jan. 19 — the day before Trump took office — would have produced sharply different outcomes by year's end.

• On the stock side, a $1,000 investment in the Nasdaq — which includes most of the publicly traded social media companies — would be worth $1,184. The same investment in Trump Media shares would be worth $331.
• On the crypto side, a $1,000 investment in the global cryptocurrency market cap would be worth $842. The same investment in Official TRUMP would be worth $114.

👀 The intrigue: Forbes estimates the billionaire president's net worth more than doubled from 2024, fueled by gains in his various crypto investments. (Trump's real-time net worth: $6.6 billion on Forbes' list.)

• The magazine reports Donald Trump Jr.'s net worth rose sixfold in 2025, based also on crypto gains (now worth $300 million).

Reality check: There's a reason retail investors are always warned "past performance is not indicative of future results."

• Trump Media shares spiked at the end of the year after the company struck a transformative deal to pivot toward nuclear fusion power.
• The TRUMP memecoin has a track record of sharp rallies since its launch.

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President Trump, who'll turn 80 in June, dismissed age-related health concerns during an impromptu phone interview with the Wall Street Journal: "Let's talk about health again for the 25th time ... My health is perfect."

• Why it matters: The interview, after the Journal gave the White House details about the paper's reporting on his health, offers rare discussion by Trump about longevity, Axios' Rebecca Falconer notes.

5 takeaways:

1. CT scan: After earlier saying he had an MRI scan in October at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Trump told the Journal that he had a CT scan. His doctor, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, concurred. "It wasn't an MRI," Trump said. "It was less than that. It was a scan."
2. Hand bruises: "The large dose of aspirin he chooses to take daily has caused him to bruise easily, he said, and he has been encouraged by his doctors to take a lower dose," the Journal reports. "But Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking it for 25 years." He said: "I'm a little superstitious ... They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don't want thick blood pouring through my heart ... I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?"
3. Sleep: "Sometimes they'll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they'll catch me with the blink." Trump "said he had asked his staff to modify his schedule so that he can have fewer, more important meetings that he can devote more attention to — a change he doesn't attribute to age, but to using his time more efficiently," the Journal says.
4. Hearing: "I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't hear a word you're saying," he said sarcastically. Trump said he only sometimes struggles to hear "when there's a lot of people talking."
5. Exercise: "I just don't like it. It's boring ... To walk on a treadmill or run on a treadmill for hours and hours like some people do, that's not for me."

Trump's bottom line: "Genetics are very important," he said. "And I have very good genetics."

• Read the interview (gift link).

AI is dictating who police stop, how reports are written, where officers patrol and how evidence is analyzed.

• Why it matters: The tech promises speed and efficiency. But its rapid spread is outpacing public rules — and could embed errors and bias deep within the criminal justice system, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.

🔎 Zoom in: Departments from California to Hawaii — facing chronic staffing shortages — are piloting generative-AI tools.

• San Francisco police are using the tech to generate first-draft reports for citations and lower-level cases.
• South Fulton, Ga., police, south of Atlanta, partnered with IBM on an AI-driven public safety platform that aggregates data to save time and predict crime patterns.
• A number of agencies, including one in Akron, Ohio, are testing AI that combs through hours of jail phone calls, interviews and police footage for evidence.

The other side: Civil liberties activists warn that AI tools risk reinforcing bias within the criminal justice system — and that it's unclear who controls the data they collect.

• Read on.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) swears in Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor at City Hall yesterday, as Mamdani's wife, Rama Duwaji, holds the Quran. From Mamdani's inauguration speech:

• "Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try. To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives."
• "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

Transcript (NYT gift link).

People throng the post-inauguration block party in downtown Manhattan.

• "All told, tens of thousands of New Yorkers — the biggest inauguration crowd in decades, if not longer — defied freezing temperatures, a fresh coating of snow and daunting security ... to watch Mamdani take the oath," the N.Y. Times notes (gift link).

The Supreme Court has a number of pivotal cases lined up for '26, including those concerning President Trump's policies, Axios' Julianna Bragg reports:

1. The court will likely decide on Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship in early 2026 in Trump v. Barbara. Upholding the order would overturn a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
2. SCOTUS will determine the legality of Trump declaring a national emergency to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign goods without congressional approval in Learning Resources v. Trump.
3. The high court appears poised to severely curtail Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a decision that would reshape how legislative and congressional maps are drawn nationwide and potentially reduce minority representation by significant margins in Louisiana v. Callais.
4. SCOTUS will decide whether Trump has the unilateral authority to fire leaders of independent agencies in Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter. A ruling for Trump would overturn a 90-year-old precedent that shielded independent agency commissioners from political firings.

More cases.

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage fell this week to 6.15% — the lowest level since Oct. 3, 2024 — an encouraging sign for prospective home buyers.

• One year ago, the rate averaged 6.91%.
• Keep reading.

Go deeper: "Condo Owners Face Worst Market Since '12" (WSJ gift link).

The three most valuable private U.S. tech companies — Elon Musk's rocket maker SpaceX and AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic — are preparing for public offerings as early as this year. The listings bonanza is expected to raise tens of billions of dollars, the Financial Times reports:

"Those three deals alone would outstrip the total haul from about 200 US IPOs in 2025 and represent a potential gold mine for investment banks, law firms and investors."

Gift link.

New Year's bowls teed up the College Football Playoffs semifinals:

• A pair of Big Ten blowouts set up Oregon-Indiana in the Peach Bowl next Friday.
• The other semifinal: Miami vs. Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl next Thursday. Keep reading.

🌊 The Indiana Hoosiers, in the school's first Rose Bowl victory, handed Alabama's Crimson Tide their worst loss since '98, 38–3.

• Semifinal lookahead ... Quarterfinal takeaways.