BUSINESS

Drive past enough American commercial real estate and you start to notice the second acts.The bowling alley that became a church. The Sears that became a self-storage warehouse. Somebody put up the building for one reason, the reason expired, and the concrete found a new job.That pattern is not a failure of imagination. It is what happens when capital gets committed years before the demand it was built for actually shows up, which is most of the time.Right now the largest version of that bet in corporate history is being poured into the ground across Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin and Louisiana.Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META) and Amazon (AMZN) are on pace to spend close to $700 billion this year, the bulk of it on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, according to CNBC.Wall Street has treated every upward revision to those budgets as a buy signal. Bigger capital plan, bigger conviction, bigger stock.Mark Cuban looked at the same construction schedule and saw the strip mall.

Mark Cuban says today’s AI data center buildout could leave much of it idle.PixeloneStocker / Getty Images

Why the AI data center boom rhymes with the fiber boomCuban has an unusual claim on this particular argument, because he was on the winning side of the last one.He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in April 1999, roughly 11 months before the Nasdaq peaked. The buyer eventually shut the service down.More Wall Street:Wells Fargo revamps S&P 500 target for rest of 2026Cerebras Systems Q1 2026 Earnings Call: Updates on $CRBS outlookJPMorgan drops blunt verdict on stock market rallyThe analogy he keeps returning to is not the dot-com stock mania. It is the fiber-optic buildout that ran underneath it.Telecom carriers trenched enormous amounts of long-haul capacity on the assumption that demand for bandwidth would keep outrunning supply. Then compression and optics improved faster than traffic did, and the bandwidth problem quietly stopped being a problem.Much of that glass sat unlit for years and later changed hands for a fraction of what it cost to install. The technology was real. The timing of the spending was wrong.I went back through this year’s capital expenditure guidance from the four largest spenders, and the thing that stands out is not the size of the numbers. It is the duration. These are multi-year commitments to physical assets, funded increasingly with debt, in a business where the useful life of the hardware inside the building is measured in single-digit years.The power commitment runs just as long. Global data center electricity consumption is set to more than double to around 945 terawatt hours by 2030, slightly more than Japan’s total consumption today, according to the International Energy Agency.Substations, transmission lines and gas turbines get ordered against that forecast. They do not come back down if the forecast is wrong.That is a very specific kind of risk, and it has almost nothing to do with whether AI works.Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on AI companies and job lossesWhat Mark Cuban actually said about data centersSpeaking with Jason Calacanis on the All-In podcast, Cuban said the hyperscalers are correct that AI usage will keep climbing. His disagreement is about efficiency.If breakthroughs make models cheaper and less power-hungry, he argued, a large share of the capacity being built today becomes redundant. In that scenario there will be plenty of data centers “turned into pickleball courts,” according to Business Insider.The line landed partly because Cuban co-owns the Dallas Flash, a professional pickleball team. The argument underneath it is less comfortable.Committing tens of billions of dollars to facilities meant to run for a decade or two is, in his framing, “planning for perfection,” according to 24/7 Wall St. Nobody forecasts technology that well.Where the AI bubble damage would actually landCuban does not think this looks like 2000. Few companies are going public at absurd valuations with no revenue, and there is no retail mania to speak of.The exposure sits with the institutions. Venture capital firms, private equity funds, and infrastructure backers have gone “all in,” according to Benzinga, and they are the ones who would absorb the write-downs.His proposed fix is more companies going public at smaller sizes, in the $50 million to $100 million range, which would spread both the upside and the losses across ordinary investors instead of concentrating them in private funds.Three numbers frame how large the bet has become.Combined 2026 capital spending by Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon is tracking toward roughly $700 billion, up more than 60% from last year’s record, according to CNBC.Hyperscalers may understate depreciation by about $176 billion between 2026 and 2028 by stretching the assumed useful life of AI servers, a practice Michael Burry called “one of the more common frauds of the modern era,” according to TipRanks.The Magnificent Seven now account for roughly 34% of the S&P 500, up from about 12% a decade ago, according to Forbes.That third number is where my analysis parts company with Cuban’s.What the AI capex bet means for your retirement accountIf the pain really were confined to venture capital and private equity, most readers could watch this from a safe distance. The index math says otherwise.Roughly a third of the S&P 500 by weight is now the same handful of companies signing the construction contracts. A standard target-date fund or S&P 500 index fund in a 401(k) is, functionally, a concentrated position in AI capital spending.You do not have to own a single share of Nvidia (NVDA) to be long this trade. You already are.There is a second bill in this story, and it does not show up in a brokerage statement. Utilities recover the cost of new generation and transmission through rates, which is why data center load has turned into a standing fight in the communities hosting them, as TheStreet highlighted.Cuban’s warning about persuasion and AI business models got attention earlier this year, but this argument has a cleaner tell attached to it. Watch the depreciation schedules in the next round of annual filings, and watch whether capital spending guidance stops rising.Here is the part the fiber story usually leaves out. The dark fiber eventually got lit, and it made streaming video possible for everyone who came later.The buyers of those distressed assets did extremely well. The companies that dug the trenches did not.If Cuban is right, the buildings get finished either way. The open question is who owns them when the demand finally arrives, and whether the people paying for them today are still holding the paper.Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on income and inequality

James made nearly $53 million last season with the L.A. Lakers, but will take a major pay cut this season to pursue his fifth NBA championship in Philadelphia.

Imagine a world where Walmart only has five stores left.It’s unthinkable because the company has dominated retail for so long, and it survived the pivot from pure brick-and-mortar operations to an omnichannel retailer.It’s probably safe to say that no one mistake could bring Walmart down. Even if it sells explosive diarrhea lettuce, builds its own Epstein Island, or launches a new line of children’s clothes with Diddy, the chain would suffer, but survive.Sears, arguably the chain that served as the Walmart of its day, did not make any single mistake quite as epic as any of the silly ones listed above. Instead, the chain, which was bigger than Walmart by sales until 1990, according to Business Insider, made thousands of little mistakes.The once-dominant retailer, founded in 1886, even survived the pivot from its catalog business to a store-based model.Since 1990, however, the chain has slowly dwindled, selling off assets such as its Craftsman, DieHard, and Lands End brands and using the proceeds for ill-fated ideas that did not reverse the slide.Now, while Sears has not shut down, the chain has five locations left and appears to have abandoned any realistic hopes of a comeback.Sears Chapter 11 was the beginning of the endSears actually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, according to court documents filed on PacerMonitor.At the time, Global Data Managing Director Neil Saunders released a strong statement on the company.“Today is a day that will live in retail infamy. That a storied retailer, once at the pinnacle of the industry, should collapse in such a shabby state of disarray is both terrible and scandalous in equal measure. However, it is not surprising because this is a destination that Sears has been headed towards for many years, with virtually no serious attempt having ever been made to change the trajectory,” he wrote.Saunders called on the company to make big changes and made it clear that its current strategies were not working.“Over the longer term it is still unclear what Sears hopes to accomplish. We believe there is no clear path to success. The group has tried to shrink its way to profitability for years to no avail, so it is hard to see why pursuing the same strategy under the auspice of Chapter 11 would result in a different outcome,” he added.More Retail:Coca-Cola quietly hints at reinventing previously failed flavorBath & Body Works quietly gains a competitive advantageDollar General brings back old pricesHe also foretold what would happen down the road with many of the company’s owned-and-operated brands, which had not yet been sold. “Further asset sales may reduce debt, but they would not put the company on a sound financial footing nor would they solve the operating losses the group is racking up,” he shared.Many analysts trace the true beginning of the chain’s downfall not to its Chapter 11 filing, but to its post-bankruptcy purchase by hedge fund operator Eddie Lampert in 2004.Lampert merged the company with KMart in 2005, which Saunders also saw as a problem. “The solution to Sears’ problems was to buy another retailer not doing well, and that was Kmart. Then they got a bigger bad business,” Saunders told CNBC. “Sears wasn’t investing or changing, and they started to suffer because of that.”And while other retailers were investing, Sears was cutting back.A report from Susquehanna Financial Group had said Sears in 2017 was spending roughly 91 cents per square foot to make upgrades both online and in stores, while J.C. Penney spent $4.13, Kohl’s was paying $8.12, and Best Buy was forking out $15.36 per square foot to make enhancements, CNBC reported.“I think if it was any other retailer they probably would’ve already filed for bankruptcy,” Retail Metrics founder Ken Perkins told CNBC in 2018. “But in Sears’ case, someone with deep pockets is able to influx cash, extract real estate and sell off assets … the cupboard is running very bare and there isn’t a lot left.”At its peak, Sears operated more than 2,700 locations.Sears was sold off for partsSome analysts have argued that Lampert’s only goal was to sell off Sears’ massive real estate holdings. Lampert also used those holdings to protect his investment in the company should it fail.“If they go bankrupt, he remains in control of the company because, though he loses his equity stake, he’s their principal creditor,” former Sears Canada CEO and Columbia Business School Professor Mark Cohen told CNBC. But Lampert has cordoned “off an enormous amount of assets through the loans he’s made, which have essentially protected him from what is eventually (going to) occur,” added Cohen.Sears’ owner sold off hundreds of the chain’s properties to Seritage Growth Properties, a company he controls.The problem is that “then you end up signing leases” and saddling the company with lease liabilities, Neil Stern, senior partner at retail consulting firm McMillanDoolittle, told CNBC.

Sears only has five locations left. Shutterstock

Lampert was sued over Sears’ salesSears creditors sued Lampert and other investors, a case which was ultimately settled. The settlement could resolved years-long litigation filed against Lampert and other defendants over allegations of asset stripping and “rank” self-dealing in the years leading to Sears Holdings’ 2018 bankruptcy, according to Retail Dive.The settlement paid plaintiffs $175 million, including $125.6 million from insurers, $41.9 million from the defendants, and $7.5 million from shareholding funds, reported News.Law.”By the time it filed for bankruptcy, many of Sears Holdings’ stores had closed, major assets — including property, beloved products brands and retail banners such as Sears Canada — had been sold or spun off,” the legal website shared.How those sales were conducted were the heart of the lawsuit against Lampert and other defendants. “Lampert and his hedge fund, ESL Investments, invested in and often took controlling stakes in many of the divested assets, including Sears Canada, Lands’ End, and Seritage Growth Properties (which included a large portfolio of Sears Holdings’ real estate),” the site reported.Sears has 5 locations leftFive Sears stores are still operating in the country, but they won’t be around much longer, industry experts predict, The New York Times reported.”Neither will Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust created to cash in on the value of the retailer’s properties. It abandoned its somewhat audacious plan to turn Sears’ rich real estate holdings into dazzling mixed-use properties. Today, Seritage is offloading the last of its assets as it pays down a $1.6 billion term loan from Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway,” the newspaper shared.That process will end soon, which could mean the formal end of Sears as a retailer.“The goal is to sell the remaining Seritage assets as quickly and profitably as possible, but we are also very open to an alternative transaction that could enhance shareholder value,” Adam Metz, chief executive of Seritage, said in an interview with the paper.RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino sees Sears’ saga as a sad tale that could have been avoided. “The Sears story is one of the biggest cautionary tales in retail history. It’s almost hard to comprehend how many wrong turns a company had to make to go from being America’s most iconic retailer to having only five stores left,” he told TheStreet.It was a demise that required a lot of mistakes, he shared. “The issue wasn’t one bad decision — it was a series of decisions that slowly disconnected Sears from its customers, its employees, and the future of retail. They had the brand, the real estate, the trust, and the history. In the end, it just wasn’t Amazon that killed them but a series of unfortunate events and decisions,” he wrote.Related: Costco drops a surprising new exclusive snack

It would likely be too expensive and time-consuming for SpaceX to build a mobile network on its own. But the major wireless carriers have to hope one of their rivals doesn’t sell out.

Green Bay Packers third-year linebacker Edgerrin Cooper is hoping for a breakout season in 2026.

Affordability keeps hitting home, and hitting hard, across the country this summer.Inflation-weary Americans once again are looking in disbelief at rising gasoline prices and the eye-popping costs of even the cheapest cuts of beef to toss on their grills.Meanwhile, Kevin Warsh has said very little since taking over as chairman of the Federal Reserve in May. He has, however, repeatedly vowed that the policymakers at the U.S. central bank will focus on price stability, which you and I refer to as — ahem — inflation when we’re in polite company. It’s important to note that Warsh has not said how policymakers will do this. They meet July 28-29 to vote on interest-rate policy, and consensus indicates a nearly 65% chance they’ll hold rates steady. But there are increasing signals that a rate hike as soon as September could be in the hawkish viewpoints of Fed officials.Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Economist David Mericle said in an email note to TheStreet that although modest interest-rate hikes by the Federal Open Market Committee might signal the Fed’s commitment to lowering inflation, economic research shows this action rarely proves effective “mainly because businesses and consumers — unlike financial market participants — pay little attention to central banks.’’This means the limited one or two interest-rate hikes in the short term touted by some Fed watchers and prediction markets will have very limited impact on curbing price pressures from supply shocks that are preventing the Fed from reaching its own 2% inflation target, the note said. The Fed has missed this metric for the last five years. That message is consistent with Goldman’s estimate that the combined impact of tariffs, the Iran war, and mismeasurement of artificial intelligence accounts for most of the overshoot of 2% for core PCE and all of it for core CPI, the note said.“There is evidence that inflation expectations affect how businesses set prices, and that in experimental settings, providing people with information about the central bank — its target, its inflation forecast, or its policy actions — influences their inflation expectations at least slightly,’’ the note added.Warsh commits to “price stability”“While monthly price fluctuations are inevitable — especially in an unsettled world —underlying inflation over longer time horizons is determined largely by monetary policy,’’ Warsh said in prepared remarks while delivering the Fed’s twice-yearly Monetary Policy Report to Congress July 14-15.The report, issued July 10, said the outlook of the future path of interest rates “is subject to considerable uncertainty.” It also described the U.S. economy as overall “expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East.’’  Warsh repeatedly reminded members of both chambers that the Fed is committed to its dual Congressional mandate: use interest rates and balance-sheet policy to keep prices stable and the labor market at full employment.That’s tricky.Lower interest rates support hiring but can fuel inflation, potentially leading to an inflationary spiral.Higher rates cool prices but can weaken the job market. This increases the cost of borrowing and further stifles economic activity.As I reported, Warsh consistently repeated his pledge that the central bank would work on its “resolute commitment” to restore price stability.

Fed holds interest rates steady thus far this year The rate-setting FOMC voted unanimously in June to hold its benchmark Federal Funds Rate target at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. But the minutes of the June FOMC meeting showed policymakers splitting their views on inflation risk and the impact on interest rates with a rising hawkish tinge to the “dot plot.”How the Federal Funds Rate impacts youThe funds rate is the interest rate at which banks lend balances at the Federal Reserve to other banks overnight. A change in the funds rate triggers moves in borrowing costs ranging from credit cards to auto loans to even mortgage terms.Related: Warren Buffet delivers powerful 2-word judgment on Fed’s WarshPolicymakers had cut rates by a quarter point at each of their last three meetings of 2025 to shore up the softening labor market. These “insurance” cuts stopped after the majority of policymakers decided the risk from higher prices was outweighing signs that the jobs market was stabilizing.Goldman cites supply shock concerns, rate path June Headline CPI dropped to 3.4% month over month from May’s 4.2% figure. Core inflation stayed flat. The drop was attributed to the reported peace accord of the Iran war that saw the energy shock since February abate. However, in recent weeks, both sides have escalated attacks, and crude oil prices are back on the rise.As of July 24, the widely watched CME Group FedWatch Tool shows financial markets are pricing in higher probabilities of interest-rate hikes for the final months of this year, while expecting a 64.2% probability that rates will remain steady and a 35.8% chance of a quarter-point rate hike. This is a marked change from the week before, which saw a near 90% chance of July rates remaining steady.September shift: Traders now price in a nearly 79% cumulative chance of at least one quarter-point rate hike happening by or during the September FOMC meeting.December tightening: By the end of the year, the CME Group FedWatch Tool leans heavily toward a half-point hike, reflecting sustained inflation concerns.The Goldman note said that a “key lesson of recent years is that the effects of supply shocks on inflation are often large, while the effects of changes in resource utilization are moderate.“In short, there is little reason to think that the limited hikes currently being entertained by the bond market would provide much help in bringing inflation down.“We suspect that most FOMC participants would share this view, though some might also feel that after the pick-up in job growth in recent months, a hike or two probably would not hurt much either.’’Related: Fed’s Warsh drops fresh clues on interest-rate path

Most people build their investing rules out of their own mistakes. You hold something too long, you sell something too early, and you learn what a wash sale is sometime around the first week of April.Nobody hands you the rulebook in advance. You write it after the fact, usually at your own expense.Congress has the opposite arrangement. The people who write the country’s financial rules also decide which of those rules apply to themselves, and for the past 14 years they have landed on the same answer, which is disclose rather than prohibit.That framework dates to 2012 and the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, better known as the STOCK Act, which requires lawmakers to report trades above $1,000 within 45 days. It never barred anyone from trading. It only made the trading visible.Visibility turned congressional portfolios into a spectator sport, then into an investable product. Two exchange-traded funds now exist for the express purpose of mirroring what lawmakers buy.So July 22’s House vote on an actual purchase ban carried more weight than the usual ethics exercise. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) voted against it.

The House passed a congressional stock trading ban 232-198. Pelosi voted no.aimintang / Getty Images

Why the STOCK Act never slowed congressional stock tradingThe 2012 law has an enforcement problem that has never been fixed. No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted under the statute despite documented violations, according to CBS News.That gap is why the disclosure regime turned into a data business instead of a deterrent. Watchdog groups now publish annual scorecards ranking lawmakers against the index, and retail traders build strategies around the 45-day reporting lag.Here is what the most recent full year looked like.Roughly 32% of the 311 disclosed congressional portfolios beat the S&P 500 in 2025, according to Unusual Whales.Pelosi’s portfolio gained 20.1% and ranked 28th in Congress, per Unusual Whales data compiled by Benzinga.Some 86% of registered voters back barring lawmakers from trading individual stocks, according to the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland.Pelosi disclosed up to $6 million in Intel (INTC) and Uber (UBER) call options bought May 29, according to her Periodic Transaction Report.Wednesday’s vote tally was 232 to 198, with 13 Democrats joining every Republican, according to the House Clerk.Pelosi has been the face of this issue for years, and not by choice. She spent the early 2020s defending the status quo before reversing herself in 2022, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent singled her out by name last year while pushing for a single-stock trading ban, TheStreet reported. Her most recent filing showed seven-figure bets on Intel and Uber calls expiring in March 2027, as seen in TheStreet’s coverage. That is the record Republicans wanted voters thinking about.Related: Nancy Pelosi sells $1M of struggling dividend stockWhat the House stock trading ban would actually changeRead the legislation and the picture shifts. H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, would bar members, spouses and dependent children from purchasing individual stocks, and it would require seven to 14 days of public notice before any sale, according to Congress.gov.What it does not do is force anyone to sell. Existing holdings stay exactly where they are, so the Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) positions already sitting in congressional portfolios would survive the ban untouched.More Stock Market:6 high-risk stocks that could be big winnersWorld’s quietest metal just dropped a huge bullish signal3 Tesla shareholders speak out after mixed Q2 earningsRepublicans added two more wrinkles. The bill exempts the president from the trading restriction, and House leadership attached an unrelated voter identification measure to the package before the floor vote.That rider is what most Democrats pointed to. Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) called the voter identification provision a “poison pill” during floor debate, according to the Associated Press.Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), who co-leads a bipartisan divestiture bill, argued the package amounts to a “voter suppression bill” dressed up as ethics reform, he told CNN.Republicans framed the outcome as self-protection. Bill sponsor Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) said lawmakers who want to day trade already have somewhere to do it, and that “It’s called Wall Street,” according to Roll Call.Ethics groups were not satisfied either. The Campaign Legal Center urged Congress to reject the measure on the grounds that letting members keep existing stock leaves both the appearance of insider trading and the ability to profit from official position fully intact.When I pulled roll call 280 from the House Clerk’s office, the number that jumped out was not 198. It was zero, the count of shares any sitting member would have been required to sell had the bill become law that afternoon.What the congressional stock ban means for your portfolioNothing changes in your account this month. The measure faces long odds in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes and where Republican leadership has shown little appetite for taking it up, according to NOTUS.So the 45-day disclosure window survives, and so does the copy-trading trade built on top of it. That trade has never been as good as it looks, because you are acting on information that can be six weeks stale before you ever see it.The Democratic-tracking fund NANC returned 20.8% in 2025 against 16.6% for the S&P 500, per Unusual Whales. Respectable, and close to what a concentrated large-cap technology tilt would have delivered with no political signal attached.My analysis of the bill text points to a simpler conclusion. A purchase ban that grandfathers existing positions does not remove the conflict people are angry about. It freezes that conflict in place and hands it a compliance stamp.The proposals that would actually change lawmaker behavior are the divestiture bills, including the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which would require members to sell individual holdings or move them into a blind trust. That measure had 126 House cosponsors as of January, along with a bipartisan Senate companion from Sens. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), according to Gillibrand’s office.None of that reached the floor Wednesday, July 22.Pelosi leaves Congress in January 2027, so whatever passes next will barely touch her remaining tenure. It will govern the members who plan to stay, and the campaign season starting now is where they get asked to explain a vote that reads one way on a scorecard and another way in the statute.Watch the discharge petition rather than the press releases. That is the mechanism that can force a floor vote on the divestiture version over leadership objections, and the signature count is the one number in this fight that shows you who wants the rule to actually bite.Related: Nancy Pelosi places big bets on two surging tech stocks

The Atlanta Braves CEO invited President Donald Trump to join the team’s pitching staff during a rally.

Will Kevin Warsh support a rate hike? Fasten your seat belts for the decision on Wednesday.

The ATP Masters 1000 event runs Aug. 1-13 and is traditionally the second-biggest warm-up for the U.S. Open.