In a note published this week, Noble said SpaceX’s biggest challenge isn’t its triple-digit price-to-sales multiple—it’s a lockup schedule that could increase the stock’s tradable float by roughly 900% over the coming months as insider shares become eligible for sale.
SpaceX Stock: From Scarcity To SupplyNoble argues SpaceX’s post-IPO rally was driven as much by supply constraints as investor enthusiasm.
Less than 5% of the company’s shares were freely tradable when the stock debuted, he noted. Shortly afterward, Nasdaq-100 inclusion and Russell index rebalancing forced passive funds to buy billions of dollars’ worth of shares while the public float remained exceptionally small.
“The supply was minuscule and the buying was mandatory,” Noble wrote. That dynamic helped propel SpaceX above $225 during its first week of trading before shares began retreating.
The Calendar That MattersAccording to Noble, the next phase of the story is already mapped out in the company’s prospectus.
The first meaningful unlock arrives after second-quarter earnings, when 20% of locked shares become eligible for sale. Another early release could occur if the stock meets a price-based performance trigger.
From late August through October, additional tranches are scheduled to unlock every few weeks. The largest release comes after third-quarter earnings, followed by the expiration of the six-month lockup in December.
Noble estimates insiders could be free to sell as much as 44% of the company by early September, increasing the tradable float by roughly 900% from IPO levels.
A Different Kind Of Bear CaseUnlike traditional short theses built around deteriorating fundamentals or disappointing earnings, Noble argues the catalyst is already visible.
“It’s literally a published calendar,” he wrote.
He contends that thousands of early employees and private investors who acquired shares at substantially lower valuations may choose to monetize their holdings once restrictions expire.
Noble also questioned the company’s valuation, noting that SpaceX has yet to report an annual profit and traded above 90 times revenue at its IPO, with the multiple briefly approaching 140 times during the stock’s early rally.
While he described Starlink as “a wonderful business,” he argued it does not justify the company’s multi-trillion-dollar valuation on its own.
Why Investors Are WatchingLockup expirations don’t always trigger sharp declines. Some insiders hold their shares, while strong institutional demand can absorb new supply.
But Noble believes SpaceX’s combination of a historically small IPO float, rapid index inclusion and staggered insider unlocks makes this one of the most unusual supply-demand setups he has seen.
His conclusion is blunt: the story investors should be watching isn’t just how SpaceX performs—it’s how many shares suddenly become available to sell.
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SPCX stock is under pressure today. Why are SPCX shares down? SpaceX Stock Back in the SpotlightToday’s move reads less like a thematic unwind and more like a positioning reset, with fast-money sellers leaning on a stock that has had a significant run. With SPCX now trading below its 52-week low of $145.07, that level has flipped from support to resistance, and the burden of proof shifts to buyers to show up with conviction at current levels.
Analyst Consensus and Recent Actions: The stock carries a Buy rating with an average price target of $236.27. Recent analyst moves include:
Clear Street: Buy ($217.00 target) (July 7) Macquarie: Outperform ($250.00 target) (July 7) Deutsche Bank: Buy ($255.00 target) (July 7) What SpaceX Actually DoesThat combination ties SPCX to multiple high-interest themes including launch services, satellite connectivity and AI infrastructure, a profile that tends to reward the stock richly when growth sentiment is running hot and punish it sharply when it is not.
SPCX Shares Are Plunging MondayImage: Thrive Studios ID/Shutterstock
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Apple (AAPL) and Samsung gained smartphone market share in the second quarter even as global shipments fell 4% year over year, highlighting how the industry's l
Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI is packed with a number of extraordinary allegations that paint a picture of a coordinated effort to extract confidential information from current and former Apple employees. But what’s perhaps most striking is how casually the alleged misconduct is described, including one message that reads, “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.”
The 41-page complaint, which was filed on Friday, is filled with unusually detailed allegations, like this and others. Here are some that stood out the most to us:
“Normalized and exemplified by leadership.” With this description of OpenAI, Apple is making it clear its lawsuit isn’t just focused on rogue employees, but that misconduct like this is part of OpenAI’s culture and is led from the top. “Rotten to its core.” Leave it to Apple to work a rotten fruit analogy into its criticism of OpenAI’s behavior in this case. The AI model maker is rumored to be working on a hardware device to challenge the iPhone, potentially a smartphone of its own. But Apple wants to stress that what OpenAI is developing was allegedly built with Apple’s trade secrets. “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” the complaint states. “This is the tip of the iceberg.” In addition to documenting the allegations against its former employees, Apple is suggesting that the alleged misconduct outlined in the complaint is only a fraction of what it will uncover after the discovery process gets underway. In discovery, corporate documents and communications, including texts and emails, are obtained, potentially uncovering other examples of this kind of behavior at OpenAI. “Discovery will expose that the misappropriation has been occurring on a scale many times greater than the several instances described below,” Apple’s complaint states. “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.” Apple says that Chang Liu, previously a senior systems electrical engineer at Apple before joining OpenAI, sent this message to an Apple employee, Yu-Ting “Alyssa” Peng, who allegedly was a conduit between Apple and OpenAI. Peng later left to join OpenAI herself but is not a defendant in the lawsuit. Peng allegedly replied to the message, “I’m ready.” Apple claims that Liu was able to access Apple’s systems by exploiting an authentication bug, which he did from Peng’s Apple-issued work computer. “I still have another computer.” Liu allegedly also texted this within hours of leaving Apple, referring to another Apple computer he allegedly planned to use to access Apple’s confidential information. Apple discovered the message on Peng’s Apple-issued work laptop. “Didn’t even know we could take those from the office.” One of the wilder allegations is that OpenAI job candidates working at Apple were directed by OpenAI chief hardware officer Tang Yew Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as VP of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, to bring “act ual parts” from Apple to their interviews at OpenAI for “show and tell sessions.” One candidate was surprised by the request, saying he didn’t even realize that Apple parts could be taken out of the office, Apple alleges. Apple also says employees were instructed to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to interviews. Avoiding the “dreaded walkout.” Apple alleges that OpenAI coached departing Apple employees on how to evade Apple’s security procedures to reduce the chance their alleged trade secret theft would be caught. The complaint claims that OpenAI circulated an internal Apple document bearing a “Need to know” designation to new hires with details on how to avoid the “dreaded walkout,” which would immediately remove them from Apple after giving notice, instead of letting them continue to work for the typical two weeks, which would allow them more time to access Apple’s confidential information. “Let OpenAI know ‘asap’” if asked to sign anything when quitting Apple. In addition to helping OpenAI job candidates avoid Apple’s security procedures, the complaint alleges that if Apple asked departing employees to sign anything at an exit interview, they should let OpenAI know immediately, and advised them not to sign. “Over four hundred former Apple employees now working at OpenAI.” Another surprise: the complaint reveals the extent to which Apple employees have left the iPhone maker to work for OpenAI. Apple leverages this figure to paint a picture of the potential scale of the problem, noting that “it is not surprising that certain OpenAI personnel have knowledge of Apple’s confidential and proprietary information, which they are obligated to keep confidential. But OpenAI has resorted to exploiting this confidential information…” “io…access, exploited and used Apple’s secret, proprietary industrial design techniques, processes, and know-how related to metal-finishing.” Founded by former Apple employees, including Jony Ive, the company io was acquired by OpenAI last year in a $6.5 billion deal. Now, io is a defendant in this lawsuit, as Apple alleges that the firm used its industrial design techniques by misleading Apple’s partner into believing that it had Apple’s permission to carry out a “confidential metal-finishing technique,” the complaint states. Apple also alleges that OpenAI approached a supplier using its confidential information about design and components related to power and batteries, even using “internal terminology” to ask targeted questions that “only Apple-insiders would know to ask.”) “Apple is left with no choice.” Though seemingly typical legal language, in this case, it appears that Apple may have tried to resolve the situation outside the courts first. The tech giant says that it first tried to contact OpenAI in February, raising its concerns, but OpenAI never responded. So far, OpenAI has only commented publicly via a statement shared on X on Friday, which reads: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
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Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow breaks down why an AI-fueled stock rout in South Korea spilled over into the US market Monday, sending SK Hynix ADRs falling in their second US trading day. Plus, Apple and OpenAI's AI rivalry enters the courtroom, with Apple filing a sweeping trade secrets lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker.
Apple's lawsuit accusing OpenAI of systematically stealing its intellectual property threatens to disrupt the AI company's device ambitions long before the case is resolved. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech.
Jim Cramer says a single AI product decision at Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) just moved the stock roughly $100 per share, and he is using it as Exhibit A for why big tech is nearly impossible to trim.
In his Sunday column, Cramer wrote that on the June 30 episode of Mad Money he argued a cloud business announcement from Meta would be “worth an easy 100 points, or $100 per share, for the stock,” back when shares closed at $563. Ten trading days later, they closed at $669.21.
That is a 14.81% move in a single week and a 17.31% move in a month on a company with a $1.7 trillion market cap. Cramer’s takeaway, published on CNBC: “By a simple stroke of a pen, Meta gives you 100 points, or almost 20%.”
The Catalyst Cramer Called The specific event was Meta signaling it would rent out excess AI compute. Zuckerberg told Bloomberg last week that “the offers that you get for using the compute are so high that it may make sense, in some cases, to rent out or consider those kind of deals instead of your own internal uses.” Meta jumped 5.97% on Friday, July 10, closing at $669.21.
The compute-monetization pivot lands on top of Meta Superintelligence Labs, the new AI research entity Zuckerberg introduced on the Q1 2026 call. He described it as a “milestone quarter” that included “the release of our first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs” and reiterated the goal of “personal superintelligence to billions of people.”
The Numbers Under the Rally Meta’s Q1 2026 report, filed with the SEC on April 29, showed revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33.08% year over year, and EPS of $10.44 against a $6.66 estimate. The advertising engine grew 33%, with ad impressions +19% and average price per ad +12%. Family daily active people reached 3.56 billion.
The catch: capex. Meta raised full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125–145 billion, up from a prior $115–135 billion range. Q1 capex alone hit $19 billion. Cramer’s argument is that the compute-rental pivot changes how investors should think about that spend, because dormant infrastructure suddenly becomes a revenue line rather than a capex sinkhole.
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Debt Versus AI Payback The bear case Cramer is answering is leverage. Total debt has climbed from $13.87 billion at year-end 2021 to $86.77 billion at the end of Q1 2026. Capital lease obligations tied to AI data centers doubled to $28.02 billion. Debt-to-equity has moved from 0.111 to 0.356.
The offset is cash generation. Retained earnings reached $144.65 billion. Operating cash flow in Q1 was $32.23 billion. Liquid assets total $51.84 billion, and the current ratio sits at 2.35x.
Investors sorting the AI winners from the also-rans may find useful context in our 7 Stocks Powering the AI Boom (That Aren’t Chipmakers) report, which frames why hyperscalers with in-house monetization paths get valued differently than pure infrastructure plays.
What to Watch Next At 24x trailing earnings and 19x forward, Meta is not cheap on a growth-adjusted basis, but the analyst consensus target of $828.34 implies room above current levels, backed by 49 Buy and 8 Strong Buy ratings against zero Sell calls. Q2 revenue guidance is $58–61 billion.
Prediction markets are notably split on tempo. Polymarket traders assign a 64.5% probability that shares finish today lower, yet give Meta an 80.5% chance of ending 2026 with a higher valuation than OpenAI. That is the exact tension Cramer’s column captures: near-term digestion is possible, but the AI optionality is the reason he says these names are so hard to leave.
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$125 billion to $145 billion. That is what Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) now expects to spend on capital expenditures in 2026, raised from a prior range of $120 to $135 billion when the company reported first-quarter results on April 29, 2026.
Now, this is forward-looking guidance, not a reported figure. That said, this number stands against a 2025 full-year capex base of $72.215 billion. The framing writes itself: Meta is preparing to deploy roughly $50 billion more on AI infrastructure this year than last, and CFO Susan Li told analysts the raise reflects “higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future-year capacity.”
What It Means The scale is what stops you. In the first quarter alone, Meta spent $18.997 billion on capex, up 46.8% year over year. The company also disclosed that multiyear cloud deals and infrastructure purchase agreements drove a $107 billion step up in contractual commitments during the quarter. Zuckerberg framed the spend directly: “We are investing aggressively to meet our infrastructure needs and ensure we maximize our strategic flexibility over the coming years.”
What backs the spend is a business still compounding at scale. Q1 revenue came in at $56.311 billion, up 33.08% year over year, with operating income of $22.872 billion and a 41% operating margin. Ad impressions rose 19% and average price per ad rose 12%, both year over year, while family daily active people reached 3.56 billion. Free cash flow was $12.386 billion in the quarter, and operating cash flow reached $32.226 billion. Additionally, reported EPS of $10.44 exceeded expectations against a consensus of $6.6587, though investors should note the beat was inflated by an $8.03 billion one-time tax benefit tied to U.S. Treasury guidance on capitalized R&D, worth $3.13 per share.
Market Reaction Meta shares have not rewarded the Capex raise. From the Q1 filing date on April 29, 2026 through July 2, 2026, the stock is down 12.81%, moving from $668.53 to $582.90. Year to date, shares are off 11.54%. Over the past week, however, the stock has moved higher by 7.37%, and one TradingKey report attributed a 7.56% single-day gain on July 1 to plans to launch a cloud infrastructure business selling excess AI computing capacity.
Bull Case The bull case rests on three data points that connect the capex to cash. First, monetization is accelerating alongside the AI build. On Instagram, Q1 ranking improvements drove a 10% lift in Reels time spent, and Facebook video time rose more than 8% globally, the largest quarter-over-quarter gain in four years. Enhancements to the Lattice and GEM ad models delivered a more than 6% increase in conversion rate for landing page view ads.
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Second, the business AI layer is scaling from a small base. Susan Li said Meta now has “more than 10 million conversations each week being facilitated through business AIs, up from 1 million at the start of the year.”
Third, the company is diversifying compute suppliers to control cost, with Zuckerberg noting Meta is “rolling out more than one gigawatt of our own custom silicon that we are developing with Broadcom as well as a significant amount of AMD chips to complement the new NVIDIA systems.”
I think Meta’s valuation still frames the setup as reasonable for a business growing revenue in the low 30s. The company’s trailing P/E multiple sits at 22, forward P/E at 19, and the analyst consensus target is $828.13 against a current price of $582.90. Ratings tilt heavily positive with 8 strong buy, 49 buy, 6 hold, and zero sell ratings. Prediction markets favor Meta over OpenAI at 81% probability of a higher year-end valuation.
Bottom Line For long-term holders, Meta’s raised capex range is the clearest statement the social media and tech giant has made about where the next decade of returns will come from. The company’s Q2 guidance calls for revenue of $58 to $61 billion, and management expects full-year 2026 operating income above 2025 levels even after absorbing the higher spend.
The next test is the Q2 earnings report against that $58 to $61 billion range. If ad pricing, impression growth, and business AI adoption keep compounding, the $125 billion to $145 billion looks like scale investors will eventually pay up for. If any of those levers slip, the same number becomes the bear case in one earnings cycle.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
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A rendering of the Richland Parish data center. Meta Meta is scaling up what was already slated to become its largest AI data center, a Louisiana campus that the tech giant says has fueled "life-changing returns" for local teachers and businesses.
The company behind Facebook and Instagram said in a blog post on Monday that the Richland Parish data center, known as Hyperion, will now grow to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, bringing the project's cost to more than $50 billion.
The announcement offers a new data point for Wall Street investors watching Meta closely for updates on its AI spending plans. The company's capital expenditures have ballooned in the last two years, largely due to AI infrastructure costs.
As part of its announcement, Meta touted the project's local economic impact, saying that the increased tax revenues tied to the data center have recently led to year-end bonuses of up to $50,000 for Richland Parish teachers.
That's 400% higher than what teachers received last year in the rural Louisiana parish that's home to about 20,000 people, according to Meta.
Sheldon Jones, the parish's school district superintendent, said in a statement shared by Meta that the influx of money has been "life-altering for our teachers and their families" and was "transforming our schools."
"Last year, our teachers received a $10,000 bonus, this year that check was over $50,000," Jones said, adding, "Meta's investment has made Richland Parish a destination for education as well as industry."
Jones did not immediately respond to a request by Business Insider for further comment.
The Hyperion project, according to Meta, is among the largest investments in AI infrastructure worldwide.
Meta said in its Monday post that local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion in contracts from the company since it broke ground on the 4 million-square-foot site in December 2024.
"With this expansion, we will be investing over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems," said Meta.
It added that the company "pays the full costs of the energy, water, and related infrastructure the data center uses so consumers aren't paying the cost."
The project's expansion marks a dramatic escalation from last year when Meta and investment firm Blue Owl Capital put the data center's price tag at about $27 billion with plans for more than 2 gigawatts of compute capacity.
Once operational, Meta says the data center will create more than 1,000 jobs.
While Meta has highlighted the project's economic benefits, the rapid buildout of AI data centers by Big Tech has become a flashpoint, with critics raising widespread concerns about energy demand, water consumption, and the strain on local infrastructure.
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Natalie Musumeci You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Natalie is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Business News team.She was previously on BI's Legal Affairs team where she covered major cases out of state and federal court, as well as bankruptcy. Her coverage often focused on stories at the intersection of law, business, politics and technology. Natalie has covered Donald Trump’s criminal and civil cases, the wave of lawsuits against the second Trump administration, the indictment and criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the legal battles facing Elon Musk and his companies. Natalie came to Business Insider in June 2021 as a breaking news reporter, focusing on the most interesting angles around the trending news of the day. Natalie largely drove BI’s coverage around the fatal “Rust” shooting involving Alec Baldwin and the disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito.Prior to joining BI, Natalie worked for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and The Brooklyn Paper. She has an extensive background covering crime and courts. During her more than 12-year journalism career, she did a stint covering the police beat out of the headquarters for the New York Police Department. Natalie, a Brooklyn native, graduated from Brooklyn College in 2012 with a journalism degree. Popular articles
Walmart and Amazon face legal trouble for using a points system to track and fire employees over absences: lawyersCelebrities who partied with Diddy may want to contact their lawyersAn unchecked AI could usher in a new dark ageAt Diddy's A-list 'white parties,' naked women were a staple — but that didn't seem to raise eyebrows at the timeThe illegal maneuvers the rich use to get richerOwner of ship that crashed into Baltimore bridge will likely try to invoke 1851 law used to cap damages after Titanic disaster AI Data Centers Meta More Tech
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52-Week Range$520.26▼
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After being down and out for several months, shares of Magnificent Seven giant Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META are starting to get their groove back. The stock recently popped 8.8% on reports that Meta will enter the cloud computing business, selling excess capacity to third parties.
Meta shares then saw two large single-day up moves on July 9 and July 10, rising 4.7% and 6%. Part of the stock’s latest gain is due to what is likely Meta’s most significant artificial intelligence (AI) model release: Muse Spark 1.1.
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Data indicates that Muse Spark 1.1 is Meta’s most intelligent model yet.
Additionally, the model may mark the beginning of an inflection point in Meta’s ability to generate revenue from AI products.
Muse Spark 1.1: Meta’s AI Model Intelligence Is on the RiseArtificial Analysis is a helpful source for gauging the relative capabilities of AI models. The company tests models on agentic, coding, general intelligence, and scientific reasoning to give them an “Intelligence Index” score. Currently, Muse Spark 1.1 has a score of 51, which is higher than any model developed by Alphabet NASDAQ: GOOGL. However, it still ranks below many of Anthropic's and OpenAI’s latest models, several of which have scores above 55.
Muse Spark 1.1’s score is also significantly higher than that of Meta’s initial Muse Spark model, with a score of 43. Going forward, it will be important to see whether Muse Spark 1.1 maintains this score and its relative standing among other models. Initially, Meta’s first Muse Spark model had a score of 52, but this has since fallen. This is likely because Artificial Analysis updates and reweights its evaluation framework over time.
Still, based on the latest testing, Muse Spark 1.1 represents a significant improvement over the original Muse Spark and ranks highly overall. This lends validation to Meta’s massive AI capital expenditures and its hiring of Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who has been critical to Muse Spark’s development. Not only is Meta making better models, but for the first time, it is making a real monetization push.
Meta Steps Into AI Model MonetizationNotably, Muse Spark 1.1 marks the first time Meta will charge for access to its models. Meta will charge users on a per-token basis, or based on the amount of information the model processes and outputs, in a "pay-as-you-go" format. Anthropic and OpenAI allow users to pay for models in this way as well, but also provide access through flat monthly or annual fees.
One of the reasons to think that Muse Spark 1.1 could gain real traction and generate notable revenue for the firm is its pricing. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Muse Spark 1.1’s per-token pricing is around 25% of what Anthropic and OpenAI charge for similar models. Artificial Analysis adds weight to this. It places Muse Spark 1.1’s “cost per Intelligence Index Task” around three times lower than OpenAI’s GPT-5.4, which also has an Intelligence Index Score of 51.
If Muse Spark 1.1 offers a level of intelligence comparable to another model but at a much lower cost, users have an incentive to adopt it. This gives Meta a realistic opportunity to start generating significant revenue directly through its AI model. This may come through software developers using it for coding tasks, an area where its performance is particularly improved over the original Muse Spark.
Still, it is possible that Meta is highly subsidizing its model cost, with Alexandr Wang calling the pricing “very aggressive and attractive.” The word ‘aggressive’ seems to indicate a degree of deliberate undercutting. In turn, Meta’s pricing may not be high enough to support the model profitably.
Nonetheless, through low pricing, Meta has an opportunity to prove Muse Spark’s capabilities to users, an important first step in generating sales. Over time, Meta can evolve its pricing to increase margins.
Patience Remains Key as Meta Looks to Monetize Muse Spark 1.1There is real reason for investors to feel excited about the progress Meta has made with Muse Spark 1.1. It has a better model and is now looking to monetize it to boost returns on its AI spending. Still, the true test will be what Meta shows over time in its actual financials.
Investors should monitor the company’s future earnings calls for data on how much revenue Muse Spark is bringing in. It may take time for Meta to provide detailed information on this, and the company’s near-term earnings reports may not give much insight.
Meanwhile, recent gains indicate investor optimism, and sentiment around Meta has not been this high in quite some time.
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I keep buying Meta, and the reason is embarrassingly simple: it is the only trillion-dollar AI story I can find where the buyer of the compute and the seller of the ads are the same company. Every time I add, I am buying a business that owns its picks, its shovels, and the mine.
The $13 billion, 1-gigawatt data center expansion in Alberta is what pushed me from “position” to “conviction.” Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is partnering with local energy infrastructure to bypass grid constraints and control its own natural gas power, then running open-source Llama-family models on top of it. That is a vertical stack. Zuckerberg has already said Meta is “rolling out more than one gigawatt of our own custom silicon” alongside AMD and NVIDIA systems. The cloud giants I would otherwise own are renting land, waiting on substations, and marking up someone else’s GPUs.
The Numbers That Keep the Buy Button Warm Start with the earnings report. Q1 2026 delivered EPS of $10.44 versus a $6.66 consensus, a 56.79% beat and the fifth straight quarter of EPS beats, on revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33.1% year over year. Ad impressions rose 19% and average price per ad climbed 12%, so both sides of the ad equation are expanding at once.
Then the margins. Meta ran an operating margin of 41% while pushing $18.997 billion of capex in a single quarter. The full-year 2026 capex range is $125 to $145 billion, and the business still generated $32.226 billion of operating cash flow in the quarter. That is what a fortress income statement looks like.
Then the price you pay for it. Meta trades at a 22 trailing P/E and a 20 forward P/E, with a PEG of 0.889 and an analyst target of $828.17 against a $631.48 quote.
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Why Not AWS or Azure I own the cloud story indirectly through Meta, so I do not need to reach for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). Microsoft is down 23.05% over the trailing year and 20.17% year to date, and it announced 4,800 job cuts amid pressure to show AI ROI. Amazon has run up 11.01% over one year, but it is raising $25 billion in a bond sale to finance AI capex. Meta is funding its buildout out of its own ad engine while carrying interest coverage of 71.48x. When the compute layer commoditizes, the rentiers get squeezed and the owner-operator keeps the spread.
The Risk I Actually Respect Reality Labs bled $19.2 billion in 2025, and youth-related litigation trials scheduled in 2026 may result in material losses. Capex could also outrun revenue if AI monetization slips. What keeps my thesis intact: 3.56 billion daily active people and business AI conversations that grew from 1 million to more than 10 million per week in a single year. That is the distribution monopoly paying the infrastructure bill.
What Keeps the Buy Button Active Prediction markets currently give a 76.5% probability that Meta will outvalue OpenAI by year-end 2026. I am paying for the machine that produces it: owned power, owned silicon, owned models, owned audience. As long as that stack holds together at a 20 forward multiple, my finger stays on the buy button.
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Tesla stock TSLA fell more than 3% on Monday as investors continued to wait for further progress in the company's artificial intelligence initiatives.
The electric-vehicle maker's stock traded at $393.56 during Monday's session.
The broader market also came under pressure after President Donald Trump announced he was reinstating what he described as a blockade on Iranian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 132 points, or 0.3%.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving.”
Tesla investors have increasingly focused on the company's artificial intelligence strategy, particularly the rollout of its autonomous robotaxi service and the commercialization of its Optimus humanoid robot.
The company launched its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June 2025. While the launch generated significant attention, the expansion has progressed gradually.
The service now operates in several cities but remains substantially smaller than Alphabet's Waymo.
Tesla has yet to begin commercial sales of Optimus, although it is preparing manufacturing capacity for the humanoid robot.
On Friday, the company released a video showing the decommissioning of the Model S and Model X production lines at its Fremont, California, facility.
According to Tesla, the process of removing tooling and infrastructure took less than 50 days, allowing the factory to prepare for Optimus production while continuing to manufacture Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
Tesla announced in January that it would discontinue production of the Model S and Model X to repurpose manufacturing capacity for robots. Chief Executive Elon Musk has described humanoid robots as a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.
Despite those plans, investors continue to await updates on the latest version of Optimus as competing robotics companies.
Tesla is expected to provide additional updates on Optimus when it reports second-quarter earnings on July 22.
Jefferies raised its price target on Tesla to $400 from $375 while maintaining a Hold rating, citing the company's stronger-than-expected second-quarter automotive deliveries.
Tesla reported second-quarter deliveries of 480,126 vehicles, including 467,800 Model 3 and Model Y units, exceeding the consensus estimate of around 410,000 vehicles.
Following the delivery results, Jefferies increased its second-quarter earnings before interest and taxes estimate to $1.45 billion, representing a 5.1% margin.
The firm also increased its automotive revenue forecast to $21 billion, including $250 million in zero-emission vehicle credits and $500 million in leasing revenue.
Jefferies expects total group revenue of $28.7 billion and group EBIT of $1.45 billion for the quarter.
Earlier this month, RBC Capital raised its price target on Tesla to $500 from $475, incorporating a premium tied to a potential merger with SpaceX while also updating its standalone valuation for the automaker.
Analyst Tom Narayan said the revised target reflects "a 25-30% premium to current trading levels (and a 15% premium to the stock's intrinsic value) owing to a potential SpaceX acquisition scenario based on unconfirmed media reports."
According to RBC, the most likely transaction structure would involve an all-stock acquisition in which SpaceX acquires Tesla at a 20% to 30% premium.
The firm said the rationale centers on operational collaboration, including proprietary chip manufacturing, Megapacks for data center energy requirements, and joint AI training and fleet management services.
RBC also said Tesla shareholders would likely require a premium because Musk "would control 50%+ of a combined entity, well above the ~20% stake he currently holds in Tesla."
Excluding any potential SpaceX acquisition premium, RBC valued Tesla at $435 per share.
Within that valuation, Narayan increased the firm's robotaxi segment valuation by 20%, citing a higher forecast for the global robotaxi fleet and describing the business as "currently Tesla's most robust opportunity" within a $4.2 trillion total addressable market.
SpaceX Bear Stays BearishNoble has described himself as one of the biggest bears on the SpaceX IPO. Weeks after the company’s public debut, he remains firmly bearish.
"SpaceX went public at more than 90x revenue, and the insiders who bought in at a fraction of today’s price are about to start selling their shares to you," he wrote in a recent Substack post.
Noble highlights the fact that SpaceX has never turned a profit in its history and lost around $5 billion last year.
"At the offering you were paying more than 90x revenue and at the peak the market briefly valued it near 140x," he wrote. "Shares have given back the entire squeeze and slipped below their opening print."
‘Biggest Misallocation’Noble, who previously ran the Fidelity Overseas Fund, said he has watched every disaster since being Lynch’s auto analyst in 1981.
"I am telling you this is one of the great wealth transfers of my lifetime packed into a fancy narrative."
The investor emphasized SpaceX’s lack of profits and its limited initial float, which helped fuel demand from investors drawn to the company’s well-known name.
When it comes to hype, Noble can’t help but compare SpaceX to another Elon-Musk led company, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA).
"Tesla was the biggest misallocation of capital in the history of stock markets. SpaceX may have just surpassed it."
SpaceX Stock Hits New LowsOn Monday, SpaceX stock hit new lows since going public, with shares trading as low as $137.68.
The stock was priced at $135 at the IPO before opening for trade at $150. Investors who bought in at the IPO are still profitable, but potentially not for long.
Other investors who bought in after shares went public are now down on their investment unless they were able to sell in the first days of the space stock being public.
Analysts have come out with price targets on SpaceX stock with many pointing to the potential long-term valuation and high addressable markets for the company.
Others like Noble have been quick to point out the lack of profits and financials to justify the large share price and multiples. A lack of profits could keep SpaceX from being in the S&P 500 for years, with the index not changing its rules to include the stock.
Image via Shutterstock
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Other than PepsiCo's food business, both beverage giants are comparable to one another. Berkshire Hathaway's ownership of Coca-Cola may keep it top of mind for investors.
Alphabet Inc. (GOOG - Free Report) appears an attractive pick, as it has been recently upgraded to a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). This upgrade primarily reflects an upward trend in earnings estimates, which is one of the most powerful forces impacting stock prices.
The sole determinant of the Zacks rating is a company's changing earnings picture. The Zacks Consensus Estimate -- the consensus of EPS estimates from the sell-side analysts covering the stock -- for the current and following years is tracked by the system.
Individual investors often find it hard to make decisions based on rating upgrades by Wall Street analysts, since these are mostly driven by subjective factors that are hard to see and measure in real time. In these situations, the Zacks rating system comes in handy because of the power of a changing earnings picture in determining near-term stock price movements.
Therefore, the Zacks rating upgrade for Alphabet basically reflects positivity about its earnings outlook that could translate into buying pressure and an increase in its stock price.
Most Powerful Force Impacting Stock PricesThe change in a company's future earnings potential, as reflected in earnings estimate revisions, and the near-term price movement of its stock are proven to be strongly correlated. The influence of institutional investors has a partial contribution to this relationship, as these big professionals use earnings and earnings estimates to calculate the fair value of a company's shares. An increase or decrease in earnings estimates in their valuation models simply results in higher or lower fair value for a stock, and institutional investors typically buy or sell it. Their transaction of large amounts of shares then leads to price movement for the stock.
Fundamentally speaking, rising earnings estimates and the consequent rating upgrade for Alphabet imply an improvement in the company's underlying business. Investors should show their appreciation for this improving business trend by pushing the stock higher.
Harnessing the Power of Earnings Estimate RevisionsEmpirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock movements, so it could be truly rewarding if such revisions are tracked for making an investment decision. Here is where the tried-and-tested Zacks Rank stock-rating system plays an important role, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions.
The Zacks Rank stock-rating system, which uses four factors related to earnings estimates to classify stocks into five groups, ranging from Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) to Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive externally-audited track record, with Zacks Rank #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .
Earnings Estimate Revisions for AlphabetFor the fiscal year ending December 2026, this company is expected to earn $14.32 per share, which is unchanged compared with the year-ago reported number.
Analysts have been steadily raising their estimates for Alphabet. Over the past three months, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company has increased 24%.
Bottom LineUnlike the overly optimistic Wall Street analysts whose rating systems tend to be weighted toward favorable recommendations, the Zacks rating system maintains an equal proportion of "buy" and "sell" ratings for its entire universe of more than 4,000 stocks at any point in time. Irrespective of market conditions, only the top 5% of the Zacks-covered stocks get a "Strong Buy" rating and the next 15% get a "Buy" rating. So, the placement of a stock in the top 20% of the Zacks-covered stocks indicates its superior earnings estimate revision feature, making it a solid candidate for producing market-beating returns in the near term.
You can learn more about the Zacks Rank here >>>
The upgrade of Alphabet to a Zacks Rank #1 positions it in the top 5% of the Zacks-covered stocks in terms of estimate revisions, implying that the stock might move higher in the near term.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction) and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) both delivered blockbuster AI quarters, but the results hide a widening strategic gap. Alphabet is a hyperscaler feeding its own custom chips into a $460 billion cloud backlog. Broadcom is the merchant silicon supplier riding that same wave. Same AI supercycle. Very different positions in the value chain.
TPUs Feed the Cloud. Broadcom Sells the Picks and Shovels. Google’s Q1 FY2026 landed with EPS of $5.11 against a $2.63 consensus, a fourth straight beat, on revenue of $109.90 billion (+21.8% YoY). Google Cloud was the star at $20.03 billion (+63% YoY), with Sundar Pichai noting Gemini is now “processing more than 16 billion tokens per minute via direct API use”. CapEx more than doubled to $35.67 billion, with 2026 guidance calling for $175 to $185 billion. That spend flows straight into Google’s own TPU stack.
Broadcom’s Q2 FY2026 was strong. EPS of $2.44 beat by 1.79%, and AI semiconductor revenue jumped to $10.80 billion, up 143% YoY. Hock Tan guided Q3 AI revenue to $16.0 billion, over 200% YoY. The catch: that growth depends on a handful of hyperscalers, and one of them, Google, is a customer aggressively vertical integrating.
Hyperscaler Kingpin vs. Silicon Middleman Alphabet bypasses the hardware margin squeeze entirely. It designs TPUs, monetizes them through Cloud, and layers a sovereign Gemini ecosystem on top. Multi-gigawatt compute deals with Anthropic plug directly into that stack. Broadcom sells accelerators and Ethernet switches into the same customers but faces rising foundry costs and a crowded custom ASIC field with Marvell competing for socket wins.
Lens GOOG AVGO Forward P/E 25x 20x Trailing P/E 27x 60x YTD Return +13.65% +4.53% 1-Month -0.56% -25.03% The valuation asymmetry is stark. Google trades cheaper on forward earnings than a fabless chipmaker with severe customer concentration risk. AVGO shed roughly a quarter of its value in the last month, and founder Henry Samueli unloaded over 1 million shares on June 24 alone. That is not typical rebalancing.
The Anthropic Compute Race Decides Who Pulls Ahead Watch Google Cloud’s backlog conversion, Gemini Enterprise’s 40% QoQ growth in paid MAUs, and whether TPU capacity keeps absorbing internal AI workloads. For Broadcom, keep an eye on whether the $16 billion Q3 AI target holds if any hyperscaler pulls back custom ASIC orders in favor of in-house silicon.
Why I’d Take the Vertical Stack Over the Silicon Middleman I lean toward Google. Owning the chips, the cloud, the models, and the distribution surface gives it pricing control that a merchant chipmaker cannot replicate. At 25x forward earnings with a $426.62 analyst target, the risk-reward looks cleaner than paying 60x trailing for AVGO’s exposure to the same customers Google is quietly disintermediating. For me, the hyperscaler kingpin monetizing its own chips end-to-end is the better place to sit in 2026.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Google didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
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Amazon's (AMZN +1.57%) valuation has done something surprising. Even though a 29 price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio may not sound cheap, the stock is coming off its lowest valuation since the financial crisis.
The company operates in competitive industries such as retail and cloud computing, and its spending on capital expenditures (capex) likely scared some investors. Nonetheless, Amazon's P/E ratio does not drop below 30 often. Knowing that, has the sell-off in the consumer discretionary stock gone too far, or are Amazon's days of commanding high valuations over?
Image source: Amazon.
The state of Amazon It is easy to understand why Amazon's capex spending concerns many investors. It pledged to spend $200 billion on capex in 2026 alone. This is not unusual in today's tech industry but is more than the $175 billion to $185 billion from Alphabet or the $125 billion to $145 billion pledged by Meta Platforms.
Moreover, despite its $143 billion in liquidity, the capex spending reduced free cash flow to just $1.2 billion over the trailing 12 months. Consequently, it sold bonds this year to help cover capex costs, including an issuance of at least $25 billion this month. Considering its massive liquidity, such an act would have seemed unimaginable until recently.
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However, investing in artificial intelligence (AI) seems to have improved the company's performance, including in its e-commerce segments. In the first quarter of 2026, net sales rose by 17% year over year, close to double the 9% annual increase reported in Q1 2025.
In the same quarter, net income increased by 77% year over year, even more than the 64% annual increase in Q1 2025. Considering that growth, investors might perceive 29 times earnings as a historically cheap valuation. Still, analyst estimates call for a more modest 21% increase in profits for the year, a significant slowdown that could cool investor enthusiasm about the lower P/E.
Considering Amazon's history, capex spending, and improved results, Amazon appears to be in oversold territory. Admittedly, the P/E ratio shows the stock has not become a screaming bargain, as the heavy capex spending and coming slowdown in profit growth may understandably give investors pause.
Nonetheless, Amazon is clearly making that investment to stay competitive in AI. Moreover, seeing its P/E ratio fall below 30 is unusual, even with the more conservative profit growth forecasted by analysts.
Additionally, the capex spending has helped boost net sales growth and brought massive profit increases in recent quarters. Assuming net income grows by well above 21%, Amazon stock could regain some traction.
Ultimately, such an improvement is speculation, and it is unclear whether Amazon has bottomed. Still, if one wants to begin building an Amazon position, now is probably a good time to start that process.
The market is selling Amazon over falling free cash flow, a $200 billion capex program, and circular AI financing, whilst I see all three as reasons to buy. Advertising generated $17.24 billion in the quarter, with software-like margins that the market still values as part of a retailer. Retail automation is a second catalyst. AWS backlog stands at $364 billion (excluding a $100B+ Anthropic deal), with diversified customers and custom silicon driving competitive advantage.
Microsoft (MSFT +2.02%) is having an uncharacteristically bad year thus far in 2026. Entering trading this week, it's down around 20% as the market has been bearish on software stocks as a whole, related to concerns about artificial intelligence (AI). Rightly or wrongly, Microsoft's stock has struggled to turn things around.
Later this month, however, on July 29, the company reports its all-important earnings numbers. They will be particularly crucial as they will also be its year-end numbers, and its guidance for the year ahead could be of most importance to investors, as it may offer proof that the business isn't in as bad a shape as its recent stock performance might suggest.
While Microsoft's stock isn't trading at its 52-week low anymore, its valuation remains modest. Is now a good time to buy the tech stock, before it posts its latest numbers?
Image source: Getty Images.
Microsoft's track record hasn't been good of late When a company releases its latest earnings numbers, it can have a significant impact on its share price. Unfortunately, in Microsoft's case, the last three times it posted earnings, the stock would proceed to fall in value, sometimes sharply.
MSFT data by YCharts
While this might seem bad, expectations may also be a bit lighter for the business going into the upcoming earnings release, given how much negativity may be priced in at this stage. Recently, Microsoft also announced significant layoffs and a "reset" for its Xbox business amid underwhelming results. Between AI-related concerns, worries of cloud business Azure slowing down, and now an Xbox turnaround, there are an increasing number of things that investors will be watching for when Microsoft reports its latest earnings numbers this month.
Why Microsoft stock still looks worth buying, despite the uncertainty Buying a stock based on how it might do when it releases earnings is dangerous and risky. A company can post strong numbers, and there may still be something that the market didn't like about the guidance or some commentary that came out. The market can be fickle that way. And just because the stock has a good or bad track record after earnings in the past doesn't mean that trend will continue.
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Investing based on fundamentals and focusing on a long-term outlook is going to yield safer results for investors than looking at just the short term. Whether or not Microsoft beats expectations for the current quarter is irrelevant. What matters is that with a reasonable valuation (the stock trades at 23 times its trailing earnings), a robust business, and promising growth opportunities, Microsoft can make for a fantastic stock to buy right now.
LOS ANGELES, July 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP reminds investors of the upcoming August 11, 2026 deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in the class action filed on behalf of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: MSFT) common stock between May 1, 2025 and January 28, 2026, inclusive (the “Class Period”).
IF YOU SUFFERED A LOSS ON YOUR MICROSOFT INVESTMENTS, CLICK HERE TO INQUIRE ABOUT POTENTIALLY PURSUING CLAIMS TO RECOVER YOUR LOSS UNDER THE FEDERAL SECURITIES LAWS.
What Happened?
On January 28, 2026, Microsoft announced disappointing results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026, revealing that growth of its cloud computing platform, Azure, had slowed suddenly and fallen below analyst expectations due primarily to computational capacity constraints, as the Company had diverted central processing unit and graphics processing unit capacity to applications for its generative AI chatbot, Copilot, and AI-related research and development. The Company also revealed that its capital expenditures had increased to $37.5 billion during the quarter, causing the Company’s capital expenditures for the first six months of fiscal 2026 to expand to $72.4 billion compared to $88.2 billion for the entirety of fiscal 2025, largely due to AI-related research and development and Copilot development and capacity buildout costs. Additionally, Microsoft disclosed that the amount of paying users of Copilot was well below analyst estimates.
On this news, Microsoft’s stock price fell $48.13, or 9.99%, to close at $433.50 per share on January 29, 2026, thereby injuring investors.
What Is The Lawsuit About?
The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that Microsoft’s Copilot family of products had experienced significant brand positioning, user experience, usage, data siloing, computational capacity, organizational, and interoperability problems; (2) that Microsoft’s flagship proprietary AI model ranked well below competitors on a number of benchmark tests; (3) that Microsoft needed to increase by billions of dollars its capital expenditures and divert GPU and CPU capacity away from fulfilling demand for its profitable Azure services in order to improve the competitive positioning of its critical Copilot family of products and increase its AI-related R&D; (4) that, as a result of the foregoing, Microsoft had failed to convert a significant percentage of its commercial Microsoft 365 users to paid Copilot subscriptions and the Company’s Copilot offerings had lost market share to rival products, a trend that was increasing; and (5) as a result, Defendants’ positive statements about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.
If you purchased or otherwise acquired Microsoft common stock during the Class Period, you may move the Court no later than August 11, 2026 to request appointment as lead plaintiff in this putative class action lawsuit.
Contact Us To Participate or Learn More:
If you wish to learn more about this action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact us:
Charles Linehan, Esq.,
Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP,
1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100,
Los Angeles California 90067
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 310-201-9150,
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Visit our website at www.glancylaw.com.
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If you inquire by email, please include your mailing address, telephone number and number of shares purchased.
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Contact Us:
Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP,
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The engine of a Boeing Dreamliner 787-9, operated by Riyadh Air, is displayed at the 55th International Paris Airshow at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 17, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more
PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) - Saudi startup Riyadh Air is studying the purchase of between 25 and 30 more Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab 787 Dreamliners by exercising most of its contractual options with the U.S. planemaker, and may also top up its Airbus order book, industry sources said.
The carrier, which last month staged its first commercial revenue flight, ordered up to 72 Boeing Dreamliners in 2023, including 39 definitive orders and options for a further 33.
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An announcement that Riyadh Air is converting the bulk of those options into outright purchases could come as early as next week's Farnborough Airshow, the sources said, though they cautioned that details were still being discussed.
Riyadh Air and Boeing both declined to comment.
Riyadh Air also has 25 Airbus A350-1000 long-haul jets on order along with options for another 25. Industry sources say some of those may also be converted into firm orders. Airbus declined comment.
Reporting by Tim Hepher, Editing by Louise Heavens
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Nvidia (NVDA 3.28%) remains the top company in the world, with a market cap of around $5 trillion. This year, however, there has been a bit less excitement around the business, particularly as new growth stocks have taken center stage, including Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPCX 5.47%), better known as just SpaceX.
Right now, there's still a fairly large delta between their two valuations. But with Nvidia facing an uptick in competition in the chipmaking business, and with SpaceX eyeing some incredibly huge growth opportunities, the gap could shrink in the future. Will Nvidia still be the more highly valued company in five years, or could SpaceX end up overtaking it?
Image source: Getty Images.
Is Nvidia's stock due for more of a slowdown? Nvidia has been a red-hot stock to own in recent years due to the incredible demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a market that it dominates. Its sales and profits have been soaring, which has enabled it to continue trading at a fairly modest valuation, despite the stock's massive returns. Paying 32 times earnings for a business that's growing at a rate of 85% (in its most recent quarter) doesn't seem like a bad deal at all.
However, this year, the stock is up around 11% thus far. Investors appear to be less excited about the business, perhaps because its market cap is as high as it is and because of worries that a growing number of tech companies are making their own chips, which would lessen demand. Plus, if spending slows down in the broader tech sector, due to concerns about the payoff from AI investments, there could be multiple factors weighing on its future growth rate.
It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to expect Nvidia's stock to generate more modest returns in the near term. And under a worst-case scenario where its growth rate falls significantly, it may even be due for a steep correction.
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Could SpaceX stock take off? SpaceX stock started hot when it began trading last month, but things have cooled off significantly of late, with investors thinking twice about its valuation. It does, after all, trade more on its future expectations rather than its results -- the company is deeply unprofitable, with its net loss during the first three months of the year totaling $4.3 billion, on revenue of $4.7 billion.
But Elon Musk's high hopes for the business, including not only AI-related growth but also the possibility of helping send humans to Mars, could enable the stock's valuation to reach new heights, even if profitability may not be around the corner. Investors already showed a strong willingness to pay a high price for the stock when it began trading, and if it's showing signs of progress toward reaching its goals, that may be the confirmation that growth investors need to believe that it's on the right track and worthy of an even higher price tag.
Some analysts project that in five years, the stock could be generating an incredible $565 billion in sales. Surely, if it gets to those heights, that might be proof that it's doing exceptionally well, and its valuation may be much higher.
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Nvidia's returns may be more modest, but it's likely to remain far more valuable than SpaceX Even though Nvidia's stock may not soar over the next five years, certainly not to the extent that it has over the past five years, I don't think it's likely that SpaceX will become more valuable. The most valuable companies in the world today are those that are also highly profitable. While speculation and hype have enabled SpaceX to command a valuation of around $2 trillion, cracks and doubts have already appeared, with the stock struggling in recent weeks. And this could still be the early innings of a much wider decline to come.
A slowdown in Mag 7 CapEx spending will happen, says John Belton, but he doesn't expect it any time soon. One of the biggest beneficiaries he sees: Nvidia (NVDA), which he considers cheap at its current price.
General Fusion opens on the Nasdaq under GFUZ, backed by more than 200,000 plasma experiments, a TIME's World Number One GreenTech Company ranking, and a framework deal to deploy fusion power in Italy
Issued on behalf of General Fusion Inc.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Equity Insider News Commentary — General Fusion Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: GFUZ) has begun trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GFUZ following the completion of its business combination with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III. This debut makes General Fusion, by the company's account, the first publicly listed fusion company. It arrives with more substance behind it than the typical pre-revenue listing[1]. Built for Our World sets out the broader vision behind the company.
General Fusion is entering the public markets with approximately US$150 million in cash, inclusive of net transaction proceeds from the private placement and trust capital. This capital is expected to fund General Fusion's Lawson program through several key technical milestones, which the Company aims to complete in 2028, with the goal of demonstrating and de-risking Magnetized Target Fusion ("MTF") technology in a commercially relevant way.
Key Takeaways
General Fusion is now trading on the Nasdaq under GFUZ after completing its business combination with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III. The company reports more than 200,000 plasma experiments conducted over two decades, culminating in its LM26 demonstration machine, which recently showed compressional plasma heating. General Fusion was ranked first on TIME's list of the World's Top GreenTech Companies of 2026 and has signed a framework agreement to advance fusion deployment in Italy. General Fusion's Chief Executive Officer, Greg Twinney, has framed the listing as the start of a new chapter built on a long operating history rather than a standing start. The company points to more than twenty years of real-world testing, dozens of testbeds and prototypes, and more than 200,000 plasma experiments as the foundation for its current work[1]. This is General Fusion offers a closer look at that operating history.
That work has converged on Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), the company's large-scale MTFdemonstration machine operating at its Vancouver facility. General Fusion recently reported meaningful plasma heating to electron temperatures of approximately 8.4 million degrees Celsius (roughly 0.72 keV), driven by the compression of a plasma with a lithium liner. The company describes these results, which have been submitted for peer review and are publicly available, as significant progress toward the key 1 keV electron temperature milestone and a validating indicator for its practical approach to fusion[1].
Recognition, Governance, and a Path to Deployment
Beyond the technical results, General Fusion has been accumulating the kind of external validation that public-market investors tend to weigh. The company was ranked first on TIME's list of the World's Top GreenTech Companies of 2026, a recognition of its leadership in fusion energy that landed shortly before its market debut[1].
The company has also strengthened its board of directors by adding experienced governance from the power and energy-transition sectors. In addition, General Fusion has taken concrete steps toward commercial deployment. General Fusion and Renexia S.p.A., a Toto Group company specializing in renewable energy, announced a framework agreement to advance the commercial deployment of General Fusion's fusion energy technology in Italy. This agreement represents an early signal that the company is thinking about where fusion power might actually be sited and sold[1]. The Path to Commercialization details how the company plans to move from demonstration to deployment.
A Market That Has Learned to Underwrite the Long Game
General Fusion joins the public markets at a time when investors have grown more comfortable valuing companies based on the strength of their pipelines, partnerships, and technical milestones rather than near-term earnings. The companies powering, supplying, and paralleling the AI-driven energy buildout offer a useful frame of reference.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) sits at the source of the demand story. Its AI accelerators are driving a new generation of data centers that draw many times more power than their predecessors, putting fresh urgency behind every credible path to abundant clean energy[2]. Vertiv Holdings (NYSE: VRT) supplies the power and cooling infrastructure those facilities depend on, reporting first-quarter 2026 net sales of US$2.65 billion, up 30% year over year on strong data-center demand[3]. GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV) builds the generation and grid equipment behind the buildout, booking US$2.4 billion in data-center equipment orders in its Electrification segment in the first quarter of 2026, more than in all of the prior year[4]. And Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB), which itself came public through a SPAC business combination, shows how the market has learned to underwrite frontier technology through long development arcs, converting years of technical milestones into record quarterly revenue of just over US$200 million and a contracted backlog above US$2.2 billion while its next-generation Neutron rocket is still in development[5].
None of these companies is a fusion pure-play, and their inclusion here is illustrative rather than comparative in any financial sense. But they help explain why a company like General Fusion can list on the Nasdaq before generating commercial revenue: the market is increasingly willing to price the option value of technologies that, if they work, could reshape the energy system.
For now, General Fusion's task is to keep converting laboratory milestones into public-market credibility. The company has been explicit that meaningful technical hurdles remain, including reaching the 1 keV and 10 keV heating milestones and ultimately achieving the Lawson criterion. With GFUZ now trading, investors can track that progress in real time.
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Company Contact
General Fusion Investor Relations: [email protected]
North America toll-free voicemail: +1 (833) 717-1519 | Outside North America: +1 (236) 253-6968
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Sources
[1] General Fusion Group Ltd. - Begins Trading on Nasdaq Under GFUZ (company primary release), syndicated via GlobeNewswire; includes references to LM26 compressional heating results and TIME GreenTech ranking
[2] Bloomberg, How AI Firms Are Redesigning Data Centers to Meet Energy Demand, June 1, 2026 (comparative market context)
[3] Vertiv (VRT) first-quarter 2026 results coverage: net sales of US$2.65 billion, up 30% year over year on data-center demand
[4] GE Vernova First Quarter 2026 Financial Results (company release), April 22, 2026
[5] Rocket Lab First Quarter 2026 Financial Results (company release), May 7, 2026
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In a recent note, Belton pointed to Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 and xAI’s Grok 4.5 as evidence that frontier AI developers continue to rely on Nvidia’s infrastructure to train their most advanced models.
The AI Race Is Still Running On Nvidia“Both models were trained on NVDA infrastructure, suggesting there is still a clear value proposition for using NVDA’s stack,” Belton wrote.
While those in-house silicon efforts continue to expand, Belton argues the latest generation of frontier models shows Nvidia remains the platform of choice for the industry’s most demanding AI workloads.
Why Meta MattersBelton also sees another reason Nvidia has outperformed the broader semiconductor sector to start the third quarter.
He pointed to reports suggesting Meta’s AI infrastructure spending in 2027 could come in well above Wall Street expectations, reinforcing the view that the hyperscaler capital expenditure cycle is far from over.
That matters because hyperscalers account for roughly 50% of Nvidia’s business, according to Belton.
“The market has become concerned about the durability of those revenues,” he wrote, noting that many hyperscalers are operating around break-even free cash flow. Meta’s expanding infrastructure ambitions, however, provide greater near-term visibility into AI spending, even if longer-term questions remain.
Competition May Be Nvidia’s Biggest AdvantageBelton’s most notable takeaway is that Nvidia doesn’t necessarily need one dominant AI winner. Instead, he argues, competition among leading AI labs is a positive.
“Fragmentation in the LLM space is a good thing for NVDA,” Belton wrote, adding that a winner-take-all market for AI models would be less attractive for Nvidia over the long run.
For Nvidia investors, that means every breakthrough from companies like Meta, xAI, Anthropic or others isn’t just another milestone in the AI race—it could also reinforce demand for the infrastructure powering it.
Image via Shutterstock
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Nvidia NVDA stock declined on Monday, even as fresh announcements on artificial intelligence infrastructure spending reinforced expectations of continued demand for the chipmaker's products.
Shares of Nvidia were down 3.2% at $204.12 in trading.
The decline broadly tracked weakness in the wider market, with the Nasdaq Composite falling 1.4%. However, Nvidia outperformed the broader semiconductor sector, as the PHLX Semiconductor Index fell 4.8%.
Despite Monday's move, Nvidia has significantly lagged the broader chip sector this year.
Through Friday's close, the PHLX Semiconductor Index had gained 75%, while Nvidia shares were up just 12%.
The latest AI infrastructure announcement came from Meta Platforms, which said on Monday it would increase spending on its Louisiana data center to more than $50 billion.
Meta, alongside SpaceX, is one of Nvidia's major customers and uses the company's hardware to train its latest artificial intelligence models.
John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, said in a Barron's report continued competition among AI model developers could benefit Nvidia.
“Fragmentation in the LLM [large language model] space is a good thing for Nvidia. While they still have an opportunity to grow share with [Claude developer] Anthropic, it isn’t necessarily a great thing for Nvidia longer term if the model-as-a-service space starts to look like a winner take all market.”
Wall Street also remains broadly optimistic on Nvidia despite the stock's relative underperformance.
According to FactSet, the company now trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of less than 20 times, while the average analyst price target stands at $313.39.
Mizuho Securities analyst Vijay Rakesh reiterated an Outperform rating and a $300 price target on Saturday, arguing that Nvidia would benefit from an expected $1.2 trillion in data center capital expenditures next year.
Tech strategist Dan Ives also expressed confidence in Nvidia during an interview with CNBC, dismissing the recent weakness in the stock.
According to Ives, investors have recently shifted their attention toward memory stocks, creating what he described as the "shiny new toy" effect.
“You’ve seen so many of these names, when the ones that are actually at the center, whether it’s the hyperscalers or Nvidia… those are actually the ones, to some extent, almost in the penalty box.”
Valuation, earnings and supply remain key focusIves argued that there is a disconnect between market performance and the companies driving AI development.
“The reality is, there’s one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution, that’s by the godfather of AI the revolution, Jensen of Nvidia.”
According to Koyfin data, Nvidia's forward price-to-earnings ratio has recovered to around 21.2 after falling to 19.6 last week, levels last seen in January 2019.
Ives also pointed to the importance of the upcoming earnings season in assessing AI monetization.
“When you look at memory, where is memory with Nvidia? Where's memory without hyperscalers? This all plays into what's going to be a crucial earnings season in Q2 for monetization.”
He added that demand for AI chips continues to exceed available supply.
“I continue to see chip demand far outstripping supply,” estimating the demand-to-supply ratio at “15-to-1.”
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The JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF (NASDAQ:JEPQ) is doing something that should not really work, paying roughly a 10.5% distribution yield while its share price grinds toward record territory in a Nasdaq-100 rally. JEPQ shares recently traded near $60, up about 8.5% year-to-date, and the fund still owns NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) alongside the rest of the megacap tech cohort. For income-hungry investors watching the 10-year Treasury sit at 4.54%, JEPQ looks like the answer to a prayer. It is a trade with real trade-offs.
JEPQ holds a defensive slice of the Nasdaq-100, tilted toward lower-volatility names but still anchored by the tech giants. It then sells upside through equity-linked notes that write out-of-the-money call options on the index. The premiums collected become the monthly distribution. When tech grinds higher slowly, JEPQ collects premium, and the underlying stocks appreciate. When tech rips, JEPQ collects the same premium but the options get called away near the strike, which caps participation in the rally.
The Yield Is Real. So Is the Opportunity Cost. The distributions are not marketing. JEPQ has paid every month for its entire history. The trailing 12-month total is $6.26 per share, and the July 2026 payment was $0.63658. Those checks are variable, not fixed. The February 2024 distribution was $0.34167, roughly half the most recent one, because option premium tracks volatility. Calm markets pay less; jumpy markets pay more.
Year to date through July 10, JEPQ returned 8.5% in total, while the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ), which tracks the same index JEPQ tracks, returned 16.3%. Over one year, JEPQ is up 22% against QQQ’s 29%. Add the JEPQ distributions back, and the gap narrows but does not close. Over five years, JEPQ is up 85% in price versus QQQ’s 102%, and QQQ’s number does not include its dividend either.
NVIDIA shows the cost best. NVIDIA is up 8% year-to-date and 24% over the past year. Every time NVIDIA runs, JEPQ’s calls get called against those gains. The fund converts what would have been NVIDIA capital appreciation into an option premium check that lands in your account in the first week of the month.
The Recovery Problem Nobody Mentions Premium-income ETFs have an asymmetry that shows up in drawdowns. When the Nasdaq falls, JEPQ falls with it (the option premium cushions a little, but not much). When the Nasdaq rebounds, JEPQ participates only up to the call strike. You take most of the downside and a fraction of the upside on the way back. In a sideways or slowly-rising market, this is fine, even good. In a sharp V-shaped recovery, it is punishing, and the fund can take years to reclaim old highs that QQQ retook in months.
Distributions are largely taxed as ordinary income rather than qualified dividends, which makes JEPQ a natural fit for IRAs and a lousy one for high-bracket taxable accounts. The 0.35% expense ratio is fair for an actively managed options-overlay product, though meaningfully higher than QQQ’s cost.
Who Should Actually Own This JEPQ makes sense as a 5% to 15% sleeve for retirees and near-retirees who need Nasdaq-flavored exposure but want the return in cash, monthly, rather than in eventual capital gains. It also works for investors who genuinely want to spend the distributions rather than reinvest them, because reinvesting a 10% yield into a capped-upside vehicle is a slow way to underperform the index it draws from.
Younger investors trying to compound for 20 or 30 years should own QQQ or a broad-market fund instead. Trading away tech’s long-run upside for monthly checks you do not need is the wrong direction on the risk-return curve. The catch is what you give up to earn that yield.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
After a year-long bear market, an almost 20% decline year-to-date, and sell-offs after four of its past four earnings reports, options traders are striking a decidedly bullish tone heading into Netflix's earnings on Thursday.
Call volumes doubled puts in back-to-back sessions Friday and Monday, with almost three times as many calls bought versus puts by midday Monday, according to data from ThinkOrSwim. At the same time, one of the most popular trades was selling at-the-money puts.
The technical picture may be helping. At around $75, Netflix is trading about on par with where the stock was when it ended its pursuit of Warner Brothers Discovery in February. It was around this level in late 2021 that Netflix began a sharp, 80% selloff before a multi-year recovery that peaked at $134 in June last year.
"Netflix is now testing a rising 200-week moving average as well as the $70 prior resistance-turned-breakout level from late 2021," Todd Gordon, founder and CIO at Inside Edge Capital, said in an email. "Should this $70 technical support hold, it may be time to consider changing the channel back to NFLX."
Options pricing currently implies a 7.6% swing after earnings, compared to the average realized move of 7.4% the past year, according to Cboe LiveVol data. Netflix stock has fallen after four of its last four reports, after rallying three times a row in its preceding three reports.
Media watchers have pointed to a lack of engagement as the company has yet to have a major breakout hit in the last quarter. According to Nielsen, Netflix's share of TV vieweship touched its lowest level in over a year.
Netflix, YTD
"Netflix has not had a breakout hit this year," Rich Greenfield, co-founder and TMT analyst at LightShed Partners, said in a text. "Nielsen stats show they are growing engagement in the U.S. but with sub growth viewership per sub is down modestly. New ad-supported users likely watch less than older ad-free users so mix shift likely explains some of it as well as rising competition."
The most popular contract by volume Monday was the 75-strike put expiring on Friday, thanks in part to one big seller who brought in just shy of $150,000 selling 500 of those puts. Among the 20,000 transactions on that put contract on Monday, 15,000 were likely sales, according to SpotGamma data.
There is never a good time for a stock to be on the losing end of an analyst downgrade or a sinking price target adjustment, but the worst possible scenario has to be just before the publicly traded company steps up with fresh financials. This happened on Monday, with Oppenheimer slashing its price target on Netflix (NFLX +1.48%) from $120 to $100. The leading premium streaming platform reports its second-quarter results on Thursday afternoon.
Wall Street pros aren't perfect. They are human, and not just because they have a tendency to aim lower on earnings projections more often than not. However, knocking down a price target instead of waiting for the actual numbers to come out three days later is intentional. Oppenheimer didn't want to enter earnings season with a higher price target. It might not be a big deal, but let's zoom in for a closer look.
Image source: Getty Images.
Be kind, rewind It's worth noting that Oppenheimer's senior internet analyst, Jason Helfstein, also lowered Netflix's price target three months ago. He slashed his price goal on the shares from $135 to $120 on April 17, the day after the platform's poorly received first-quarter release. It's worth noting that the adjustment occurred after the April report. The price target tweak is coming ahead of the performance report this time around.
Oppenheimer's April downward revision was attributed, in part, to the firm conceding that it had been too ambitious in modeling how a recent price hike could boost Netflix's performance. This week's markdown is slightly more optimistic, despite the price target receiving a $20 haircut.
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Oppenheimer's Helfstein argues that the stock's historically low earnings multiple is baking in the near-term pressures in advertising and consumers shifting to lower-priced subscription tiers. It still sees upside in Netflix stock, especially if it can address recent challenges. He is sticking with his firm's bullish outperform rating on the shares. Even at the new $100 price goal, that represents a healthy 36% of upside from where Netflix entered the new trading week.
Shares of Netflix have tumbled 40% over the past year, with the lion's share of that happening in the last three months. The stock is trading for just 20 times forward earnings, a historical bargain for a stock that has routinely commanded a premium given its sticky engagement, market dominance, and steady all-weather growth.
A major Wall Street analyst talking down a price target just days before a telltale quarterly update isn't a good look, but a closer look shows that it's just adapting to the new reality. As long as the revision still offers upside and a bullish stock rating -- and this checks off both boxes -- it's not as problematic as it might seem.
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Visa (NYSE:V | V Price Prediction) stands as a nearly $700 billion payments giant poised for continued long-term growth. The company’s payments network touched 69.4 billion processed transactions in the quarter, yet it also sits on top of three earlier quarterly provisions of $899 million, $615 million, and $992 million. The disruption story at Visa is showing up quarter after quarter, in cash. This past quarter alone, Visa booked a $707 million litigation provision, which has some investors concerned.
But should they be?
What It Means Visa is still a cash machine. Fiscal Q1 2026 net revenue came in at $10.90 billion, up 14.6% year over year, with non GAAP EPS of $3.17 beating the $3.1423 estimate. Net income came in at $5.853 billion, and cross border volume excluding intra Europe rose 11%, while data processing revenue climbed 17% to $5.544 billion.
The pressure sits beneath that. Full year FY2025 revenue rose 11.34% to $40 billion, but net income advanced only 1.6% to $20.058 billion. That is margin compression at a company built on operating leverage. In Q1 FY26, non GAAP operating expenses grew 16%, faster than net revenue. The $707 million interchange provision explains part of the gap. The rest is spending to defend a network under attack from stablecoins, real time rails, domestic wallets, and agentic commerce.
Market Reaction Shares of Visa stock closed at $326.37 the day of the Q1 FY26 filing and traded at $362.13 on July 2, 2026. Year to date, Visa is up 3.68% against the S&P 500 tracker SPY at 9.22%. Over one year, Visa returned 3.04% versus 20.04% for SPY. The stock is trailing the index it usually rides.
Bear Case The bear case centers on a widening gap between top line growth and bottom line growth, and the reasons that gap is opening.
First, litigation is a recurring line item. Four consecutive quarters of interchange MDL provisions of $992 million, $615 million, $899 million, and $707 million point to a settlement structure that keeps taking bites out of the company’s GAAP earnings. Merchant challenges to interchange are one of the risks Visa flags directly in its filings, alongside complex and evolving global payments regulations, government imposed restrictions on international payments systems, and continued push to lower acceptance costs.
Second, competition is arriving on multiple fronts at once. CEO Ryan McInerney told analysts that “there will be more competition in Europe and globally, including domestic digital wallets and initiatives like Wero and a potential digital euro.” Stablecoin card programs are growing, with volume up nearly 200% year over year in Q2. Visa is positioning as a bridge layer, but bridge economics are not the same as toll booth economics.
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Third, the market is charging Visa a full price for a slowing story. The company’s trailing PE ratio sits at 31, its forward PE is 23, and its price to sales sits at 15.52. Reddit chatter has already zeroed in on the valuation question, with a recurring thread noting Visa and Mastercard “both trading at 28x PE TTM” and sentiment cooling from bullish scores of 62 to 72 in mid June to neutral 50 to 58 by late June.
Fourth, capital return is doing heavy lifting. Visa repurchased roughly 11 million shares at an average price of $342.13 in Q1 FY26, spending $3.8 billion, with $21.1 billion remaining on the authorization as of December 31, 2025. Buybacks flatter EPS – they do not answer whether the interchange model survives the next decade intact.
Bottom Line For long term holders, the question is whether Visa’s payments empire is compounding at the pace the multiple implies. FY2025 said no, as revenue grew 11.34% and net income grew 1.6%.
Now, the company’s Q1 FY26 results suggest Visa’s revenue engine still works, and the litigation and expense drags still bite. Analysts remain constructive with an average target of $398.7, but the stock is lagging the S&P by a wide margin year to date.
The next quarterly filing will show whether the interchange MDL provisions keep landing, and whether Visa’s Value Added Services and stablecoin bridge revenue can outrun the erosion in its core. Until then, the $707 million line item is the one worth watching.
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ToplineJPMorgan Chase & Co. maintained to Forbes on Monday that CEO Jamie Dimon did not know Jeffrey Epstein and never met with him, after the Epstein files raised new questions about Dimon and JPMorgan Chase’s relationship with the late financier—which Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is now investigating.
Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Jamie Dimon speaks at the Statue of Liberty in New York City, on July 1, 2026.
AFP via Getty Images
Key FactsWarren sent a letter to Dimon last week about his ties to Epstein, which the Senate Banking Committee published Monday after the Financial Times first reported its existence late Sunday.
Warren questioned JPMorgan Chase’s “extended business relationship” with Epstein, who was known to have banked with the institution between 1998 and 2013, paying some $8 billion in fees to the bank and opening at least 134 accounts.
Dimon testified in 2023 he never met or knew Epstein, but emails in the Epstein files show Epstein and then-UK Business Secretary Peter Mandelson strategizing on having Dimon urge the UK government not to approve a new tax on bankers’ bonuses—which he ultimately did, though it’s unclear if he was at all influenced by Epstein and Mandelson to do so.
Warren also cited a 2010 email in which Epstein’s assistant asked the financier about a meeting with Mandelson, Dimon and JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. spokesperson Patricia Wexler told Forbes that Dimon never attended the 2010 meeting and the bank "found no evidence that he was even invited to attend,” also saying about the UK policy, “Jamie regularly speaks his mind on bad, anti-growth policy and has his own views. At no point did he take counsel from [Epstein], directly or indirectly.”
What to Watch forWarren’s letter asks Dimon for a response by July 24, though that is not legally binding. More information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan Chase could also come out on July 23, when the House Oversight Committee will interview Staley as part of its ongoing probe into Epstein and his alleged crimes.
Forbes ValuationForbes values Dimon’s net worth at $3 billion as of Monday morning.
What Has JPMorgan Chase Said About Epstein?Dimon “never met with [Epstein], never emailed him, and was not involved in any decisions about his account. There are over a million pages of emails and other documents that have been produced in this case and not one comes even close to suggesting otherwise,” Wexler told Forbes in an email Monday, referencing litigation that has been brought against JPMorgan Chase by the U.S. Virgin Islands and Epstein accusers. “Any association with the man was a mistake and we regret it, but we would not have continued doing business with him had we believed he was engaged in ongoing crimes,” Wexler added about the bank’s relationship with Epstein, noting it stopped doing business with him in 2013, which she said was “years before his federal sex trafficking arrest and years after the government had damning information they kept from us.”
Dear Mr. Dimon: I am writing to request information regarding JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (“JPMorgan”) extended business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and your knowledge of the bank’s activities. You have maintained that you don’t recall knowing anything about Jeffrey Epstein and did not know Epstein was a client of JPMorgan prior to his 2019 arrest. But according to new information released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Mr. Epstein was in touch with former U.K. Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to discuss the possibility of you calling then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling regarding a tax on bankers’ bonuses—a call you reportedly made. These resurfaced emails and related reporting raise serious questions regarding the extent of the bank’s relationship with Epstein, and your knowledge of these ties. It is critical that Congress and the American public fully understand the extent of any interactions the bank and you had with Epstein.
Epstein’s client relationship with JPMorgan spanned from 1998 to 2013, overlapping with your tenure as CEO, which began in 2006. During this period, Epstein would become a highly profitable client for the bank. In 2003, JPMorgan is reported to have made $8 million in fees off Epstein, “the biggest revenue generator” among a certain class of investor clients. Epstein (and his companies and associates) opened at least 134 accounts, processed over $1 billion in transactions, and brought in several lucrative clients. Additionally, Epstein reportedly developed close relationships with several top JPMorgan executives, including Jes Staley, who was then the head of JPMorgan’s private banking division and is often reported as once being one of your long-standing “lieutenant[s].”
JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein landed the bank in legal trouble. In 2023, the bank agreed to pay “$290 million to sexual abuse victims of Jeffrey Epstein who claimed that the bank ignored warnings about the disgraced financier.” In addition, JPMorgan “agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that it did nothing to deter a sex-trafficking operation that Mr. Epstein ran from his private island in the U.S. territory.” In neither case did JPMorgan admit to wrongdoing or liability.
As part of those legal challenges, lawyers uncovered emails between Jes Staley and Epstein suggesting that you planned to meet with Epstein. In June 2009, for example, Epstein asked Staley via email if he “want[ed] to organize either you, or you and Jamie, quietly” at “71st Street,” Epstein’s New York mansion. Lawyers also identified a February 2010 email exchange between Epstein and his assistant, Lesley Groff, discussing an apparent “evening appointment” with you: Groff asked Epstein, “Shall I have Lynn prepare heavy snacks for your evening appointments with [redacted attendee], Jes Staley and Jamie Dimon?” During a 2023 deposition regarding your knowledge of the bank’s interactions with Epstein, you were repeatedly asked whether you ever met Epstein or if any JPMorgan employee had raised any information about Epstein to your attention. You stated, “I have never had an appointment with Jeff Epstein. I’ve never met Jeff Epstein. I never knew Jeff Epstein. I never went to Jeff Epstein’s house. I never had a meal with Jeff Epstein.” You also said that you “had never even heard of the guy, pretty much” prior to 2019.
Yet newly released emails by the DOJ and subsequent reporting reveal additional information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan—including an effort to push you to weigh in on British tax policy on behalf of JPMorgan. According to reports, several emails indicate that in December 2009, Epstein and then-U.K. Business Secretary Peter Mandelson advised one another on how to approach the U.K. Treasury regarding a proposed one-time, 50% tax on bankers’ bonuses above £25,000. For example, on December 15, Epstein asked Mandelson if the proposal could be limited to cash bonuses, rather than the more valuable, non-cash compensation, such as share options. Minutes later, Mandelson responded that he was “[t]rying hard to amend.” In a follow-up exchange, Epstein appears to direct Mandelson to “amend it, deliver the message personally to [D]imon.”
In other email exchanges between Epstein and Mandelson, the two men appear to strategize as to how you, as JPMorgan’s CEO, could apply pressure on then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who proposed the tax. On December 17, Epstein asked Mandelson if “jamie,” apparently referring to you, should call Darling one more time, to which Mandelson advised, “Yes and mildly threaten.” And on December 29, you reportedly made the call. As Darling recounted in his memoir, “Mr. Dimon was very, very angry.. he said that his bank bought a lot of UK debt and he wondered if that was now such a good idea. . . . He went on to say they were thinking of building a new office in London but they had to reconsider that now.” It is unclear what influence, if any, Epstein’s engagement with Mandelson had—directly or indirectly—on your decision to call Darling.
Furthermore, files released by the DOJ reveal that the redacted individual from Lesley Groff’s February 2010 email about a proposed meeting between you and Epstein was, in fact, Peter Mandelson. In full, Groff asks Epstein, “Shall I have Lynn prepare ‘heavy snacks’ for your evening appointments with Peter Mandelson, Jes Staley and Jamie Dimon? Or is this to be a nice sit down dinner at 9pm?”
In light of this new reporting and the release of new materials by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, I seek additional information regarding JPMorgan and your relationship with Epstein. I request answers to the following questions no later than July 24, 2026:
1. Did you, or any other JPMorgan employee, direct or otherwise collaborate with Epstein to lobby U.K. officials regarding the bankers’ bonus tax proposal? If so, was Epstein compensated by you, Jes Staley, or JPMorgan, directly or indirectly, for this service?
2. Did you ever call then-Chancellor Darling regarding the U.K. bankers’ bonus tax?
3. Did Epstein or any JPMorgan employee, advise you to “mildly threaten” then-Chancellor Darling to reduce the bonus tax? If applicable, which JPMorgan employee?
4. Please provide copies of JPMorgan’s policies and procedures related to retaining external lobbyists in both the U.K. and U.S.
5. Provide copies of any communications, including but not limited to emails, texts, or phone records, between you and Peter Mandelson, Jes Staley and Alistair Darling regarding the U.K. bankers’ bonus tax proposal.
6. During Epstein’s 15-year long relationship with JPMorgan, you served as CEO for about seven years. At one point, Epstein became one of JPMorgan’s most profitable clients – opening at least 134 accounts, processing over $1 billion in transactions, and recruiting other wealthy clients. You have repeatedly denied under oath that you did not know Epstein existed until his 2019 arrest and that you have never met with Epstein. In your experience, is it typical that a CEO would not have any awareness of their firm’s top clients?
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Warren
Ranking Member
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
73% want retirement decision-making made simpler with 91% looking for in-plan guaranteed income options
, /PRNewswire/ -- J.P. Morgan Asset Management today released its 2026 Defined Contribution (DC) Plan Participant Survey Findings, providing insights into how participants engage with their retirement plans across life stages given ongoing economic uncertainty. The findings highlight growing expectations, especially among younger generations, for more guidance and support in navigating retirement planning decisions, along with continued interest in ways to strengthen plan experiences and retirement outcomes over time. Published every other year, the survey is designed to provide financial professionals with a deeper understanding of how participants view their retirement plans and overall financial picture.
Exhibit 1: There is a clear generational shift toward expecting more employer support in retirement planning and decision-making.
Exhibit 2: Most participants and retirees express interest in in-plan retirement income solutions. "This ongoing research is important for retirement planning conversations because it captures direct feedback from participants at every stage of the retirement journey," said Alyson Frost, Head of Retirement Insights at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. "Workplace plans matter to participants, and many still do not feel confident making the right decision on their own. They want retirement decision-making made simpler, and they welcome support from their plans in turning savings into retirement income."
New this year:
Retired participants. Retired DC plan participants were surveyed to understand how they navigated their transitions into retirement and whether they wish they had done anything differently during their saving years. The largest share of participants (44%) expects to retire gradually by reducing how much they work over time, but only 12% of retirees report this as their actual transition experience. Social Security trends. The findings compare participant expectations for Social Security's role in covering retirement expenses and when they plan to claim benefits versus retirees' lived experiences. Only 35% believe their Social Security benefits will be enough to cover routine retirement expenses, steadily declining as participants move closer to retirement. Generational insights. The survey goes further than ever before in exploring generational differences in participant behaviors and what they want from their employer plans. 61% of Boomer respondents think their employer has a great deal or some responsibility to help them save for retirement, compared to 86% of Gen Z respondents. Key insights from this year's research include:
Make it easy. Most want retirement decision-making made simpler, and younger generations increasingly expect their plans to provide it. Seven in ten (73%) participants wish they could "push an easy button" and fully delegate their retirement planning and investing, up from 55% in 2016. Demand for retirement income solutions is climbing. 91% express interest in in-plan guaranteed retirement income solutions, and 75% of those surveyed would likely keep assets in-plan if it offered an income solution. Most participants know they are falling short. 59% of participants think they should be contributing more, and 63% of retirees wish they had contributed more while working. 53% of participants do not know how much they need to save to retire securely. Plan design features are resonating. 96% of participants who were defaulted into their plans and 97% who had their contributions automatically escalated report being satisfied. Plan leakage is closely tied to financial shocks. 45% of participants who take a loan do so to cover unexpected expenses or credit card debt. Participants without emergency savings are almost 70% more likely to have taken a plan loan or withdrawal. "This year's survey results highlight opportunities to help more participants achieve the retirement they have earned. It is clear that many want more guidance on how to use their plans effectively. Continued advancements in plan design, savings tools, and both accumulation and decumulation solutions are helping to close this gap and enhance how participants think, act and engage with their retirement plans," said Meghan Conklin, Vice President, Retirement Insights at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
For more information about the survey findings, please visit the DC Plan Participant Survey Findings dedicated website.
Methodology
In January 2026, we partnered with Greenwald Research, a market research firm based in Washington, D.C., to conduct an online survey of 1,716 DC plan participants. To qualify for the study, each respondent had to be employed full time at a for-profit organization with at least 50 employees, be at least 18 years old and have contributed to a 401(k) plan in the past 12 months.
An online survey was also conducted of 512 retired DC plan participants. To qualify for the study, each respondent had to consider themselves retired from their primary career/job and had contributed to their employer-sponsored retirement plan.
Survey results have been weighted by age, gender and household income to reflect the overall makeup of the general population of 401(k) plan participants. In a similarly sized, random sample survey of general population respondents, the margin of error (at the 95% confidence level) for the total population in this study would be plus or minus approximately 2.5 percentage points.
In a similarly sized, random sample survey of general population respondents, the margin of error (at the 95% confidence level) for the total participant population in this study would be plus or minus approximately 2.5 percentage points and it would be plus or minus approximately 4.4 percentage points for retired participants.
About J.P. Morgan Asset Management
J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with assets under management of $4 trillion (as of 9/30/2025), is a global leader in investment management. J.P. Morgan Asset Management's clients include institutions, retail investors and high net worth individuals in every major market throughout the world. J.P. Morgan Asset Management offers global investment management in equities, fixed income, real estate, hedge funds, private equity and liquidity. For more information, visit: www.jpmorgan.com/am.
About JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading financial services firm based in the United States of America ("U.S."), with operations worldwide. JPMorgan Chase had $4.6 trillion in assets and $360 billion in stockholders' equity as of September 30, 2025. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management. Under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands, the Firm serves millions of customers in the U.S., and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients globally. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.
JPMorgan Chase and Co. (JPM), a Wall Street bank, has reduced its price target for MiniMax Group Inc., a Shanghai-based artificial intelligence model developer, f
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Social Security benefits come with inflation protection, but the tax formula attached to those benefits does not. For retirees with pensions, IRA withdrawals, taxable investment income, or municipal bond interest, a larger benefit can quietly mean a larger federal tax bill. The result is a tax rule from the 1980s that reaches more retirees every year.
That detail is the core problem. The thresholds that decide whether none, part, or up to 85% of your benefits are taxable sit at $25,000 and $34,000 for single filers, and $32,000 and $44,000 for joint filers. They have not moved in more than forty years. Meanwhile, the 2026 Social Security COLA of 2.8% pushed the average retired worker’s benefit to about $24,852 a year, while the maximum monthly retirement benefit at age 70 rose to $5,181, or $62,172 a year. Inflation drags more retirees across fixed lines every year.
What the Tax Actually Costs You The mechanic is often called “provisional income,” though the IRS uses the term combined income: adjusted gross income, plus tax-exempt interest, plus half your Social Security. Cross $34,000 as a single filer or $44,000 as a joint filer, and the taxable portion can keep rising until as much as 85% of benefits are included in taxable income.
Consider a common case. A married couple collecting $48,000 in combined Social Security plus $30,000 from a traditional IRA sits at $54,000 of combined income. Under the IRS formula, about $14,500 of their benefits is taxable. In the 12% bracket, that is roughly $1,740 in federal tax tied to Social Security benefits. A single retiree with $24,000 in benefits and $25,000 of IRA withdrawals would have about $7,050 of taxable benefits, or about $846 of tax at a 12% marginal rate.
For many middle-income retirees, the federal tax tied to Social Security is more likely to land in the high hundreds or low thousands, depending on filing status, deductions, and other income. We will use $1,500 as the working number, which is closer to the joint-filer example above and still large enough to matter in a retirement budget.
Three Ways to Generate $4,000 of Replacement Income Conservative tier, 3% to 4%. $1,500 divided by 0.035 equals about $43,000 of capital. This is the dividend-growth lane: blue-chip consumer staples, healthcare, and broad dividend-focused funds. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) raised its quarterly dividend to $1.34 in 2026, extending its streak to 64 consecutive years of increases. Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) raised its quarterly payout to $0.53 earlier this year. Qualified dividends may receive 0%, 15%, or 20% long-term capital gains rates, but they still count in adjusted gross income and therefore still affect the Social Security tax formula.
Moderate tier, 5% to 7%. $1,500 divided by 0.06 equals about $25,000. Regulated utilities, net-lease REITs, and preferred shares often sit in this range. Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) says it is targeting 5% to 7% growth through 2029, off its 2025 guidance midpoint. Realty Income (NYSE:O) declared its 670th consecutive monthly dividend this spring at an annualized $3.246 per share. REIT distributions are often nonqualified and taxed as ordinary income, though some may include return of capital.
Aggressive tier, 8% to 12%. $1,500 divided by 0.10 equals $15,000. Business development companies, mortgage REITs, and option-income funds live here. The capital required is smaller, but the trade-off is higher risk. Payouts are often taxed as ordinary income, principal can erode, and taxable distributions can push combined income higher, which may make this tier counterproductive for retirees trying to limit Social Security taxation.
The Trap Most Retirees Miss Municipal bonds feel like the obvious answer. The Schwab Municipal Bond ETF (NYSEARCA:SCMB) charges 0.03% and tracks the U.S. AMT-free municipal bond market. Yet tax-exempt interest is explicitly added back into the Social Security tax formula. Munis may avoid federal income tax on the coupon itself, but they can still make more of your Social Security taxable.
The income types that actually help are more specific. Qualified Roth IRA withdrawals do not count in adjusted gross income. Return-of-capital distributions generally are not taxed immediately, though they reduce basis and can create tax later. Qualified dividends still count in adjusted gross income, but they may be taxed at preferential rates. A Roth-based income plan can replace the tax drag without nudging a Social Security threshold; a taxable account producing ordinary income can push the formula in the wrong direction.
Useful Moves From Here Run your own combined-income number. Add your AGI, your tax-exempt interest, and half your expected Social Security. Where you land relative to $34,000 or $44,000 tells you whether you are solving a tax problem, an income problem, or both. Locate income by tax character first, then by yield. Ordinary-income payers, including many REITs, BDCs, taxable bonds, and traditional IRA withdrawals, are often better held in tax-deferred or Roth accounts when possible. Qualified dividend growers can make more sense in taxable brokerage accounts, where the preferential rate may apply.
Stress-test the COLA. A 2.8% benefit increase that is partly taxed does not produce a full 2.8% after-tax raise. Model the next five years of cost-of-living adjustments against the frozen thresholds before assuming Social Security’s inflation protection will fully reach your checking account.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Key Takeaways Delta's premium revenue rose 17%, while diverse streams generated 61% of total revenues. DAL's loyalty revenues grew 19%, with American Express remuneration reaching $2.4 billion. Delta Sync seatback spans 400-plus aircraft, while fuel and non-fuel costs remain elevated. Delta Air Lines ((DAL - Free Report) ) sits at the center of several trends shaping airline economics in 2026. Fuel volatility, premium demand, loyalty monetization and technology-driven personalization are all visible in its current setup.
For investors, the issue is how much of Delta’s advantage can translate into durable earnings support. United Airlines Holdings, Inc. ((UAL - Free Report) ) offers a peer comparison because network carriers face similar fuel, capacity and international demand tests. American Airlines Group Inc. ((AAL - Free Report) ) provides another reference point where revenue segmentation and cost control remain central to investor debate.
Delta Shows Premium Travel Staying StrongDelta’s revenue base continues to show that higher-yield travel remains firm. In the June quarter, premium revenue grew 17% year over year, while diverse revenue streams accounted for 61% of total revenues, up 2 points from the prior-year period.
Corporate demand also strengthened. Corporate sales grew double digits across all sectors, and premium corporate sales rose more than 25%, helped by demand for Delta Comfort and Delta Premium Select. That mix matters because airlines are no longer competing only on volume. Carriers with more premium exposure and better customer segmentation may be better positioned to defend revenue quality when fuel spikes or macro conditions become less predictable.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for sales shows year-over-year growth for the third quarter of 2026, fourth quarter of 2026, full-year 2026 and 2027.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
DAL Loyalty Model Is Becoming More ValuableDelta’s loyalty ecosystem is becoming a larger part of its investment story. Loyalty and related revenues grew 19% in the June quarter as SkyMiles engagement expanded beyond air travel and deeper into partner activity.
American Express remuneration reached $2.4 billion in the quarter, up 16% year over year. The growth was supported by accelerating card acquisitions and the seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth in cardholder spend.
The value of the model is that it extends Delta’s economics beyond the seat sale. Enhanced travel benefits with American Express, partner activity and higher member engagement can help reduce dependence on purely cyclical airfare demand.
Delta AI Tools Deepen Customer ReachTechnology is becoming part of Delta’s revenue and loyalty strategy. Delta Sync now supports logged-in experiences across onboard channels, giving the company more ways to understand customers and tailor engagement during the trip.
Delta Sync seatback is on more than 400 aircraft, with a log-in rate of more than 40%. Delta Sync Wi-Fi log-in rates are approaching 50%, and about 30% of those customers remain in the platform.
Delta also plans to begin installing Amazon Leo low Earth orbit satellite technology on 500 aircraft starting in 2028. The broader point is not connectivity alone. Better logged-in engagement can improve personalization, retailing and long-term customer value.
DAL Reflects the New Margin BattlegroundDelta’s results also show why airline profitability remains exposed to external shocks. Adjusted fuel expense rose 77% year over year in the June quarter, while adjusted fuel price increased 75% to $3.93 per gallon.
The September-quarter outlook assumes an all-in fuel price of approximately $3.15 per gallon, including a refinery benefit of 5 cents per gallon. The refinery can help offset some pressure, but it does not eliminate fuel risk.
Cost discipline is equally important. Non-fuel cost per available seat mile increased 6.8% year over year in the June quarter, and wage, crew-related and recovery costs remain elevated. Delta is biasing capacity lower to protect margins, underscoring that the industry’s battleground is increasingly about profitability per seat, not just filling aircraft.
Delta Ratings Fit a Trend-Driven StoryThe bottom line is that Delta has several constructive trend signals, but fuel and cost volatility keep the story balanced. Premium demand, loyalty growth and technology-led personalization support revenue durability, while cost inflation limits the margin for error.
DAL currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). That ranking fits a stock with favorable business drivers but enough earnings sensitivity to prevent a more decisive near-term signal. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Style Scores are more supportive. DAL has a Value Score of A, Momentum Score of A and VGM Score of A, suggesting attractive value and trading characteristics across the Zacks Style Score framework. Its Growth Score of C tempers the picture, making the stock a trend-positive airline name that still requires discipline around costs, fuel and execution.
Key Takeaways Delta's rally reflects resilient demand, premium revenue growth and improving earnings sentiment. Fuel and non-fuel costs climbed sharply, narrowing upside after Delta's strong rally.Management still expects full-year 2026 earnings per share in the band of $6.50-$7.50. Delta Air Lines (DAL - Free Report) has rallied sharply, helped by resilient demand, premium revenue growth and improving earnings sentiment. The stock’s setup is no longer a simple cheap-airline recovery trade.
For investors comparing DAL with United Airlines (UAL - Free Report) and American Airlines (AAL - Free Report) , the question is whether Delta’s stronger revenue mix still leaves enough upside after the move.
DAL Valuation Still Looks ReasonableDAL trades at 0.85X forward 12-month sales. That is above its five-year median of 0.53X, so the stock is not as deeply discounted as it once was.
Still, the multiple remains below the Zacks sector’s 1.53X and well below the S&P 500’s 5.07X. That gives bulls a valuation argument, even after a 21.9% three-month gain and a 54.3% rise over the past year.
Delta Has Earnings Support From RevisionsEstimate revisions are a key part of the near-term case. The current fiscal-year earnings estimate has moved 25.7% higher over the past four weeks, a strong signal that analyst sentiment has improved.
Delta also posted a 3.3% positive earnings surprise in the latest quarter, with adjusted earnings of $1.56 per share. Management reaffirmed full-year adjusted earnings guidance of $6.50-$7.50 per share and free cash flow guidance of $3-$4 billion.
The airline has an impressive earnings surprise record, having outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the past four quarters. The average beat is 5.5%.
DAL Faces Real Margin PressureThe caution case starts with fuel. Adjusted fuel expense jumped 77% year over year in the June quarter, while adjusted fuel price rose 75% to $3.93 per gallon.
Non-fuel costs are also elevated. Non-fuel cost per available seat mile increased 6.8% year over year in the June quarter, and Delta continues to absorb wage, crew-related and recovery costs. Airlines can show strong demand and still see margins compress quickly when fuel and labor move against them.
Delta Has Upside but Less Margin for ErrorThe $93 price target compares with a $87.39 stock price, implying remaining upside but not a wide margin of safety. That matters after the rally.
Delta’s premium, loyalty and corporate revenue streams still support the investment case. But the reward-to-risk spread has narrowed, especially for investors uncomfortable with fuel volatility, consumer sensitivity and geopolitical uncertainty.
DAL Scores Favor Value and MomentumThe bottom line is that DAL still looks attractive in several respects, but it is not an uncomplicated buy. The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which points to a balanced near-term setup rather than a decisive bullish call. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Style Scores are more constructive. DAL has a Value Score of A, Momentum Score of A and VGM Score of A, suggesting favorable valuation and trading characteristics. Its Growth Score of C tempers the case, reinforcing that the stock has upside potential but less room for disappointment after its rally.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (TSXV: PTF): Pender Growth Fund Inc. (the “Company” or “PTF”) is pleased to report that the business combination of long-time holding General Fusion Inc. (“General Fusion”) with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III (“SVAC”) (the “Business Combination”), closed on July 10, 2026.
On closing, Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III was renamed “General Fusion Group Ltd”. The combined company’s shares and warrants commenced trading on the Nasdaq on July 13, 2026 under the ticker symbols “GFUZ” and “GFUZW” respectively.
General Fusion's Nasdaq listing comes at an important moment in the evolution of fusion energy. For decades, fusion energy has been regarded as one of science's greatest engineering challenges. Today however, it is increasingly emerging as a strategic priority for governments, the private sector and long-term investors. While commercialization remains a long-term objective, General Fusion's transition to the public markets represents an important milestone not only for the company, but for the broader fusion ecosystem. It reflects growing confidence that fusion technologies are beginning to attract the capital required to accelerate their path toward commercial deployment.
At Pender, we invested in General Fusion because we believe meeting the world's future energy needs will require breakthrough technologies alongside continued improvements to today's energy infrastructure. As artificial intelligence, electrification and digital infrastructure drive unprecedented growth in global electricity demand, the world will require abundant, reliable sources of carbon-free baseload power alongside renewables.
General Fusion's continued technical progress, including the 8.4 million degrees Celsius plasma heating milestone announced last month, provides tangible evidence that fusion has the potential to advance to commercial application. While significant technical challenges remain, we believe milestones such as these demonstrate that fusion is progressing from scientific research toward practical energy solutions. As global electricity demand continues to accelerate, we believe fusion has the potential to become an important component of tomorrow's energy infrastructure, supporting both energy security and the broader energy transition.
A news release issued by General Fusion provides further information and can be found here: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/13/3326335/0/en/general-fusion-becomes-first-publicly-listed-fusion-company
About Pender Growth Fund Inc.
The Company’s objective is to achieve long-term capital appreciation for its investors. The Company utilizes its small capital base and long-term horizon to invest in unique situations, primarily small cap, special situations, and illiquid public and private companies. The Company trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol “PTF”. The Company posts its Reporting NAV on its website, generally within five business days of each month end. Please visit www.pendergrowthfund.com.
For further information, please contact:
Melanie Moore
Vice President of Marketing
PenderFund Capital Management Ltd. [email protected]
(604) 688-1511
Toll Free: (866) 377-4743
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Information
This news release may contain “forward-looking information” (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws) relating to the business of the Company and the environment in which it operates. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as “believe”, “anticipate”, “project”, “expect”, “intend”, “plan”, “will”, “may”, “estimate” and other similar expressions. These statements are based on the Company's expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections and include, without limitation, statements regarding the following (collectively, the “Forward Looking Items”): the anticipated growth in global electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, electrification and digital infrastructure, and the expectation that meeting future energy needs will require abundant, reliable sources of carbon-free baseload power alongside renewables; the expectation that fusion technologies will continue to attract the capital required to accelerate their path toward commercial deployment; the potential for fusion technology, including General Fusion's technology, to advance from scientific research to commercial application and practical energy solutions; and the anticipated long-term potential of fusion energy to become an important component of future energy infrastructure, supporting energy security and the broader energy transition.
The forward-looking statements in this news release are based on various assumptions (collectively, the “Forward Looking Assumptions”), including, without limitation, assumptions that each of the Forward Looking Items will occur or be achieved as described above. The forward-looking information herein is not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict.
A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the Forward Looking Items, including, without limitation, the risk that any of the Forward Looking Items will not occur as anticipated. Additional risk factors are discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Company's annual information form available under its issuer profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking information herein will prove to be accurate as actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in this news release. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking information. Further, the forward-looking information herein is made as of the date of this news release and, except as expressly required by applicable law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Key Takeaways GE is expected to report Q2 revenues of $11.9 billion, up 16.8% year over year, with stable EPS estimates.GE has topped earnings estimates in each of the past four quarters, averaging a 13.6% surprise.GE expects growth from commercial and defense markets, despite cost and supply-chain issues. GE Aerospace (GE - Free Report) is scheduled to release second-quarter 2026 results on July 16, before market open. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly earnings is currently pegged at $1.86 per share on revenues of $11.9 billion.
GE’s second-quarter earnings estimates have been stable over the past 60 days. The bottom-line projection indicates an increase of 12.1% from the year-ago number. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly revenues indicates year-over-year growth of 16.8%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Earnings Surprise HistoryGE Aerospace has an impressive earnings surprise history. The company’s earnings outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 13.6%. In the last reported quarter, it delivered an earnings surprise of 15.5%.
Earnings Whispers for GEOur proven model predicts an earnings beat for GE this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. You can uncover the best stocks before they are reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.
Earnings ESP: GE Aerospace has an Earnings ESP of +2.79% as the Most Accurate Estimate is pegged at $1.91, higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.86.
Zacks Rank: GE presently carries a Zacks Rank of 2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
What’s Likely to Shape GE Aerospace’s Q2 Results?The growing installed base and the higher utilization of engine platforms across commercial and defense end markets are expected to have benefited GE Aerospace in the second quarter. Solid demand for LEAP, GEnx & GE9X engines and related services, supported by growth in air traffic, fleet renewal and expansion activities, is likely to have benefited the Commercial Engines & Services business. Also, the company’s progress under its FLIGHT DECK lean model, including supplier improvements, is expected to have driven its performance. The consensus estimate for the segment’s second-quarter revenues is pinned at $9.13 billion, indicating robust 14.2% growth on a year-over-year basis.
The Defense & Propulsion Technologies business is anticipated to have performed strongly, backed by robust demand for the company’s defense products amid heightened geopolitical tensions and positive airline & airframer dynamics. The growing popularity of GE’s propulsion & additive technologies, critical aircraft systems and aftermarket services is anticipated to have boosted the segment’s performance in the second quarter. The consensus mark for the segment’s revenues is pegged at $3.19 billion, indicating strong 24.6% year-over-year growth.
GE has been making investments to expand and upgrade manufacturing facilities in the United States and overseas. These investments are likely to have enabled the company to boost its operational capacities and cater to the increased demand from its commercial and defense customers. This, along with its focus on operational execution, robust backlog (more than $210 billion at the end of first-quarter 2026) and aim to generate healthy free cash flow, is likely to have bolstered its second-quarter performance.
GE’s multi-year portfolio restructuring actions to rebalance its portfolio toward the aerospace sector allowed it to achieve better operational focus on its core business and financial flexibility. This is expected to have driven its margins and profitability in the to-be-reported quarter.
However, high costs and operating expenses owing to certain projects and research and development activities are likely to have weighed on the company’s margin performance. Supply-chain challenges and labor shortages, especially in the aerospace and defense markets, are likely to have been a spoilsport for the delivery of its LEAP engines.
GE’s Price PerformanceGE Aerospace’s shares are up 12.9% in the past three months against the Zacks Aerospace - Defense industry’s 5.3% decline and the S&P 500’s 8.6% growth. Its peers, Northrop Grumman (NOC - Free Report) and Howmet Aerospace Inc. (HWM - Free Report) , have lost 20.7% and gained 4.9%, respectively, over the same period.
Three-Month Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
GE Aerospace’s ValuationGE is trading at a forward 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 44.30X, higher than the industry average of 32.86X. This elevated valuation could make the stock vulnerable to further pullbacks if market sentiment sours. In comparison with GE’s valuation, Northrop Grumman is trading cheaper, while Howmet Aerospace is trading at a premium. Notably, Northrop Grumman and Howmet Aerospace are currently trading at 18.53X and 49.37X, respectively.
Price-to-Earnings (Forward 12 Months)
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Investment ThesisGE Aerospace's robust and diversified portfolio, encompassing commercial engines, propulsion and additive technologies, along with its strength in the defense aerospace market, is likely to drive its performance. For 2026, GE expects adjusted revenues to grow in the low-double-digit range from the year-ago level.
To add to its strengths, GE continues to reward shareholders with substantial dividends and share repurchases, supported by a strong cash flow and operational excellence.
How Should You Play GE Aerospace Pre-Q2 Earnings?GE Aerospace's strong foothold and solid momentum in the commercial and defense aerospace markets, driven by solid build rates, wide-body aircraft recovery and robust defense budget, bode well for growth. Given the strength in most of its served markets, the company has built a sound liquidity position that supports its shareholder-friendly policies.
Despite its expensive valuation, given the positive analyst sentiment and its growth prospects, the time appears right for potential investors to bet on this company.
Key Takeaways Goldman sees AI adding to inflation before long-term productivity gains emerge.Chips, software and power demand are fueling the next wave of inflation.ETFs such as QUAL, VTV and VIG could help cushion the impact. Inflation remains one of the biggest concerns for investors in 2026, though the catalyst behind the fears has changed over time. Earlier this year, investors were focused on the risk of oil-driven inflation as the Middle East conflict pushed energy prices higher. However, as the conflict de-escalated, diplomatic efforts gained momentum, oil prices retreated and the concerns gradually eased.
Now, a new inflation narrative has emerged, with economists increasingly warning that the global AI boom could create fresh price pressures. Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) cautions that the rapid adoption of AI is likely to fuel inflation globally as supply struggles to keep pace with soaring demand for critical AI components, including memory chips and semiconductors.
According to a Business Insider article, as cited by Yahoo Finance, the Wall Street giant expects the United States to be hit hardest by AI-driven inflation. Goldman forecasts that AI is already adding roughly 20 basis points annually to U.S. core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation. That contribution is expected to more than double to 50 basis points by year-end as AI adoption accelerates and supply constraints persist.
Understanding the Drivers of AI-Driven InflationHigher memory chip prices, software costs and electricity expenses are fueling the next wave of AI-driven inflation. As AI adoption gathers pace, Goldman expects software and accessories prices in the United States to climb sharply, with prices projected to rise about 30% year over year by November. The category also carries greater weight in the U.S. inflation basket, accounting for roughly 1% of core PCE inflation, more than double its share in other developed economies.
The investment bank also expects memory-related inflation to be more pronounced in the United States than in other countries.
Beyond rising chip and software costs, energy is emerging as another major source of inflationary pressure. As AI adoption accelerates, the rapid expansion of data centers is driving a sharp increase in electricity demand. At the same time, sustained increases in energy prices could push up electricity generation costs, further amplifying the broader inflationary pressures associated with the AI buildout.
The outlook is further complicated by geopolitical developments. Renewed tensions in the Middle East, following the collapse of the ceasefire, have reignited concerns over higher oil prices. If energy costs remain elevated while electricity demand from AI infrastructure continues to climb, the combination could intensify price pressures across the economy.
However, there is a silver lining. While AI is expected to generate near-term inflationary pressures, its long-term productivity gains could ultimately help bring inflation lower. The timing, however, remains uncertain, as it is unclear how long the initial price pressures will persist before those disinflationary benefits begin to emerge.
Stay Ahead of Rising Inflation With These ETFsRising inflation headwinds are likely to weigh on investor finances, encouraging a more cautious, risk-aware approach and a reassessment of portfolios. Below, we have highlighted a few ETF areas that investors may consider expanding their exposure to, as the risk of inflation increases.
Quality ETFsAmid market uncertainty, quality investing emerges as a strategic response, providing a buffer against potential headwinds. Investing in such high-quality companies can mitigate volatility for investors.
Investors can look at funds like iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF (QUAL - Free Report) , Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF (SPHQ - Free Report) and JPMorgan U.S. Quality Factor ETF (JQUA - Free Report) .
Value ETFsInvestors can leverage value investing, a strategy particularly compelling in today’s economic environment. Value investing through ETFs offers investors an easy and accessible way to follow this strategy. Value ETFs focus on stocks characterized by strong fundamentals and robust financial health, which trade below their intrinsic value.
Investors can consider Vanguard Value ETF (VTV - Free Report) , Avantis U.S. Large Cap Value ETF (AVLV - Free Report) and Vanguard Small Cap Value ETF (VBR - Free Report) .
Dividend ETFsDividend-paying securities serve as primary sources of reliable income for investors, particularly during periods of equity market volatility. These stocks offer dual advantage safety, in the form of payouts, and stability in the form of mature companies that are less volatile to large swings in stock prices. Companies offering dividends often act as a hedge against economic uncertainty.
Investors can consider Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG - Free Report) , Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD - Free Report) and Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index ETF (VYM - Free Report) , with dividend yields of 1.50%, 3.23% and 2.25%, respectively.
Intel (INTC) shares fell about 3% on Monday even after the chipmaker said it has begun a â¬5 billion ($5.7 billion) investment to expand and modernize its manu
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52-Week Range$155.33▼
$239.10Dividend Yield1.26%
P/E Ratio115.97
Price Target$234.72
The aging of America has made healthcare stocks an evergreen investment theme. It's also a reason for investors to consider looking at real estate investment trusts (REITs) focused on this area. REITs are commonly seen as vehicles for income-oriented investors.
Welltower Inc. NYSE: WELL is a great example. This is the world’s leading residential wellness and healthcare infrastructure company.
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The company has a portfolio of over 2,500 senior and wellness housing communities spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
As of July 13, Welltower had a market cap of over $165 billion, over $100 billion larger than its closest rival, Ventas Inc. NYSE: VTR.
Senior Housing Demand Is Creating a Powerful Growth TailwindSince being interrupted in 2020 by a global pandemic, demand for senior housing has been surging, making REITs in this sector a solid choice for both growth and income.
WELL is up over 160% in the last five years and has delivered a total return (which includes its dividend) of over 230% in the last three years. There’s likely to be more growth ahead. The percentage of the population aged 80+ is expected to accelerate by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4% between 2026 and 2030. That's up from the 1.8% CAGR between 2010 and 2025.
Welltower Inc. (WELL) Price Chart for Monday, July, 13, 2026
This is the shift that patient investors have been waiting on for over a decade. However, with the company having shown such strong growth, it’s fair for investors to wonder if this is a time to buy or wait for a better entry point.
Breaking Down the Numbers Behind Welltower StockIn terms of valuation metrics, REITs have their own language. Two terms matter most for Welltower: net operating income (NOI) and normalized funds from operations (NFFO).
Net Operating Income (NOI) measures how the buildings themselves are performing. Think of it as rent collected minus the cost of running the property (i.e., staff, utilities, maintenance, food service). It excludes corporate overhead, interest payments, and taxes. NOI answers a simple question: Is this real estate portfolio actually making money before any financial engineering happens on top of it?
Welltower's same-store NOI (a comparison using only properties owned during both periods, so acquisitions don't distort the picture) grew 16.4% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026. The senior housing segment alone grew 22.1%. This marked the 14th straight quarter of 20%-plus growth for that segment.
Normalized funds from operations (NFFO) is the REIT industry's substitute for "earnings per share." Regular net income assumes buildings lose value every year through depreciation, the same way a company would write down aging factory equipment.
But real estate often holds or gains value over time. NFFO adds depreciation back into net income, then strips out one-time items like gains from property sales, so investors can get a fair comparison from quarter to quarter.
Welltower reported NFFO of $1.47 per share in the first quarter, up 23% year-over-year. That's the growth rate management uses to justify the stock's premium. Full-year guidance was also raised, with the midpoint moving to $6.28 per share from $6.17.
REIT investors price the stock against NFFO instead. On that basis, Welltower trades closer to 30-40 times forward earnings, depending on where the stock sits. That's still a premium to healthcare REIT peers in the mid-teens to low-20s. Which means that investors have to be counting on enough growth to justify that premium.
How Housing Trends Could Affect Welltower StockWelltower's bet is that the 80-plus population boom starting later this decade will fill its buildings faster than new supply can be built. But that story assumes seniors will actually move into senior housing when the time comes. Research on aging in America suggests that's a more complicated transition than the demographic charts imply.
A Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies analysis found that most seniors want to age in place, and that the U.S. faces an acute shortage of housing options that let them do it, whether that means staying in an existing home or moving to something smaller within their own community.
That distinction matters. "Aging in place" doesn't automatically mean senior housing—often it means retrofitting a current home or downsizing nearby, not relocating into a managed community.
AARP's 2024 national survey backs this up with numbers: 75% of adults 50 and older want to stay in their current homes as they age, and 73% want to stay in their communities specifically. Cost is the biggest obstacle. Nearly half of respondents expect to move eventually for financial reasons, driven primarily by rising mortgage or rent payments, maintenance costs, and property taxes.
Higher Mortgage Rates Are Slowing Senior Housing MovesMillions of older homeowners are sitting on mortgage rates locked in below 4% from the pandemic-era low-rate window. Selling that home to finance a move into senior housing means giving up a historically cheap mortgage payment for market-rate financing on whatever comes next. Even if the new living arrangement itself doesn't require a mortgage, the psychological and financial "sunk cost" of an ultra-cheap rate makes staying put feel safer.
Roughly half of homeowners with mortgages are sitting on rates far enough below current market levels that moving has become financially irrational. That dynamic has kept existing home sales running near 1990s-era volumes despite full employment and rising household income. It's a market where staying put pays.
However, there are early signs that this is loosening. Real estate agents surveyed in Spring 2026 reported that mortgage rate lock-in is becoming less of a factor in sellers' decisions, with sellers increasingly listing due to life circumstances rather than timing the market. But even an aggressive round of Fed rate cuts would likely leave the rate gap for the median locked-in borrower wider than 200 basis points.
Why Both Bulls and Bears Have a Case on WelltowerFor Welltower, this cuts two ways. The bear case: if seniors and their families delay a move because selling the family home feels like giving up cheap financing, occupancy gains could arrive more slowly than the demographic math implies.
The bull case: once a move becomes unavoidable (e.g., health decline, widowhood, a fall), the lack of affordable, accessible alternative housing pushes more of that unavoidable demand toward professionally operated senior housing rather than a DIY solution like an in-law suite or home retrofit, because those alternatives are themselves scarce and expensive to build.
Should You Invest $1,000 in Welltower Right Now?Before you consider Welltower, you'll want to hear this.
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