BUSINESS

Morgan Stanley says the bull case for the rocket-launch stock is now much rosier as the company diversifies its business.

The Moana live-action movie Rotten Tomatoes score is in, and it is absolutely not what Disney wants to see ahead of its opening weekend.

Comcast, which owns Xfinity Mobile, is promoting a free offer it is now aiming at T-Mobile customers frustrated by the carrier’s latest wireless plan changes.Last week, T-Mobile raised eyebrows when it confirmed that it is retiring several legacy wireless plans, including Simple Choice, ONE and Magenta. Customers affected by this change will automatically be moved to newer wireless offerings, resulting in price hikes of up to $6 per month in some cases. To add fuel to the fire, T-Mobile also informed customers that its KickBack discount, which slashes $10 off each wireless line on an account that uses less than 2GB of mobile data per month, will officially retire on July 13. In response to these changes, some customers took to social media platform Reddit to express frustration, with some even threatening to switch carriers. Comcast vies for frustrated T-Mobile customersAs T-Mobile faces backlash, Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile is taking advantage of the moment. The mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is targeting T-Mobile customers by promoting a free year of wireless service to those facing price increases, according to a recent report from PhoneArena. “T-Mobile raising your rate? Try Xfinity Mobile free for a year,” reads an ad in the Xfinity app. Xfinity Mobile, which uses Verizon’s cellular towers, has long offered this promotion, but its messaging towards T-Mobile customers is new. The free line applies to Xfinity Mobile’s Mobile Select plan, which is usually $30 per month when Xfinity Internet is activated. Xfinity Mobile compares the offering to T-Mobile’s Essentials plan, which is $60 per month for one line.Related: Comcast launches new service to win back internet customersThe Mobile Select plan includes features such as unlimited talk, text, and data in the U.S. and for over 215 travel destinations outside of the country. However, after 50GB of cellular usage, speeds slow down when network congestion occurs.The plan also offers unlimited mobile hotspot data, but speeds are reduced after 15GB of usage. Customers can also enjoy WiFi PowerBoost, which increases Wi-Fi speeds at home or when traveling, and the ability to stream movies and TV shows in 720p. In addition to the free line for a year, new customers who join Xfinity Mobile’s Mobile Select plan aren’t required to sign a contract, granting them the freedom to cancel their service whenever they see fit. 

Comcast targets frustrated T-Mobile customers with free line offer. Shutterstock

Comcast is benefiting from customers seeking more valueThe move from Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile comes during a time when it is already seeing increased demand for its wireless service.In the first quarter of 2026, Comcast gained 435,000 new U.S. wireless customers, while revenue in this business spiked by 15% year over year, according to its latest earnings report. During an earnings call in April, Comcast Co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said that the company’s free line offer is successfully luring new wireless customers. “Wireless accelerated meaningfully this quarter, even as the competitive environment remains intense,” said Cavanagh. “We like what we’re seeing, both in the momentum we’re generating and in the quality of the customer relationships we’re building.”More Telecom News:T-Mobile warns customers that a key service will double in priceVerizon adds generous offers for customers after price increaseSpectrum suffers heavy loss as customers ditch service“Our free line offer continues to perform well and is doing exactly what we intended, building awareness, increasing attachment, and expanding the top of the funnel across our broadband base,” he continued.Comcast and other cable companies have also been attracting wireless customers through bundled mobile and internet offerings. About 80% of Americans consider bundled internet and mobile services to be more affordable than paying for each service individually, according to a recent survey by Optimum.Amid this growing trend, cable companies (excluding privately held cable companies) added 830,000 mobile lines in the fourth quarter of 2025, accounting for roughly 33% of industry mobile phone net additions, according to a MoffettNathanson report, which was shared with TheStreet.MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in a statement to Light Reading in March that he expects cable operators to attract more customers through bundled phone and internet offers than T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon (the Big 3).”Cable not only offers customers much lower converged pricing but also has an enormous footprint advantage over any of the telcos individually, and indeed even versus all of the Big Three collectively,” said Moffett.Currently MVNOs/cable operators top consumer satisfaction rankings when it comes to bundled wireless offerings, according to a recent CableTV.com survey. The top 7 wireless bundles Americans are most satisfied with: Spectrum ranks No. 1 with an 88% consumer satisfaction score.AT&T takes second place at 87%, and Cox follows at third with 86%. Astound Broadband lands at fourth place with a 84% score.At fifth is Verizon (83%), sixth is T-Mobile (82%) and Xfinity ranks seventh, scoring 82%.
Source: CableTV.com
“MVNOs have a key advantage over traditional carriers, as ISPs (internet service providers) have heavily promoted them with deals like a free year of service to entice customers to try them out,” said Eric Chiu, CableTV.com internet editor, in the survey release.“Traditional providers are no slouch here – AT&T or Verizon commercials for new iPhone and Samsung deals are commonplace every holiday season – but it’s hard to beat free when it comes to a deal,” he added. “Still, this category’s high satisfaction scores reflect how consistent cell phone service can be with either an MVNO or a major provider.”Related: T-Mobile retires several cheaper wireless plans for customers

Days before her new album Confessions II debuts on charts everywhere, Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor returns in the U.K. to several tallies.

Dish DBS, the satellite TV and wireless subsidiary of EchoStar, filed for prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 30 in federal court in Houston. The filing ends months of speculation about the future of the industry’s would-be fourth wireless carrier.More than 88% of Dish’s bondholders backed the filing, which was triggered when the company could not repay $2 billion in senior secured notes carrying a 7.75% interest rate, due July 1.There is a twist in this story, and it works in AT&T’s favor.AT&T’s spectrum deal sits at the center of the storyEchoStar took on roughly $25 billion in debt after merging with Dish in 2024. It had been counting on a cash infusion from AT&T (T) to bridge the gap between its debt payments and its available cash.Back in August 2025, AT&T agreed to buy about 50 megahertz of nationwide spectrum from EchoStar for $23 billion. That includes around 30 MHz of 3.45 GHz mid-band airwaves and 20 MHz of 600 MHz low-band spectrum, spread across more than 400 markets.The deal was expected to close by mid 2026, but regulatory delays pushed the timeline back, which left EchoStar short of the cash it needed to make its July 1 payment.In plain terms, AT&T’s own pending spectrum purchase is the deal whose delay helped push Dish DBS into bankruptcy court. And once that sale finally closes, AT&T stands to gain from it twice over.

John Stankey, Chairman and CEO of AT&T inked a spectrum deal with EchoStarBill Pugliano/Getty Images

AT&T’s network already leans on this strategyAT&T CFO Pascal Desroches has repeatedly described the company’s approach as playing the long game rather than chasing quick wins. Speaking at the Mizuho Technology Conference on June 9, Desroches said: “So we are building a network, not simply for today, we are building it — a network for the future. And that network is going to be AI-ready for whatever workloads it produces.”The CFO pointed to rising demand for bandwidth from AI, autonomous vehicles and smart devices.More AT&T:AT&T is raising 2 fees customers pay monthlyAT&T launches 4 new internet plans amid fight for customersAT&T lands Rivian win as Wall Street sees growing threatOnce the sale closes, AT&T adds a large amount of low-band and mid-band capacity, the type of spectrum it has trailed Verizon and T-Mobile on in recent years. Under a companion agreement, EchoStar is also winding down parts of Boost Mobile’s radio network and shifting to a hybrid setup where AT&T’s network carries Boost’s traffic.Boost, which has roughly 7.6 million subscribers today, down from more than nine million when EchoStar acquired it, is not part of the bankruptcy filing. Neither is sister brand Gen Mobile. Both will keep operating. But increasingly, their signal will travel over AT&T’s network rather than a rival’s.Telecom stocks fell on Dish bankruptcy newsThe market’s first reaction was not a clean win for AT&T. Shares slid more than 5% on July 1 as Dish’s bankruptcy filing became public. That erased roughly $8 billion in market value in a matter of hours, as investors weighed the $23 billion cash outlay against the risk of dealing with a bankrupt counterparty. Shares of Verizon and T-Mobile also dipped following the bankruptcy news, a sign that spectrum deals of this size carry execution risk for everyone involved, not only the seller. T-Mobile has its own reasons to welcome the news. As Dish exits the wireless race as an independent, price-cutting competitor, the pressure to undercut on price eases across the market.Related: T-Mobile stands to benefit as rival files Chapter 11 bankruptcyT-Mobile has also separately extended its mid-band lead by folding in UScellular’s spectrum and subscribers.Still, it is AT&T that walks away with the spectrum, the Boost traffic, and a would-be rival sidelined for good, even while its stock digests the near-term cost.The core business keeps growing regardlessAT&T’s underlying operations have not skipped a beat. The carrier added 294,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the first quarter of 2026, alongside a record 584,000 net additions in fiber and fixed wireless. That marked the company’s sixth straight quarter above half a million.AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey told investors at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference on May 19 that the company’s fiber and wireless buildout gives it “a structural advantage over time in how you handle networking and network loads,” a point he has repeated across multiple investor events this year.Dish expects to emerge from Chapter 11 by the end of the third quarter. EchoStar says Dish TV and Sling TV customers should see no disruption to their service.But the wireless ambitions that once made Dish DBS a genuine fourth carrier threat appear to be over. What began as a challenge to the industry’s biggest players has instead folded into the very incumbent it once hoped to compete against.Related: Oppenheimer downgrades AT&T stock on SpaceX threat

In this week’s Crypto Long & Short, FalconX’s Gaspar Martin writes that BTC is reaching a market bottom and is poised for a turnaround.

The firm’s latest fund backs AI and robotics startups but leadership says it remains committed to crypto investing.

After decades of building an individual retirement account (IRA), retirement may finally be within reach. However, the five years leading up to retirement are far from a passive countdown. Advisors, including Fidelity’s Frank Maltais, and researchers such as Wade Pfau have flagged this stretch as a period when portfolio decisions carry outsized consequences for the rest of retirement.The order in which your investment returns arrive determines whether your savings survive a full retirement. A portfolio’s 30-year outcome depends heavily on what happens in its first decade, accounting for roughly 77% of the final result, according to research from retirement scholar Wade Pfau at The American College of Financial Services.Asset allocation, contribution strategies, and tax planning all require careful reassessment before the transition from accumulating wealth through earnings to drawing income in retirement begins, Fidelity reported.Sequence-of-returns risk threatens your IRA the most near retirementA market downturn in your early withdrawal years forces you to sell holdings at depressed prices, not just temporarily denting your balance.That sell-off permanently shrinks the capital base available for recovery, even if the broader market rebounds sharply in the years that follow.A retiree withdrawing $50,000 annually depletes savings far sooner than expected if they face a 15% portfolio decline in the first two years.Someone who encounters that identical decline a decade into retirement ends up in a far stronger financial position, Schwab Center’s analysis showed.Frank Maltais, a certified financial planner and Fidelity Investments financial advisor, told CNBC that retiring during a market downturn can erode a retiree’s savings, particularly without adjusting withdrawal amounts.If you retire into a poor market, that can diminish your nest egg over time, especially if you don’t scale down your withdrawals during that declining marketThe base-case safe withdrawal rate is now 3.9% for portfolios holding 30% to 50% in equities, according to Morningstar’s retirement income research.That figure falls below the widely cited 4% rule because elevated equity valuations amplify the risk of destructive early losses.How Schwab and Vanguard model the pre-retirement IRA shiftMany savers approaching 60 still hold the heavily stock-weighted allocation they built in their 30s, and that inertia becomes a growing liability. Schwab Center for Financial Research models a conservative investor on a three-to-five-year horizon at roughly 20% stocks, 50% bonds, and 30% cash.More Retirement:Vanguard drops playbook on retirement incomeVanguard warns workers losing thousands in 401(k)sFidelity’s wake-up call on Social Security, IRAs, and 401(k)sVanguard’s target-date fund glide path reaches a 50/50 stock-to-bond split by the target retirement date after starting new investors at 90% stocks, according to Vanguard’s target-date fund documentation. Stocks still play a role because IRAs need to generate growth across a retirement lasting 25 to 30 years. Maltais recommends keeping one to two years of expenses in cash so retirees can avoid selling stocks during a downturn, he told CNBC.

Schwab and Vanguard recommend gradually reducing stock exposure while increasing bonds and cash as retirement approaches to manage investment risk.miniseries/Getty Images

Roth conversions offer tax control, but Medicare surcharges catch savers off guardIf your IRA is heavily weighted toward traditional pre-tax dollars, the years before retirement offer a narrow window to convert some of that balance. Roth conversion transactions jumped 41% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, according to Fidelity’s first-quarter 2026 Retirement Analysis.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act permanently extended reduced federal income tax rates, creating a favorable window for pre-retirees weighing Roth conversions. However, conversions come with a cost that many pre-retirees do not expect, known as the income-related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA. This Medicare surcharge is triggered when modified adjusted gross income exceeds $109,000 for single filers or $218,000 for joint filers in 2026, Kiplinger reported, citing the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.Medicare calculates the premium using your income from two years prior, so a large Roth conversion in 2026 could trigger higher costs starting in 2028. Even after a conversion, taxpayers with sizable capital gains or MAGI above the threshold can still face bracket creep, Derrick Longo, a wealth advisor at Exencial Wealth Advisors, told Kiplinger.IRA catch-up limits rise to $8,600, and your withdrawal plan cannot waitSavers who are 50 or older can now contribute up to $8,600 per year to an IRA, up from $8,000 in the prior year.That total combines a $7,500 base limit with a $1,100 catch-up contribution for those 50 and older, which increased from $1,000 for the first time in years under a SECURE 2.0 Act indexing provision, according to IRS Notice 2025-67. Schwab’s catch-up guide notes that even a few years of maxed-out contributions can meaningfully expand a saver’s balance and open up additional room for tax planning.Funding a Roth IRA with those contributions also eliminates future required minimum distributions on that money, since Roth accounts are exempt from mandated withdrawals.Related: Dave Ramsey raises red flag on major IRA, Roth IRA decision

Salesforce Inc. (CRM) said Tuesday it will invest $1 billion in Switzerland over the next five years to accelerate the country’s adoption of agentic AI, according to a Seeking Alpha report.The pledge comes as Salesforce shares trade near a two-year low, weighed down by investor doubts about whether all of its AI spending will pay off.Switzerland is not an isolated bet. It is the latest entry in a spending campaign that has quietly become one of the most aggressive corporate AI investment pushes anywhere.Chair and CEO Marc Benioff announced the commitment during a visit to Geneva ahead of the AI for Good Global Summit, where he will co-chair the inaugural meeting of the new AI for Good Global Commission alongside Rwandan President Paul Kagame and International Telecommunication Union Secretary General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, according to a Salesforce statement.Geneva was not a random stop. The city hosts the ITU and the World Economic Forum and will host the Global AI Summit in 2027.Related: Salesforce makes gutsy bet to win AI agent raceSalesforce will fund Swiss workforce expansion and AI trainingThe money is meant to fund Salesforce’s Swiss workforce, its growing customer and partner base, and local AI skills training, according to a company statement.Switzerland now joins a growing list of countries receiving similar pledges.Salesforce committed $1 billion to Italy in June and $2 billion to France that same month, on top of an earlier $3.5 billion five-year commitment there.Salesforce points to existing traction in Switzerland as proof of concept. Virtual care provider Oviva uses Agentforce to handle more than 300,000 monthly customer messages autonomously, deflecting half of all inquiries without a human involved, the company said.Bag maker FREITAG built an agent called FRIDA for customer service, and the World Economic Forum deployed an agent named EVA to guide more than 3,000 leaders through its 2026 Davos meeting.

Salesforce will invest $1 billion in Switzerland over five years to expand Agentforce, its autonomous AI agent platform, across Swiss industries.LUDOVIC MARIN / Getty Images

What is agentic AI, and why is Salesforce racing to own it?Agentic AI differs from the chatbots most people already know. Instead of only answering a question, an agent can complete a multi-step task on its own, such as resolving a support ticket from start to finish.That distinction matters commercially because it changes what software companies can charge for.Salesforce has historically sold per-seat licenses to human employees. If agents start doing part of that work, the pricing model shifts toward consumption or outcomes, and Salesforce needs that shift to happen on its own terms.More AI:The new Chinese AI model rattling U.S. tech investorsAnthropic restores access to Mythos 5 for select organizationsSoftBank CEO offers stinging critique of Musk’s AI betAgentforce annual recurring revenue reached $1.2 billion in the quarter ended April 30, up 205% year over year, according to Salesforce’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings release. That is the fastest revenue ramp of any product in the company’s history, though it remains a fraction of the company’s record $41.5 billion in total annual revenue for fiscal 2026.Investors worry autonomous agents will cannibalize seat-based revenueDespite that growth rate, Salesforce shares have fallen roughly 33% so far this year, dropping from $253.62 to $169.01, according to CNBC, as investors weigh whether agent-driven efficiency will eventually erode the seat-based licensing business that still generates most of the company’s revenue.The market has learned to discount forecasts and back-half promises. It wants organic proof instead.That skepticism helps explain the pattern of country-specific pledges. Locking in enterprise and government relationships now gives Salesforce a claim on future AI budgets in markets like Switzerland, Italy, and France, even while near-term monetization stays murky at home.The pattern echoes how cloud providers once courted governments with local data centers years before the revenue followed.Salesforce is running the same playbook with agentic AI, spending capital today for customer relationships and policy access it hopes will matter more once agents take on more of the work companies currently pay humans, and Salesforce, to manage.Whether that bet pays off may hinge on a question Geneva’s AI summit is grappling with this same week: how much of what agents promise to do, they can actually deliver.Related: Turing cuts Nvidia reliance, taps AMD for 10% of AI training

Low-volatility stocks are having a moment after a long stretch of underperformance.