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The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is meeting this week. During these meetings, the committee **** ses the health of the economy and potentially adjusts the federal funds rate. Read on to learn more about the timeline for this meeting, what it involves, and expected outcomes.
The latest FOMC meeting takes place on July 28-29, 2026. This is its fifth scheduled meeting of the year.
Once the meeting concludes, the FOMC will release its policy decisions on Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Then the Fed chairman will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m.
The live news conferences, held by the Federal Reserve chairman, are livestreamed and recorded. Additionally, the minutes of regularly scheduled meetings are released three weeks after the date of the policy decision.

#committee #chairman #advertiser

Enterprise AI agents were meant to be the breakout software offering for 2026, yet instead they've become one of the major sources of buyer distrust. According to Anaconda and Forrester research, over 88% of AI agent pilots never reach production, as confirmed by independent polls from a16z and MIT Sloan's CIO panel, while Gartner predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI initiatives will be discontinued entirely by 2027 due to questionable ROI.
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) walked into the gap between agent hype and agent reality when it placed its growth narrative on Agentforce, and by 2026, that bet has made Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) one of the worst-performing components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, down around 31.48% year to date.
The immediate cause appears to be a credibility problem, not a demand issue. Bernstein downgraded Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) to Sector Weight from Outperform on July 9, removing its price target completely and citing poor customer feedback on Agentforce in particular. According to **** yst Jackson Ader, the released data doesn't yet indicate growing momentum, and a recent CIO survey found Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) to be "a standout for the wrong reasons."
That said, this interpretation is not uniform, and the debate on the market is serious. On July 14, Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy rating and $242 price target, expecting organic growth to pick up in the third quarter as more details on AI monetization become available at Salesforce's Agentforce event in September. Goldman's more constructive reading is based on management's own acknowledgment of headwinds in Tableau, Commerce, and Marketing, which the firm sees as realistic rather than concerning, arguing that Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is being open about a 12-to-24-month drag on its organic growth algorithm rather than covering it up.
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)'s historical valuation decline looks to be the most mispriced aspect of the market story. Shares are currently trading at a compressed forward earnings multiple of only 10.83x, a substantial drop from the stock's five-year historical average of over 127x. The disparity is even more obvious when compared to prominent peers such as ServiceNow, which trades at a forward P/E of around 20.43x and requires consistent revenue growth above 18% through 2028 to maintain its valuation premium. Salesforce's current valuation of less than 11x forecast earnings is in near-total deadlock, despite the company's strong free cash flow generation and substantial enterprise data integration.

#valuation #july

Tesla runs its earnings Q&A through a platform called Say Technologies, where shareholders submit questions and vote them up based on how many shares they hold. The idea is that the most pressing investor concerns rise to the top, giving Musk and his team a clear read on what the market actually wants answered before he gets on the call.
For Tesla's second-quarter earnings on July 22, the top categories looked predictable: FSD, Robotaxi, Optimus, Cybercab. And then, in fifth place, ****** eX. Not Starlink. Not ****** eX's technology. Whether Tesla and ****** eX might merge. Twenty-two questions on that topic made it onto the formal shareholder agenda, and Tesla investors want a direct answer from Musk, Business Insider reported.
The persistence of the question has a lot to do with how much the two companies already overlap. Tesla holds a stake in ****** eX. Tesla sold roughly $890 million in vehicles and batteries to ****** eX and its subsidiary xAI since 2023, and ****** eX spent $131 million on Cybertrucks in 2025 alone, according to the company's IPO filing.
Earlier this year, ****** eX acquired xAI. Tesla had put $2 billion into xAI, so that investment became a small equity stake in ****** eX when the deal closed, the first time a regulatory filing had formally connected the two companies, CNBC reported.
More Teslaand ****** eX:

#musk

July 22 (Reuters) - Repligen Corp said on Wednesday it would buy BioLife Solutions in a cash-and-stock deal valued at ‌about $1.5 billion, to expand the drugmaking equipment provider's presence in ‌the fast-growing cell therapy market.
The acquisition gives Repligen access to BioLife's technology to preserve cells throughout the manufacturing process and the supply chain, as well as its portfolio of cell-processing tools and high-margin consumables business.
Larger peer Danaher on Tuesday signaled a recovery in demand for bioprocessing products, including ‌equipment and consumables used ⁠to manufacture biologic drugs, as biotech and pharmaceutical companies ramp up spending after a broader slowdown in research ⁠spending and customer inventories in recent years.
The acquisition comes a month after German drugmaker Merck KGaA's $11.3 billion deal to buy Bio-Techne, underscoring growing interest in companies making tools for drug development.
BioLife shareholders will receive $11.25 in ‌cash and 0.1442 shares of Repligen for each share, valuing the cell therapy tools supplier at $31 per share — a premium of about 6.2% to BioLife's last close.

#tools #billion #equipment #growing

All the fears that worried the market in the past are percolating. Inflationary concerns are rising, with oil prices near a six-week high, more tariffs, and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East unlikely to go away anytime soon. The Federal Reserve is likely to nudge rates higher -- not lower -- the next time it meets. Suddenly, everything that is borrowed is about to be something blue.
It's against this unsettling climate, with consumer confidence hitting a new low before rebounding this summer, that investors might want to consider investing in Costco (NASDAQ: COST). Yes, Costco.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
The country's top warehouse club operator may not seem much of a growth stock. It's also certainly not cheap by most measuring sticks. However, if reality catches up to today's buoyant market later this month, you're probably going to learn the real reason why Costco is worth its market premium.
Costco stock is trading for 47 times trailing earnings, a big markup to both the market average and the retailer's own growth. Its revenue multiple may initially seem low at 1.4, but in the low-margin world of groceries and other consumer staples retail, it's a princely premium. If you're an income investor, the stock's 0.6% dividend yield isn't going to ring a dinner bell, even though Costco does reward shareholders with substantially larger special dividends every few years.

#market #signal #Consumer #years

Lake Success, New York-based Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR) provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry in the United States and internationally. The company has a market cap of $17.3 billion and handles the proxy materials distribution and voting processes for bank, broker-dealer, corporate issuer, and fund clients, and more.
BR is expected to release its Q4 2026 earnings soon. Ahead of the event, ***** ysts expect the company's EPS to be $3.75 on a diluted basis, up 5.6% from $3.55 in the year-ago quarter. The company has exceeded Wall Street's EPS estimates in each of its last four quarters.
Alibaba Stock Just Got Apple's Biggest AI Endorsement. This Could Be a Game Changer for BABA.
Elon Musk Says If ***** eX Accomplishes Its Goals, 'It Will Be Worth More Than The Rest of Earth' — Though He's Also Said 'Money Will Stop Being Relevant'
AI Bubble Fears, Earnings and Other Can't Miss Items this Week

#solutions #york #broadridge

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Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong shared advice for entrepreneurs, saying founders should pursue difficult problems instead of choosing safer, less ambitious business ideas.
On Wednesday, Armstrong shared startup advice in a post on X, saying many founders avoid complex problems because they believe easier ideas offer a better path to success.
"When starting a company, most people shy away from truly hard problems and go for base hits thinking it will be easier," He wrote.
Don't Miss:

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is one of the Best Quantum Computing Stocks to buy and Hold Forever. The company runs a growing fleet of superconducting quantum processors, offers cloud access to them through IBM Quantum, and has a public roadmap targeting fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade.
Recently, on July 9, International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) announced major updates to Bob, which is the company's agentic software development platform. The updates add multi-agent capabilities, built-in cost ******* ytics, and pre-built workflows for modernizing enterprise systems.
Management noted that the updates are a response to shifts in software development challenges. The company's survey shows most DevSecOps professionals now see reviewing and validating AI-written code as the bigger bottleneck, rather than writing it. The platform is designed to support engineering work across the full development lifecycle, not just a single coding interface.
Management added that a new feature called Bobalytics gives organizations visibility into productivity, quality, performance, and AI spend, helping them balance cost against performance more effectively. Moreover, other new capabilities include parallel, model-native tool calling, which lets models request multiple tools in a single turn, and "subagents" that isolate context for complex tasks to control cost and improve response speed.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) operates as an integrated solutions and services provider across the Asia Pacific, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The company operates in the Infrastructure, Software, Financing, and Consulting segments.

This story was originally published on QSR. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily QSR AM Jolt.
Papa Murphy's is headed for more closures.
Parent company MTY Food Group told investors during the company's Q2 earnings call that it expects to shutter 68 underperforming corporately owned restaurants over the next nine months. Of those, between 45 and 50 stores will be Papa Murphy's locations.
Most of the shutdowns will occur in the third quarter, with the first scheduled to begin this week. The 68 closures represent about 1 percent of MTY's systemwide restaurant base.
The move comes after MTY attempted to revive a collection of stores it took back from Papa Murphy's franchisees about two years ago.

Alibaba (BABA) shares ripped higher on Wednesday following an interim corporate update that signaled robust AI growth and clear signs of operational stabilization.
The bullish momentum even saw BABA break above its 20-day moving average (MA), signaling bulls are now starting to take back control for the near term.
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PE dealmaking in Europe defied a shaky macroeconomic backdrop in the second quarter of this year, putting 2026 on pace for one of the strongest years in the market's history—with caveats attached.
In PitchBook's Q2 2026 European PE Breakdown, much of that headline strength is concentrated in a handful of very large transactions rather than broad-based momentum. Just 22 mega-exits accounted for 65.8% of the total exit value of €157.6 billion (about $180.1 billion) in Q2—well above the decade average.
Having recently returned from SuperReturn International in Berlin, one of Europe's largest PE conferences, our research team remains firmly convinced Europe is best placed to attract LP capital over the medium term.
The continent is fragmented, offers lower entry multiples than the US, and generates genuine alpha opportunities—and in an environment where value creation has replaced financial engineering, that's increasingly attractive.
Much of the exit concentration has been in Germany. Advent International and Cinven's €29.4 billion sale of TK Elevator to Finland's Kone, alongside the Nasdaq listing of Innio—a maker of power generation equipment backed by Advent and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority—pushed the country's exit value to a record high. Concentration of this kind can flatter the aggregate.

SpaceX surged from its $135 IPO price to $225 intraday before collapsing to $151, erasing nearly all post-IPO gains.
SpaceX becomes the fastest newly public company ever added to the Nasdaq-100, triggering mechanical passive-fund buying that won't sustain the stock long-term.
Morningstar warns ****** eX could be worth less than half its IPO price, leaving little margin for error if Starlink or Starship growth disappoints.
Act now: the ****** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and ****** eX didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
The market has spent much of 2026 rewarding companies tied to artificial intelligence, defense, and ****** e technology with premium valuations. Investors have been willing to pay up for businesses promising decades of future growth, often overlooking near-term fundamentals.

With a market cap. of $15.2 billion, Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC) is a leading global energy technology company that designs, manufactures, and provides innovative power generation, energy storage, and energy management solutions for residential, commercial, industrial, and other markets. It is committed to its mission of "Powering a Smarter World" by delivering resilient, efficient, and intelligent energy solutions that empower people to use energy on their own terms.
The Waukesha, Wisconsin-based company is expected to release its fiscal Q2 2026 results soon. Ahead of the release, **** ysts expect the company to post adjusted EPS of $1.95, up 18.2% from $1.65 in the year-ago quarter. It has exceeded Wall Street's bottom-line estimates in two of the last four quarters while missing on two other occasions.
Broadcom's Largest AI Customer Is Fleeing to MediaTek. AVGO Stock Is Still a Buy.
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Some offers on this page are from advertisers who pay us, which may affect which products we write about, but not our recommendations. See our Advertiser Disclosure.
Saving money doesn't have to mean following the same routine month after month. For people who struggle to stay motivated by traditional savings plans, turning the process into a game can make it feel more rewarding.
That's the idea behind the bingo savings challenge — a customizable approach that uses a bingo card filled with savings amounts instead of numbers. Here's how it works.
The Bingo savings challenge is a gamified savings method that turns contributions to a savings account into a game of chance. Instead of saving a fixed amount on a set schedule, you make deposits based on the numbers you draw or mark off on a bingo card. The unpredictability makes saving feel more fun and can help people stay motivated.
Here's how it works: