During the first quarter of 2024, the U.S. stock market picked up where it left off at the end of 2023, fueled by a blend of economic optimism, the expectation of interest rate cuts, and enthusiasm for the burgeoning opportunities in artificial intelligence.

In the United States, when most people put cash in the bank, they assume it’s still going to be there when they wake up the next day. This fundamental assumption was recently tested in the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history.

Last year’s stunning collapse of FTX has inevitably led to questions about whether founder Sam Bankman-Fried intentionally misled and defrauded his investors.