Liverpool's pursuit of Bradley Barcola appears to be moving towards a decisive stage, according to David Lynch, with the journalist expressing strong confidence over the PSG winger's prospects of ending up at Anfield.
Speaking to Dave Davis on Anfield Index's Media Matters podcast, Lynch was asked about developments after Barcola and Ibrahim Mbaye were named in PSG's initial squad, then watched from the stands rather than featuring in the playing squad. Davis also referenced Luis Enrique's comments before the game: "When a player doesn't have a smile when coming here, it's better to look for another solution."
Lynch's ***** sment of Bradley Barcola was strikingly confident.
"The talks are ongoing. I wonder whether the next thing that we'll hear about this is a kind of done deal, to be honest, because the talks have been going on for a while. Everybody knows what's going on."
He then reduced the situation to its essential parts: "PSG are willing sellers. Liverpool are willing buyers."

#barcola #anfield #talks #willing

Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UAA)'s long-running turnaround just got tougher. On August 7, the athletic clothing manufacturer forecasted a sharper annual revenue decline, and investors responded by sending shares down as much as 9% in early trade, showing the market's lack of patience for a recovery story that is being pushed further out.
The headline number is the forecast drop itself: Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UAA) now expects full-year revenue to fall by a mid-single-digit percentage, a significant decrease from its previous target of only a "slight decline." The breakdown is centered right where it hurts the most. Under Armour's North America sector, its largest market by far, saw revenue fall 9% to $609.8 million in the fiscal quarter ended June 30. During the post-earnings call, CFO Reza Taleghani didn't sugarcoat the forecast, telling investors that the company is expecting a more difficult consumer environment, notably in North America and parts of Asia Pacific, to continue through the second quarter.
The pressures behind the miss are largely macro, but they aggravate a company-specific issue. Ongoing inflation and a more difficult consumer-spending environment have caused buyers to be more careful about discretionary purchases such as apparel, footwear, and accessories, a trend that has impacted the whole sportswear industry, not just Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UAA). Morningstar ******* yst David Swartz put it bluntly: the sportswear market is struggling right now, and tariff-related cost constraints aren't helping. On top of the macro pressure is a competitive one. Buyers are increasingly moving toward newer, innovation-focused companies such as On and Hoka.
CEO Kevin Plank, who returned to the position in 2024 to create a turnaround, has pursued a strategy based on doing less, better. The company has reduced its product ******* ortment by about 25%, focusing on higher-priced items in sectors such as training, running, and team sports rather than competing across price points. Plank's own definition of the plan was pointed: consumers do not need more choices, but rather better ones. Under that idea, Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UAA) has introduced new goods geared in part at attracting younger Gen Z customers, including training shoes such as the "Surge 5" and "Radiant TR".
That strategic reset did not come cheap. Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE:UAA) stated it had spent $266 million on restructuring and transformation efforts thus far, with the overall turnaround plan scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

#armour #north #buyers

General Motors Co (NYSE:GM) is abandoning one of the most storied American automobile brands in the world's largest auto market, and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) announced a different kind of pullback. Together, the two moves demonstrate how much American manufacturers have lost their foothold in China.
According to a report in German trade publication Automobilwoche, General Motors Co (NYSE:GM) plans to stop Chevrolet sales in China after nearly 21 years. The figures driving the decision are stark: Chevrolet sold over 767,000 vehicles in China in 2014, its peak year. Last year, that figure had fallen to less than 9,000 units, a 98.8% decrease in just over a decade. GM's answer has been to double down on its two surviving, more successful Chinese brands, focusing on Buick and Cadillac, with Buick specifically finding success with its new Electra electric vehicle series.
Chevrolet's decline is a symptom of a broader fundamental instability. Foreign automakers' overall share of China's auto market has plummeted, dropping from 53% to around 33% in just two years, while local Chinese companies led by BYD and Geely have taken control.
Ford's version of the retreat, announced on August 13, focuses on Lincoln, its luxury brand. Ford announced that beginning in 2030, it will stop producing Lincoln vehicles in China for the US market and instead expand Lincoln manufacturing domestically. The move notably targets the Lincoln Nautilus, the brand's best-selling model and the only car Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) currently makes in China for American buyers, manufactured at the Changan Ford joint venture in Hangzhou since 2024.
CEO Jim Farley described the move as a statement of identity as much as strategy, claiming that Lincoln is an American brand and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) is America's automaker, telling Reuters that the decision was prompted by the Trump administration's trade policies. Those policies are doing the majority of the work here. The China-built Nautilus is subject to a significant 52.5% tariff in the US, a cost that has become difficult to justify. Despite the fact that the SUV has held up fairly well commercially, its US sales are down only 5.7% year-over-year through July, a smaller decrease than the Lincoln brand overall (down 12.6%).

#ford #american #motor #announced

Happy Friday, traders. Welcome to our weekly market wrap, where we take a look back at these last five trading days with a focus on the market news, economic data, and headlines that had the most impact on gold prices and other key correlated ****** ets—and may continue to in the future.
So, what kind of week has it been?
Gold held on to most of its recent rally this week, trading largely between $4,325 and $4,425/oz as buyers continued to defend the rebound.
July CPI data helped ease immediate concerns about another Federal Reserve rate hike, supporting gold as headline inflation held at 3.4% year over year and core CPI eased to 2.5%.
Thursday's PPI report delivered a mixed inflation signal: headline producer prices were flat, while the measure excluding food, energy, and trade services rose 0.4% month over month. Gold gave back part of its midweek advance even as September rate-hike odds continued to fade.

#market #trading #held #continued

MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI) just crossed $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, yet the stock sits roughly 30% below its high. That gap between a record top line and a beaten-down share price is the whole story here. On the call covering the quarter ended June 30, held August 5, management laid out exactly why it is choosing growth over profit right now, and investors are still deciding whether to believe them.
Net revenue grew 50% year-over-year in the second quarter, powered by a 44% jump in gross merchandise volume and a 56% rise in total payment volume. The more interesting number sits underneath that headline. A year after MercadoLibre lowered its free shipping threshold in Brazil, items per buyer there climbed 19% year-over-year and conversion rose 1.1 percentage points, even as the company kept adding new buyers who typically spend less at first.
Management framed this as proof that existing shoppers are engaging more deeply, not just a bigger crowd showing up. That matters most for what the company calls ecosystemic users, people who use both the marketplace and Mercado Pago. Those users generated 70% more GMV and 55% more items sold per user than marketplace-only shoppers, and contribution profit per ecosystemic user runs multiples above a marketplace or fintech user alone. The credit book backs this up. It reached $16.4 billion, up 75% year-over-year, while delinquency rates sat near historical lows and net interest margin after losses improved from 18% to 21% between the first and second quarters.
That growth came at a real cost. Operating income fell from $825 million to $683 million, and operating margin narrowed from 12.2% to 6.7%, a 550 basis point drop from a year earlier. Management did not suggest relief is coming soon, calling the trade-off a deliberate choice to keep prioritizing long-term engagement and scale over near-term profitability. Net income for the first half of 2026 fell 13% year-over-year to $883 million even as revenue climbed 50% to $19 billion, a gap that shows growth and profit are currently moving in opposite directions.
Competitors including Amazon have pushed MercadoLibre to compete harder on price, and the company's expansion into consumer lending has meant absorbing more loan losses along the way. The quarter also demanded serious capital, with $441 million in capital expenditures and $2.1 billion funneled into growing the credit portfolio, leaving adjusted free cash flow at $214 million.

#mercadolibre #billion #quarter

The US dollar (DX-Y.NYB) is currently caught in a tug-of-war between oil prices and the Federal Reserve, Rabobank senior FX strategist Jane Foley pointed out in a note to clients on Thursday.
It began when the dollar's old relationship with oil started breaking down.
Historically, crude oil (CL=F, BZ=F) and the greenback have moved in opposite directions. Oil is priced in dollars, so a stronger currency weighs on the commodity because it costs buyers more to purchase it.
That relationship began to shift in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and the US cemented its position as a major energy exporter, Foley stated. That shift became more significant as the war in Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Higher oil prices once represented an almost unambiguously negative shock for the US economy. But the war in Iran — which has triggered the largest energy supply crisis in history — has presented an opportunity for major US oil producers to ramp up production and take advantage of higher prices, bolstering the country's energy exports.

#higher #began #relationship

CF Industries (NYSE:CF) just posted a first half of 2026 that most fertilizer companies would frame around one thing: the conflict with Iran. Instead, management spent the earnings call on August 6 arguing that something bigger is happening underneath the headlines. Adjusted EBITDA hit $2.2 billion for the first half, ammonia plants ran at nearly 98% of available capacity, and the company raised its own estimate of what it can earn in a normal year. Investors chasing the geopolitical story may be missing the real one.
Management's central argument is that global nitrogen capacity has gotten permanently more expensive to build, which raises the price required to justify new plants and therefore lifts what CF Industries can earn even in ordinary years. That case leans on Blue Point, where the company has now received every permit needed to start construction, ordered nearly all its long lead items, and expects module fabrication to begin later this year. Combined with the planned return of the Yazoo City Complex in the first half of 2027, those projects support management's target of roughly $3.3 billion in mid-cycle EBITDA by 2030, up from a new $2.9 billion baseline, and neither figure includes any ****** p from the current conflict.
The quarter's numbers back up the operational side of that story. Second quarter net earnings reached $727 million, or $4.73 per diluted share, while trailing 12-month free cash flow came in around $1.8 billion. CF Industries has funneled much of that into buybacks, repurchasing 10.6 million shares for $958 million over the past year, and the board raised the quarterly dividend 20% to $0.60 per share in July. Shares outstanding have fallen 29% since the start of 2021 while the dividend has doubled, a combination management says has lifted investor ownership of the underlying business by more than 40% since 2020.
Management spent real time on the call pushing back on the idea that CF Industries' growth is mostly a geopolitical trade, which suggests that's exactly how a lot of investors are currently pricing the stock. Demand data from the quarter gives that read some support. Customers in regions with second-half application seasons deferred purchases as prices rose, and North American buyers slowed down enough in June that channel inventories fell to a very low point.
That weakness only reversed once thin inventories forced a rush into July's UAN and ammonia fill programs. Meanwhile, capital spending is about to climb as Blue Point construction ramps up, with CF Industries' share of 2026 capex projected at $950 million out of a company total of $1.3 billion, a bill that has to be paid before any of the 2030 targets show up in earnings.

#million #first #year

e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE:ELF) reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on August 5, and the headline number is hard to ignore. Net sales grew 36% year-over-year, marking the company's 30th consecutive quarter of net sales growth, a streak stretching back more than seven years. Management says only 6 of 516 public consumer companies tracked have matched that pace while averaging at least 20% quarterly growth. On the back of it, e.l.f. raised its full-year outlook to 18% to 20% net sales growth, up from 12% to 14% previously.
Of roughly 1,800 cosmetics and skin care brands Nielsen tracks, only 14 have topped $200 million in retail sales, and e.l.f. now owns four of them. Rhode, the Hailey Bieber brand, is the standout. It added about $160 million in net sales this quarter and posted $27 million in single-day sales on rhodeskin.com during its summer launch, pulling in 90,000 new customers while still drawing over 70% of sales from repeat buyers. International sales grew 61%, well ahead of the 29% domestic pace, as e.l.f. expands into Boots in the UK, Sephora in Brazil, and Naturium into Canada and Mexico this fall.
Rhode itself launches with Sephora across 19 European countries in September. The company is also pushing into haircare, with its June launch of e.l.f. Hair drew nearly half its buyers from outside the existing e.l.f. customer base, a sign the newer categories are expanding the audience rather than just cross-selling it.
Strip away Rhode and the core e.l.f. business told a different story this quarter. Organic net sales declined by a high single-digit percentage, and unit volumes fell about 3 percentage points even as pricing and mix added 39 points to overall growth. Management ran a pricing test this spring and ultimately cut prices on about 10% of e.l.f. SKUs to try to win back units, an acknowledgment that value positioning needed adjusting. Profitability also got a boost that will not repeat. Q1 gross margin jumped roughly 1,400 basis points to 83%, but over 1,050 of those basis points came from $50 million in IEEPA tariff refunds flowing through cost of goods. Adjusted EBITDA rose 93% to $168 million, yet excluding the refund, growth was 36%.
Management plans to reinvest the entire refund through lower prices and marketing, which it expects to be a net zero benefit to full-year EBITDA. SG&A as a share of sales also climbed to 54% from 50% a year earlier, and the company still owes the first payment on Rhode's earnout later this year given how far the brand has outperformed.

#back #sephora

By Harry Robertson
LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Market gauges of inflation-adjusted borrowing costs have shot to their highest in more than a decade across major economies as AI companies and governments ramp up bond sales, raising risks for stock markets and the world economy.
Real yields are the returns that a bond investor ‌demands above inflation and are an important indicator of true borrowing costs for governments and companies. They are typically determined by expectations about growth, interest rates and the ‌supply and demand of money.
U.S. 30-year real yields, as measured by inflation-linked bonds, are near 18-year highs at around 3%, while British and German 10-year real yields are trading at around their highest in more than a decade.
Investors and **** ysts say a surge in borrowing by AI "hyperscalers", at a time when governments are still spending heavily, has been a leading factor pushing up yields, as buyers demand higher returns to keep purchasing the flood of bonds hitting markets.

#governments #costs

Corn futures fell back from the Wednesday rally on Thursday, with contracts falling 5 to 9 cents at the close. The CmdtyView national average Cash Corn price was down 9 cents at $4.18 1/4.
Export Sales data was released this morning, with a total of 410,748 MT sold in the week of August 6 for old crop. That was a 5 week high and well above the same week last year's net cancellations. Spain was the top buyers of 257,600 MT, with 74,000 MT sold to Mexico. New crop sales were tallied at 924,532 MT in that week. That was a 3-week low and down 54.9% from the same week last year. Mexico was the top buyer of 416,400 MT, with unknown destinations buying 253,700 MT.
Coffee Prices Decline as Colombian Coffee Exports Partially Resume
Coffee Prices Decline as Colombian Coffee Exports Partially Resume
Bulls Are Back in Charge of Corn Prices as a New Rally Forms

#decline

AGTHX owns $6 billion in private AI stakes like Anthropic and OpenAI, unavailable to index funds, and returned 87% over three years vs. SPY's 72%.
The A share load of up to 5.75% can cost retail buyers thousands upfront, making GAFFX the cleaner entry for fee-based advisory clients.
Act now: the ****** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and AGTHX didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
The Growth Fund of America manages $360.9 billion in net ****** ets as of May 31, 2026, which is roughly the GDP of a mid-sized country parked inside a single actively managed mutual fund. That is a strange headline in an era when index funds were supposed to have won the argument. Yet Growth Fund of America (NASDAQ:AGTHX) keeps holding its ****** ets, keeps writing checks to private AI companies, and over the last three years has quietly done something its skeptics said active managers no longer could.
Run by Capital Group under the American Funds brand, AGTHX is a large-cap growth fund with 332 positions spread across US mega-caps, international semiconductors, private tech, and a slug of cash. The A share class is the flagship retail vehicle and the one most 401(k) participants know. Capital Group does not disclose the expense ratio in the snapshot data reviewed here, so investors should confirm the current figure and any sales charge directly on the fund's prospectus before buying.

#Growth

Josh Kushner and Bob Iger are set to become the new owners of the Los Angeles Lakers.
In a surprise turn of events, less than a year after Dodgers kingpin Mark Walter took the keys from the Buss family, he's flipping the franchise for a jaw-dropping $12 billion-plus.
The buyers? Venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney man Bob Iger. The duo originally had their eyes on a Las Vegas expansion team, but when the chance to own purple-and-gold royalty popped up, they pivoted fast and a deal is set to be completed.
If approved by the league, this record-shattering Lakers takeover officially ushers Hollywood's favorite basketball team into a whole new era.
Kushner, a billionaire investor, is the founder of Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm with early stakes in tech giants like Instagram, Spotify, and OpenAI. He is also the co-founder of Oscar Health.

#Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers could soon change hands again in a deal that underscores the soaring value of California's most iconic sports brands.
A group led by businessman Joshua Kushner and former Disney CEO Robert Iger has agreed to purchase the Lakers from owner Mark Walter in a transaction valued at $12 billion, according to statements released by the parties involved. If approved, the sale would set a new record for a North American sports franchise, eclipsing the $10 billion valuation attached to Walter's purchase of the team last year.
"As lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world," Kushner and Iger said in a joint statement.
The buyers behind the record-setting Lakers deal come from two very different corners of the business world.
Joshua Kushner is a billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist best known as the founder of Thrive Capital, a New York-based investment firm that has backed some of the technology industry's biggest companies. Through Thrive and other investments, Kushner has built a reputation as one of the nation's most influential tech investors. He is also part of the Kushner family, a prominent name in real estate and business. Kushner is also the brother of Jared Kushner, who served as a senior adviser in President Donald Trump's first administration and is married to Trump's daughter. His father, real estate developer Charles Kushner, has served as U.S. ambassador to France since 2025.

#Lakers #sports #joshua #purchase

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.
Mortgage rates slipped slightly lower this week, though discount points remained pricey. The Yahoo Finance weekly survey ranks lenders by the lowest annual percentage rate (APR), which includes lender fees. Read on to see the 10 lenders with the lowest rates this week.
See our top picks for mortgage lenders for first-time home buyers.
Here are the 10 mortgage lenders with the best interest rates this week, as determined by our survey of the lowest mortgage rates on 30-year, fixed-rate conventional loans. The following numbers are each lender's annual percentage rate (APR).
Navy Federal Credit Union: 6.280%

#rate

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) released a new open-weight AI model called Muse Glimmer on August 10, a compact system built for agentic tasks that can run on a Mac or PC with a single graphics card. CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the launch to press Washington for lighter rules on open-source AI, arguing that Chinese developers have pulled ahead. The release lands squarely inside the debate that has been rattling Meta's stock all summer: whether the company's AI ambitions are actually worth what they cost.
Muse Glimmer's design speaks to real demand. Businesses have grown uneasy about the size of their AI bills, and about a string of recent hacking incidents tied to models built by Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta itself. Open-weight systems answer both worries by running locally and staying cheap to operate. Hugging Face illustrated that shift last month, saying it deployed a Chinese-made open-weight system to fend off an attack traced to a rogue OpenAI model, since closed-source options are restricted from that kind of security work. If Meta can position Muse Glimmer as a trusted domestic alternative for that exact use case, the addressable market is not small.
None of this changes what still pays Meta's bills. Advertising brought in $114 billion in the first half of 2026, 97.7% of total sales, and Wall Street expects that business to keep compounding at a 21.6% annualized clip through 2028. Zuckerberg is also betting AI sharpens that ad targeting further, which is part of why Meta paired the Muse Glimmer release with a governance change, giving independent directors power to sign off on safety criteria before future models ship. Add in early plans to sell spare data center capacity to outside buyers, and Meta has more ways to monetize its AI buildout than the spending headlines usually suggest.
The launch does not erase the fact that Meta is behind in open-weight AI. By Zuckerberg's own account, Chinese labs including Moonshot's Kimi K3, Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max and DeepSeek's V4-Flash already deliver performance that rivals top US systems, while Meta and its domestic peers remain boxed in by training-data rules Zuckerberg says put American developers at a disadvantage. Muse Glimmer is smaller and narrower than Meta's frontier ambitions, and Washington adds its own uncertainty: the Trump administration has said it will not subject open-weight systems to voluntary safety testing, leaving the ground rules for a technology already tied to hacking incidents unsettled.

#open

D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI) operates as a homebuilding company. Valued at $42.3 billion by market cap, the company constructs and sells single-family homes designed primarily for the entry-level and move-up markets. DHI also provides mortgage financing and ***** le agency services to homebuyers.
Shares of this leading homebuilder have underperformed the broader market over the past year. DHI has declined 1.8% over this time frame, while the broader S&P 500 Index ($SPX) has rallied nearly 22.4%. In 2026, DHI stock is up 4.9%, compared to the SPX's 13.3% rise on a YTD basis.
Don't ***** ume Micron Will Share SanDisk's Fate. Here's Why.
The Nvidia-SpaceX Deal Is Sending a Clear Signal on AI Dominance
Rocket Lab Investors Have Plenty to Cheer Ahead of Q2 Earnings Today

#market #broader #micron

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.
Both options and stocks can deliver quick profits amid substantial risk. Beyond that, these two trading instruments work very differently. Those differences affect your profit potential, loss exposure, and the skills you need to trade successfully. Here's what you need to know.
Option contracts are sold by option writers (sellers) to option holders (buyers). The price paid for the contract is called the premium. The contract itself gives the holder the right to buy or sell an underlying security at a stated price within a defined time frame. If the holder chooses to proceed with the transaction, called exercising the option, the writer must fulfill it.
Stock trading involves actively buying and selling ownership shares in a company. Once a stock trade is complete, the buyer and seller in the transaction have no further obligation to one another.
The table below outlines how stock trading differs from options trading in terms of ownership rights, capital required, risk, time horizon, and income potential.

#option #affect #Potential #price

Napoli want a statement signing, and Gabriel Jesus has moved from fantasy to something far more concrete. According to Gazzetta Dello Sport, the Brazilian forward is firmly on the Italian club's radar as they look to sharpen their attack and restore momentum ahead of a season built around high expectations.
The logic is straightforward. Napoli have spent heavily already, with £86.5 million committed to permanent deals for Rasmus Hojlund, Alisson Santos and Lorenzo Lucca. That is proper money, even in a market where clubs often behave as though accounting is optional. The issue now is balance. Napoli still need sales, and those sales are dictating the pace of everything.
This is where the Gabriel Jesus transfer story becomes interesting for **** nal as well as Napoli. The report states that **** nal have not yet contacted the player to discuss a renewal, even though his current contract expires in 2027. In transfer terms, that matters. Clubs do not need to panic with two years left, but they do need clarity. If there is no obvious long-term plan, buyers start circling and the player starts considering alternatives.
Napoli's move is tied closely to Romelu Lukaku's expected departure. The Belgian has reportedly reached an agreement with Fenerbahce, with the two clubs still needing to settle the fee. Napoli had initially wanted £12 million, but the piece suggests they may accept £7 million to £8 million including bonuses. That is a sizeable drop, but this is what happens when a sale becomes part of a bigger mechanism. They want room, wages off the books and a clear run at their real target.
The other outgoing mentioned is Noa Lang, who is attracting interest from Ajax after PSG pushed ahead on a move for Mika Godts. Napoli want £30 million for Lang, though the report suggests £25 million plus bonuses could be enough. Again, this is not random. If Lukaku and Lang move, Napoli create the financial and tactical **** e to go hard for Gabriel Jesus.

#lang

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.
Buying a home has long been part of the American dream, but many recent buyers are finding that keeping up with the monthly mortgage payment takes far more than they expected.
A new report from mortgage verification platform Truework found that 88% of recent homebuyers with a mortgage say at least one common financial setback could jeopardize their ability to make their monthly payment. A job loss, a major home repair or an unexpected medical bill could all push their finances to the brink.
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#mortgage #benzinga

On June 2, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) set the price on $18 billion of new stock it was selling to public investors, part of an $84.75 billion effort to raise money for its artificial intelligence buildout. Anyone who got shares in that sale paid $355.1982 apiece for the Class A stock.
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) paid $351.81.
The Google parent had agreed the day before to sell Warren Buffett's company $10 billion of stock in a private placement — Alphabet sold the shares straight to Berkshire instead of running them through the public offering. Berkshire paid $351.81 for $5 billion of Class A shares and $348.20 for $5 billion of Class C shares, which carry no voting rights and trade a few dollars cheaper, according to Alphabet's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Public buyers in the sale running alongside it paid $355.1982 and $351.8018. The private sale closed June 4, the same day as the public one.
Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one
Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake. Here's what it is and 3 simple steps to fix it ASAP

#Stock #june

(By Oil & Gas 360) – This week underscored how quickly geopolitical uncertainty can reshape market sentiment, even as companies remain focused on long-term capital discipline. Oil prices strengthened on renewed uncertainty surrounding the Iran conflict, while producers continued investing in natural gas, offshore development, and high-quality shale **** ets.
At the same time, mergers and acquisitions slowed, balance sheets strengthened, and executive leadership changes signaled the industry's continued focus on creating shareholder value through disciplined growth rather than aggressive expansion.
Brent crude climbed as uncertainty surrounding the Iran conflict returned to the forefront. Goldman Sachs said Brent is likely to trade in an $80 to $90 per barrel range until markets receive clarity through either a U.S.–Iran agreement or a significant escalation. Meanwhile, reports indicated a proposed Strait of Hormuz agreement could give Iran greater control over inbound shipping traffic, adding another layer of uncertainty to global energy markets. ADNOC also issued a statement clarifying reports surrounding attacks on its facilities.
Why it matters:
Markets continue to trade on geopolitical expectations rather than purely on supply and demand. The future of Hormuz remains one of the most important variables influencing global oil prices.
U.S. upstream mergers and acquisitions declined sharply during the second quarter as commodity price volatility made buyers more cautious. Despite the slowdown, demand for high-quality Permian Basin **** ets remained strong. **** ex agreed to acquire U.S. tight oil and gas **** ets for $320 million, while bp expanded its natural gas portfolio by acquiring Woodside's stake in Trinidad's Calypso gas project.

#Iran #uncertainty #markets #surrounding

After a sharp pullback, Meta Platforms is testing a price floor that has held strong on seven prior occasions. The business arriving this time is different, setting up a classic standoff between history and today's reality.
Meta Platforms (META) connects 3.6 billion people through its family of apps and sells advertising against that attention. After a 13% slide from its recent high, the stock now trades around $589 a share, a price zone where buyers have repeatedly stepped in to halt declines. This floor between $560.41 and $619.40 has been successfully defended seven times before. History says buyers show up here. Will they this time?
The pattern is striking. Since late 2024, every significant test of this price level has been met with a sharp rebound. Most of these are not minor rallies; the average peak gain following a successful defense has been 21%. The bounces have varied in speed and scale, from a swift 20% gain in just eight days in January 2026 to a more sustained 38% climb over 103 days starting in May 2025. This history creates a powerful precedent, suggesting a level of psychological and technical importance for the stock.
Peak Gain After Holding
Days To That Peak

#peak #price #seven

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has posted the kind of earnings report that makes a pricey company seem nearly fair.
Revenue surged 93% year over year. U.S. commercial sales jumped 149%. Government revenue climbed 90%. Profit margins expanded while growth accelerated, an unusual combination for any software company, let alone one approaching $2 billion in quarterly revenue.
And they responded accordingly.
Palantir shares surged 29.5% on Aug. 4, according to CNBC, its highest one-day percentage gain since February 2024, after the firm raised its annual projection and beat Wall Street's second-quarter estimates.
That surge presented a difficult dilemma for shareholders and would-be buyers.

#surged #year #technologies

Five dividend stocks, among them ARLP and BKR, share an August 7 ex-date, so buyers must act by market close on August 6 if they want to collect the next distribution.
CFFN and BKR carry the strongest payout coverage, while ARLP's 9% yield already absorbed a 2025 cut and still exceeds trailing EPS.
Act now: the ******* yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Baker Hughes didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Five dividends land in investor accounts this month, but only for people who own the shares before Friday, August 7. That's the ex-dividend date every one of the names below shares, which turns a routine income roundup into a timing exercise. The buy-by deadline is the close of trading on Thursday, August 6.
One of the five (a coal MLP with real coverage questions) carries a supersized yield; the rest have varying yields but they're still worth checking out. The main point here is the ex-date, and a quick read on whether each payout looks safe.

#stocks #yield #still

The euro looks like it is testing the 1.1560 level, an area that had been important previously on a swing high, so we'll have to see if we can break above there. It certainly looks like it's struggling, but I also recognize that recently the 1.15 level had been support. Typically speaking, this is a pretty choppy pair, and when we zoom out on the longer-term charts, we start to see that we are approaching an area that historically has seen a lot of chop and noise. So a little bit of a pullback here would not be surprising to me at all. Certainly, we are seeing interest rates in America try to turn back around to the upside during the early part of the session, so something worth keeping an eye on.
Currently, the US dollar and the Swiss franc seem to be very consolidated, and this is typical for this pair. But the interest rate differential most certainly favors the US dollar, and carry traders will be attracted to the wide spread here that they collect at any close of the day, especially with a lot of traders on Wednesday getting triple swap. Looks like the area right around 0.81 continues to be a magnet for price.
And finally, the British pound is stretching towards the 1.35 level. This is a lot like the euro in the sense that we had reached close to a swing high and failed a bit. Rates in the United States climbing a little bit early may provide a little bit of a headwind as well. 1.35 being broken would obviously be a strong headline because of the large round psychological number. It could bring in more buyers; we'd have to wait and see.
Currently, the 1.3435 level or so looks to be support. Could be range-bound. Today has no major economic announcements of any serious consequence. And with that, it would make sense if traders were a little bit range-bound and indecisive.
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#like #little #certainly #currently

SpaceX's $100 billion lockup expiration more than doubled its tradable float yet shares gained over 5% as markets had already priced in the risk.
ARK Invest and retail buyers absorbed the unlock while ~35% short interest created conditions for short covering that lifted shares.
The overhang persists as roughly $800 billion in additional ****** eX shares become eligible for sale through October.
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For weeks, investors have focused on one date they believed could unleash another wave of selling in one of 2026's most closely watched IPOs.

#Invest #short #active

Free cash flow is negative while the cloud build runs, and that is the whole question for anyone weighing the stock today.
Two Multiples, Two Opposite Answers
Amazon.com (AMZN) trades at 22.6 times earnings against 23.9 for the S&P 500, the cheaper of the two on the line buyers check first, though that headline P/E is flattered by a wide gap between net income and operating income: LTM net income of $135.3 billion runs $41.6 billion above operating income, lifted by non-operating gains including Amazon's stake in Anthropic. Switch to cash, and the answer inverts: pricier at 18.7 times operating cash flow against 15.7 for the index, with free cash flow negative outright over the trailing twelve months.
The Cloud Build Is Why Free Cash Flow Is Negative
Management now expects about $220 billion of cash capital spending in 2026, up from an earlier estimate of roughly $200 billion because memory got more expensive. Most of it supports AI and AWS, and it splits two ways: data centers, which take about two years to open and then earn for 30-plus years, and servers and networking equipment, which the company says break even in a little under three years. Earnings already show the profit; the cash statement carries the bill. Buying the earnings multiple means buying that bill too.

#cash #flow #operating #earnings

It is not often that TSMC (TSM) takes cues from Intel (INTC), but that is undoubtedly what's happening. According to The Information, the world's largest contract chipmaker is quietly building a new packaging technology modeled on Intel's EMIB. TSMC's own engineers are reportedly calling the project "EMIB-like" in-house. The company is developing it with a Taiwanese substrate maker, Kinsus Interconnect Technology. Following the report, TSMC's U.S.-listed shares rose about 8%, while Intel climbed roughly 11% on July 30. For a company that usually defines the industry's direction, TSMC borrowing ideas from Intel is worth a closer look.
The fight is all about how chips get packaged. TSMC's main method, CoWoS, uses a large and expensive silicon layer to link chips together. Intel's EMIB takes a leaner route, embedding tiny silicon bridges only where the chips actually connect. That makes it cheaper and potentially better suited to the increasingly large AI chip designs. The timing makes this sting more for the Taiwanese company. TSMC's CoWoS is sold out into 2027, with some customers waiting well over a year. That backlog is pushing buyers to look for alternate suppliers, and Intel is ready. Its newest version, EMIB-T, recently hit a 98% yield rate, matching CoWoS in that metric, and has already drawn interest from Google (GOOG) (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and Nvidia (NVDA). Every customer who leaves over the wait chips away at TSMC's lead.
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#emib #tsmc #taiwanese

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A housing market crash happens when home values plummet due to a lack of demand for or an oversupply of homes. The factors leading to a housing market crash are varied, ranging from economic recessions to high mortgage rates that make it less affordable to buy a home. A housing crash can have upsides (low home prices) and downsides (losing built-up equity and tighter finances).

So, what's ahead for the housing market in 2026?
➡ Read more: Want to buy a house in 2026? Here's what you need to know.
Generally, experts don't foresee a housing market crash in 2026. If anything, they see a greater sense of normalcy following multiple years of twists and turns.
"We're not heading toward a housing crash; we're in a market correction defined by stability, not volatility," Hoby Hanna, CEO of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, said via email. "Today's housing environment is fundamentally different from 2008. Homeowners have record levels of equity, lending standards are sound, and inventory remains constrained. What we're seeing now is a normalization, not a collapse, as the market adjusts to new economic realities. For buyers and sellers, this is a market filled with opportunity and resilience, not instability or uncertainty."

#crash #economic

The surprise: Wall Street expected Ford's Q2 2026 earnings to fall about 5% year over year. Ford instead posted an increase. The stock jumped more than 6% after the report.
The quarter's story was Ford making more money on fewer sales. Wholesale volumes dropped 12% year over year, but revenue fell just 4%, because Ford sold a richer mix of high-margin trucks, off-roaders, and hybrids. Adjusted EBIT rose 17% year over year.
Ford raised full-year 2026 adjusted EBIT guidance, the second raise this year.
Bull case: The real reason to own Ford is Ford Pro, its commercial fleet business, and it's the strongest ******* et any legacy automaker has. Pro sells to construction firms, delivery companies, and contractors — customers who keep buying through inflation and fuel spikes because a plumber can't stop showing up to jobs. Those buyers are far steadier than the average consumer, who is pulling back right now. And Pro isn't just vans. It's an entire infrastructure of service centers, parts, and fleet software that builds a real moat. Fleet managers won't switch to unproven rivals without a big reason, so undercutting Pro means rebuilding that whole ecosystem. Even in a weak quarter dragged down by a plant fire, Pro posted a 9.7% EBIT margin, roughly double Ford Blue's 4.4%.
The second leg is the shift to higher-margin, recurring revenue. Ford Pro paid subscriptions hit 1.6 million in Q2 2026, up 50% year over year, and BlueCruise ******* isted-driving now makes up half of retail services revenue. Software margins beat metal by a wide gap, and if Ford hits its target of 8% margins on services by 2029, that flywheel starts to move the whole company.

#ebit #revenue #Margin