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For adults working full-time jobs, finding time for yourself can be a struggle, especially if you have a family with dependents to take care of. According to a 2024 study from Business Insider, the average American has between four and six hours of leisure time per day.

At least some of that leisure time is probably soaked up by doom-scrolling social media, so the time American adults have for their hobbies is pretty small on a day-to-day basis.

Despite this lack of time, adults, particularly older Millennials, are spending more on their hobbies in recent months than they have previously, according to Bank of America customer account data.

Americans increase hobby spending

According to BofA, hobby spending rose 7.9% year over year in August, more than doubling the pace of transactional growth, meaning that hobbyists are spending more money, not spending money more often.

Older Millennials were the biggest drivers of this increase, according to BofA card data, despite having the least amount of leisure time of any generation. The bank defines hobby spending as money spent at arts and crafts stores, hobby shops, outdoor recreation service providers, and retailers that specialize in activities like hiking, camping, skiing, and scuba diving.

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Spending growth nearly doubled transaction growth, which rose 3.4% year over year. This trend is the opposite of last August, when transaction growth outpaced spending growth by nearly a percentage point. It is also a major rebound from August 2023, when spending fell nearly 4% while transactions rose nearly 1%.

What’s driving the increase in spending?

¨In our view, it’s likely that people splurged on hobbies amid social distancing during the pandemic, then gravitated back toward pricier alternatives like travel throughout 2022 and 2023,¨ BofA analysts said. ¨However, last year there may have been some rotation back to less expensive leisure like hobbies as after-tax wage growth slowed considerably.¨

¨Bank of America card data suggests there’s been a recent acceleration in hobby spending in the past few months, possibly as some consumers balance shift away from travel due to higher prices from rising fuel costs.¨

Diem.ph / Getty Images

Hobby spending shifts across generations

As mentioned above, not every generation spends on hobbies in the same way.

Older Millennials have the largest share of their population spending money on hobbies, followed closely by Baby Boomers then Gen X. BofA analysts theorize that this discrepancy is ¨likely because this group is most likely to have young children. Which may mean older Millennials not only spend on their own hobbies but on their kids’ as well.¨

The three-month moving average for Millennial hobby spend is about $210, while Baby Boomers and Gen X spent closer to $200 each. Meanwhile, younger Millennials spent an average of $150, and Gen Z spent less than $100 during the time period.

BofA’s theory that older Millennials are spending much of this hobby money on their kids is supported by a recent U.S. Census Bureau survey, which suggests older Millennials have the least daily leisure time, at around 4 hours and 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, the groups aged 15-24 and 55-64 have nearly five and a half hours of daily leisure time. Those 65 and over have over seven hours daily.

¨On the other hand, younger Millennials and Gen Z have the lowest average spending, but a higher share of their population with hobby outlays,¨according to BofA. ¨To us, this suggests that these generations are likely gravitating most of their spending toward less expensivehobbies like arts, crafts and board games.¨

Gen Z and Baby Boomers share something in common

While Millennials, both older and younger, and Gen X are increasing their hobby spending, Baby Boomers and Gen Z are going in the opposite direction.

Gen Z hobby transaction growth was nearly zero in August, a dramatic slowdown from the 16% year over year increase the year prior. The overall decrease was driven by a large decrease in outdoor recreation spending, which tends to be more expensive, while Gen Z is gravitating towards arts and crafts retailers and hobby shops.

¨Additionally, some transactions at hobby shops may require less frequent purchases like board games or tabletop role-playing games. The social component to these activities can’t be overlooked as a factor. In fact, over a quarter of Gen Z said they feel a sense of belonging to a streaming or gaming community,¨ according to a BofA survey. ¨This is almost two and half times as high as younger Millennials and over eight times the rate of Baby Boomers.¨

Gen Z has seen their video game spending increase by around 20% year over year in August after an increase of 30% the year prior. BofA’s data suggests that over a quarter of Gen Z have video game spending, over four times the rate of boomers. Younger Millennials have the next highest rate at over 23% while older Millennials have about a 20% rate.

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Zumiez built its business on a sneaker culture that didn’t exist when I was a kid.

In the early 1980s, while I grew up in a reasonably wealthy household, sneakers were something you purchased either at the beginning of the school year or when you wore out or outgrew your current pair.

The term “sneakerhead” wasn’t common yet, and while some sneakers (probably not the ones I wore) were cooler than others, they weren’t really a fashion statement yet. That cultural change, however, was coming; it just hadn’t reached Swampscott, Mass., quite yet.

“Most sneakerheads credit the advent of their subculture to the rise of athlete-endorsed shoes in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Converse’s Chuck Taylor All-Stars had dominated the basketball courts for decades — and brands like Puma and Adidas started to get in on the action,” according to National Geographic.

The explosive growth, however, traces back to 1985 and the emergence of Nike’s Air Jordan partnership with Michael Jordan.

“What transformed sneaker culture into a true phenomenon was the 1985 release of Nike’s Air Jordan 1s. In 1984, Michael Jordan was a talented rookie who had yet to play in a professional game. Despite that, Nike — better known then as a running shoe company — saw Jordan as the future of their brand and signed him to a five-year, $2.5 million endorsement deal,” the website reported.

Sneakerheads, sneaker collecting, performance-based sneakers, and regular old sneakers are different things. Consumers are still buying shoes, but increasingly buying shoes they perceive as necessary, useful, or versatile, while postponing discretionary purchases.

That has proven to be bad news for Zumiez.

Zumiez sees sneaker sales drop

Zumiez, which describes itself as a “leading specialty retailer of apparel, footwear, equipment and accessories for young men and women,” saw its net sales drop for the second quarter ended Aug. 1, 2026 by 2.5% to $209.0 million from $214.3 million in the second quarter ended Aug. 2, 2025. Comparable sales for the same period decreased 2.1%, according to an earnings release.

“Net loss in the second quarter of fiscal 2026 was $2.7 million, or $0.17 per share, compared to a net loss of $1 million, or $0.06 per share, in the second quarter of the prior fiscal year,” the company added.

CEO Rick Brooks blamed the declines at least partially on falling sneaker sales.

“Second quarter results came in below last year driven by weaker performance in the U.S., which was primarily driven by continued softness in footwear as well as lower traffic levels,” he said.

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The drop was not isolated to one quarter.

“The footwear category has been the most significant headwind, accounting for 70% of the total U.S. sales decline from the prior year through that timeframe. Footwear has been challenged since the second quarter of 2025, and the year-over-year comparisons get easier as we head into the fourth quarter of this year,” Brooks said during the chain’s second-quarter earnings call.

He made it clear that Zumiez was trying to correct the problem.

“We are certainly trying a lot of different things. And we have some things that are working to offset, but it is not working at a level that is able to deal with the big brands that are trending down,” he said.

The company plans to respond by working with footwear partners and trying to bring more unique products to its stores.

Zumiez has seen a dramatic drop in sneaker sales.Shutterstock

Zumiez is closing stores

CFO Christopher Work shared the company’s plans to close some underperforming stores.

“We plan to close approximately 16 stores during fiscal 2026, including 10 in North America and 6 internationally,” he said during the earnings call.

That’s actually an improvement over the 25 stores the company had planned to close previously.

Brooks noted the drop in transactions, which could be related to fewer customers visiting its stores. That trend has been unfolding for a while.

Traffic for the brand dropped while overall mall visits, where many Zumiez stores are located, grew.

“Shopping mall foot traffic continued to grow in July, with visits up 0.5% year over year at outlet malls, 4.3% at indoor malls, and 5.1% at open-air shopping centers — extending the sector’s positive momentum into the second half of the year,” according to Placer.ai.

Customers also spent more time at the mall.

“Visit duration grew at all three mall formats in July, reversing a decline that had persisted since February. Average visit durations were up 0.6% year over year at outlet malls in July, 0.2% at OASCs, and 2.7% at indoor malls,” the data showed.

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U.S. shoe sales are complicated

Shoe sales aren’t shrinking, but strengths in some areas have covered up weaknesses in others.

“The U.S. footwear industry delivered modest dollar growth during the first half of 2026, with total sales increasing +1%, compared to the same period last year,” according to Circana. “While consumers remained selective in their discretionary spending, higher average selling prices (ASP) continued to offset weaker demand reflected in a decline in units sold.”

Basically, people are buying the shoes they need for athletic and hobby reasons, but being more selective with other purchases.

“Performance footwear remained the industry’s standout growth engine in the first half, generating +6% dollar growth coupled with an increase in units sold. Running shoes continued to lead gains, with category dollar and unit sales both climbing +13%. Cross-training, golf, volleyball, and other activity-based categories also posted gains as consumers continued investing in products that support movement, wellness, and active lifestyles,” Circana shared.

RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino explained why these trends are bad for a lifestyle retailer that caters to teens.

“Parents will still replace the shoes their kids outgrow, but the second or third pair is easy to postpone. That is where Zumiez gets squeezed: The customer may still like the product, but liking it and needing it are two very different things when the family budget is tight,” he told TheStreet.

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Thomas Edison demonstrated a practical light bulb in 1879. Commercial central power arrived three years later, when Pearl Street Station began serving 59 Manhattan customers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The bulb won the headlines. The power plant decided who got light.

Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) CEO Eddie Wu borrowed that history on Tuesday, September 22, 2026. At the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, he said “AI coding is simply the light bulb of the machine intelligence era,” according to CNBC. Then he spent his keynote on the power plants.

The bombshell is a target measured in electricity, not revenue.

Alibaba Cloud aims for more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032, according to Bloomberg.

A year ago, Wu promised only a tenfold rise in data center energy use by 2032, according to TechNode. Now investors have a number to track.

The engine is the Zhenwu V900 from Alibaba’s T-Head chip unit. It triples the performance of May’s M890 and links up to 500,000 chips in one cluster, according to Seeking Alpha. Wu called it the “most powerful AI chip in China today.”

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Alibaba moved its chip deadline up six months

The launch date is the bigger surprise. In May, Alibaba set the V900 for the third quarter of 2027, according to Yicai.

Mass production now starts in the first quarter, according to CNBC. Pulling a flagship chip forward two quarters signals demand Alibaba cannot yet serve.

Huawei made the same move on Thursday, September 17, 2026, pulling its Ascend 960DT forward three quarters to early 2027, according to The Next Web.

Two of China’s leading homegrown chip programs will now chase the same buyers.

Those buyers are multiplying. Zhenwu chips had more than 400 external customers in May, according to Reuters, as U.S. export curbs pushed Chinese firms away from Nvidia (NVDA) processors.

The count now tops 650, up more than 60% in four months, according to Benzinga.

Alibaba moved its Zhenwu V900 AI chip up to the first quarter of 2027 and now targets more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032.NurPhoto / Getty Images

Why bigger Qwen models need more power

Parameters are the internal settings an AI model tunes as it learns, and more of them require more chips and electricity. Alibaba expects Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 to reach 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, according to Seeking Alpha. That is up to four times the 2.4 trillion in its current flagship, Qwen 3.8 Max.

Last year, Wu framed AI that iterates on itself as the final stage on the road to superintelligence, according to TechNode.

This year, he said the Qwen team made “meaningful progress” on models that generate their own training data, according to Seeking Alpha.

Such models keep chips busy around the clock, tying his research to his power target.

What the 20 gigawatt plan means for BABA stock

Alibaba runs the Taobao and Tmall shopping platforms and Alibaba Cloud, which the South China Morning Post calls China’s biggest public cloud provider. For U.S. investors, BABA bundles Chinese consumer spending and China’s AI buildout into one ticker.

The market cheered, but quietly. Hong Kong shares rose about 3% on Tuesday, according to CNBC.

A year earlier, Wu’s Apsara spending pledge sent the stock to its highest level in four years, according to the South China Morning Post. U.S. shares were down about 25% for 2026 as of Monday, September 14, 2026.

The difference is the bill. Capital spending jumped 75% to 67.7 billion yuan in the June quarter while profit fell by the same rate, according to CNBC.

Cloud revenue still grew 45%, according to Alibaba’s results filing, and Wu has told investors he puts growth before margins.

Shareholders also absorbed dilution when Alibaba sold HK$80 billion of new shares at HK$112.70 each in August, according to its SEC filing. Wu and Chairman Joe Tsai bought more stock afterward.

The bigger issue is duration. By June, Alibaba had spent 190 billion yuan of the 380 billion yuan it pledged over three years, according to an Investing.com earnings call transcript. The 20-gigawatt goal runs years past that budget, so heavy spending will likely outlast it.

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China’s AI race is becoming a power race

At last year’s Apsara, Wu predicted only five or six global cloud platforms would dominate. The 20 gigawatt plan is his price for a seat at that table. Huawei is chasing the same seat with systems built to link up to 1 million processors, according to The Next Web.

That shifts the contest in China from who builds the smartest model to who can power the most chips.

The first test is scheduled for the first quarter of 2027, when both the V900 and the Ascend 960DT are due. If Alibaba ships on time, those 20 gigawatts become working compute. If it slips, investors will be paying for power plants with too few bulbs to light.

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Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has a rapidly growing U.S. business. But a £330 million ($447 million) NHS contract in Britain is giving investors another issue to watch: what happens when the company’s expansion into foreign governments meets political resistance?

Lobbyists are urging Britain’s new government to review the contract awarded to Palantir to run the NHS Federated Data Platform. The agreement has a review point and an initial three-year commitment through February 2027.

But Palantir’s financial fortunes are unlikely to depend solely on the UK government’s decision. But for U.S. investors the spat provides a useful test of one of the company’s most important growth stories: whether Palantir can translate its government customer wins into a sustainable business overseas.

Palantir’s U.S. government business is booming

The U.K. scandal comes as Palantir’s U.S. government business is growing significantly.

In the second quarter, Palantir generated $809 million in U.S. government revenue, up 90% from a year earlier. U.S. commercial revenue was even larger at $764 million and increased 149%.

Overall revenue climbed 93% to $1.94 billion.

Palantir also booked $3.37 billion in overall contract value in the quarter, including a record $2.13 billion from U.S. commercial clients.

That is important because it puts the British debate into perspective.

The NHS contract is a big deal for Palantir’s foreign reach, but the company’s present growth engine is still strongly connected to the U.S.

For investors, it’s not just a matter of whether Britain preserves one contract. The question is whether opposition in Britain or elsewhere may make it difficult for Palantir to repeat its US government success elsewhere.

The $330 million NHS deal is approaching a key date

In 2023, the NHS awarded the Federated Data Platform contract to a consortium headed by Palantir. The deal, which may include up to 240 NHS organizations, could be worth up to £330 million over a maximum of seven years.

That first three-year commitment expires Feb. 15, 2027.

British authorities are studying the deal, and lawmakers and activists are urging the government to trigger the break provision.

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Reuters reported in June that the administration was considering whether to prolong the arrangement or discontinue it at the end of its first term.

That’s a very clean timeframe investors can observe.

But a termination wouldn’t necessarily impact the U.S. growth trajectory for Palantir. But it may serve as a reference point for other governments thinking about whether to employ Palantir for sensitive public-sector data and processes.

Palantir’s biggest government opportunity may come with a catchMATT RAMEY / Getty Images

Britain shows the risk behind Palantir’s government strategy

Data, artificial intelligence, and what it calls sovereign capabilities are increasingly at the heart of Palantir’s offer to governments.

That technique has huge promise since governments operate big, complex systems that often need long-term software interactions.

But the same interactions might have unexpected hazards.

The NHS deal has been questioned on the basis of privacy, public trust, data sovereignty, and reliance on a U.S. IT company. A U.K. parliamentary committee has also advised the government to employ the break clause and to look at alternatives.

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Separately, five British police agencies recently opted not to renew a two-year Palantir experiment because of financial constraints and doubt about the project’s merits, the Financial Times said.

That does not mean a wider retreat for Palantir in Britain. But it does illustrate that government growth is not seamless.

The U.S. business gives investors some cushion

But there is an essential counterargument.

Palantir’s U.S. government revenue grew 90% in the latest quarter, while U.S. commercial revenue jumped 149%. The company also raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to roughly $8.15 billion.

So even if Palantir loses or does not extend the NHS deal, investors would have to measure that event against the considerably bigger U.S. growth prospect for the firm.

This makes the British contract a more compelling signal than a financial threat per se.

If governments overseas start to doubt Palantir’s position, investors may want to rethink expectations about how fast the business can translate its U.S. government success into worldwide expansion.

If Britain does go forward with the deal and Palantir continues to provide quantifiable advantages, the experience might instead bolster the company’s capacity to sustain substantial public-sector connections despite political scrutiny.

What U.S. investors should watch next

The immediate trigger is the U.K. government’s assessment of the NHS contract and the approach of the February 2027 break point.

But the greater concern is Palantir’s worldwide government pipeline.

The company’s rapid growth in the U.S. raises the question of whether it can replicate that model abroad, where procurement rules, political pressures, and data sovereignty concerns vary.

For PLTR investors the NHS fight is not only a tale about a £330 million contract.

It’s a test of just how lasting Palantir’s government growth can be beyond its home market.

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