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Gas on AztecGas on Aztec is known as Fee Juice and is used to pay for transaction costs. This is the same as $ETH on Ethereum. Some apps will handle transaction costs for you under the hood, but if you are using a browser extension wallet, you will not be able to send transactions without it. Fee Juice can be obtained by bridging the $AZTEC token on Ethereum to the Aztec Network L2. This means that under the hood, all activity that happens on Aztec is underpinned by the $AZTEC token bridged into the network. Some bridges like Shield (by human.tech) handle this for you, allowing you to allocate a portion of your bridged transaction to convert into Fee Juice and land in your wallet automatically.

Public vs Private AssetsAssets and transactions on the Aztec Network can be either public or private. If you bridge publicly, your tokens will arrive as public, traceable tokens visible to all. Privately bridging, on the other hand, will give you private assets that are visible only to you. These assets can then be sent privately to another user or wallet without ever revealing who you are, what tokens were sent, how many, or who the recipient is.

Public vs Private GasLike tokens on the Aztec Network, Fee Juice (gas) can also be public or private. The reason for this is that even if what you are sending is private, the gas you spend to execute that transaction could still be visible if you are using public Fee Juice, potentially revealing transaction patterns and activity. Private Fee Juice keeps your entire transaction footprint hidden. When you send a private transaction, you can use private Fee Juice, and when you send a public transaction, you can use public Fee Juice, which means your transaction costs are always aligned with the type of transaction you're making.

Fee Juice in AppsAztec has native fee abstraction, which means apps could let you pay for transactions in any token you want, or cover your fees entirely. Apps like Nyx may choose to cover part or all of a user's transaction costs, or allow you to pay in tokens that are convenient for you. This means you will most likely never see Fee Juice in an app; instead, you'll pay in whatever makes sense for what you're doing, on your terms. Similarly, you might never even see an Aztec wallet at all, because the app itself becomes your interface that you connect to using your MetaMask wallet.

Fee Juice in Browser WalletsIf you're using a browser extension like Azguard, you'll manage Fee Juice directly in your wallet alongside your private and public balances, converting between tokens as needed to cover transaction costs.

When you bridge tokens in, you'll need enough Fee Juice to cover the cost of your first transaction, then you'll need to monitor how much Fee Juice you have available to make transactions. Browser wallets will allow you to send either publicly or privately to other users and will default to using either public or private Fee Juice depending on the type of transaction. Both private Fee Juice and public Fee Juice will appear by default in your token list.

Wrapping upHow you handle Fee Juice depends on where you're transacting: apps can abstract it away entirely and let you pay in any token, while a browser wallet like Azguard puts it in your hands to manage across public and private balances. Match your gas to your transaction, keep private activity private down to the fee, and you move on your terms.

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Aztec Network

Aztec Network

21 Jul

•

xx min read

Introducing Alpha V5The Aztec Network today activated Alpha V5, a major protocol upgrade passed by token-holder governance and executed onchain. Alpha V5 reduces private-transaction proving times by more than 2x compared to the previous version, lowers the cost of a fully private transaction by roughly 50%, resolves the critical issues found in V4, and sees the first wave of apps go live. Users can now send private transactions and earn yield on Aave simply by connecting their Ethereum wallets on Nyx, bridge from Ethereum to Aztec using Shield or TRAIN, privately collect NFTs on RavenHouse, or play Dark Forest Aztec, a hidden-information strategy game in a universe that lives entirely onchain. 

"Alpha V5 continues Aztec's work at the frontier of client-side proving, with cryptographic breakthroughs that cut proving times by more than half this release," said Zac Williamson, Co-founder, Aztec Foundation. "We believe Aztec is now the fastest system in the world for proving a fully private transaction entirely on a user's own device, and every release moves the industry closer to private transactions at public transaction speeds."

As the only decentralized privacy L2, Aztec is the credibly neutral privacy layer for Ethereum. Aztec allows anyone to write smart contracts that include both private and public aspects – every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so no operator, sequencer, or intermediary can see the data. The Alpha V5 proving improvements come from cryptographic advances that make this client-side proving faster than any prior release. The network remains in alpha, but with V5 it is ready for teams to begin building and deploying applications.

Performance - 2.5 second fully private transactions Making private transactions practical comes down to how quickly a proof can be generated on a user's own device, without offloading that work to a server that would learn what the user is doing. On Alpha V5, proving a private token transfer natively now takes approximately 2.5 seconds on a consumer laptop, down from 5.2 seconds on V4, and about 6.8 seconds in a browser, down from 12.5 seconds. Across every measured transaction flow, client-side proving times improved by approximately 2x compared with V4.

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Bench machine: an M2 MacBook (12 cores, throttled to 8). "Native" runs Aztec's C++ proving binary; "WASM" runs the same prover in a browser engine (Node on V8).‍

Alpha V5 lowers ECDSA signature-verification cost by approximately 2x, speeds up Poseidon2 hashing by approximately 3x, and reduces the protocol circuit gate count by approximately 50% (gate count is the number of individual operations a proving circuit must perform, and it is the main driver of how long a proof takes to generate). Each of these lowers the amount of work a device performs to prove a transaction, and the reduction in gate count in particular compounds across every proof the network generates.

Apps - send, receive, and earn privately on EthereumAlpha V5 launches the first wave of apps on a network where privacy is built into the protocol rather than managed by an operator. On other networks that claim privacy, transactions still pass through an operator or node that reads them in plaintext, or depend on a viewing key that a third party holds, so users rely on someone else to protect their data and to decide when it gets disclosed. On Aztec, every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so the app, the sequencer, and any operator never need to see the underlying data. Nyx is one of these apps, allowing users to privately send transactions and privately earn yield on Aave. 

"On Ethereum, everything you do is public. That's why we built Nyx: a private account governed by your Ethereum wallet", said Nikhil, Co-founder of Nyx. "Now you can send, receive and earn in private. Nyx was the first app live on the Aztec Alpha, and we're excited to expand participation to more users with the added stability of Alpha V5."

Other apps on Alpha V5 include Azguard and Nethermind (wallets), Shield, TRAIN, and RavenHouse (bridges), and the Aztecscan block explorers. Also launching is Dark Forest Aztec, a game where users explore a universe, control planets, manage planetary energy, expand territory, and launch attacks through strategic play with private state and hidden actions.

Dark Forest Aztec private universe-building gameplayLower costs, higher security Transaction fees on Aztec come from two main sources: the cost of proving a transaction and the cost of verifying the rollup proof on Ethereum. Alpha V5 reduces both. It lowers the network's proving-cost parameter by 50%, and it reduces the L1 gas required to verify a rollup proof by approximately 40%. Because rollup proofs are verified on Ethereum and that cost is shared across all transactions in a batch, the L1 reduction lowers fees for every user, while the lower proving-cost parameter reduces the per-transaction proving fee directly. Together, these bring the average cost of a fully private token transfer to under a $0.05 transaction cost.

Alpha V5 also hardens the network on several fronts. It resolves critical vulnerabilities found in Alpha V4 along with additional bugs discovered since launch. Aztec's bug bounty program on Cantina also drew more than 234 security researchers to participate. The network remains in alpha, and further bugs may surface as usage grows, but each release has closed the issues found in the last and strengthened the protocol against new ones. With the critical V4 issues resolved and these safeguards in place, Alpha V5 is stable enough for teams to begin building and deploying applications.

AvailabilityAlpha V5 is live now, view the Alpha V5 landing page for a full list of features, performance updates, and live apps to explore. 

About AztecAztec is the only decentralized, privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum. Developers write private and public logic in the same smart contract, and private functions are executed and proven on the user's own device, so no operator sees the underlying data. The protocol is upgraded through onchain governance, and the network settles to Ethereum. For more information, visit aztec.network.

Aztec Network

Aztec Network

30 Jun

•

xx min read

Inside an Aztec TransactionOn Ethereum today, each transaction reveals everything publicly. The token you moved, the size, the timing, the wallet it came from, every action you take. Given the limitations of this type of transparent network, the industry is now focusing on bringing privacy onchain as a top priority. The response to this has mostly been to enable private transactions that shield transfers in various ways. But when we look at how privacy works on Web2, it’s clear that users and developers need granular privacy controls: the ability to decide what is public or private and who is able to see different types of data.

Aztec was built so that one transaction can carry two halves. A private half that runs on your own device and never leaves it, and a public half that the network runs in the open. Apps can choose which aspects are private or public, and users can choose what they want to reveal and when.

This article will follow an example transaction on Aztec: a vote in an onchain election built on Aztec, where who you are and which candidate you chose stay private, while the running tally for each candidate stays public for anyone to verify.

Public and private in one movePicture the vote you cast in our example as two aspects that seamlessly weave together. In the first step, you act in private: an app records your vote on your device and hands the network a proof that the vote is valid without revealing it. In the second, the network acts in public: it checks that proof, then adds one to the chosen candidate's public tally. It is one transaction: one part stays with you, one part goes to the network. Both parts end up recorded onchain, in two separate state trees, one private and one public. The walkthrough below follows how these two aspects work together and what this means for how your transaction lands onchain. 

It starts on your deviceYou open the voting app and connect an Aztec wallet. That first step looks like any onchain app. The difference is inside the wallet. An Aztec wallet carries a private execution environment, the PXE, pronounced "pixie", which runs on your phone or in your browser. The PXE is where the private half of your transaction executes, and where the proof of that work gets made, on your hardware, under your exclusive control.

Every account on Aztec is a smart contract rather than a bare key. That design, account abstraction, allows a wallet to authorize a transaction however its owner chooses without writing an identity onto the network for everyone to read. The wallet is the front door, and on Aztec you can decide if the door is open or closed, who you share your information with. 

The private half runs on your deviceThe voting app is a smart contract with two kinds of functions. The private functions run first, and they run inside your PXE. Your identity and the candidate you picked are the private inputs, and they stay on your device.

The only thing to leave your device is a proof confirming the legitimacy of your vote. Aztec's client-side proving system, Chonk, takes the private execution and produces a zero-knowledge proof: a compact cryptographic receipt that your vote followed the rules, that you are eligible, and have not voted before, while revealing nothing about who you are or who you voted for. Think of it as a sealed ballot the network can confirm is valid without opening it. The network learns only that a legitimate vote happened. It does not learn how you voted, or even which account voted. 

This is the part that used to be too slow to be practical. Generating a proof on a phone was the bottleneck every privacy app hit. Aztec’s Chonk is purpose-built for fast proving on low-memory devices, both natively and in the browser, so the private half runs on the device in your hand instead of on someone else's server.

The public half runs in the openSome elements of a vote should be public. The tally is shared infrastructure, the number everyone relies on to trust the result. Thanks to programmable privacy on Aztec, the app marks that part public. Public functions live on the network and run in the open, the way functions do on Ethereum.

On Aztec, private and public logic live in the same contract, and the developer decides which is which, function by function and variable by variable. Programmable privacy is a dimmer, not a switch. The voting app turns it up on the individual ballot and turns it down on the running tally. That boundary is a design decision written into the contract, and it is the thing no transparent chain and no fixed-privacy chain can offer.

The network checks the proof and runs the public partYour vote leaves your device as a bundle: the zero-knowledge proof of the private half, plus the call to the public function that updates the count. It goes to Aztec's sequencers, a decentralized set of thousands of independent operators, with more than 3,500 of them running the network today.

The sequencers do two jobs at once. They verify the proof of your private vote, confirming it is valid and eligible without seeing the choice behind it, and they run the public function that adds one to the chosen candidate and updates the public tally. Your ballot stays sealed. The count goes up by one for everyone to see. The same proof guarantees you cannot vote twice, even though no one learns which ballot is yours.

Two state trees, both onchainAztec has two main state trees, and both live onchain. One holds private state, the other holds public state, so the full record of what happened sits on the network rather than on any one person's laptop. The two trees store each record in two different ways depending on if it needs to be private or public. 

The private tree uses a UTXO model, the same note-based design used by Zcash. In this model, state is written as commitments: each entry is a sealed record that a valid vote was cast, with the voter and the choice kept private. Just like with Zcash or Bitcoin, you do not edit a private entry in place. You write a new one, and the design stops the same vote from being cast twice (old state is nullified). The vote stays private, and the record of a legitimate vote happening is onchain for the network to check.

The public tree uses an account-based model, the same shape Ethereum uses: values that update in place, readable by anyone. This is where each candidate's tally lives.

One transaction wrote information to both trees. The private tree recorded that you voted, sealed. The public tree recorded the new totals, in the open. Everything is onchain. The difference between the two trees is how much each one reveals.

Every private app on Aztec writes into that same private tree. A vote, a payment, and a payroll run all land in one shared record of activity, so each user's privacy grows stronger as the network grows, instead of splitting into a separate pool for every app.

A block is proposed, and Ethereum records itAztec is an L2 on Ethereum, so everything settles to Ethereum L1. A sequencer on Aztec gathers transactions into a proposed block. Other sequencers validate it before it goes to Ethereum's pending chain. At that point the block sits on Ethereum, ordered and recorded, waiting for its proof. The network has agreed on what happened and the proposed block is just waiting a final proof. 

Anyone can prove itProving a block is its own job, and on Aztec, it belongs to no one in particular. A decentralized, permissionless set of provers competes to take a full epoch, a 32-block stretch of the chain, and compresses it into a single zero-knowledge proof of the entire epoch. Anyone with the hardware can run a prover and bid for the work. There is no privileged operator, no committee you have to trust, no outside network holding a key.

That openness is the whole point of a privacy layer. A system that protects your data but routes it through one trusted server has only moved the exposure rather than removed it. Aztec keeps proving permissionless and your private inputs on your device, thereby avoiding any exposure.

The economics land in the voter's favor too. As an L2 network, Aztec spreads the cost of that one L1 proof across thousands of transactions in the rollup, so a vote costs pennies, not the millions of gas a private proof would cost verified alone on Ethereum.

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Settled on Ethereum, verifiable by anyoneA prover then posts the epoch proof to Ethereum's proven chain, and the Aztec state is final. Ethereum verifies one proof and inherits the correctness of everything inside it. Aztec extends Ethereum and settles to Ethereum, so your hybrid transaction carries Ethereum's security without carrying Ethereum's enforced transparency.

Anyone can now verify that the result is valid and that every counted vote was legitimate. No one can see how any individual voted. The tally is on the shared ledger where it belongs, and your ballot stayed yours the whole way through.

What this unlocksFor the voter, their ballot was never a broadcast. The candidate you chose stayed yours, with no record tying your wallet to a name for anyone to read later, and you can still check that your vote was counted and the result is honest. You took part without your choice becoming data for systems built to act on it.

For a founder, the election app in this walkthrough is easy to implement without needing to build extensive custom code. Secret ballots with a public, verifiable count, in one contract, is a product category that opens up only because the boundary is programmable. You can build governance, elections, and polls where people vote without fear and the result still proves itself. And of course you can build anything that requires both public and private state to work seamlessly together. 

For an infrastructure provider, the same machinery serves clients who need a result they can stand behind without exposing the people who produced it. Selective disclosure lets a client prove exactly what a counterparty needs to see, the count and the integrity of the process, and protect everything else, on their own terms. That is a guarantee a transparent chain cannot make.

A real vote needs two things at once: a secret ballot and a count anyone can check. A transparent chain makes you give up the first to get the second. On Aztec, you get both. The tally settled on Ethereum for anyone to verify, and how you voted stayed yours. The infrastructure is in place, what will you create with it? 
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->Review the Aztec Basics ->Head to the docs and start building today
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Aztec Network

Aztec Network

23 Jun

•

xx min read

The Devil's Bargain - Privacy Without Credible Neutrality Crypto is in a long night. It is no secret that the industry is facing challenging circumstances and there has been a clear consolidation of the industry. Right now we are seeing a focus on real traction, demonstrable value projects shipping practical solutions that will meaningfully reach users. 

Some of that discipline is overdue. However, in times like these the properties that made crypto structurally different begin to look expendable. Decentralization slows you down. It makes upgrades harder. It makes institutional sales harder. It removes the control surfaces that the existing financial world knows how to buy.

We used to accept those costs as the price of building something durable. But, in a famine, they look like unaffordable affectations. Discarding them wholesale, however, is like selling the land out from under our feet.

Permissionless, uncensorable transaction networks with rich composability - this is the clay from which our industry was grown. The long term commercial health of our industry depends on preserving these properties in an age of privacy and institutional adoption.

These trade-offs become more challenging and pernicious when privacy is involved. Privacy is the narrative for crypto in 2026, and for good reason. It’s the missing piece that will deliver the traction and real use-cases that the industry so desperately needs. 

The challenges of decentralization multiply under the constraints of privacy and what we are seeing in the industry is not a pivot, but a complete capitulation of all of the differentiable value that made crypto valuable.

I have spent nearly a decade building a network that marries programmable privacy with decentralization. A network where users keep their data, where applications are composable with one another, where transactions can settle without a privileged party learning everyone’s business or deciding which products are allowed to exist. That required new cryptography, new programming models, new state architecture, new wallets, and a fairly insane number of tradeoffs that are invisible until you try to build the thing yourself. There are easier products to ship. 

A centralized privacy service can give institutions something legible quickly, replicating how the existing financial sector works: a responsible operator, a viewing key, a way to block transactions, a way to explain the whole thing to a risk committee. Some of these products will be useful. Some will be good businesses. But they are not the thing we came here to build.

The Devil’s BargainInstitutional and enterprise adoption is one of the core growth areas in this crypto-winter and the playbook is simple: use the language of crypto as a skin-suit to sell products and services that pattern match onto existing financial rails, with their need for complete visibility, censorship, centralized network operators and all of the liabilities this incurs.

This is a tempting bargain because it shortens the path to adoption. It gives buyers and regulators a shape they understand. A company. A contract. A switch. But the moment you accept that bargain, the system changes character. It may still be encrypted. It may still contain proofs. It may still call itself private. But, it now behaves like and is an operated service. 

There is a party with privileged knowledge and privileged control. Builders must shape themselves around it. Institutions negotiate with it. Regulators may pressure it. Attackers target it. Users ultimately depend on it. By a backdoor I mean something specific: a network or protocol-level viewing key where the product developer does not control who can see their users’ data, especially when paired with network-level controls that can block transactions or ban smart contracts entirely. I do not mean application-level controls. I do not mean user-authorised disclosure. I do not mean a dapp deciding that users must prove something before using it. Regulated applications will need rules. The issue is that the disclosure boundary of your application belongs to somebody else, and the same layer that sees can also decide whether your users are allowed to transact. In short, users lack a platform that has credible neutrality.

The Platform RiskPrivacy on top of centralized rails is fatal. If one party can see everything and stop anything, that party may be treated as responsible for seeing and stopping.

This compounds into substantial platform risk. If an entity builds on top of such a system they must surrender visibility and control to the network operator to satisfy their liabilities without consideration for yours. Decentralization and ultimately credible neutrality is the difference between whether you own durable infrastructure or are renting a service whose rules can change on a whim. Worse, you cannot “just build things”. For novel transaction flows approval must be sought and granted. Tell me, would Ethereum have grown if every smart contract deployment required approval from the Ethereum Foundation?

Privacy needs the same freedom. A private credit market, for example, touches identity, collateral, repayment history, payment flows, liquidation logic, lender disclosures, auditor access and borrower privacy. If every component lives inside a different permissioned service, each with its own operator and viewing assumptions, that is a bureaucratic friction that negates blockchain’s core value proposition; composability.

A decentralized and credibly neutral privacy network prevents the settlement layer from becoming the single place where all surveillance and censorship obligations naturally accumulate. It allows product developers to scope their code to satisfy their own narrow requirements without consideration for the obligations of a centralized operator.

Building for credible neutralityA lot of today’s privacy narrative treats architecture as if it were a detail. It is not. You cannot take a transparent ledger, staple confidentiality onto the edge, add a viewing key for comfort, and expect to get programmable private infrastructure.

If the state model is not private from the ground up you get wrappers, third party tools, data custodians, ad hoc disclosure paths and a pile of assumptions that every application drags into the next. Developers do not get a normal programming model where private contracts can call private contracts and users keep state on their own devices. They do not get composability.

The difference matters. In a real private execution environment, users generate transactions locally. They do not outsource their intent to a third party who learns what they are doing. Private contracts interact through a state model designed for privacy. The network settles proofs without becoming the party that knows everyone’s business. Privacy is part of the architecture.

This is why Aztec has taken so long. We built something that makes programmable private state and decentralised settlement live inside the same system. That means proving systems that run on consumer hardware, a transaction architecture built around local private execution, and a programming model where privacy is idiomatic and just works out of the box.

A centralized service can skip much of this. It can hold the key, run the prover, approve the flow and call the result privacy. It gets to market faster because it is not trying to arrive at the same place.

The edgeAdding decentralization does not make obligations disappear. Applications, issuers, frontends, custodians and regulated businesses will continue to exist in a web of obligations and responsibilities. Anyone pretending otherwise is unserious.

The question is where those obligations live. If they are pushed into the settlement layer, the settlement layer is no longer credibly neutral. It needs visibility into everyone and controls over everyone. 

The better answer is selective disclosure. Users and applications should prove specific facts to specific parties for specific purposes. A regulated application may need to know that a user passed a check, that a transaction satisfies a policy, or that an auditor can inspect a particular flow. None of that requires the base network to hold a permanent key into everyone’s activity.

This will be harder to explain to the existing world. New infrastructure always fails to fit the categories built for the old infrastructure. Bitcoin did not arrive as a neatly regulated bank product. Ethereum did not wait for every lawyer to understand smart contracts. Stablecoins and DeFi forced institutions, regulators and users to develop new language around rails that kept existing.

If the standard for privacy infrastructure is to plug into the old world without changing anything, the answer will always be a service with a backdoor. And the result will be to catch crumbs falling from the tables of the old world.

The market worth buildingThe market we should be building is, well, a market. A private financial system that compounds: assets, liquidity, identity, credentials, credit and applications interacting through a shared settlement layer without forcing users to surrender their data to whoever sits in the middle. 

Traditional finance is built out of vertically integrated information silos. Those silos are its moat. Banks, exchanges, custodians, payment processors and data brokers all benefit from controlling the information that flows through them. A global private settlement layer attacks that advantage directly. It lets liquidity and credentials move while outsourcing information custody to neutral cryptographic infrastructure. 

A company wants a moat. A settlement layer wants surface area. A permissioned privacy provider can ration access, raise fees, exclude applications, shape disclosure rules and define acceptable use around its own risk tolerance. These are products pretending to be networks, and not durable financial infrastructure. What bothers me is this compounding category confusion. Networks adding protocol-level viewing keys and transaction controls are using the same language as decentralised programmable privacy, and commentators are treating them as variations of the same thing. They are not.

We have spent nine years walking the hard road. Now, just as we are close, the market has lost faith. Everyone is reaching for whatever lifeline looks immediate. Some of those lifelines will be real. Some will make money. But if crypto responds to its long night by rebuilding financial privacy as permissioned services, then we will have survived by surrendering the property that made the industry worth building.

Markets can grow when the platform is removed from the position where it can dictate the rules. It would be perverse to forget that lesson while building privacy, the domain where control over information matters most.

The land we tillCrypto is in a famine. The land is struggling. We could sell our land for a pittance and survive the season. But the famine will pass, and when it does the land will blossom again. Without the land we are nothing.

We have struggled immensely to create a permissionless network that can marry privacy with decentralisation: an indestructible network whose users cannot be surveilled and whose transactions cannot be censored. This is the soil we have to grow our crops. To surrender a backdoor or a centralized operator for temporary relief is to sell our land for the price of a stablecoin. And we cannot sell the land.

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Aztec Network

Aztec Network

2 Jun

•

xx min read

Who controls your privacy off-switch?Privacy has become a baseline requirement for L1s and L2s who care about bringing real-world users onchain. Users don't want their activity broadcast to competitors or the general public, but applications operating at scale also need some form of auditability, whether for regulators, compliance requirements, or tax reporting. Selective disclosure resolves that tension: privacy by default, with the ability to prove specific facts when required. What separates these networks is not whether they offer that switch, but who gets to hold it.

Aztec, Canton, Starknet, Tempo, and zkSync all offer some form of privacy with selective disclosure, but under the hood they make fundamentally different architectural decisions about who can see your data and who can turn your privacy off. Those decisions determine whether your privacy stays under your own control or sits behind a switch that someone else operates.

Three questions reveal where these networks actually diverge:

Who sees your data?Who can prove the network followed its own rules?Who controls when something gets disclosed?The answers determine whether your privacy off-switch is held by a policy, by an operator's good behavior, or by you alone through a cryptographic proof. As you'll see in this post, there are legitimate reasons to use each one with different tradeoffs. Aztec is the only network, however, where that switch stays in the user's hands, answering all three questions without putting a permissioned set of operators or a standing viewing key in control of your privacy. That gives developers the flexibility to build apps that comply with applicable laws while still keeping full privacy under the user's control.

This article will compare the privacy approaches of Aztec, Canton, Starknet, Tempo, and zkSync to give developers insight into the privacy tradeoffs of each network.

TL;DRHere’s how each network handles the selective disclosure privacy off-switch, and who has control over your privacy: 

Aztec: Only you can see your data, client-side proofs settled to Ethereum let anyone verify every transaction without trusting an operator, and the off-switch stays in your hands, allowing you selectively share information.Canton: Participant nodes read your data in plaintext, no outside party can verify the global ledger, and your off-switch sits with those nodes rather than with you, since disclosure depends on them staying honest.Starknet: No operator ever sees your plaintext because proofs are generated client-side, and those proofs verify the rules, but your off-switch is a standing viewing key that a designated auditor can use to decrypt and trace your entire history on request.Tempo: The zone operator sees every transaction in plaintext, mainnet validity proofs let anyone verify the zone ran correctly, and the operator holds the off-switch, so you are private from the public but not from the operator.‍ zkSync: The operator reads every transaction in plaintext while a validity proof on Ethereum proves it cannot forge state, and the operator holds the off-switch over who sees what, giving you privacy from the outside world but not from the operator.The Comparison In One View

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Comparing your privacy off-switch Each of these networks offers privacy with selective disclosure, but each rests on a different network design with its own tradeoffs. We have ordered them by who holds your privacy off-switch, starting with designs where a third party controls access to your data and ending with designs where that control stays with you. At the top, the switch sits behind a policy promise and an honest operator, and further down it is replaced by proofs that the user generates and controls.

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CantonCanton keeps data private by controlling viewing permissions for the various actors on its network. A transaction splits into per-participant views, so each party receives only the sub-transactions that name it, and the parts it is not entitled to never reach it. The sequencer and mediator move those views without reading them, which is real privacy against those roles.

However, the data is still read in plaintext by the participant nodes that host the relevant parties, and in the common regulated-asset pattern where the issuer is a signatory on its own token, the issuer's node sees every transfer. The harder gap is verification, because no third party can reconstruct the global ledger, so correctness rests on the confirming nodes staying honest and their keys staying safe. In practice the off-switch sits with those nodes rather than with you, since you cannot see when your data is read and cannot stop it.

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TempoTempo is designed for payments and uses validity proofs to verify that each zone is executing correctly, while still giving the zone operator full plaintext visibility into every transaction within that zone. Privacy comes from Tempo Zones, which are parallel execution environments connected to the Tempo mainnet.

By design, the zone operator has visibility into all transactions within the zone, while users see only their own and the public sees only a proof that the zone is valid. Token issuers set compliance controls, allowlists, blocklists, and freezes, enforced across zones. The mainnet checks each zone's validity, so execution is verified, while the operator still reads every transaction in plaintext and holds the off-switch over what is revealed. Your privacy is from the public, not from the operator.

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zkSync PrividiumzkSync Prividium adds the verifiability piece that Canton lacks. Every batch produces a validity proof settled to Ethereum, so a compromised operator cannot forge state or mint tokens from nothing without also forging a proof, which it cannot do. The tradeoff is that the operator processes every transaction in plaintext and decides who sees what, which means the off-switch stays with the operator and your privacy is from the outside world rather than from the operator itself.

This tradeoff has legitimate uses in high-trust institutional environments. If Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo are transacting on a shared network, a zone where BofA's infrastructure processes BofA-originated transactions satisfies internal control requirements while still delivering genuine ZK privacy from the other banks and the rest of the world. Where this model breaks down is in lower-trust environments where giving an operator full plaintext access and the switch that comes with it holds back product design possibilities. 

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Starknet STRK20Starknet's STRK20 breaks from relying on an operator for privacy. It shields ERC-20 balances and transfers in a privacy pool, and every private transaction carries a zero-knowledge proof generated client-side, so no operator sees your plaintext in order to build it.

Disclosure is where STRK20 diverges from Aztec. To join the Starknet Privacy Pool, you register an encrypted viewing key onchain, and it sits there for the life of your participation. On a regulatory request, a designated auditing entity can decrypt that key and trace your complete transaction history, forwards and backwards. StarkWare calls this ‘not a backdoor’ but a carefully scoped access mechanism, and the safeguard is a policy promise that the auditor decrypts only when required. The privacy is cryptographic, but the off-switch is a standing key that someone else holds and can flip whether or not you are watching.

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AztecOn Aztec your private state lives as encrypted private data that only you can decrypt. The contract developer can choose what state is public and what is private, and whether your encrypted private data is emitted onchain as a private log or shared off-chain instead.

Your transactions get proven client-side on your own device, so no sequencer or operator sees your unencrypted private data. Those proofs settle to Ethereum, which gives the same integrity anchor marketed by Prividium, with every transaction verified and no forged state, but without a single operator who reads your data. The base protocol decentralizes sequencing, proving, and governance, so there is no operator to choose and trust in the first place.

Disclosure is your choice too: you decide who learns your private data, and whether they learn it in encrypted or decrypted form. To grant discovery without readability, you share an app-specific tagging secret that lets an auditor find your data in encrypted form without being able to decrypt and read it. This is enough to prove things calculated from that data, such as a tax basis or a profit and loss figure. Granting permission to actually read the data works differently. There's no per-contract read key you can hand out, because decryption uses your master viewing key, which would unlock all your data across every contract. So instead of sharing a key, you share the data itself, plus a proof that your plaintext is what encrypts to the on-chain ciphertext.

Aztec has true selective disclosure in that you can selectively share it, and nothing else you don’t need to. This is app specific, meaning that private data discoverability access on one app does not grant access on another. Most importantly, the off-switch stays in your hands, and you never need to trust the network to handle access to any of your private data and activity.

This is not just conceptual: here is a working proof-of-concept of this model on Aztec. PrivPNL takes you from private DEX trades through a tagging-key disclosure to a browser-generated ZK proof of your PnL. The auditor verifies a proof while the prover only has to reveal the amount they owe, and your portfolio stays private.

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Users need to hold their own off-switch, not a promise to look awayCanton keeps the switch with the participant nodes that read your data in plaintext, so disclosure rests on those nodes staying honest rather than on anything you control. Tempo similarly gives the off-switch to a zone-based node operator, but allows you to verify the correctness of transactions using validity proofs. Prividium hardens that promise with a proof settled to Ethereum, a real improvement, but the operator still reads every transaction and still decides who sees what. This can work well for large institutions, but small to medium sized enterprises are left with the same privacy as their current banks unless they run their own Prividium nodes. STRK20 moves the switch into a standing viewing key and asks you to trust that a designated auditor reaches for it only when needed. In each of these models the real question is not whether your privacy can be switched off, but who gets to do the switching, and whether you would even know it happened.

Aztec takes the operator and the standing key out of the question entirely. You keep the data, you generate the proof, and you disclose the result, one fact at a time and only when you choose to. The off-switch never leaves your hands, and no operator, auditor, or node can reach it on your behalf. This is one of the benefits of a network that offers fully programmable, privacy-preserving smart contracts that put you in control. 

Selective disclosure is how privacy survives contact with a regulator, and the model you pick decides who can open your history when you are not looking. On Aztec, that answer is no one but you.‍

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Let's BuildDive into the technical details: Try a live demo of selective disclosure on Aztec and read the technical article on how it was built. 

‍Integrate with Aztec: Reach out if you are interested in integrating privacy into your project.

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott said on Wednesday that the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence is strengthening the company's competitive position.

His comments come just one day after OpenAI disclosed that one of its advanced AI agents escaped a controlled testing environment during a cybersecurity evaluation and compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face before it was detected and contained.

"We have a kill switch that stops AI agents that go rogue, so those things don't need to happen, and they wouldn't happen when companies run ServiceNow," McDermott said on CNBC's "Mad Money."

ServiceNow offers a suite of software applications and tools used by companies to manage and automate workflows across IT, human resources, and customer service operations. It's also expanded its cybersecurity presence, in part through the acquisitions of Veza and Armis. Both deals closed this year.

Agentic systems are an increasingly popular corner of AI, going beyond a more simplistic chatbot that answers queries with a written response. These advanced systems are capable of executing multi-step tasks with little to no human intervention.

McDermott said ServiceNow's AI Control Tower is its system that gives companies a central place to monitor, manage, and secure the growing number of AI agents, helping businesses move "from AI chaos to AI discipline."

Shares of ServiceNow rose in extended trading after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue. Even after the jump, however, the stock remains down more than 30% this year after software shares sold off during what investors dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse" amid concerns that advances in AI would disrupt the industry's traditional seat-based business model.

McDermott dismissed concerns that growing AI competition could pressure ServiceNow's profits or cause customers to shorten contract terms.

"If you look at the terms of our contracts, they've actually gotten longer," McDermott said.

Instead, he argued that broader AI adoption should increase demand for ServiceNow's software.

"There's going to be more AI. There's going to be more incidents, and all these things drive more and more volume to ServiceNow," he said. "That's why we increased the full-year guide."

OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment but said earlier that AI is accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities, which means model security and safety need to keep up.

"We are strengthening the containment, monitoring, access controls, and evaluation practices used during model development," the ChatGPT maker said.

ServiceNow (NOW - Free Report) reported $3.99 billion in revenue for the quarter ended June 2026, representing a year-over-year increase of 24%. EPS of $0.90 for the same period compares to $0.82 a year ago.

The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.92 billion, representing a surprise of +1.65%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +4.65%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $0.86.

While investors closely watch year-over-year changes in headline numbers -- revenue and earnings -- and how they compare to Wall Street expectations to determine their next course of action, some key metrics always provide a better insight into a company's underlying performance.

Since these metrics play a crucial role in driving the top- and bottom-line numbers, comparing them with the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated about them helps investors better project a stock's price performance.

Here is how ServiceNow performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:

Current Remaining Performance Obligations(cRPO) - GAAP: $13.20 billion versus $13.03 billion estimated by four analysts on average.Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) - GAAP: $29.00 billion versus the four-analyst average estimate of $28.82 billion.cRPO (Current Remaining Performance Obligations) - Non-GAAP: $13.28 billion versus the two-analyst average estimate of $13.05 billion.Revenues- Subscription: $3.88 billion versus the nine-analyst average estimate of $3.82 billion. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +24.5%.Revenues- Professional services and other: $110 million versus $107.26 million estimated by eight analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +7.8% change.Gross Profit (Non-GAAP)- Subscription: $3.12 billion versus the seven-analyst average estimate of $3.09 billion.Gross Profit (Non-GAAP)- Professional services and other: $-16 million versus the six-analyst average estimate of $10.73 million.View all Key Company Metrics for ServiceNow here>>>

Shares of ServiceNow have returned +6.4% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), indicating that it could underperform the broader market in the near term.

Contrarian Alert: 5 Downgraded Stocks That May Reward Long-Term InvestorsServiceNow NYSE: NOW reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter 2026 results, with executives pointing to broad demand across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, IT operations, customer relationship management and employee workflows.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott said the company delivered “a stunning Q2 print,” citing subscription revenue growth of 23% in constant currency, current remaining performance obligations, or cRPO, growth of 21.5% in constant currency and a non-GAAP operating margin of 29.5%. He said each of those metrics exceeded the company’s guidance.

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Marvell’s AI Moment Raises a Bigger Question for Amazon and ServiceNowServiceNow also reported 123 deals greater than $1 million in net new annual contract value, up 40% year over year. McDermott said ServiceNow AI annual contract value exceeded $1 billion and remains on pace to surpass the company’s target of $1.5 billion by the end of 2026.

AI Demand Continues to Build McDermott and President and Chief Financial Officer Gina Mastantuono both emphasized that AI adoption is becoming a larger driver of ServiceNow’s business. Mastantuono said ServiceNow AI net new ACV growth accelerated sequentially and grew more than 40% quarter over quarter. She added that deals including five or more ServiceNow AI products increased 5.5 times year over year, helping drive a tripling of million-dollar-plus deals.

Microsoft Build 2026 Is Really Just One Big AI Stress TestThe company said the number of customers with agentic AI in production has increased ninefold over the last nine months. Mastantuono said ServiceNow is already tracking ahead of its target for AI to reach 30% of ACV by 2030.

President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer Amit Zavery discussed the company’s level 1 IT service management automation, saying more than 40 customers are already using the product. He said the AI specialists are closing about 80% to 85% of service requests without human interaction, reducing some request resolution times from two days to about 20 minutes.

“It’s end-to-end service request completion, not just giving you the information, but actioning on those requests as well,” Zavery said.

Cybersecurity Becomes a Central Theme McDermott repeatedly framed cybersecurity as a major growth area for ServiceNow, saying the company already has a “$1 billion-plus cybersecurity business” and is the “eighth-largest cybersecurity business in the enterprise.” He said ServiceNow is building what he described as an integrated end-to-end security platform spanning cyber risk and compliance, incident response, exposure management, identity and access security and vulnerability detection.

Executives highlighted the company’s acquisitions of Armis and Veza as important additions to that strategy. McDermott said Veza maps access across human, machine and AI identities, while Armis tracks connected devices in real time. He said the combination strengthens ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower, which is designed to give enterprises visibility, governance and security across AI systems.

Zavery said the company is addressing both pre-breach and post-breach cybersecurity workflows, including vulnerability management, exposure management and security operations center processes. However, he said ServiceNow does not plan to participate in every area of the cybersecurity market.

“Where we have strength, where we have opportunity, and it builds on top of what we did with CMDB, what we did with our post-breach stuff, and now adding the AppSec, as well as the pre-breach things,” Zavery said.

Revenue, RPO and Customer Metrics Mastantuono said second-quarter subscription revenue was $3.877 billion, up 23% year over year in constant currency and 150 basis points above the high end of guidance. Remaining performance obligations ended the quarter at approximately $29 billion, representing 22% year-over-year constant currency growth. Current RPO was $13.2 billion, up 21.5% in constant currency and 200 basis points above guidance.

ServiceNow’s renewal rate was 98% in the quarter. Mastantuono said the company ended the period with 658 customers generating more than $5 million in ACV, with 32 additional customers crossing the $20 million threshold compared with last year.

She said demand was broad across workflows:

Technology workflows had 50 deals above $1 million, including nine above $5 million. ITSM appeared in 15 of the top 20 deals, while ITOM appeared in 18 of the top 20 deals. Security and risk solutions were in 16 of the top 20 deals. CRM and industry workflows were also in 16 of the top 20 deals. Core business workflows were in 12 of the top 20 deals, supported by demand for ServiceNow EmployeeWorks. Mastantuono said business and consumer services led industry growth, with net new ACV growing more than sixfold year over year. Education grew more than 125%, while telecommunications and media grew nearly 40%. Manufacturing also posted strong growth, she said.

CRM, Employee Workflows and AI Control Tower McDermott said ServiceNow’s CRM business has reached $2 billion in ACV, and net new ACV growth in CRM accelerated both year over year and quarter over quarter. He said ServiceNow is increasingly being positioned by partners as an “operational CRM platform.”

He cited customer examples including a large airline using ServiceNow’s voice AI CRM agents to handle 5 million annual customer service voice calls in its first year of production. He also pointed to examples in quoting, loan origination and field operations.

On employee workflows, McDermott described EmployeeWorks as a strategic entry point for enterprise employee experiences, combining Moveworks conversational AI with ServiceNow workflows across HR, IT and workplace services. Mastantuono said EmployeeWorks deal volume grew more than 150% quarter over quarter.

The company also said AI Control Tower is gaining traction. Zavery said more than 500 customers are already live using AI Control Tower within the first six months of launch. McDermott cited customers including Maybank, Tech Mahindra, NTT Data and a Fortune 50 healthcare and retail distributor as examples of organizations using ServiceNow for AI governance and workflow transformation.

Guidance Raised for 2026 ServiceNow raised its full-year 2026 subscription revenue guidance by $15 million at the midpoint, to a range of $15.755 billion to $15.770 billion, representing 21% year-over-year growth in constant currency. Mastantuono said the company expects subscription gross margin of 81%, operating margin of 31.5% and free cash flow margin of 35% for the year.

For the third quarter, ServiceNow expects subscription revenue of $3.975 billion to $3.980 billion, representing 20% year-over-year constant currency growth. The company also expects cRPO growth of 20% in constant currency and an operating margin of 31%.

Mastantuono said some second-quarter upside came from strong U.S. federal demand, which shifted certain on-premises revenue from the third quarter into the second quarter. She said the timing shift did not account for all of the quarter’s outperformance, noting strong net new ACV as well.

Asked about sales cycles, McDermott said he has not seen a negative impact. “If I’ve seen any change, it’s on the positive,” he said, adding that ServiceNow’s relevance is increasing in C-suite discussions around AI, workflow automation and cybersecurity.

About ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW)ServiceNow NYSE: NOW is a cloud computing company that builds enterprise software to manage digital workflows and automate business processes. Its offerings are designed to replace manual work and legacy systems with cloud-based, service-oriented applications that support IT operations, customer service, human resources, security response and other enterprise functions.

The company's flagship product family is the Now Platform, a suite of subscription software and platform services that includes IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), IT Business Management (ITBM), Customer Service Management (CSM), HR Service Delivery, Security Operations and Asset Management.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Reliance (RS - Free Report) came out with quarterly earnings of $6.27 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $5.38 per share. This compares to earnings of $4.43 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.

This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +16.54%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this metals service-center company would post earnings of $4.63 per share when it actually produced earnings of $5.16, delivering a surprise of +11.45%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates two times.

Reliance, which belongs to the Zacks Mining - Miscellaneous industry, posted revenues of $4.63 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 10.93%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $3.66 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates four times over the last four quarters.

The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.

Reliance shares have added about 32.7% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 9.7%.

What's Next for Reliance?While Reliance has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?

There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.

Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.

Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Reliance was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $4.68 on $3.94 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $19.24 on $15.83 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year.

Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Mining - Miscellaneous is currently in the bottom 16% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.

One other stock from the same industry, Alpha Metallurgical (AMR - Free Report) , is yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026.

This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.65 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +271.1%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days.

Alpha Metallurgical's revenues are expected to be $567.3 million, up 3.1% from the year-ago quarter.

PAAS weekly chart shows one-week reversal from lower boundary of large falling channel. Source: TradingView Resistance Builds Toward $53.99 That price area looks like it may soon be joined by the falling 50-day moving average at $49.46. The 50-day moving average represents the next key dynamic resistance zone, which was confirmed as resistance during the advance that established the $53.99 swing high. A sustained move above the 50-day moving average would further strengthen the reversal signal. For the health of the long-term trend, the 200-day moving average would need to be reclaimed. Although at first there might be signs of resistance near the average, the completion of recent corrective price action would suggest that it may be reclaimed. Certainly, if the target from the wedge pattern is to be reached, it will need to be.

Weekly Reversal Adds Bigger-Picture Support The weekly chart shows a declining trend channel defining the boundaries of the decline that followed the $69.99 peak in January. A one-week upside reversal triggered this week, establishing a higher weekly high and higher low. Moreover, it occurred from the lower channel boundary, suggesting an eventual approach to the upper boundary of the falling channel.

That higher-time-frame reversal reinforces the bullish signals on the daily chart and supports the potential for the recent correction to have ended. If PAAS can continue to reclaim the resistance levels above, the weekly reversal could provide the foundation for a broader advance toward the upper boundary of the declining channel.

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM - Free Report) ended the recent trading session at $87.32, demonstrating a +1.3% change from the preceding day's closing price. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.14%. Elsewhere, the Dow saw a downswing of 0.01%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq depreciated by 0.57%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the agribusiness giant had gained 13.66% outpaced the Consumer Staples sector's gain of 1.73% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.

The upcoming earnings release of Archer Daniels Midland will be of great interest to investors. The company's earnings report is expected on August 4, 2026. In that report, analysts expect Archer Daniels Midland to post earnings of $1.27 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 36.56%. Simultaneously, our latest consensus estimate expects the revenue to be $22.38 billion, showing a 5.72% escalation compared to the year-ago quarter.

Looking at the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $4.76 per share and revenue of $84.48 billion. These totals would mark changes of +38.78% and +5.25%, respectively, from last year.

Investors should also take note of any recent adjustments to analyst estimates for Archer Daniels Midland. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. Therefore, positive revisions in estimates convey analysts' confidence in the business performance and profit potential.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-term stock moves. To utilize this, we have created the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model that integrates these estimate changes and provides a functional rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 7.45% higher. Right now, Archer Daniels Midland possesses a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

From a valuation perspective, Archer Daniels Midland is currently exchanging hands at a Forward P/E ratio of 18.11. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 13.64, which means Archer Daniels Midland is trading at a premium to the group.

The Agriculture - Operations industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 165, placing it within the bottom 33% of over 250 industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

To follow ADM in the coming trading sessions, be sure to utilize Zacks.com.

For the quarter ended June 2026, AvalonBay Communities (AVB - Free Report) reported revenue of $777.77 million, up 2.3% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $2.86, compared to $1.89 in the year-ago quarter.

The reported revenue represents a surprise of +0.31% over the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $775.34 million. With the consensus EPS estimate being $2.80, the EPS surprise was +2.14%.

While investors scrutinize revenue and earnings changes year-over-year and how they compare with Wall Street expectations to determine their next move, some key metrics always offer a more accurate picture of a company's financial health.

As these metrics influence top- and bottom-line performance, comparing them to the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated helps investors project a stock's price performance more accurately.

Here is how AvalonBay performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:

Same Store Economic Occupancy: 96.1% versus 96% estimated by four analysts on average.Revenue- Management, development and other fees: $1.78 million versus the four-analyst average estimate of $1.73 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +11.8%.Revenue- Rental and other income: $775.99 million versus $772.59 million estimated by four analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +2.3% change.Net Earnings Per Share (Diluted): $1.11 compared to the $1.17 average estimate based on four analysts.View all Key Company Metrics for AvalonBay here>>>

Shares of AvalonBay have returned +4.6% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term.

In the latest close session, Strategy (MSTR - Free Report) was down 1.9% at $100.01. The stock's performance was behind the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.14%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.01%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.57%.

Coming into today, shares of the business software company had lost 1.82% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector gained 2.55%, while the S&P 500 gained 0.25%.

Analysts and investors alike will be keeping a close eye on the performance of Strategy in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings report is set to go public on July 30, 2026. The company's earnings per share (EPS) are projected to be $52.04, reflecting a 59.63% increase from the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $126.95 million, indicating a 10.88% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $57.47 per share and a revenue of $503.9 million, signifying shifts of +477.35% and +5.59%, respectively, from the last year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Strategy. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. Consequently, upward revisions in estimates express analysts' positivity towards the business operations and its ability to generate profits.

Our research demonstrates that these adjustments in estimates directly associate with imminent stock price performance. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 50.76% lower. As of now, Strategy holds a Zacks Rank of #5 (Strong Sell).

With respect to valuation, Strategy is currently being traded at a Forward P/E ratio of 1.77. This expresses a discount compared to the average Forward P/E of 11 of its industry.

The Financial - Miscellaneous Services industry is part of the Finance sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 186, placing it within the bottom 25% of over 250 industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the vigor of our specific industry groups by computing the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks incorporated in the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Don't forget to use Zacks.com to keep track of all these stock-moving metrics, and others, in the upcoming trading sessions.

AMD Stock Jumps 10% on Anthropic Deal: Can Nvidia’s Lead Hold?

In the latest trading session, Plug Power (PLUG - Free Report) closed at $2.23, marking a -1.76% move from the previous day. This change lagged the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.14%. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.01%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.57%.

Shares of the alternative energy company witnessed a loss of 16.24% over the previous month, trailing the performance of the Computer and Technology sector with its loss of 4.82%, and the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.

Analysts and investors alike will be keeping a close eye on the performance of Plug Power in its upcoming earnings disclosure. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of -$0.08, marking a 50% rise compared to the same quarter of the previous year. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $167.74 million, indicating a 3.58% decline compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.

PLUG's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of -$0.36 per share and revenue of $814.34 million. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +74.65% and +14.71%, respectively.

Additionally, investors should keep an eye on any recent revisions to analyst forecasts for Plug Power. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the business and profitability.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-term stock moves. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 6.14% higher. At present, Plug Power boasts a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

The Electronics - Miscellaneous Products industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 65, this industry ranks in the top 27% of all industries, numbering over 250.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.

July 22, 2026 18:51 ET  | Source: Canadian National Railway Company

MONTREAL, July 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) and Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) announced today that they have signed a binding Memorandum of Understanding establishing a framework for CN to secure competitive access in connection with the proposed transaction between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC).

The settlement agreement preserves customer options and resolves terminal railroad ownership issues, while expanding CN’s presence in the Midwest and reaffirming gateway protections for all customers and railroads.

Under the settlement agreement, which is contingent on the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) approval and closing of the merger:

CN gains access to shipper facilities where Class I railroad options would be reduced from 2-to-1 or 3-to-2, where commercially and operationally feasible.CN acquires Norfolk Southern's ownership interests in the Kansas City Terminal Railway Company (KCT) and the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA). CN gains new access in the Midwest through overhead rights between Tuscola, Illinois, and East St. Louis, Illinois, and rights to serve customers between St. Louis, Missouri, and Kansas City, Missouri. For the first time, CN will have a footprint in the heart of Kansas City, with usage of Union Pacific’s Neff Yard. CN will not oppose the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger. Both parties will collaborate through the STB process to ensure that this agreement takes effect. “From day one, we’ve said our merger with Norfolk Southern will preserve and enhance competitive options and create a stronger railroad industry that delivers better service for customers,” said Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena. “This settlement agreement reinforces those commitments by giving expanded access and operating rights to a tough competitor.”

“As the rail industry considers significant structural change, it is essential that customers continue to benefit from meaningful competition and choice,” said CN President and CEO Tracy Robinson. “This framework would preserve competitive access to key markets, including Kansas City, while positioning CN to continue providing reliable and efficient options for customers across North America.”

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements by CN and Union Pacific included in this news release constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and under Canadian securities laws. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The companies caution that their assumptions may not materialize and that current economic conditions render such assumptions, although reasonable at the time they were made, subject to greater uncertainty. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of terminology such as “believes,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “assumes,” “outlook,” “plans,” “targets,” or other similar words. Forward-looking statements reflect information as of the date on which they are made. The companies assume no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect future events, changes in circumstances, or changes in beliefs, unless required by applicable securities laws. In the event CN or Union Pacific do update any forward-looking statement, no inference should be made that they will make additional updates with respect to that statement, related matters, or any other forward-looking statement.

About CN
CN powers the economy by safely transporting more than 300 million tons of natural resources, manufactured products, and finished goods throughout North America every year for its customers. With its nearly 20,000-mile rail network and related transportation services, CN connects Canada’s Eastern and Western coasts with the U.S. Midwest and the U.S. Gulf Coast, contributing to sustainable trade and the prosperity of the communities in which it operates since 1919. 

Contacts: 
MediaInvestment CommunityAshley MichnowskiJamie LockwoodSenior ManagerVice-PresidentMedia RelationsInvestor Relations & Special Projects(438) 596-4329(514) 399-0052
[email protected]@cn.ca ABOUT UNION PACIFIC
Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) delivers the goods families and businesses use every day with safe, reliable and efficient service. Operating in 23 western states, the company connects its customers and communities to the global economy. Trains are the most environmentally responsible way to move freight, helping Union Pacific protect future generations. More information about Union Pacific is available at www.up.com.

Union Pacific Media Contact: [email protected]
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Crown Castle (CCI - Free Report) reported $1.01 billion in revenue for the quarter ended June 2026, representing a year-over-year decline of 4.9%. EPS of $1.13 for the same period compares to $0.61 a year ago.

The reported revenue represents a surprise of +1.52% over the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $992.89 million. With the consensus EPS estimate being $1.00, the EPS surprise was +13%.

While investors closely watch year-over-year changes in headline numbers -- revenue and earnings -- and how they compare to Wall Street expectations to determine their next course of action, some key metrics always provide a better insight into a company's underlying performance.

As these metrics influence top- and bottom-line performance, comparing them to the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated helps investors project a stock's price performance more accurately.

Here is how Crown Castle performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:

Revenues- Services and other: $41 million versus $53.17 million estimated by three analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a -21.2% change.Revenues- Site rental: $967 million versus $937.27 million estimated by three analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a -4.1% change.Net Earnings Per Share (Diluted): $0.22 versus the three-analyst average estimate of $0.23.Services and other- Gross margin: $22 million versus the three-analyst average estimate of $25.67 million.Site rental- Gross margin: $718 million versus the three-analyst average estimate of $687.46 million.View all Key Company Metrics for Crown Castle here>>>

Shares of Crown Castle have returned -9.6% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term.

In the latest trading session, Blink Charging (BLNK - Free Report) closed at $0.55, marking a -3.15% move from the previous day. The stock's change was less than the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.14%. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.01%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.57%.

The stock of company has fallen by 7.96% in the past month, lagging the Computer and Technology sector's loss of 4.82% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.

Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Blink Charging in its upcoming release. The company is expected to report EPS of -$0.05, up 80.77% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $24.47 million, down 14.65% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of -$0.17 per share and revenue of $105.64 million. These totals would mark changes of +73.02% and +2.07%, respectively, from last year.

Additionally, investors should keep an eye on any recent revisions to analyst forecasts for Blink Charging. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To utilize this, we have created the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model that integrates these estimate changes and provides a functional rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, spanning from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), boasts an impressive track record of outperformance, audited externally, with #1 ranked stocks yielding an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has remained steady. Blink Charging presently features a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

The Electronics - Miscellaneous Services industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 232, finds itself in the bottom 6% echelons of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the strength of our separate industry groups by calculating the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks contained within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.

Devon Energy (DVN - Free Report) ended the recent trading session at $44.88, demonstrating a +1.77% change from the preceding day's closing price. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.14% loss on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a drop of 0.01%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw a decrease of 0.57%.

Shares of the oil and gas exploration company have appreciated by 1.64% over the course of the past month, underperforming the Oils-Energy sector's gain of 5.65%, and outperforming the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.

Investors will be eagerly watching for the performance of Devon Energy in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings report is set to be unveiled on August 4, 2026. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $1.3, marking a 54.76% rise compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $6.25 billion, up 45.92% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $4.61 per share and revenue of $24.23 billion, which would represent changes of +17.6% and +40.98%, respectively, from the prior year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Devon Energy. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. Therefore, positive revisions in estimates convey analysts' confidence in the business performance and profit potential.

Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, there's been a 7.17% fall in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. Devon Energy is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Investors should also note Devon Energy's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 9.56. This expresses a discount compared to the average Forward P/E of 10.03 of its industry.

The Oil and Gas - Exploration and Production - United States industry is part of the Oils-Energy sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 210, positioning it in the bottom 15% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.

Tesla Q2 Earnings Beat Revenue, Miss Profits: Stock Set to Swing?

The carrier said it now expects full-year adjusted earnings per share of $3.25 to $4.25, compared with its forecast from January for at least $4.

Southwest Airlines (LUV - Free Report) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.94 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.52 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.43 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.

This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +80.77%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this airline would post earnings of $0.45 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.45, delivering no surprise.

Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times.

Southwest, which belongs to the Zacks Transportation - Airline industry, posted revenues of $8.43 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.68%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $7.24 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates just once over the last four quarters.

The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.

Southwest shares have added about 17.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 9.7%.

What's Next for Southwest?While Southwest has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?

There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.

Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.

Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Southwest was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.77 on $8.19 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $3.23 on $32.75 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year.

Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Transportation - Airline is currently in the top 32% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.

Another stock from the same industry, Air Canada (ACDVF - Free Report) , has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026.

This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.05 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -88.4%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been revised 18.5% higher over the last 30 days to the current level.

Air Canada's revenues are expected to be $4.43 billion, up 8.8% from the year-ago quarter.

CSX stock is moving. Watch the price action here. CSX Q2 Details       CSX reported quarterly earnings of 54 cents per share, which beat the consensus estimate of 52 cents, according to Benzinga Pro data.

Quarterly revenue came in at $3.94 billion, which beat the Street estimate of $3.9 billion.

Total volume of 1.68 million units for the quarter was 6% higher compared to the second quarter of 2025.

“Our second quarter results reflect the solid progress we’re making at CSX. Our railroaders successfully managed substantial volume growth while maintaining a consistent focus on safety and productivity, which allowed us to deliver improved financial performance,” said CEO Steve Angel.

“As we move into the second half of the year, we will strengthen our service execution as we continue to build momentum across the business,” Angel added.

CSX Stock Price Activity: According to data from Benzinga Pro, CSX stock was up 4.43% to $52.14 in Wednesday’s extended trading.  

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CSX (CSX - Free Report) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.54 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.5 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.44 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.

This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +8.00%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this freight railroad would post earnings of $0.39 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.43, delivering a surprise of +10.26%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times.

CSX, which belongs to the Zacks Transportation - Rail industry, posted revenues of $3.94 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2.99%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $3.57 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates just once over the last four quarters.

The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.

CSX shares have added about 37.6% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 9.7%.

What's Next for CSX?While CSX has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?

There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.

Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.

Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for CSX was favorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to outperform the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.51 on $3.86 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $1.92 on $14.93 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year.

Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Transportation - Rail is currently in the bottom 26% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.

One other stock from the same industry, Canadian National (CNI - Free Report) , is yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on July 24.

This railroad is expected to post quarterly earnings of $1.39 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +3%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been revised 1.7% lower over the last 30 days to the current level.

Canadian National's revenues are expected to be $3.26 billion, up 5.5% from the year-ago quarter.

In the latest close session, Robinhood Markets, Inc. (HOOD - Free Report) was down 1.87% at $104.37. The stock's change was less than the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.14%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.01%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.57%.

Shares of the company have appreciated by 3.01% over the course of the past month, outperforming the Finance sector's gain of 2.55%, and the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.

Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Robinhood Markets, Inc. in its upcoming release. The company plans to announce its earnings on July 29, 2026. The company is forecasted to report an EPS of $0.39, showcasing a 7.14% downward movement from the corresponding quarter of the prior year. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $1.22 billion, up 23.64% from the prior-year quarter.

For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $1.86 per share and a revenue of $5 billion, representing changes of -9.27% and +11.78%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Robinhood Markets, Inc. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the business and profitability.

Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. To take advantage of this, we've established the Zacks Rank, an exclusive model that considers these estimated changes and delivers an operational rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 2.82% higher. Robinhood Markets, Inc. is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, Robinhood Markets, Inc. currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 57.12. This indicates a premium in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 14.16.

We can additionally observe that HOOD currently boasts a PEG ratio of 2.25. The PEG ratio is akin to the commonly utilized P/E ratio, but this measure also incorporates the company's anticipated earnings growth rate. As of the close of trade yesterday, the Financial - Investment Bank industry held an average PEG ratio of 1.04.

The Financial - Investment Bank industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 29, finds itself in the top 12% echelons of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

To follow HOOD in the coming trading sessions, be sure to utilize Zacks.com.

USD/JPY remains supported by a wide US–Japan interest-rate differential, positive carry and a firmly bullish technical structure. Yet with the pair trading above 163, speculative yen shorts already substantial and Japanese intervention risk rising, the immediate entry is less convincing than the underlying bullish thesis.

USD/JPY has moved into territory not seen for roughly four decades, trading above 163 and leaving the Japanese Yen near its weakest level against the US Dollar since 1986.

The reasons behind the move are relatively clear. US interest rates remain considerably higher than Japanese rates, the Dollar continues to offer attractive carry, and the Bank of Japan is normalising monetary policy at a measured pace.

The trading decision is less straightforward.

At current levels, USD/JPY no longer offers the same risk profile that existed earlier in the trend. The pair is testing major long-term resistance, speculative investors already hold substantial short-yen exposure, and Japanese authorities have shown that intervention is more than a verbal threat.

The result is a market where the underlying direction remains bullish, but the case for chasing the move has weakened.

US–Japan policy divergence continues to favour USD/JPYThe Federal Reserve maintained its target range at 3.50%–3.75% at its June meeting. Policymakers described US economic activity as expanding at a solid pace and acknowledged that inflation remained elevated relative to the 2% objective.

That does not provide an obvious foundation for rapid monetary easing.

For USD/JPY, the key question is not simply whether the Fed will eventually reduce rates. It is whether US rates will fall sooner or more quickly than financial markets currently expect.

A weak economic release can cause a temporary decline in the Dollar. A sustained USD/JPY reversal would probably require a broader deterioration in US employment, consumption or growth, accompanied by a meaningful fall in short-term Treasury yields.

The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, has continued to move away from the ultra-loose policy regime that defined the Japanese economy for many years. Its policy rate has risen to around 1%, and officials have indicated that further adjustments remain possible if wages, inflation and economic activity develop in line with expectations.

This is supportive of the Yen at the margin, but the relative policy gap remains wide. A 1% Japanese rate is still substantially below the Federal Reserve’s 3.50%–3.75% range.

The Yen would receive stronger support if markets began pricing a faster BoJ tightening cycle, a materially lower Fed path, or both. Until that happens, the rate differential remains an important fundamental anchor for USD/JPY.

Positive carry supports the trend but creates asymmetric riskThe interest-rate gap also keeps USD/JPY relevant as a carry trade.

Investors can fund positions in a lower-yielding currency such as the Yen and allocate capital to higher-yielding Dollar assets. Provided that the exchange rate remains stable or moves in the investor’s favour, the strategy earns the interest-rate differential.

Carry trades tend to perform best when volatility is low and global risk appetite is stable. Those conditions encourage traders to maintain leverage and stay invested.

The weakness is that carry returns accumulate gradually, while reversals can happen quickly.

If volatility rises or the policy outlook changes, investors may rush to reduce similar positions at the same time. Closing a yen-funded carry trade requires buying Yen, which can accelerate a decline in USD/JPY.

This helps explain why the pair can rise steadily over several months and then fall several hundred pips in a much shorter period.

Positive carry supports the current trend. It also creates the conditions for a more violent correction if the market turns.

Japanese capital flows add a structural layerJapan’s international investment position is another important part of the picture.

Japanese residents hold a very large stock of overseas bonds, equities and other assets. Pension funds, life insurers, banks and asset managers regularly decide whether to allocate capital domestically or abroad.

When overseas yields are more attractive and foreign investments are left unhedged, those decisions can involve selling Yen and purchasing Dollars or other currencies.

The flow can slow or reverse if Japanese yields become more competitive, foreign yields decline, hedging costs change or institutions decide to repatriate capital.

These structural flows tend to develop more slowly than speculative positions. Even so, they help explain why the Yen can remain weak despite gradual BoJ tightening.

Professional FX analysis therefore cannot stop at central-bank announcements. Longer-term investment behaviour can continue to influence the currency long after the immediate policy reaction has faded.

Intervention risk is no longer theoreticalJapan has already demonstrated its willingness to intervene directly in the foreign-exchange market.

The Ministry of Finance reported intervention totalling more than ¥11 trillion between late April and late May 2026. As USD/JPY moved through 163, Japanese officials again warned that they were prepared to take decisive action against excessive currency movements.

The authorities are unlikely to focus on one exchange-rate level in isolation. The speed and character of the move also matter.

A slow and orderly rise may be treated differently from a rapid, one-sided advance driven by speculative positioning. Officials also need to consider the impact of Yen weakness on imported energy, food and other consumer costs.

Intervention can trigger a powerful short-term fall in USD/JPY, particularly when leveraged positioning is concentrated. Its lasting effect is less certain.

If US yields remain high and the US–Japan policy gap stays wide, official Yen buying may interrupt the trend without changing its fundamental direction. Intervention is more likely to produce a durable reversal when it is reinforced by falling US yields, faster BoJ tightening or a broader unwind in global risk positions.

Positioning confirms the trend and increases squeeze riskThe latest available CFTC data showed non-commercial traders holding 115,965 long Japanese Yen futures contracts and 238,628 short contracts. That produced a net-short Yen position of 122,663 contracts.

The direction needs to be interpreted carefully. These are Japanese Yen futures positions rather than direct USD/JPY trades.

A short-Yen futures position generally reflects an expectation of Yen weakness and is therefore broadly consistent with a bullish USD/JPY view.

The positioning confirms that speculative investors agree with the prevailing trend. That can remain supportive while the interest-rate and carry arguments remain intact.

However, it also increases squeeze risk.

If a catalyst causes USD/JPY to fall, traders closing Yen shorts must buy the currency back. A sufficiently large wave of short covering can turn an orderly correction into a much faster move.

Crowded positioning is not an automatic reversal signal. A popular trade can remain profitable for a long time. What crowding changes is the potential speed of the adjustment once the consensus begins to unwind.

Monthly trend remains firmly bullish

The monthly chart retains a strong upward structure.

USD/JPY is trading above its previous major long-term highs and remains well above the monthly Ichimoku Cloud. At the time of the chart analysis, the monthly Tenkan-sen was near 157.67 and the Kijun-sen was around 151.41.

Price was therefore more than 11 Yen above the monthly Kijun, showing a significant departure from medium-term equilibrium.

The Ichimoku configuration remains constructive. Price is above the cloud, the Tenkan-sen is above the Kijun-sen, the projected cloud remains positive and the Chikou Span is positioned above previous price action.

Monthly RSI was around 63.7. Momentum was strong, but it had not moved above the conventional overbought threshold of 70.

The distance from the monthly Kijun increases the risk of mean reversion. It does not show that a reversal has started.

An extended trend can remain extended, particularly when monetary policy, carry and momentum continue to point in the same direction.

Weekly chart tests a major breakout area

The weekly picture is similarly bullish.

USD/JPY recovered strongly from its 2025 correction and continued to form higher highs and higher lows. Price remained above the weekly Ichimoku Cloud, with the weekly Tenkan-sen close to 161 and the Kijun-sen around 157.67.

Weekly RSI stood near 67.5 at the time of the chart capture. That is elevated, but it does not constitute a reversal signal on its own.

The central technical question is whether USD/JPY can establish acceptance above the 163.20–163.30 area.

A weekly close above that zone, followed by continued trading above it, would support a continuation into price discovery.

A move above 163.30 that quickly reverses and closes below the breakout area would instead raise the risk of a false break.

The weekly chart had not yet produced a confirmed lower high, a break of an important higher low or a bearish Ichimoku crossover. Selling the pair at current levels would therefore mean anticipating a top rather than responding to an established reversal.

Daily chart defines the immediate decision

The daily chart provides the clearest map for execution.

Immediate resistance sits around 163.20–163.30. The first meaningful support is near the daily Tenkan-sen around 162.20–162.30.

A stronger support cluster lies around 161.65–162.00, where the daily Kijun-sen and projected cloud top converge. Beneath that, the weekly Tenkan-sen is positioned close to 161.

The lower boundary of the daily cloud sits around 160, while the weekly Kijun-sen near 157.67 represents a more important swing support level.

Price remains above all of the main Ichimoku components.

A pullback towards 162.20 or the stronger 161.65–162.00 support area would remain consistent with an intact uptrend. Such a move would bring price closer to short-term equilibrium without causing significant structural damage.

A daily close below approximately 161.7 would provide the first meaningful warning. The bearish case would become more credible if the pair then formed a lower high and broke below 160.9–161.0.

A sustained move below 160 would represent a more serious deterioration because USD/JPY would be trading beneath the lower boundary of the daily cloud.

Daily RSI shows a possible bearish divergence, with price testing a marginal new high while momentum remains below its earlier peak.

That is a reason to avoid chasing the market without confirmation. It is not sufficient evidence to establish a short position while price remains above support and the broader structure remains bullish.

The thesis is stronger than the immediate setupFundamental, technical and sentiment analysis currently produce a broadly consistent directional message.

The US rate advantage remains supportive. The multi-timeframe trend is bullish. Speculative positioning confirms that investors remain bearish on the Yen.

The quality of the immediate entry is less compelling.

The pair is testing major resistance, the market is already crowded in the prevailing direction and intervention risk is elevated.

This creates an important distinction between thesis quality and setup quality.

A trader may hold a well-supported bullish view while deciding that current prices do not offer enough reward relative to the risks. Equally, the possibility of intervention and crowded positioning may support a bearish scenario without yet providing technical confirmation of a reversal.

Bullish continuationA convincing daily and weekly close above 163.30 would strengthen the breakout case.

Follow-through above the high, followed by a successful retest of the 163 area, could open the way towards 164 and 165. The principal risks would remain intervention and a sudden decline in US yields.

High-level consolidationUSD/JPY could remain between roughly 160 and 164 while the market waits for clearer guidance from the Fed, the BoJ and Japanese authorities.

This outcome would allow momentum and speculative positioning to reset without requiring a major change in the longer-term trend.

Corrective declineA break below the 161.65–162.00 support cluster would create the first sign of deterioration.

A subsequent move below 160.9 and a failed attempt to recover the level would strengthen the case for a correction towards 159.30 and 157.70.

The decline would become more structurally significant if USD/JPY established sustained acceptance below 157.7.

ConclusionUSD/JPY remains supported by the relative monetary-policy backdrop, positive carry and a bullish technical structure across the monthly, weekly and daily timeframes.

However, the pair is testing a major long-term high at a time when speculative Yen shorts are substantial and Japanese authorities have already demonstrated a willingness to intervene.

The evidence does not yet confirm a bearish reversal. It also does not provide an especially attractive case for chasing the pair at current levels.

Acceptance above 163.20–163.30 would reinforce the bullish continuation scenario. A pullback that holds around 161.7–162.3 could offer a cleaner test of the trend. A break below 160.9, followed by a failed recovery, would mark a more meaningful change in the daily structure.

For now, USD/JPY presents a strong underlying thesis at a difficult entry point.

CALGARY, Alberta, July 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE) (NYSE:CVE) will release its second-quarter 2026 results on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. The news release will provide consolidated second-quarter operating and financial information. The company’s financial statements will be available on Cenovus’s website, cenovus.com.

Second-quarter 2026 conference call: 9 a.m. MT (11 a.m. ET)

Analysts wishing to participate in the conference call are asked to register in advance.

To participate in the conference call, complete the online registration form before the call begins. Once registered, participants will receive a unique PIN to access the call by phone. You can either dial into the conference call using the unique PIN or select the “Call Me” option to receive an automated call.

A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available and will remain archived for approximately 30 days.

Cenovus Energy Inc.
Cenovus Energy Inc. is an integrated energy company with oil and natural gas production operations in Canada and the Asia Pacific region, and upgrading, refining and marketing operations in Canada and the United States. The company is committed to maximizing value by developing its assets in a safe, responsible and cost-efficient manner, integrating sustainability considerations into its business plans. Cenovus common shares are listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. For more information, visit cenovus.com.

Find Cenovus on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.

Cenovus contacts:

InvestorsMediaInvestor Relations general line
403-766-7711Media Relations general line
403-766-7751

LONG BEACH, Calif., July 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rocket Lab Corporation (Nasdaq: RKLB), a global leader in launch services and space systems, today announced that it will release its financial results for the second quarter 2026 following the close of the U.S. markets on Monday August 10th, 2026. Rocket Lab will host a corresponding conference call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time).

A live webcast and replay of the conference call will be available on the Company’s Investor Relations website at www.investors.rocketlabcorp.com.

Rocket Lab Investor Relations Contact
Patrick Vorenkamp
[email protected]

Rocket Lab Media Contact
Murielle Baker
[email protected]

About Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab is a leading space company that provides launch services, spacecraft, payloads, and satellite components serving commercial, government, and national security markets. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is the world’s most frequently launched orbital small rocket; its HASTE rocket provides hypersonic test launch capability for the U.S. government and allied nations; and its Neutron launch vehicle in development will unlock medium launch for constellation deployment, national security and exploration missions. Rocket Lab’s spacecraft and satellite components have enabled more than 1,700 missions spanning commercial, defense and national security missions including GPS, constellations, and exploration missions to the Moon, Mars, and Venus. Rocket Lab is a publicly listed company on the Nasdaq stock exchange (RKLB). Learn more at www.rocketlabcorp.com.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). All statements contained in this press release other than statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, statements regarding our launch and space systems operations, launch schedule and window, safe and repeatable access to space, Neutron development, operational expansion and business strategy, are forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “potential,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “strategy,” “future,” “could,” “would,” “project,” “plan,” “target,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, though not all forward-looking statements use these words or expressions. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the factors, risks and uncertainties included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), accessible on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and the Investor Relations section of our website at https://investors.rocketlabcorp.com which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this press release. Any such forward-looking statements represent management’s estimates as of the date of this press release. While we may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so, even if subsequent events cause our views to change.

Model of LNG tanker is seen in front of Russia's flag in this illustration taken May 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesJuly 22 (Reuters) - Greece-based LNG carrier operator Dynagas (DLNG.N), opens new tab will be allowed to continue carrying Russian liquefied natural gas under ​new sanctions against Moscow set to be agreed ‌on by EU countries, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, according to three diplomats briefed on the negotiations.

Here are some details:

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The deal, which ​is yet to be approved by the EU ​envoys on Thursday, would allow companies from the bloc ⁠to continue transporting Moscow's LNG exports to third countries ​for a 12-month period that could be renewed. However, volumes would ​be capped at 2025 levels, the FT said.

The countries are also due to sign off on extending a price cap on Russian oil ​at $44.10 a barrel for a year as they look to ​continue restricting Moscow's fossil-fuel revenues, the report added.

Reuters could not immediately verify ‌the ⁠report. Dynagas and the EU were not immediately available for comment outside business hours when contacted by Reuters.

Greece dominates Europe's LNG carrier market and is among the biggest players globally, ​competing with Japan, ​China and ⁠the United States.

Last week, two Greek government officials told Reuters that EU sanctions against Russia risk ceding LNG ​market share to rivals.

EU ambassadors failed on Wednesday to ​agree ⁠on a 21st package of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, an EU diplomat told Reuters.

The new package targets Russia's ⁠banking ​sector in an effort to squeeze ​Moscow's financial system at what the EU sees as a vulnerable time.

Reporting by ​Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Nia Williams

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