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Norway seized a Russian ship in to enforce Ukraine’s $4.22B judgment. Ukraine’s lawfare campaign puts Russian global assets at risk and bolsters Norway’s sovereignty.

There was a lot to enjoy for investors in ServiceTitan’s (TTAN) most recent earnings release.

Revenue also topped Wall Street estimates. Profit above forecasts. Free cash flow up about 50%. The software company’s main product based on artificial intelligence was adopted faster than the company’s management anticipated.

The move wiped off about a third of its worth among investors.

ServiceTitan stock plunged 30% Wednesday after management forecast fiscal third-quarter revenue of $285 million to $287 million, below the roughly $288 million Wall Street expected. The selloff followed a more than 19% drop in after-hours trading immediately after the report.

The miss itself was minor in guiding terms.

Even more troubling for ServiceTitan, its growth is decelerating at a time when investors are becoming less tolerant of software businesses being challenged by AI.

But there is a caveat.

Part of Service Titan’s short-term revenue headwinds are coming from higher adoption of its own AI product, Max. Management anticipates the transformation to result in a temporary revenue impact of $4 million to $5 million.

That means ServiceTitan now needs to show something uncommon to investors: that one reason its growth seems worse now might make its firm more valuable tomorrow.

ServiceTitan’s numbers don’t look like a business in trouble

ServiceTitan’s second quarter earnings were far better than the market response indicated.

Revenue increased 21% to $292.8 million, beating the $285.9 million analysts expected. Adjusted earnings of 40 cents a share topped expectations of 35 cents.

Platform revenue was up 22 percent to $284.5 million.

More significantly, ServiceTitan is becoming much more lucrative as it expands.

Non-GAAP operating income grew 52% to $44.4 million, and the adjusted operating margin improved to 15.2% from 12.1%. Operating losses on a GAAP basis were $27.6 million vs. $34.8 million.

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Cash generation improved further.

Operating cash flow jumped to $58 million from $40.3 million. Non-GAAP free cash flow rose 47% to $50.5 million.

Net dollar retention also stayed over 110%.

There was one significant caution.

Gross transaction volume, the value billed to consumers on ServiceTitan, climbed 17% to $26.8 billion. But that growth rate was down from 19% a year ago.

Revenue growth also decelerated to 21% from 25%, while platform revenue growth decreased to 22% from 26%.

ServiceTitan is still growing. Wall Street is worried about how quickly that growth is slowing.

ServiceTitan’s AI success comes with a surprising cost

Here is when Max alters the tale.

Contractors use ServiceTitan, a “Agentic Operating System” for the trades, to manage customer acquisition, scheduling, dispatching, payments, and operations.

Max encapsulates its aim to automate more of those activities using AI.

And consumers are embracing it quicker than ServiceTitan had anticipated.

The company said it exceeded its goal of doubling Max locations during the second quarter. Management now expects more than 700 enrolled Max locations by the end of the fiscal year.

But getting clients onboard Max poses a funny accounting dilemma.

ServiceTitan generally recognizes its primary subscription income ratably during the term of a contract. Max is different since consumers need time to modify processes and install the solution.

That implies charging grows gradually.

ServiceTitan is also eliminating certain onboarding costs for current clients upgrading to Max.

Management expects the combined impact of those measures to trim revenue by around $4 million to $5 million for the balance of the fiscal year.

That’s not enough to explain every concern behind a 30% stock collapse. But it changes what investors should be watching. ServiceTitan isn’t struggling to persuade customers to try its newest AI product.

Its challenge is to prove that a speedier adoption would ultimately provide sufficient extra customer value to make up for the income it is foregoing during the shift.

ServiceTitan’s 30% selloff may be about more than weak guidance.Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Wall Street isn’t giving ServiceTitan much room for error

That evidence is becoming more significant with ServiceTitan’s third-quarter outlook. The company predicts sales of $285 million to $287 million, compared with $292.8 million in the second quarter.

Adjusted operating income is estimated to decline to between $29 million and $30 million from $44.4 million.

But the picture for the whole year is not that scary.

ServiceTitan expects fiscal 2027 revenue of $1.139 billion to $1.144 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $152 million to $154 million.

The corporation is therefore not predicting a collapse. It’s anticipating a difficult shift.

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There’s another reason investors should be suspicious. AI is an emerging cause of fear throughout the software business as ever-more-capable models threaten to automate operations formerly performed by specialized applications.

Those fears hit software stocks again this week.

ServiceTitan is arguing that AI will strengthen rather than replace its platform.

CEO Ara Mahdessian called delivering an agentic operating system to the trades and using AI internally “once in a lifetime opportunities.”

ServiceTitan’s 700-location AI test now matters more than earnings

The 30% selloff gives investors two opposing interpretations.

Looking at ServiceTitan’s Q2 financial results, the pessimistic argument begins with three numbers: Revenue growth decelerated from 25% to 21%, platform growth slowed from 26% to 22%, and GTV growth slowed from 19% to 17%.

If these trends continue, a small miss on expectations could lead to a larger decline.

The bullish case begins elsewhere.

ServiceTitan put up record free cash flow, boosted its adjusted operating margins by over three percentage points, and beat its own Max adoption goal.

That makes 700 likely the most relevant figure in the study.

If ServiceTitan concludes the year with more than 700 Max locations and those customers eventually spend more, stay longer, and run more effectively, the immediate revenue loss might prove to be just that, transitory.

Otherwise, investors would face a slower-growing software firm that spends substantially on an AI transformation that doesn’t enhance its economics.

And ServiceTitan exceeded profits but lost about a third of its market value because Wall Street isn’t ready to wait forever for that answer.

Now the business needs to convince the market that the contradiction this quarter between slowing reported growth and growing AI take-up is the expense of developing its new growth engine and not a sign the old one is running out of gas.

Related: Nvidia’s cash could reshape an AI cloud contender

Investors holding JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPQ) saw a record figure on their August 2026 statements.

The fund paid $0.70497 per share, marking the largest single distribution in its 52-month history, TopDividendETFs data confirmed.

September 2026 followed at $0.68255, the second-largest payout on record, pushing the fund’s annualized forward distribution rate to about $8.19. 

That figure is nearly double the $4.46 annualized forward rate currently flowing from the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI).

Both funds sell options for monthly income, charge the same 0.35% fee, and are managed by the same JPMorgan team. The growing gap between them traces to a single design choice about which index each fund writes its options against.

How the Nasdaq-100 generates richer option premiums for JEPQ

JEPI and JEPQ both hold stocks and sell call options through equity-linked notes, converting premium into a monthly cash distribution. The mechanics diverge at the index each fund writes against.

JEPI writes against the S&P 500, which carries lower implied volatility and tends to produce thinner premiums during calm stretches. 

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JEPQ writes against the Nasdaq-100, where technology-heavy constituents generate wider premiums because the index runs at structurally higher volatility.

JEPQ’s top holdings illustrate why the premium gap has widened, with Nvidia at 6.9% of net assets and Apple at 6.4%, followed by Alphabet at 5.3%, Microsoft at 5.0%, Amazon at 4.3%, and Micron Technology at 4.1%, JPMorgan’s July 2026 fact sheet confirmed. 

Semiconductor names, in particular, carry some of the highest single-stock implied volatility in the Nasdaq-100. That lifts the premium JEPQ collects each month above what a comparable S&P 500 portfolio would yield.

Falling broad-market volatility explains JEPI’s shrinking payouts

The CBOE Volatility Index hit a 2026 high of 31.05 on March 27, briefly boosting option premiums across both funds, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed. 

The gauge then cooled steadily through the summer, landing at 16.46 by Sept. 9, 2026, and draining S&P 500 option premiums faster than Nasdaq-100 contracts.

JEPI’s distributions traced that decline, swinging from $0.34443 in February 2026 up to $0.44761 in May 2026, then sliding back to $0.36664 by August 2026, 24/7 Wall St confirmed.

JEPQ’s payments climbed through the same window, rising from $0.46572 in February 2026 to a new high in August 2026, TopDividendETFs reported.

JEPI’s payouts declined as falling market volatility reduced option premiums, while JEPQ distributions continued climbing through August 2026.Liubomyr Vorona / Getty Images

JEPQ’s total return more than doubles JEPI’s over the past year

JEPQ has gained 20.69% on a total return basis over the trailing year, more than double the 9.21% delivered by JEPI.

Year-to-date performance follows the same pattern, with JEPQ up 11.60% and JEPI at 5.49% through early September 2026, 24/7 Wall St reported. 

Justin Christofel, global head of Income Investing for BlackRock’s Multi-Asset Strategies & Solutions Group, wrote in BlackRock’s January 2026 income outlook that income vehicles such as covered-call ETFs need a different benchmark than total-return funds, because their job is cash delivery.

For retirees, the ultimate measure of success is the confidence in income and how the portfolio pays, rather than how the market performs.

Those higher distributions have not eroded JEPQ’s net asset value, though both funds remain relatively young.

Morningstar Senior Associate Analyst Brendan McCann cautioned in an August 2026 review that the fund’s history has aligned with a strong technology rally.

Tech concentration and tax drag are the trade-offs for JEPQ’s bigger checks

Information technology stocks accounted for 47.7% of JEPQ’s portfolio as of the July 2026 fact sheet. 

Communication services names such as Alphabet and Meta add another 10.9%, leaving a handful of mega-cap technology-linked companies dominating the top of the holdings list. 

A sell-off in semiconductors, where Micron sits for 4.1% of net assets alongside Nvidia’s 6.9%, or in large-cap technology broadly, would hit JEPQ harder than JEPI.

JEPI’s $46 billion asset base is more diversified across healthcare, defense, and financials, according to 24/7 Wall St.

Option premium income from covered-call strategies is taxed at ordinary income rates, which can meaningfully reduce after-tax yield for investors in higher tax brackets, Dividend.com noted in April 2026.

Holding either fund inside a Roth individual retirement account or another tax-advantaged wrapper removes that cost entirely for qualifying investors, Dividend confirmed.

What JEPQ’s record distributions mean for your retirement income plan

JEPQ’s consecutive near-record months reflect a favorable volatility backdrop for Nasdaq-100 option writers. Distributions from both funds vary by design, rising when implied volatility jumps and falling when markets calm, Morningstar’s McCann noted. 

Investors who already own JEPI and want JEPQ’s higher yield need to weigh the tax cost of switching. Selling JEPI shares in a taxable account locks in a capital gains tax bill, while investing new money in JEPQ avoids that hit and keeps the existing JEPI position intact.

Sean Lenehan, portfolio manager and senior investment advisor with the Lenehan Wealth Management Group at TD Wealth Private Investment Advice in Ontario, Canada, told The Globe and Mail in June 2026 that covered-call ETFs like JEPQ and JEPI have earned a place in some accounts. 

Christofel, in the January 2026 BlackRock outlook, argued that the ultimate measure for retirees is whether a portfolio reliably delivers cash through market cycles. 

By that standard, JEPI’s lower but steadier payout profile looks different from JEPQ’s larger, more volatile distributions.

As Lenehan told The Globe and Mail, loss-averse investors should size JEPQ relative to their minimum monthly income floor. The $0.24-per-share swing between February’s low and August’s record highlights the monthly variance a retirement budget must absorb.

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From failed blockchain platforms to a 95% AI failure rate, tech stalls when built backwards. Rocket’s broker-designed tools show the fix: users define the build.

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Why we love this deal

Just because summer is coming to an end doesn’t mean it’s time to pack away your outdoor essentials in storage. In fact, it’s actually a great time to invest in new pieces. Whether it’s a patio set or solar lights, retailers are slashing the prices of seasonal finds, many of which you don’t have to wait until next spring to start using. With cool and crisp fall weather, it’s the perfect time to enjoy the outdoors without sweating from the heat.

The Weize 10-by-10-Foot Pop-Up Canopy Tent is a versatile outdoor must-have that you can use at home and beyond. It’s on sale for only $60 at Amazon, which is 45% off its regular price of $110. With a simple pop-up design, you can use it for everything from hanging out in the backyard to tailgating at a concert or football game.

Weize 10×10-Foot Pop-Up Canopy Tent, $60 (was $110) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

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This pop-up canopy keeps you sheltered from the sun and light rain, giving you more chances to enjoy the outdoors regardless of the weather. It measures 10 feet long by 10 feet wide, and it has an adjustable height at two levels, 7.3 feet or 8.7 feet, that you can choose from using slides and locking clips on all four sides. You can even set it up at an angle to block the sun from certain angles if needed. The canopy cover has vents for extra airflow, and it’s made of 150D silver-coated fabric that’s water-resistant and provides UPF 50+ sun protection. That means you don’t have to worry about too much sun or a little rain interfering with your outdoor activities.

With a one-push design, the canopy tent is designed for an easy setup that takes one to two people to put together. It uses a central locking system that involves the touch of a button to assemble. To add to its convenience, it comes with a carrying case for easy portability and storage, so you can pack it in your car and use it beyond your backyard.

The frame is made of steel that’s reinforced with pre-installed bolts. According to shoppers, it’s “sturdy,” but the manufacturer recommends avoiding use during “adverse weather conditions,” like storms, strong winds, and snowfall. 

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Details to know

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., has been the most prominent GOP critic of Trump’s promise.

In a footrace, when the field bunches up behind the leader, most people read it as the leader slowing down. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) just delivered a case that runs the other way.

New foundry market data shows the world’s largest chipmaker pulling further ahead of its nearest rival, even as a different rival closes in on that same target from below.

TSMC’s global foundry market share climbed to 72.5% in the second quarter, up from 72.3% in the first, according to TrendForce. The move looks modest on paper, but it happened while advanced 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer lines ran at full capacity for AI server chips.

TSMC’s foundry sales reached nearly $40.2 billion, up 12.1% sequentially, helped by early iPhone inventory building.

Read More TSMC: History of TSMC & its stock: Company timeline, facts & milestones

A different count from Counterpoint Research puts TSMC’s share even higher, near 73%, under a broader market definition. The figure varies by methodology. The direction doesn’t: Every tracker shows the same company pulling away.

The more telling number sits one layer beneath the headline share figure. TrendForce put Samsung Electronics’ (SSNLF) share at 5.9% for the quarter and 6.5% for the first, and the arithmetic tells its own story. The gap between the top two foundries widened from 65.8 to 66.6 points in a single quarter.

TSMC did not need a rival to stumble to extend its lead. It just kept building.

TSMC’s lead over Samsung just got wider

Samsung’s own quarter explains why the gap grew. Revenue rose just 1.8% to about $3.26 billion, helped by new advanced-process orders, TrendForce found. Its share still slipped because TSMC and smaller rivals grew faster.

Samsung is pouring money into yield improvements for its next-generation SF2 process, hoping to close the technology gap that keeps customers loyal to TSMC, Counterpoint Research noted. So far, it hasn’t shown up in the share numbers.

SMIC is closing a different gap, not TSMC’s

While Samsung falls further behind TSMC, it is being chased from underneath. China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, known as SMIC, posted revenue near $3.01 billion, up 20% from the prior quarter, pushing its market share to 5.4% and narrowing the distance to Samsung to just half a percentage point.

That growth came less from AI chips and more from advance procurement across PC and notebook supply chains, plus demand tied to global memory shortages, the research firm said.

Related: An AI chip machine so pricey, three rivals had to say yes

It is a different customer base than TSMC’s.

Those are two separate competitive stories inside the same report, and most coverage collapses them into one. TSMC’s advantage over the entire field is widening.

Samsung’s advantage over SMIC is shrinking. Both are true at once, and only one of them involves TSMC directly.

A few more numbers from that count:

United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) of Taiwan held a 3.9% share, on revenue of about $2.18 billion.

U.S.-based GlobalFoundries (GFS) took 3.2% on revenue of roughly $1.79 billion.

Combined revenue across the top 10 foundries hit a record $53.49 billion, up 11.5% from the prior quarter.Source: TrendForce

TSMC’s foundry market share hit 72.5% in the second quarter, widening its lead over Samsung even as China’s SMIC closes in on Samsung from below.Narumon Bowonkitwanchai / Getty Images

TSM stock trades well off its record high

Despite this record-breaking quarter for the industry as a whole and TSMC’s commanding market share, Wall Street’s reaction has remained unexpectedly lukewarm.

The stock market’s reaction has not matched the dominance story. Shares closed Thursday, Sept. 10, at $428.03, down 1.68%. That is roughly 10% below the stock’s all-time closing high of $477.57, set on June 30.

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Analysts tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence still rate TSM a consensus Strong Buy, with an average 12-month price target of $552.38, implying over 25% upside from current levels.

Shares fell the same day TSMC reported record August revenue growth of 53.3%, extending its monthly streak to four straight records, according to CNBC. That gap between the headline numbers and the stock’s muted reaction suggests investors are weighing near-term spending more than the share gains.

Washington’s tariff plan could lock in TSMC’s edge

The gap TSMC is building may soon get reinforcement from an unlikely source: U.S. trade policy.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said this month the administration is preparing new semiconductor tariffs exempting companies that manufacture inside the United States, according to Bloomberg.

TSMC’s $265 billion Arizona buildout, described on the company’s own investment page, puts it on the right side of that line.

Samsung and SMIC lack anything close to that scale of U.S. manufacturing, and SMIC faces separate U.S. export restrictions on chipmaking equipment that Samsung doesn’t. If the tariff framework Lutnick described becomes policy, the foundry gap TrendForce just measured would stop being purely a function of capacity and start being reinforced by trade law.

For investors watching the AI buildout, that combination, capital scale paired with policy protection, is a moat that gets harder to challenge each quarter it goes unaddressed.

The market share numbers explain how TSMC got here. The tariff numbers may explain why nobody catches up.

Related: Why is Taiwan hiding the backers of its $20B US pledge?

There’s a safe haven hiding in plain sight.

David Tepper has spent years betting on the biggest beneficiaries of artificial intelligence.

Now he’s moving further down the stack.

Appaloosa Management, led by Tepper, added $107 million of CoreWeave (CRWV) stock and $38 million of SpaceX stock to its technology-heavy portfolio in the second quarter. Alphabet, Amazon, Micron Technology, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing were Appaloosa’s biggest positions.

The two new holdings are completely unique.

CoreWeave leases powerful AI compute power. SpaceX launches rockets, runs Starlink and is building a nascent AI business.

But they share one key similarity.

Both require huge amounts of physical infrastructure to keep up with demand that is outstripping current capacity.

So Tepper’s buying isn’t so much a bet on two hot AI stocks as it is a bet on one of the industry’s biggest constraints: building enough infrastructure to sustain the boom.

David Tepper is moving deeper into AI infrastructure

Tepper already has significant traditional AI exposure through Appaloosa’s holdings.

Amazon made up around 15% of the reported portfolio at the end of June, while Micron made up nearly 15%, Taiwan Semiconductor made up roughly 10%, and Alphabet made up roughly 8%. Nvidia was also one of the fund’s biggest holdings.

CoreWeave takes that approach down to the infrastructure layer.

The company generated $2.58 billion of second-quarter revenue, while revenue backlog reached about $104.2 billion as of June 30.

That backlog was up from $99.4 billion in the previous quarter and excluded more than $25 billion of additional commitments signed early in the third quarter.

Related: Bank of America tweaks CoreWeave stock forecast after earnings 

That’s an insane amount of contractual demand for a firm that is still at CoreWeave’s current size.

Its customers include AI developers and big organizations. CoreWeave claimed it grew ties with firms such as Databricks, Cognition, and Runway and gained business from Caterpillar and Grammarly.

Demand isn’t the obvious issue.

It is worth meeting it.

CoreWeave’s $104 billion backlog comes with a massive bill

The $104 billion CoreWeave figure may not be the most illuminating.

That would be $35 billion to $39 billion.

That’s how much CoreWeave now intends to spend on capital expenditures in 2026, compared with its earlier prediction of $31 billion to $35 billion. Alone, capital investment in the second quarter was more than $9.4 billion, compared to $6.8 billion in the preceding quarter, Reuters reported.

The expenditure reveals the odd economics of Tepper’s gamble.

Giant deals are possible, since there’s still a shortage of high-end AI compute capacity at CoreWeave. But it needs data centers, networking equipment, electricity, and pricey accelerators to be set up first to turn those contracts into cash.

This scenario creates a potentially profitable loop if demand for AI keeps increasing.

Such an investment also constitutes a major financial risk.

“Neocloud” suppliers of AI, such as CoreWeave, combine strong leverage with a substantial dependence on a relatively limited number of major clients and on Nvidia technology, Reuters noted. So a change in demand, price, or chip technology in AI might damage corporations that have plunked down billions on infrastructure years in advance.

That comparison makes sense, particularly given that during the second quarter, more than half of CoreWeave’s backlog was already in customer delivery.

Tepper isn’t betting just that consumers want AI compute. The backlog already answers that.

He’s betting CoreWeave may provide substantial profits after paying the big expenditure necessary to supply it.

David Tepper just made two AI bets with one thing in commonEston Parker/ISI Photos / Getty Images

SpaceX gives Tepper another version of the same bet

SpaceX solves the infrastructure issue from space.

The startup promotes itself as building infrastructure for space, connectivity, and AI. Its activities include launch services, Starlink, and a burgeoning artificial intelligence enterprise.

SpaceX’s first quarterly report since going public underlined exactly how different those companies already are.

Starlink earned $4.3 billion in sales in the second quarter, up 66%, and $1.7 billion in operating profit. SpaceX’s AI business brought in around $2.6 billion in revenue, quadruple the previous-year figure, although it remained unprofitable.

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The enterprises are linked by the expense of bringing them to market.

Because SpaceX launches its own rockets, it can launch Starlink satellites at a scale rivals cannot. Starship might extend that lead much farther if SpaceX can make the vehicle fast, reusable, and drastically drive down the cost of delivering mass into orbit.

That might enable larger Starlink installations and perhaps far more extensive orbital-computing infrastructure.

So SpaceX is just another capital-demanding gamble on limited capacity.

The distinction is that its infrastructure is situated above the Earth, not within a data center.

Tepper’s two purchases reveal where the AI trade may be moving

Tepper’s positions in CoreWeave and SpaceX are small compared with Appaloosa’s biggest holdings.

That’s important.

The purchases look more like early bets than portfolio-defining convictions, but collectively, they reflect a change in where some knowledgeable investors think the next AI opportunity lies.

The initial phase of the boom benefited semiconductor producers, cloud giants, and model creators.

The next phase might be more about organizations that can offer the actual infrastructure those businesses use.

CoreWeave has a $104.2 billion backlog, showing that users are already booking large quantities of future work.

SpaceX’s Starlink and AI and launch companies are another way to tackle capacity and connection issues.

The potential is huge precisely because developing that infrastructure is tough.

So is the risk.

CoreWeave has to invest tens of billions, with no idea what the AI hardware economics will look like many years from now. SpaceX must keep pouring billions into Starship, satellites, and computer infrastructure while showing that those companies can support a value now in the trillions.

Tepper is not merely betting that AI keeps growing.

He is betting that the companies supplying the infrastructure that AI cannot grow without will capture an increasing share of the value.

Related: CoreWeave stock sinks as mag 7 move rattles investors