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Check your bank statement, and you will probably find a subscription you forgot to cancel. Maybe it is a streaming service you opened twice, or a fitness app left over from a January resolution.

Software makers have quietly counted on that forgetfulness for years. Now a new class of personal AI agents promises to catch those charges, cancel them and haggle over the rest.

That sounds like a threat to tech. It is really a transfer, and the bigger question for investors is where the money lands.

Also Read: Bank of America warns Apple investors because of Meta’s Muse

Agents move money from apps to the plumbing

OpenAI’s Dots, launched on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, work around the clock on their own cloud computer, according to NBC News. They book, research, and manage tasks without waiting to be asked, and the service went viral.

According to the Bank of America note shared with TheStreet, that shift hits software sold to consumers and small businesses the hardest. Analysts led by Tal Liani said the low end of the market has “less complex customer requirements and greater price sensitivity.”

The bank flagged 10 names at risk: Asana, BlackLine, Dropbox, Hinge Health, HubSpot, Intuit, Monday.com, Paycom, Paylocity, and Zoom.

Yet “at risk” does not mean “sell,” since BofA still rates four of them, including Zoom, a Buy.

The other list matters more. If agents do more work, someone must supply the computing power, watch for errors, and store the data.

As sophisticated AI agents like Meta’s Muse take over routine digital tasks, Bank of America warns that consumer software providers could lose ground to data infrastructure giants.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Nonstop agents need nonstop computing power

A chatbot uses computing power only when you type a question. An agent that works while you sleep keeps renting chips all night.

That is BofA’s case for CoreWeave (CRWV), Nebius Group (NBIS) and Oracle (ORCL), all rated Buy. The note even flags potentially stronger pricing for these chip landlords.

In my view, that is the underrated twist. Agents may squeeze what we pay for apps while handing pricing power to the companies that run them.

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BofA’s $140 CoreWeave target sits almost exactly on the Street average, according to Stock Analysis. The split is about risk, since nine analysts there still rate the stock a Hold.

Nebius draws more conviction. BofA’s $310 target tops the $284 Stock Analysis average.

Oracle is where the gap is widest. Based on prices in the note, BofA’s $240 target implied roughly 75% upside. Even Morgan Stanley’s neutral call carries a $210 target well above where the stock traded.

In my read, the market is not doubting Oracle’s demand. It is doubting the cash needed to build data centers that meet it. For everyday investors, the fattest upside here sits with the biggest spenders.

Someone has to watch the robots

Agents make mistakes, and businesses will want to know when they do. BofA expects agents to multiply the logs and performance data that observability software tracks.

The bank rates Datadog (DDOG) and Dynatrace (DT) a Buy, with targets implying gains of roughly 11% and 13% at the note’s prices.

BofA’s $305 Datadog target also sits about $20 above the Stock Analysis average. It held that target even after Datadog fell 19% in August, when a single AI customer pulled back usage.

Shopify bets agents still need a checkout

Shopify (SHOP) is the boldest call on the list. BofA names it a winner despite heavy small-business exposure, the same trait that lands HubSpot (HUBS) on the risk list. Its $180 target implies about 21% upside.

A robot can find the product, but it still needs a store and a payment system, which Shopify sells. Still, the first risk BofA lists is AI shopping platforms cutting Shopify out.

MongoDB (MDB) plays a quieter role, holding the data agents draw on for context. BofA’s $540 target implies about 55% upside, even after the company’s CEO abruptly left on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026.

The cost cutter could turn on the winners

Here is my concern with the bullish half of the note: Agents are built to hunt waste, and nothing says that instinct stops at consumer apps.

BofA quietly concedes the point. It warns that business agents could help companies build their own monitoring tools and switch databases more easily.

There is also a Main Street irony. For now, consumers need an OpenAI Pro plan costing $100 to $500 a month to use Dots, NBC News reported. The bargain hunter is itself a premium subscription.

Watch the bills, not the demos

The demos are impressive, but demos do not pay invoices. The next round of earnings will show whether agent traffic is turning into revenue for CoreWeave, Oracle and Datadog.

If it is, BofA’s split will look early and right. If agents mostly squeeze costs everywhere they go, the line between winners and losers may prove thinner than it looks today.

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Everyone knows McDonald’s for burgers, fries, and a very loud brand. Last month, the company told investors it wants to be known for something else, too.

Executives spent the morning in Chicago laying out a plan called McDonald’s (MCD) NEXT. Most of it focused on menus, restaurants, and technology. Tucked inside was an idea that could move the revenue needle for the fast-food giant. 

McDonald’s wants to unlock a brand-new revenue stream by using something it already owns: the attention of millions of people every day.

Why MCD stock has a built-in audience

Let’s start with the size of the crowd. McDonald’s serves more than 70 million customers every day, according to CEO Chris Kempczinski at Investor Day.

Global Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley said the company has nearly 220 million loyalty customers who were active in the last 90 days. This metric has risen by 45% over the last three years. 

Also Read: McDonald’s has an inflation problem it can’t price away

Loyalty members visit 2.5 times as often as non-members. Flatley has said that if McDonald’s daily customer base were a country, it would be the seventh-largest in the world, Adweek noted.

It’s clear that McDonald’s does not have to buy its way to a crowd. In fact, it already has one that can be monetized further. 

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski aims to unlock a new revenue stream.Win McNamee / Getty Images

McDonald’s $1 billion bet on ads

Flatley called it the new venture, the McDonald’s Media Network.

Commerce media ads are sold where people shop and order. It could be an ad on a menu board, a kiosk screen, or even in-app. 

This segment is among the fastest growing verticals in advertising and is expected to surpass $100 billion in the U.S. by 2028. 

McDonald’s recently moved into market testing, and the pilot covers 450 company-owned U.S. restaurants.

Flatley said McDonald’s aspires to build the network into a $1 billion business across the system over time. 

Last quarter, the burger behemoth reported total sales of over $7 billion.

She also explained why management likes the idea. “It’s an opportunity to generate revenue for the system with little in the way of additional cost, no operational complexity, and no disruption to our customer experience.”

Related: McDonald’s just did something not seen in decades

Flatley said the company is looking for new ways to use assets it already has.

Flatley explained that with 200 million active loyalty members and more than 70 million daily customers across age groups, McDonald’s has a significant customer base it can monetize. 

These advertisements can be shown at in-store kiosks, menu boards, restaurants, and in-app.  

Each one is a place where an advertiser might want to be seen. McDonald’s would simply be renting out space it already controls.

What it means for MCD stock price

Here is the honest part. The Investor Day event did not say how much profits the ad business could generate. 

But if we assume a 75% margin, it could increase cash flow by $700 million at $1 billion in ad revenue.  

Management also did not list the media network among the three drivers behind its margin goal. CFO Ian Borden named durable sales growth, lower overhead, and more franchised restaurants.

The goal is for adjusted operating margin to reach the low- to mid-50% range by 2030. McDonald’s also wants overhead to fall from about 2.2% of system-wide sales to about 1.9%. And it wants to move from about 95% franchised to about 98% by the end of 2028.

So the ad business looks like extra upside, not the core of the plan. Any new revenue that costs little to run could help the numbers.

McDonald’s sales backdrop

The timing helps explain the interest in new revenue. 

Borden said U.S. sales are expected to be slightly negative for the third quarter. July and August were both slightly negative, he said, though September is expected to be positive.

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Kempczinski also said industry traffic in McDonald’s wholly owned markets is expected to be flat while inflation stays elevated. 

The company is also spending heavily elsewhere.

Borden said McDonald’s plans to provide $8.5 billion in NEXT partnering through 2036. It includes rent relief and capital support for franchisees. About $5 billion of it will come by the end of 2030.

A high-margin ad business could help balance some of that spending. 

McDonald’s has a simple story to tell here. It has the audience, the screens, and the data. Now it wants to turn them into a new income stream.

The pilot is small, and the $1 billion goal is open-ended. Investors watching MCD stock should look for updates on how far the test spreads beyond 450 restaurants.

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Why we love this deal

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Ugg Valor Faux Fur Throw Blanket, $49 (was $98) at Nordstrom

Courtesy of Nordstrom

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Related: Walmart’s $27 comforter is perfect for fall and comes with matching pillow shams

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Ugg Sage Plush Throw Blanket, $39 (was $78) at Nordstrom

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Every chatbot answer, cloud upload, and streaming recommendation leans on memory chips, and the supply of them is running thin. Micron (MU) has become one of the clearest winners of the AI buildout, with results that look nothing like its numbers a year ago.

The company spent years riding the ordinary ups and downs of the memory market. AI may be changing that pattern.

Investors still struggle to price that success, and the gap between great earnings and nervous trading keeps widening. After Micron’s June report, the stock slid 41% in 35 days despite a strong beat. The latest quarter, delivered on September 30, added another chapter to that unusual story.

Also read: Bank of America doubles down on Micron stock price for 2026

Micron says it cannot see when the shortage ends

Micron posted fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $54.23 billion, up 379% from a year earlier. Adjusted earnings reached $33.42 per share, topping the $31.61 analysts expected. Gross margin hit 87%, ahead of the company’s own forecast. For the full fiscal year, revenue reached $133.19 billion, up 256%, CNBC reported.

The message on supply was blunt. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said demand has strengthened since the previous call and that supply and demand should be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than in 2026. Micron also said it has no line of sight on when supply will catch up.

Guidance pointed in the same direction. Micron expects first-quarter revenue of $60 billion to $63 billion and adjusted earnings of $37.15 to $39.15 per share. Gross margin is expected near 86.25%, and the company reported GAAP net income of $37.70 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter, Investing.com reported.

Wall Street gave the numbers a shrug. Micron shares barely moved in premarket trading after the report, even though the stock is up more than 270% this year. Analysts stayed mostly bullish, with Morgan Stanley maintaining its Overweight rating and a $1,200 price target.

Memory has always swung hard. Prices spike, makers add capacity, oversupply crushes pricing, and the cycle starts over.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Why new factories will not fix it anytime soon

Building supply is slow. Micron is adding memory and storage plants, but they will take years to finish. Even after the first wafers roll off the lines, it takes time to reach full production, with output only becoming meaningful after several quarters.

The spending is already huge. Micron projects capital spending of roughly $11.5 billion in the current quarter and about $25 billion across the first half of fiscal 2027. Some of that money funds facilities in Idaho, New York, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, Investing.com reported.

Management expects DRAM and NAND conditions to stay tight beyond calendar 2027 and noted the shortage has lasted far longer than analysts predicted. More than 20 analysts covering the stock rate it a Buy or Strong Buy.

Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy pointed to Micron’s forecast for industry DRAM bit growth in the low 20% range in 2027 and 2028, down from the mid-20% range in 2026. High-bandwidth memory is harder to produce, he added. Mehrotra said more than 75% of output is already committed. Cassidy expects fiscal 2027 capital spending to top $50 billion.

Micron is trying to break the boom and bust pattern

Memory has always swung hard. Prices spike, makers add capacity, oversupply crushes pricing, and the cycle starts over. AI servers need far more memory than past products did, and new fabs take years to build.

Micron’s answer is the strategic customer agreement. It now has 26 signed, up from 16 last quarter, with commitments worth $32 billion. The company estimates those deals will cover 35% of its revenue through 2030.

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The agreements now stretch into 2031. Three-quarters of the estimated SCA revenue comes with a defined pricing framework.

Most of the agreements carry both price floors and ceilings, while the rest are priced on market conditions. Micron’s 2027 output is already committed, leaving a smaller pool of uncommitted supply available to the rest of the market.

Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers said Micron’s next phase leans on investor confidence in how long the shortage lasts and how fast the agreements grow. He trimmed his price target to $1,400 from $1,525 and kept an Overweight rating, TheStreet reported.

Shoppers are already paying the bill

Samsung co-CEO TM Roh warned in January that the shortage was unprecedented and that no company was immune. He said higher prices for phones, TVs and appliances were inevitable. DDR5 RAM prices had more than doubled since Micron shut its consumer division.

Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro line reached stores with a $100 price bump in the first launch under CEO John Ternus. The base iPhone 18 Pro costs $1,199 and the base Pro Max costs $1,299, TheStreet reported.

Apple’s own costs keep climbing. Former CEO Tim Cook called the memory market a “100-year flood” and confirmed Apple has paid more for three straight quarters. Apple expects to pay more again in the fiscal fourth quarter.

TechInsights estimates the DRAM package in the iPhone 18 Pro costs Apple about $145, compared with roughly $39 in the iPhone 17 Pro. With no end in sight, the memory boom and its price tags are not going away anytime soon.

Related: Nvidia, SK Hynix send strong signal to Micron investors

Artificial intelligence has a funding problem that dwarfs most corporate budgets. Bank of America forecasts that AI capital spending could top $5 trillion between 2026 and 2030, with roughly $1.2 trillion of it needing outside financing.

Most of the gap sits with Oracle (ORCL), SpaceX (SPCX), CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius (NBIS), where spending runs about $700 billion more in projected capital spending than operating cash flow.

Nvidia’s answer arrived on August 10, when it signed deals with six major asset managers to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure, according to a Nvidia statement. The pitch is bold. Nvidia shares closed down 2.86% that day, while Apollo and KKR both rose more than 6%.

Also read: Nvidia, SK Hynix send strong signal to Micron investors

Lenders want more protection than Nvidia offered

Some lenders want higher guarantees than Nvidia first outlined, even for its industry-leading AI chips. Banking sources and credit managers said the August plan, announced with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, had envisioned chips as collateral with only a limited guarantee.

The structure works like a lease. A financing platform buys the chips, leases them to the customer and collects payments tied to the compute revenue. Nvidia backstops part of the residual value in some arrangements, which also lets the lender charge a lower rate.

The customer gets the hardware, the lender gets a long-dated return, and Nvidia books a sale, as long as the revenue holds.

Chief Executive Jensen Huang has said Nvidia may provide support of up to 25% of an opportunity. He also said he approached only six firms and none turned him down. The money will all be third-party capital, Huang said.

Huang’s case is simple. Chips have become an investable asset class for the first time, he said. Blackstone’s Jon Gray compared the idea to mortgage lenders evaluating homes. Gray said usage at Blackstone portfolio companies surged sevenfold this year, evidence that demand is outrunning supply, CNBC reported.

Huang’s case is simple. Chips have become an investable asset class for the first time, he said.Bloomberg / Getty Images

The fight over how long a chip keeps earning

Huang has said graphics processing units can last up to a decade. Some credit investors see a shorter life. Andrew Chang of S&P Global Ratings said service beyond five years has held true so far, yet S&P takes a conservative view of the chips’ value.

Big cloud companies already disagree with the skeptics. Google, Microsoft and Oracle estimate their AI chips last about six years. Investor Michael Burry says two to three years is closer to the truth.

Meta said extending the estimated useful lives of certain servers to 5.5 years would reduce its 2025 depreciation expense by about $2.9 billion.

GPU valuations offer one clue. Six-year-old Nvidia A100 chips are still estimated to be worth nearly $5,000 each. CoreWeave has a customer contract for A100s running through 2029, Benzinga reported. Older chips can shift from cutting-edge training to inference and lower-cost work, extending their economic life.

Burry argues the longer lives flatten earnings. He estimates that major companies overstate profits by about $176 billion from 2026 through 2028. Nvidia has told investors that hyperscalers depreciate GPUs over four to six years, not the full decade that Huang describes.

Chip-backed loans still lean on contracts

CoreWeave put that theory to work in March. The company closed an $8.5 billion loan backed by its GPUs and a Meta contract worth at least $19 billion. Moody’s gave it an A3. Fixed-rate debt priced around 5.9%. Mitsubishi UFJ and Morgan Stanley led the deal, which matures in 2032.

CoreWeave won its rating largely because lenders rely on Meta’s contractual payments, which are viewed as highly dependable. Unlike Nvidia’s plan, earlier chip-backed deals leaned on revenue from a technology firm to support the debt payments.

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The Broadcom deal makes the math concrete. Apollo led a $35 billion package backed by Broadcom’s AI chips. With Broadcom’s guarantee behind it the debt priced at 5.75%. Without the guarantee it priced at 8.5%, Investing.com reported. That is 275 basis points. That is what a guarantee is worth.

The danger is that collateral values could slide. Analysts have warned that rapid depreciation could worsen if China floods the market with cheap compute. That would erode the value of chips behind these loans, and Huang’s bet hinges on outpacing AI developments in China.

Nvidia tries to calm the doubts

Nvidia is working to ease the concerns. One source said tens of billions of dollars in loan deals in the pipeline are likely to carry strong guarantees and contracts. A spokesperson did not directly address questions about expanded guarantees.

Guarantees move risk rather than remove it. If a supplier backs a package, it could face losses if projects fall short. Customers could struggle, or AI hardware could lose value faster than expected.

More funding may keep chip demand soaring, but it may also shift some of the AI boom’s financial risk back to the firms selling the technology.

The verdict is still open. Whether Nvidia’s chips behave like durable, bankable assets or simply extend the runway for a leveraged buildout may not be settled for years. Nvidia itself raised $25 billion in a June bond sale after investors offered $85 billion.

Until the chips prove their staying power, lenders will keep asking Nvidia to stand behind its claims. That negotiation will shape how the AI boom gets paid for.

Related: Nvidia is set to challenge Anthropic and OpenAI with a new product

On Sept. 29, Caterpillar (CAT) revealed plans to buy one of its own U.S. dealers. And because of that, multiple rental equipment stocks started falling.

United Rentals (URI) fell 2.8%, Sunbelt Rentals (SUNB) dropped 1.5%, and Herc Holdings (HRI) fell 5.0%. 

The stocks dropped because investors worried Caterpillar was planning to compete with rental leaders such as URI. However, Morgan Stanley thinks it’s all a misunderstanding.

In a research note published on Sept. 29 and shared with TheStreet, analysts Angel Castillo and Stefan Diaz told clients that the URI sell-off was overdone. They maintained their Overweight rating and $1,335 price target on United Rentals, but they also said they would use the pullback as a chance to buy more shares.

What happened with the Fabick deal?

The company Caterpillar agreed to buy was the John Fabick Tractor Company. Fabick is a rental company with 37 locations across Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Although the deal has been announced, it still needs regulatory approval. But everything should close within about 30 days. During the announcement, Caterpillar did not disclose the amount they used to buy the company.

Also Read: BofA double upgrades 34-year-old gold miner ahead of earnings

Caterpillar makes construction and mining equipment. It then sells the equipment mostly through independent dealers like Fabick. So when Caterpillar announced that it bought the dealer on Tuesday, some investors thought the company might start renting equipment directly instead, which would make it a new rival for URI.

The worries were actually valid because EquipmentShare had just confirmed a separate power equipment deal with Cummins (CMI) the same day. The two headlines, which hinted at possible competition for rental stocks, were enough to trigger a sell-off.

Caterpillar’s decision to buy the Fabick dealership rattled rental stocks, though Morgan Stanley says the reaction was overdone.NurPhoto / Getty Images

Why Morgan Stanley says the URI drop went too far

Castillo and Diaz described the deal as a temporary fix meant to keep Fabick running through an ownership change. In their note, they said Caterpillar was “stepping in on a temporary basis to resolve Fabick’s ownership transition ensuring continuity rather than a change in its dealer ownership strategy.”

Basically, Fabick was looking to sell, and Caterpillar didn’t want the transition period to affect their business in Fabick’s 37 locations, so they’re buying the company instead.

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The analysts also responded to investors’ concerns about Caterpillar and EquipmentShare taking market share from URI. They pointed out that the U.S. rental industry is still very divided, and growth from companies like EquipmentShare “does not necessarily have to come at the expense of the likes of URI.”

In their opinion, any expansion by smaller rival companies will more likely pull shares away from tiny independent operators rather than top names like URI.

The economics behind Morgan Stanley’s URI call

Owning a dealership directly is not exactly a good thing for Caterpillar. As an example, consider three publicly listed dealers.

Finning, Toromont, and Ferreycorp earned adjusted operating margins of 8% to 13% in fiscal 2025, according to the Morgan Stanley note. Caterpillar, on the other hand, had an operating margin of 17.2% in the same year.

Related: GMO sends stark warning on stock market

According to the team’s estimates, for every extra $1 billion Caterpillar earns from dealership revenue, Caterpillar’s overall margin drops by about 10 basis points, which is 0.10%.

From this, we can see that mixing the dealership’s revenue with Caterpillar’s main business will only reduce the company’s overall margins, which isn’t what investors want to see.

What URI investors should consider before buying the dip

Although Morgan Stanley sees the sell-off as a great chance to buy, you should still be careful of the possible risks. URI still needs rental rates, U.S. construction activity, and equipment prices to remain strong.

Also, there is a small chance investors’ worries might actually become a reality. If Caterpillar or EquipmentShare actively start competing for rental customers, companies across the industry might have to lower their prices, which will affect URI. 

The analysts closed their note by saying they would “be buyers of URI on this sell-off and reiterate our $1,335 PT and Overweight rating.” However, the risks are still real.

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Anyone who has bought a car knows the ritual. You agree on a price, then wait while the salesperson checks with a manager. Then the finance office adds fees the listing never showed.

Now picture software sitting through that tedious afternoon instead. Meta Platforms (META) launched Muse, a personal AI agent, on Tuesday, September 8, 2026. It can open a browser, fill out forms and negotiate for users, and Meta even pitches it as a way to sell a car for more.

Car retail may be where agents matter most, according to a Morgan Stanley note shared with TheStreet. Analysts Daniela Haigian and Andrew Percoco say car buying is an expensive, infrequent purchase that still involves a lot of friction.

Their pick is clear. Carvana (CVNA), the online used car retailer, screens as the best positioned company on their framework, while franchise dealer groups skew negative.

Also Read: Morgan Stanley sees buying opportunity in beaten-down Boeing stock

Agents shift the edge from showroom to logistics

Listing sites made cars easy to search. Agents go further, comparing all-in prices, financing and trade-ins, then negotiating and buying, the note says.

That moves the moat, the analysts argue. An agent can flatten a slick website, but it cannot recondition, finance and deliver a car.

Carvana fits that mold. It owns its reconditioning and logistics network, and its checkout handles financing and trade-ins in one flow, the note says.

Cost is the real weapon. Morgan Stanley estimates CarMax (KMX) will earn about $740 less in gross profit per vehicle than Carvana in 2026, with franchise dealers trailing by about $1,100. That cushion lets Carvana cut prices to win an agent’s comparison without breaking its unit economics.

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Carvana’s second-quarter retail sales hit a record of about 197,000 units, up 38% from a year earlier, the company said in a press release. CEO Ernie Garcia said that still equals just 1.5% of the U.S. auto market.

Morgan Stanley rates Carvana Overweight with a $90 price target, about 38% above the stock’s price in the note. For investors, that is the bet: agents could speed up a share grab already underway.

Morgan Stanley estimates franchise dealers will earn about $1,100 less gross profit per vehicle than Carvana in 2026, a gap AI shopping agents could expose.jetcityimage / Getty Images

Regulators tried to force honest car prices first

The note skips a regulatory twist. The Federal Trade Commission tried to curb hidden dealer fees with its CARS Rule. A federal appeals court vacated that rule in January 2025, the National Law Review reported.

FTC staff published nonbinding guidance on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, saying advertised car prices must include every mandatory dealer fee. Guidance works only when someone checks. An agent reading every fee on every listing checks automatically.

An agent weighing prices, fees, financing and trade-ins at once could make an uncompetitive offer harder to sustain, the note says. Software may enforce what the rulebook could not.

Six franchise groups screen as more challenged, per the note: Asbury Automotive (ABG), AutoNation (AN), Group 1 Automotive (GPI), Lithia Motors (LAD), Penske Automotive (PAG) and Sonic Automotive (SAH). Dealers get partial offsets from AI cost savings, the analysts wrote.

Retailers can still shut agents out. Amazon blocked Muse, which the note says shows that retailers control agent access.

Agents also still make mistakes. A Toronto YouTuber said Muse took a lowball offer on his CA$15 keyboard, according to Moneywise.Agents also still make mistakes. A Toronto YouTuber said Muse took a lowball offer on his CA$15 keyboard, according to Moneywise.

CarMax is the wild card heading into November

Morgan Stanley calls CarMax a wild card. Its ChatGPT app, launched in February, mostly worked as a lead generator, the note says.

Comparable used vehicle sales rose 13% last quarter, beating analysts’ 5.6% expectation, and shares climbed, Bloomberg reported.

CarMax hosts a strategic update on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, according to its earnings release. Morgan Stanley warns that trading share for margin again could send agent-led buyers elsewhere.

Car buying could become an “offer wins” market

Morgan Stanley calls this an “offer wins” market, where price and fulfillment beat brand awareness. That means ad budgets and familiar names could buy less, the note says.

Trust is the bottleneck. An agent that fumbles a CA$15 keyboard sale is not ready to close a car deal. Yet the thesis only needs agents as the first stop.

Morgan Stanley sees the most risk for retailers that profit from buyers who cannot see the whole deal. The next buyer may send a machine that sees nothing else.

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Anthropic is getting investors ready for an unusual situation: buy into one of the world’s fastest-growing artificial-intelligence companies while accepting that the technology driving its value will become difficult to control as we move forward.

The Claude developer focused roughly 80 pages of the 261-page main body of its IPO prospectus on risk factors, compared with just 48 pages describing its business, Reuters reported after reviewing the filing.

More sophisticated models may begin taking steps to preserve themselves, such as refusing to be turned off, hiding data, or even acting as if they are blackmailing you, Anthropic warns.

Those disclosures are especially notable because Anthropic is eyeing a debut that could exceed $2 trillion. The company is basically asking investors to price in the tremendous economic potential of more proficient AI and accept risks that Anthropic itself admits may become harder to model as the technology advances.

The tension between those contradictions increases as you go deeper into the filing. Anthropic says staying at the frontier requires a continuous cadence of new model releases, even as the company argues that increasingly powerful systems require more robust safeguards.

That makes safety more than a moral question for Anthropic’s IPO. It is becoming part of the company’s operational model.

Anthropic says stronger models can become harder to evaluate

One of the odder warnings in the prospectus concerns the limitations of safety testing itself.

Models may occasionally acquire unanticipated capabilities during training that researchers may not be aware of until after deployment, Anthropic explains. It also warns that models becoming aware they are being tested could limit the company’s ability to know how those systems would perform outside of controlled testing, according to Reuters. 

Also read: Anthropic filing discloses up to $84.5B SpaceX commitment

The company has been publicly building infrastructure around that problem. Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy states that as frontier models become more capable, protections and oversight should increase. The present framework incorporates risk reports to evaluate potentially catastrophic threats and the company’s readiness to handle them.

That difference is important to investors. Anthropic does not guarantee that today’s Claude models will deliver the dramatic consequences stated in its filing. The prospectus is flagging possible future hazards that may arise as capabilities expand.

One Anthropic researcher, Evan Hubinger, reportedly put the chances of powerful AI killing humans over the next decade at more than 10%, according to Reuters. That value is an estimate from Hubinger, not a likelihood projection from Anthropic itself.

Anthropic’s $2 trillion ambition comes with a startling warningBloomberg / Getty Images

Anthropic also admits safety has an uncertain payoff

Another issue for investors is that Anthropic’s safety-first stance means the firm cannot accurately calculate the financial return on increased safety expenditures.

Because the corporation must divide costly technical expertise and limited computer power between model development, commercial goods, and safety research, the prospectus characterizes safety work as resource-intensive.

Recently, Anthropic made an effort to quantify that allocation. Approximately 12% of the computing power used exclusively for AI research was devoted to safety during one selected week in July, compared to only 6% of the computing power used for AI research and development. Because much safety research relies on researchers’ time rather than massive training runs, Anthropic warned that compute is an imperfect metric.

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Safety investments may compete with the resources Anthropic requires to improve and speed up Claude.

At the same time, standing still carries its own commercial risk.

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on Sept. 22, describing it as its first model release since the company publicly called for pacing development at the frontier. Before its release, Anthropic stated that the model underwent both its automatic behavioral audit and external assessments.

Six days later, Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5, which it claims is up to 30% quicker than Sonnet 5 and can save up to 30% most workloads.

That quick tempo underscores the business pressure behind a statement in the prospectus: frequent releases are necessary to stay close to the frontier, as new models increase consumer use and revenue.

Anthropic’s IPO turns safety into an investor question

The result is an unusual feedback loop.

To attract clients and stay competitive with firms like OpenAI, Anthropic requires models that are increasingly competent. However, enhancing such models may raise new safety concerns that require further investigation, additional security measures, and greater processing power.

Then, Anthropic must determine how much of those few resources to allocate to risk mitigation rather than to enhancing revenue-generating commercial capabilities.

The business thinks that trade-offs may finally be advantageous. According to its prospectus, the market will reward safe, dependable, and trustworthy AI systems.

The assumption will be put to the test by the general public.

The risk disclosures do not prove that Anthropic’s catastrophic consequences will occur. Part of the purpose of prospectuses is to reveal potential risks, including outcomes that could never occur.

The scope and character of such revelations are what set Anthropic apart from its competitors. Risk concerns make up about one-third of the main prospectus, but the business also admits it must continue developing and distributing the technology that poses such risks due to competitive pressure.

That might be one of the most significant inconsistencies in the document for investors thinking about a price higher than $2 trillion: Anthropic’s development hinges on advancing AI, and its own prospectus goes into remarkable detail on how this might become more difficult to regulate.

Related: Microsoft just sent a strong message to Anthropic

The income trade that beat the S&P 500 by double digits in 2026 just hit a new hurdle that could change what shareholders earn.

The 10-year Treasury yield topped 5% on Sept. 15, 2026, for the first time since 2007, marking a milestone last briefly touched intraday in October 2023 and sending shockwaves through dividend-paying stocks across the market, The Motley Fool reported.

The Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD) has dropped roughly 5.7% from its August 2026 record of $35, settling near $33 as bond yields surge, Benzinga showed. 

The fund holds roughly $100 billion in net assets and ranks as America’s largest dividend-focused ETF, Schwab data confirmed.

Despite the sell-off, net inflows into the fund have topped $18.2 billion over the past six months alone, TipRanks data showed. The gap between falling prices and rising demand has left income investors weighing whether the pullback marks a buying opportunity or the start of a deeper repricing.

Also Read: Jack Bogle’s 12-word investment rule fuels a trillion-dollar shift

Treasury yields above 5% squeeze SCHD from its record high

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points in September 2026, the first increase since 2023, and longer-duration yields have climbed sharply, CNBC reported.

Fewer than 4% of S&P 500 companies now offer a dividend yield above the 10-year Treasury rate, according to Ned Davis Research data shared by Schwab chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders.

The decline has not been isolated to SCHD, as the broader dividend-stock universe has felt the same gravitational pull from rising bond yields.

Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, warned that the yield’s breakout above 5% poses the most immediate danger to equity valuations across the board, Benzinga reported. 

Yardeni cut his year-end 2026 S&P 500 price target from 8,400 to 7,900, a roughly 6% reduction, citing higher-for-longer bond yields and rising downturn risks over the next three to six months.

Strong fundamentals give SCHD a case even as yields surge

Despite the competitive pressure from bonds, the fund’s underlying numbers tell a more nuanced story than the recent sell-off suggests. 

SCHD trades at a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of about 17.87, below the S&P 500’s trailing P/E of roughly 26.37, GuruFocus noted, giving the fund a meaningful valuation discount against the broader market.

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Its March 2026 reconstitution added Abbott Laboratories (ABT), UnitedHealth Group, and Procter & Gamble, while cutting energy exposure by 8%.  

Healthcare and consumer staples now account for roughly 41% of the portfolio, anchoring the fund in sectors that tend to hold up during recessions.

Brian Paoli, associate manager and research analyst at Morningstar, described SCHD’s approach as “sensible, transparent, and defensive” in his April 25, 2026, review of the fund.

The fund holds no exposure to Nvidia, Microsoft, or Apple, sidestepping the tech concentration risk that market voices, including Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, have publicly flagged.

SCHD’s lower valuation, defensive sector mix, and strong fundamentals offer investors a different path as rising bond yields pressure dividend stocks.Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Technical indicators near $32 suggest a potential floor

The Relative Strength Index for SCHD has fallen to 28 over the past 10 days, crossing below the oversold threshold of 30, ETF Database data showed.

A critical support level near $32 aligns with the Murrey Math Lines pivot point that has marked prior turning points, Benzinga’s analysis indicated.

A hold above that level would signal the decline is a temporary pullback, with $34 as the next meaningful resistance target.

How SCHD’s dividend growth record compares to fixed Treasury yields

The technical case points to a floor near $32, but the decision for income investors hinges on what each option pays over time.

A 5% government bond yield comes with a guarantee, and the payout stays locked at purchase with no protection against inflation eroding its value.

SCHD’s income stream has grown in each of the past 14 consecutive years, a record no fixed-rate bond can match over that horizon, the Motley Fool reported. 

That compounding advantage has driven the fund to a total return above 61% over five years, a pace that bonds have not matched, Schwab performance data confirmed.

Across the broader market, dividends have supplied a meaningful share of gains as well, accounting for roughly 3.2 percentage points of the S&P 500’s 10.7% annualized total return over the same stretch.

Michael Clarfeld, managing director and portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments, told InvestmentNews that dividend growth, total return, and risk all matter alongside the current yield when evaluating a dividend payer.

Beyond the headline or current yield, investors should look for dividend growth, as well as total return potential and risk.

SCHD charges an expense ratio of 0.06%, a cost that barely registers next to most actively managed income strategies, Schwab Asset Management confirmed.

Where the $32 support line leaves your income strategy

Yardeni’s warning about bond-yield headwinds and Clarfeld’s case for dividend growth over headline yield frame both sides of the decision that shareholders face. 

The tension between rising bond yields and the fund’s compounding dividend advantage defines the near-term risk profile for shareholders.

The fund’s valuation discount, record inflows, and oversold technical readings all suggest the retreat is more likely to stabilize than extend further, Benzinga’s analysis indicated. 

A sustained hold above $32 would confirm the pullback as a temporary dip and take the deeper repricing scenario off the table.

The trajectory of the 10-year yield remains the unresolved variable, because a sustained climb above 5% would extend the drag on income-generating equities broadly. 

The Federal Reserve’s next rate decision and incoming inflation data are the two catalysts most likely to determine the outcome, Benzinga’s analysis concluded.

Related: SCHD investors sit on a $216,000 gap no statement shows

Trust is the one thing no technology company can print. You either earn it from customers, or you borrow it from the rules that protect them.

For most of modern finance, you have leaned on the second kind. Banks answer to examiners, brokers answer to regulators and public companies answer to auditors who sign their names to the numbers.

That system is why you can hand your paycheck to a bank you have never visited. Somebody outside the company is checking the work.

Artificial intelligence has grown up without that referee. The same handful of companies now builds the chatbots you ask about your taxes, the tools scammers use to clone voices, and a large share of the stocks in your retirement account.

Lawmakers have argued for years about who should police that power. On Sept. 29, the industry gave its own answer, and it signed its name to it.

Meta Platforms (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood with President Donald Trump at the White House and said the goal was to give Americans confidence in the technology.

The catch is who does the checking. Under the accord Zuckerberg signed, the companies largely police themselves.

Six AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord on Sept. 29.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

Why tech giants want to write their own rules

The accord caps a fast-moving policy fight. Earlier this month, the White House dropped plans for an independent standards body that would have tested frontier AI models before release.

I reported on Sept. 19 that Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on that plan, arguing a testing queue would favor the biggest players. This accord is what replaced it.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO weigh in on Anthropic AI proposal

The money at stake explains the urgency. Meta alone expects 2026 capital spending of $130 billion to $145 billion, much of it on AI infrastructure, according to its second-quarter earnings release.

A regulator that delays launches can delay the revenue meant to pay for that spending. A voluntary pledge does not.

What the White House AI accord actually requires

Six executives signed the document alongside Trump, according to Nextgov: Zuckerberg, Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and xAI CEO Elon Musk.

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Google is owned by Alphabet (GOOGL). Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI are private companies.

According to Nextgov’s summary, the accord sets out four layers of control:

Internal controls that monitor a model’s capabilities and behavior during training and deployment.

An internal team responsible for making those controls work.

Assessments by an independent outside auditor or evaluator.

An independent board committee that receives the audit reports.

Zuckerberg framed it as a first step. “The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend,” he said, according to a Fox News live blog.

He added that the companies agreed to “multiple layers of auditing and controls,” according to CBS News. In the same clip, he called the meeting a “historic conversation.”

Trump called the pledge “morally binding” and “almost like a constitution,” CBS News reported. No agency is assigned to enforce it.

Critics say self-policing pledges fall short

Not everyone sees self-policing as protection. “What other trillion-dollar industry marks its own homework?” Toby Walsh of the UNSW AI Institute told Al Jazeera.

In Congress, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) tried the same day to pass a bill creating an AI Safety Board at the Commerce Department, according to Roll Call.

The bill would give the board access to new models at least 45 days before release and require incident reports within 30 days.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected, blocking the fast-track vote.

This is not the industry’s first promise, either. In July 2023, seven companies made voluntary commitments to the Biden White House that included testing models before release and labeling AI-generated content.

In my analysis, the 2026 version is stronger on governance and weaker on transparency. Board-level audit committees are new, but published summaries of the accord say nothing about telling you when content is AI-made.

How the deal affects your money and safety

Public trust is moving the wrong way for the industry. Only 27% of Americans trust businesses to use AI responsibly, down from 31% in 2025, according to a Bentley University-Gallup survey.

The share who say AI does more harm than good rose to 39% from 31%. Young adults turned most sharply, with trust among 18- to 29-year-olds falling to 20% from 30%.

That skepticism has a price tag. The FBI counted $893 million in 2025 losses tied to AI-related scams, including voice cloning and deepfake investment schemes, AARP reported.

An audit committee at an AI lab will not stop a cloned voice from calling your parents. Here’s what you can do while the rules catch up:

Set up a family code word for any urgent call asking for money

Hang up and call back on a number you already have before paying anyone

Treat any “guaranteed” AI trading tool or celebrity investment video as a red flag

If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you already own a stake in three of the signers: Meta, Alphabet and Nvidia.

Watch whether those companies describe the new audit committees in their proxy statements, because that is where shareholders will learn whether the audits are real.

Where industry oversight goes next

The accord’s supporters say it can evolve. “The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do,” Zuckerberg said, according to Fox News.

Critics will want proof before they believe it. The first real test is whether the promised outside audits happen, and whether any of their findings ever reach the public.

Until then, the checking falls to you. Guard your accounts as if no one else is watching, because for now, the watchers work for the companies.

Related: Zuckerberg, Musk, and Huang take key stand on huge AI issue