It seems life, for many of us, is busier than ever. Between juggling our careers, family, friends, health, and other priorities, there is little time left to handle menial tasks like shopping for better deals on our expenses.
Even in those rare, prolonged moments of solitude... the last thing you want is to squander that moment by waiting on the phone for an hour (or more) to maybe save a few bucks here and there.
I could just be projecting, but I'm sure I'm not alone in this experience. For months I've talked about changing to a different mobile provider at a lower cost. My home and contents insurance, you bet that one auto-renewed. And I know for a fact that I'm overpaying for our household gas.
The companies providing these services (along with many others) rely on this friction for their margins. Without it, the challenge of consistently turning a profit would be much harder.
That could soon change.
AI agents are starting to become accessible at a much larger scale with the launch of Meta's Muse. What used to be an hour or more manually comparing now can be offloaded to AI in the time it takes to say, "Save me money. Make no mistakes".
Which has real implications for investors. Namely, is there anything in your portfolio that has been depending on the time-poor consumer? Because that edge might be about to evaporate.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Lawler, Senior Investment Editor
