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TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealFashion has a way of coming full circle, and square-toe sandals are the latest trend to make a comeback. Popular in the ’90s, these types of sandals are in vogue once again, with jelly options and sleek minimalist designs making a comeback. They’re easy to pair with jeans and a sweater for a casual outing, or pair them with a fancy dress for a date night. The clean design fires effortlessly into today’s style, making them an easy choice for anyone looking to refresh their warm-weather wardrobe without sacrificing comfort or affordability. The versatility of a stylish pair of flip-flops almost knows no bounds, and the Sketoe Square-Toe Flip-Flops are no exception. These minimal sandals offer a polished look for everything from the grocery store to traveling abroad, making you reach for them again and again. They start at just $10, saving shoppers up to 60% at Amazon.Sketoe Square Toe Flip-Flops, From $10 (was $25) at Amazon

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Every powerful technology eventually reaches the same argument. Somebody has to decide whether the thing gets handed out or locked up.Encryption had that fight in the 1990s, when the federal government classified strong cryptography as a munition and tried to keep it away from ordinary people. Software had it a decade earlier, when a small group of programmers insisted that code should be readable by anyone willing to read it.That second fight is the one worth remembering, because the side that looked reckless at the time ended up running the century. Open source software now underpins most of the internet, along with the systems that federal agencies and the U.S. military rely on every day. Nobody calls that reckless anymore.Artificial intelligence has arrived at the same intersection, and the stakes are bigger this time, because AI is not merely software. It is the thing that writes the software.For three years, America’s largest AI labs have argued that their most capable models are too dangerous to hand out. Washington has been broadly sympathetic. Chinese labs have not been listening.On July 24, Microsoft (MSFT) stopped hedging and put its name at the top of a document that says the opposite.

Washington leaned toward restricting downloadable AI models. Microsoft’s July 24 letter argues the opposite.d3sign / Getty Images

Why open weight AI models became a Washington problemAn open weight model is one anyone can download, inspect, modify and run on their own hardware. The company that trained it gives up control the moment the file goes public. A closed model stays behind an application programming interface, or API, where the developer decides who gets access and at what price.More Artificial Intelligence:Mark Cuban sees a problem with the AI spending spreeOpenAI just disclosed something genuinely alarmingServiceNow’s quiet $1B cybersecurity boomFor most of the modern AI boom, the best models were closed and American. That arrangement quietly held U.S. policy together.It stopped holding on July 16, when Beijing-based Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter model it planned to release freely. One widely read estimate now puts the lag between open models and the closed frontier at roughly “3-5 months,” according to Interconnects, down from the six to nine months the field had been assuming.Washington noticed. The Commerce Department had already spent June testing how far its authority reaches, imposing a license requirement on the distribution of two Anthropic frontier models before largely withdrawing it two weeks later, according to Export Compliance Daily.That episode showed the industry something uncomfortable. The government is willing to treat a model file the way it treats a weapons component.Related: Morgan Stanley resets Microsoft stock forecast ahead of earningsWhat Microsoft signed and who signed alongside itThe letter is titled “Open Weights and American AI Leadership,” and it lives on Microsoft’s own corporate responsibility site rather than a trade group’s. That placement is the tell. Microsoft is not a co-signer here so much as a host.The argument runs against the industry’s own safety orthodoxy. “Relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe,” the letter says, according to Microsoft, which goes on to argue that concentrating capability behind a few providers creates single points of failure.I counted 35 names on that page on the morning of July 26. The coverage on July 24reported 25.Here is how the list moved:Twenty-five companies had signed when the letter published on July 24, including Nvidia (NVDA), Meta (META), IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL) and Palantir (PLTR), according to CNBC.OpenAI was absent at launch, according to Tom’s Hardware.OpenAI now appears among the signatories, alongside later additions including Cisco (CSCO), Box (BOX), DoorDash (DASH) and GitHub, according to Microsoft.Elon Musk backed the letter publicly without SpaceX (SPCX) signing it, calling it something he gave his “full support,” according to CNBC.Anthropic and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google remain off the list.At publication, “none of the signatories sells access to a closed frontier model,” according to Tom’s Hardware. OpenAI’s later addition complicates that reading, and it is the single most interesting thing about the document.What the open weights fight means for Microsoft stockHere is where this stops being a policy story and starts being a portfolio one.Microsoft carries a market capitalization of roughly $2.84 trillion, down about 25% over the past year, according to StockAnalysis. If you hold an S&P 500index fund in a 401(k), you own a piece of this argument whether you followed it or not.The commercial logic is not subtle. Microsoft sells cloud capacity. Every model that runs on customer-controlled infrastructure is compute Azure can rent, and Microsoft does not pay a licensing toll on weights it did not train.Closed frontier models cut the other way. They concentrate margin at the lab, which is why rivals keep building their own silicon to escape the same math, and Microsoft has been paying that toll to a partner it also competes with, as I reported for TheStreet in June.Competitors see the same incentive. U.S. labs are “clearly worried,” Mozilla chief technology officer Raffi Krikorian told Axios, arguing that executives would not lobby against open weights unless they saw a genuine competitive threat.What struck me in my analysis of the signatory list is that almost nobody on it sells intelligence directly. They sell chips, clouds, tooling, distribution and security. Cheap, abundant, downloadable models make all five of those businesses larger.That does not make the argument wrong. It does mean the reader should price it as advocacy rather than testimony.Where the open weights fight heads nextThree things worth watching, none of them abstract.Moonshot said it would publish K3’s weights on July 27, according to Axios. That would put a near-frontier Chinese model on American laptops and force Washington to respond to a fact rather than a forecast.Microsoft reports fiscal fourth-quarter results on July 29. Azure growth has been the number that moves the stock, and a strategy built on renting compute for models Microsoft did not train is now company policy in writing.And Congress is still working through the AI Kill Switch Act, legislation that would require a shutdown mechanism for AI models. A model whose weights sit on 40,000 hard drives does not have a switch to flip.The signatories know that. They wrote the letter anyway, which tells you they would rather argue about competition now than compliance later.For everyone else, the practical read is simpler. The cost of using capable AI is heading down faster than the labs charging for it would prefer, and the companies betting on that outcome just told Washington so in public.Related: Washington doubles down on its Al fight with China

The Roth IRA is usually framed as a patient account, one that rewards savers for leaving it alone across a long career and collecting the reward decades later. Contributions go in with money that has already been taxed, and the vision is that everything inside grows and eventually comes out without the IRS taking another cut.Typically, the mindset is to put money in and leave it there until age 59½, or expect a tax bill and a penalty for reaching in early. However, that belief is only half right, and each half costs retirement savers something. Some Americans leave a Roth untouched during an emergency because they assume it is off limits. Others, once they learn it is not, start treating the account as reachable without considering what the withdrawal takes with it.In a video on his YouTube channel, Mark J. Kohler, a CPA, attorney, and bestselling author, ran through the beliefs he says most savers hold about the Roth and showed where each one falls short.”They think it’s locked up until they’re 59 and a half,” Kohler said, naming the misconception he says keeps savers from understanding what the account can actually do.What the IRS rule on Roth IRA contributions actually saysUnder the ordering rules in Section 408A(d)(4) of the tax code, explained in IRS Publication 590-B, money leaving a Roth IRA comes out in a fixed order: contributions first, then any converted amounts, then earnings. That order is what decides the tax treatment.Contributions occupy the first layer because they were already taxed on the way in. They can be withdrawn at any age, without income tax and without the 10% early distribution penalty, and no qualifying reason is required. There is no hardship test and no exception to claim.The layers underneath behave differently, and the logic makes sense once everything is properly separated. Each Roth conversion carries its own separate five-year clock, and pulling converted money inside that window can trigger the 10% penalty for a saver under 59½. Earnings are the layer to be especially mindful of. They come out tax-free only once the saver is 59½ or older and the account has been open at least five years.As for the contribution layer, Kohler puts it in plainer terms.”But if you follow the rules, the contributions can come out penalty-free and tax-free if you need them earlier in an emergency, maybe to go to college, to buy a new home or something if necessary,” Kohler said.More on retirement accounts:Charles Schwab, Fidelity alert workers to forced 401(k) ruleDave Ramsey warns Americans on 401(k)s, IRAs (he’s not wrong)Congress research arm warns Americans on 401(k), IRA penaltyWhile he wants people to know this exists, Kohler does not present that access as a strategy. In the same breath, he tells savers what he would rather they do with it.”Now, yes, we want to let that money ride as long as possible,” Kohler said. “You’ve got to know that that option to get those contributions out if necessary is always there.”Both sides of this matter for Americans building their retirement nest egg. The access is real, and for a saver facing a genuine emergency it can be the cheapest money available. What the rule does not do is make the withdrawal entirely free, even if it feels that way.

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What retirement savers give up by draining a Roth earlyThe first cost is structural and has nothing to do with markets or returns. Roth contribution room is annual, and it does not regenerate. The 2026 IRA limit is $7,500, with an additional $1,100 available to savers 50 and older, according to IRS Notice 2025-67. A saver who takes a contribution out cannot simply put it back the following month. The only restoration path is a 60-day rollover, and the IRS permits one IRA-to-IRA rollover per 12-month period across every IRA a taxpayer owns. Past that window, replacing the money counts as a fresh contribution against that year’s cap. The room is gone for good, and so is everything it would have earned.The second cost is the compounding, which is what Kohler emphasizes can leave thousands or more on the table.”Do not underestimate the Roth because of the annual contribution limit and that it feels small,” Kohler said. “The wealthy understand that tax-free compounding growth over time can become massive.”He ran the math to show how impactful seemingly small contributions, or in this case withdrawals, can be. Starting with $7,500 and adding $8,000 every January for 20 years at a 15% annual rate of return, he said, produces more than a million dollars tax-free. That assumed return runs well above long-run stock market averages, and a more conservative rate lands the figure considerably lower, but the argument survives either way. The contributions pulled out early are the ones that had the most time left to work.”I don’t mean you treat your Roth IRA like a checking account,” Kohler said. “I just mean later in life when you follow the rules, this account can become a source of tax-free income. And just like an ATM, you can go get that tax-free money anytime you want. And it doesn’t even show up on your tax return.”That last detail is what separates the account from everything else in a retirement income mix, since withdrawals from a traditional account, a rental property, or a small business all lift the figure a retiree reports.”That Roth IRA can give you income without adding to your taxable income,” Kohler said. “It can even affect your Medicare premiums and how you’re going to cover your health insurance costs. It can affect how much of your social security is taxed.”None of that argues for leaving a Roth alone when the alternative is worse. A saver weighing a contribution withdrawal against high-interest debt or a missed housing payment is running a different calculation, and the access exists for exactly that reason. The distinction Kohler draws is between leveraging the rule and defaulting to it.”And you’re not going to drain it early because you’re building an account that will give you the freedom and wealth that millions of Americans are now older and can only dream about,” Kohler said.Key takeaways on Roth IRA contribution withdrawalsRoth contributions can come out at any age: Under the IRS ordering rules, contributions leave a Roth IRA first, without income tax and without the 10% early distribution penalty. No qualifying reason or hardship test is required.Earnings are the part that is actually locked: Money the account has generated comes out tax-free only once the saver is 59½ and the account has been open five years. Each Roth conversion also carries its own separate five-year clock.The contribution room does not come back: The 2026 IRA limit is $7,500, plus $1,100 for savers 50 and older, per IRS Notice 2025-67. A withdrawn contribution can only be restored through a 60-day rollover, and the IRS allows one IRA-to-IRA rollover per 12 months.Kohler’s case rests on compounding, not the annual limit: Kohler said savers underestimate the Roth because the yearly contribution feels small, and that tax-free compounding over time is what makes the account powerful. His on-camera example assumed a 15% annual rate of return.The access exists for a reason: Kohler said savers should let the money ride as long as possible while knowing the option to pull contributions is always there. For someone facing a genuine emergency, the withdrawal can still be the right call.Related: Americans get blunt message on early retirement

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung flew to San Francisco on July 24 for a summit with the most powerful names in artificial intelligence. Jensen Huang was there. Sam Altman was there. The heads of Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai Motor and Naver flew in. By the end of the day, roughly $950 billion in new AI agreements had been signed, and South Korea had positioned itself as the country most central to the next phase of the buildout.Nvidia (NVDA) is not slowing down its global hunt for AI infrastructure partners. The chipmaker has spent much of 2026 signing deals across Asia, the Middle East and Europe to secure the chips, memory and power it needs to keep building AI systems. On July 24, that hunt landed squarely on South Korea, with a cluster of new agreements announced within hours of each other.Nvidia, SK Hynix seal $500 billion memory dealNvidia said on July 24 that it has locked down AI memory supply from SK Hynix, South Korea’s second most valuable company, CNBC reported. The agreement, unveiled late that evening in San Francisco, could be worth $500 billion over a number of years, and it includes large-scale data centers expected to come online in 2027.SK Hynix affiliate SK Telecom will build a cloud business using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin systems as part of the deal. Nvidia said it is targeting enough capacity to require 2 gigawatts of power, a figure that points to a buildout involving hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units working together.More Nvidia:Bank of America sees Nvidia’s next $20 billion businessMorgan Stanley says Nvidia stock remains top pick despite headwindCiti sends strong signal to Nvidia investors amid rumors”The expansion will include a co-develop opportunity for us on the next-generation SK Hynix AI memory, and this will help us secure a stable supply of HBM memory,” Raj Mirpuri, Nvidia’s enterprise vice president, told reporters on a call. High bandwidth memory, known as HBM, sits directly next to AI chips and feeds them data fast enough to keep expensive processors from sitting idle.SK Hynix (SKHY) has built its recent momentum on exactly that product. The company ranked first globally in HBM revenue with a 56.4% share in the first quarter of 2026. Its Nasdaq debut showed first-quarter revenue reaching 52.58 trillion won, roughly $34.5 billion, up 198% from a year earlier, with the stock now trading under the ticker SKHY, as TheStreet reported.Samsung, Broadcom ink separate $200 billion pactA second, unrelated deal landed the same day. Samsung Electronics said it signed a memorandum of understanding with chip designer Broadcom to expand their collaboration across memory and foundry technologies. The agreement, worth an estimated $200 billion, is meant to help support the next generation of AI infrastructure, Reuters reported.The timing is notable given Broadcom’s growing footprint inside the AI supply chain. The company already builds custom silicon for Google’s TPU program. Adding Samsung’s memory and foundry capacity gives Broadcom another lever to pull as demand for custom AI silicon keeps climbing.For Samsung, the deal is part of a broader push to close the gap with SK Hynix in HBM production while also rebuilding its contract manufacturing business. Samsung has also been courting AI labs directly, following a pattern in which memory makers are moving beyond simply supplying parts and into designing the systems that use them.

Nvidia is not slowing down its global hunt for AI infrastructure partnersPhilip/Getty Images

Naver, Hyundai deals widen Korea’s AI reachNvidia’s South Korea push was not limited to memory chips. The company said on July 24 it would invest $1 billion into Naver, a Korean cloud company building data centers around Nvidia’s GPUs, with the project intended to triple the facility size and provide 200 megawatts of AI computing capacity.Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told the gathering that the SK Group partnerships alone represented more than $500 billion in combined business, though he did not detail how that figure was calculated, according to the Korea Herald. “The SK Group and I are announcing today that our two companies will enter into business partnerships that will represent over $500 billion of business together,” Huang said during a meeting with President Lee in San Francisco.Huang also said Nvidia would work with Hyundai Motor Group on autonomous vehicles and robotic systems, extending the day’s announcements beyond data centers and semiconductors into transportation. The comments suggest Nvidia is treating South Korea as a testing ground for AI applications well outside its traditional chip business.The deals mark a shift in how AI infrastructure gets financed. What used to be the province of a handful of U.S. hyperscalers now involves foreign governments and industrial conglomerates writing checks at a similar scale.What the deals mean for chip investorsThe memory market that underpins all of these deals remains a three-way race. Samsung Electronics leads with a 38% share of the broader DRAM market, followed by SK Hynix at 29% and Micron at 22%, according to Counterpoint Research data cited in a recent fund manager interview, as TheStreet reported. Every one of those three now has direct exposure to Nvidia’s expanding supply chain.Analysts have been warning for months that memory demand is outpacing supply, and the announcements on July 24 only add to that pressure. BofA has pointed to the same dynamic as a reason memory prices could climb across DRAM, NAND and HBM products alike.For U.S. investors without direct access to Samsung shares, SK Hynix’s new Nasdaq listing and Micron remain the two clearest ways to track the trade. Both are now tied more tightly than ever to decisions being made inside Nvidia’s San Francisco headquarters.Related: Nvidia stock is doing something it hasn’t done in years

You already know the rule: Buy low, sell high.Almost nobody follows it, and the reason is not ignorance. Low feels terrible while you are standing in it.When something you own falls by half, the number on your screen stops being a price. It turns into a verdict on your judgment. Most people sell right there, not because the math changed, but because the discomfort finally outran the conviction.

Robert Kiyosaki doubles down on gold and silver with Jim Rogers.matejmo / Getty Images

The metals market has been running that experiment on ordinary savers all year.Gold and silver spent January in the kind of rally that ends arguments, then spent six months handing most of it back. Silver took the worse beating, falling by more than half from its January record. Gold gave up roughly a quarter, which still stings if you bought near the high.That is the exact moment when confident advice usually goes quiet.Instead, one of the loudest voices in personal finance announced he was buying. Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” told followers on X that he added to both metals during the drop.Why gold and silver fell so hard this yearMetals do not fall for mysterious reasons. They fall when the alternative starts paying.Gold and silver hand you nothing while you hold them. No dividend, no coupon, no interest.Their entire case rests on what is happening to the cash you would otherwise sit on. When inflation runs hot and real yields sink, that case is powerful. When the central bank turns hawkish and Treasury yields climb, it weakens fast.More Gold and Silver:Gold’s record run has dark side few investors seeGoldman Sachs revisits its gold price target after Fed decisionSilver price hits new low, here is what comes nextThe second version has defined 2026. Inflation is running at 3.7%, far above the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal, according to Forbes. The Fed under Chair Kevin Warsh has held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% and quietly moved the conversation from cuts to hikes.Every month that story holds, the cost of owning something that pays you nothing goes up. That applies whether you own bullion, coins, or shares of SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares Silver Trust (SLV) in a brokerage account.Related: Robert Kiyosaki flips his gold stance after weeks of waitingSilver fell twice as far as gold for a reason worth understanding before you buy either one. Silver trades as money and as an industrial input, so it absorbs the rate story and the manufacturing story at once.When solar and electronics demand softens while rates rise, silver takes the hit from both directions. The war complicates all of it. U.S. strikes have continued for more than a week and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requested an additional $67 billion in war funding, reported Yahoo Finance. Conflict lifts safe-haven demand, then lifts oil, then feeds the inflation that invites tighter policy.What Robert Kiyosaki says he boughtKiyosaki did not announce a target this time. He announced a transaction.”During this last ‘retracement’ or ‘crash’ I bought more gold and silver,” he wrote, according to BeInCrypto.He credited the broader call to veteran investor Jim Rogers, arguing both metals climb sharply from here though not without “severe retracements,” reported Bitcoin.com News. Gold and silver are “going to the moon,” Kiyosaki added in his post on X.The context makes it sharper. He spent June telling followers to wait for the chart to confirm a bottom before buying anything, as TheStreet highlighted; then bought into a decline that had not confirmed much of anythingStrip away the exclamation points and there is still a real argument underneath, and I have read enough of these posts to separate the two. The forecast is unfalsifiable. The behavior is not.In my analysis, the useful part is the sequencing. He bought after the drawdown, not during the January melt-up when coverage was loudest and coins were most expensive. That is the reverse of what most retail buyers did this year, and it is a habit you can copy without adopting a single one of his price targets.Whether that discipline is repeatable or simply well-timed is the open question. He has floated $35,000 gold and $200 silver before, and those numbers still read as marketing rather than modeling.The numbers behind the metals selloffHere is what this week actually looked like, and why the fundamentals and the price keep pointing in opposite directions.Gold traded at $4,131.10 an ounce on the morning of July 22, its third straight session higher, according to Yahoo Finance.Silver traded at $59.42 an ounce that same morning, more than $20 above its level a year earlier, according to Fortune.The global silver market is heading for a sixth consecutive annual deficit, projected at 46.3 million ounces, according to the Silver Institute.Central banks bought a net 244 tonnes of gold in the first quarter of 2026, led by Poland and Uzbekistan, according to the World Gold Council.Markets put roughly a one in three chance on a Fed rate hike at the July meeting, according to Forbes.Read that list again and the tension is obvious. Supply keeps tightening and sovereign buyers keep accumulating, while the price spent six months falling.What moved the price was policy, not scarcity. That distinction matters more to your account balance than any forecast, because policy can reverse in an afternoon and scarcity cannot.What the Fed meeting means for your metalsThe Federal Open Market Committee meets July 28 and 29. That is the next real test.A hike, or hawkish language without one, pushes real yields up and gives both metals another reason to slide. A softer tone does the reverse, and January’s highs stop looking like a ceiling.Neither outcome validates a $35,000 forecast. Both change what your position is worth by Christmas.What I would take from this week is smaller and more useful than a price target. The people who got hurt in metals this year were not wrong about inflation or federal debt. They were wrong about their own tolerance for a 50% drawdown, and they found that out at the bottom instead of before they bought.So decide now what share of your savings you can watch fall by half without touching it. Ten percent of a portfolio is a position. Half your net worth is a personality.Kiyosaki bought this dip and got a fast bounce for it. The next one may take years to pay, and that gap between conviction and patience is where most household portfolios actually break.Related: Robert Kiyosaki sends blunt stock market warning

It might be funny, except it’s expensive. You run a business, a small theater maybe, and you need to air-condition it in warm weather. One warm day, you turn on the AC for your theater… and nothing happens.And then you discover no repairman can fix the problem. Because thieves climbed onto the roof of your building, opened up the AC system and tore out all the copper tubing. And you can’t just fix it because to get to the copper, the rest of the system was, well, trashed. So, you hope insurance will cover the costs to replace the entire system. That is exactly what happened to the 50-year-old Taproot Theatre in Seattle at the end of April as a production of Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin'” was near the end of its run.The theater produces six shows a year and is an important piece of Seattle’s theater scene.The cost to replace the AC units: a cool $130,000.A national, even global problemTaproot isn’t alone. Vandalism to strip out copper happens regularly in the United States and around the world. It is a side effect of the fact that copper, at least as bought and traded in futures markets, is now selling for $6.40 a pound in New York, up 185% just since 2020, when it sold for $2.23 a pound.Thieves, seeing a way to make quick buck, break into a building and tear out the copper, whether tubing or wiring. They sell their booty to recyclers, probably small, probably not well known, who may choose not to inquire how the copper was obtained. The problem is growing. How much is a guess, but the Internet and Television Association (NCTA, because it was once the National Cable and Telecommunications Association) put its guess at $294 million to $1.47 billion, just in 2025.And the damage caused to get to the actual copper was multiple times bigger than the value of the copper itself. Many thieves don’t seem to worry much about law enforcement because they know the police will try to solve murders and, say, bank robberies first.

Damage to air conditioning system at Seattle’s Taproot Theatre.Courtesy Taproot Theatre, Seattle

Low barrier to entryMost of the time, the thievery is simple.Consider: Very early on the morning of June 27, a man was stopped on the West Seattle bridge in Seattle with four coils of copper wire and some heavy wire cutters. He told a police officer he worked for Seattle City Light, the municipal utility, and was fixing a problem. There was, in fact, no problem on the bridge. The 47-year-old man didn’t work for the utility. The man was arrested and charged, then failed to appear for arraignment. So, there’s an arrest warrant out for him, said Douglas Wagoner, legislative director for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Related: The ultimate AI proxy trade isn’t a tech stock—It’s something more humbleThe bridge and its wiring, however, are exposed and hit repeatedly, The Seattle Times noted.So are old street lights in downtown Los Angeles. In early 2024, Wired reported, a country radio station in Oklahoma saw the height of its 499-foot transmission tower cut by more than half so thieves could remove the copper wire. Two young men were arrested and sentenced to jail terms. Value of their haul: $100.Telecommunications giant AT&T (T) says it suffered some 10,400 copper theft incidents in 2025 alone — about 200 a week, most of it inCalifornia. But only 3% of its phone customers use copper phone lines. AT&T would like to get rid of all copper wiring to all its California customers, but local opposition is thwarting the idea. So, AT&T is doing the American thing. It’s suing. A crime committed by young menMost of the vandalism is done by men 25 or younger. Most are underemployed or unemployed. Many have criminal records. Drugs are involved in most Seattle-area copper theft, says Wagoner of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office. Sometimes, however, a theft goes horribly awry. Two men were killed in April 2023 trying to steal copper wiring from an electric power substation in Gainesville, Ga., CBS News reported.Is organized crime involved?AT&T believes organized crime increasingly is involved. “In many major metropolitan areas and small towns, copper theft has escalated to levels that can only be described as systemic,” Rahdeese Calcutt, lead investigator at AT&T Global Security, wrote in an April blog post. In March, Portland, Ore., law enforcement charged five people with copper theft, according to KPTV. One of the five was a woman who allegedly acted as a broker. She would take in stolen copper and sell it to legitimate recyclers.More Natural resources:The ultimate AI proxy trade isn’t a tech stock—It’s something more humbleJefferies joins Barclays in backing major gold minerAfter the bubble: Why UBS is still a gold-and-silver fanIn June, Illinois authorities found a trailer loaded with $300,000 in copper wire. The trailer had been stolen in Alabama.Is there a fix to the problem? Stiffer penalties would help, businesses say. But a bill supported by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office went nowhere in the 2026 Washington State Legislative Session. The bill would boost jail time and require all recyclers to photograph copper they take in and upload the photos to a database. There will be a new effort in the 2027 session, Wagoner told theStreet. For Taproot, the show could go onIn the case of the Taproot Theatre, sadly, there have been no arrests in the case. But there is a happy ending. An insurance claim is pending for the damages to its air-conditioning system. Meanwhile, an emergency fund drive raised $450,000, and the theatre was able to replace the two destroyed units.The entire system is now encased in a metal cage, the Puget Sound Business Journal noted.The 226-seat theatre was able to produce “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” as scheduled and announced it would extend the run by two weeks.Related: White House’s sweeping Canada tariffs put US prices at risk

The Federal Reserve’s July 28-29 policymaking meeting on interest rates was, frankly, expected to be a snooze fest just a few weeks ago. Now, it’s going to be a humdinger.Economists, traders, and other Fed watchers were forecasting that the Federal Open Market Committee would vote to hold the benchmark Federal Funds Rate steady. This was due to a stabilizing labor market, a huge slide in oil prices, and a refreshing dip in the June Consumer Price Index, indicating a resilient U.S. economy that could take a beat from hawkish concerns that a tightening of policy was needed ASAP.Today, we’re looking at a coin toss, folks. Don’t be surprised if there’s a rate hike coming down the pike.“I can make a good case for either raising rates or not,” William English, a former senior Fed economist now at Yale University, told The Wall Street Journal. “They’re just kind of stuck.”The recent Iran war military escalation saw energy prices surge once again, along with concerns that the so-called peace accord between the United States and Iran had broken down. Prices rose at gas pumps across the country, while Treasury yields hit new highs.And the Trump administration on July 24 released new tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% against 60 countries for alleged forced labor practices — a workaround from the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year squashing the “Liberation Day” tariffs.As Eric Diton, president of The Wealth Alliance, told TheStreet in an email: “Given that the Iran War continues to drag on, and oil prices have spiked once again, combined with a resilient labor market and a shortage of resources due to the AI buildout, plus the tariff uncertainty, the Fed target of 2% inflation seems unattainable in the near-term. “The 30-year Treasury rate sits around 5.18%, the highest in nearly two decades. The markets now give a 30-40% probability that the Fed will need to hike rates at least once before year-end. I agree that the Fed may have to hike rates given this unusual set of circumstances.”Warsh commits FOMC rate policy 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,’’ Fed Chairman Kevin 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. This risks fueling further 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.

FOMC holds interest rates steady thus far  The rate-setting FOMC voted unanimously in June to hold its benchmark Federal Funds Rate target in 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.”Shortly before the cooling June CPI came out, I reported that Fed Governor Christopher Waller issued a stark warning on inflation and its long-term impact on prices.“No matter how you cut it, or what measure you want to use, inflation is up this year,” Waller said in a July 13 speech. “At this point, I am concerned about the elevated pace of core inflation.”   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 longer-term mortgage rates.Policymakers cut rates by a quarter point at each of its 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.Traders shift Fed interest-rate betsAs 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 in July. This is a marked change from the week before, which saw a near 90% chance of July rates remaining steady.Related: Goldman Sachs pitches eye-opening view on Fed interest-rate betsSeptember shift: Traders now price in a nearly 79% cumulative chance of at least one 25 basis-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.Inflation risks spark markets’ interest-rate jittersWarsh, as promised, dropped forward guidance language to markets and consumers in the June statement following his first FOMC meeting as chairman. He and other proponents of Fed reform advocate that the central bank should follow the market, not the other way around.Forward guidance is when a central bank communicates its future economic outlook and interest-rate plans in advance, instead of surprising markets, in signaling whether rates are likely to rise, fall, or hold. Advocates of forward guidance say it helps businesses, investors, and consumers make informed financial decisions.Right now, the Fed’s credibility is at risk, former New York Fed President Bill Dudley said in a Bloomberg Opinion piece. He recommended that the Fed tighten monetary policy to achieve price stability and preserve its independence, as the risks of not doing so exceed the costs of a somewhat tighter policy.“Inflation has exceeded the central bank’s 2% objective for more than five years. If the Fed dawdles, the risk is that market participants will judge Warsh’s tough talk as “all hat, no cattle,” Dudley wrote.  Related: Bank of America CEO warns inflation will back Fed into a corner

Peter McCrory spent 18 months reviewing Bureau of Labor Statistics data, occupation-level unemployment figures, and Anthropic’s own internal research on how workers actually use Claude. On July 24, he published what he found. It wasn’t what his boss had been predicting.McCrory is Anthropic’s head of economics. In a lengthy essay on X (the former Twitter), he laid out the data and concluded the U.S. labor market has not yet taken a visible hit from AI. His CEO, Dario Amodei, has spent the past year repeatedly warning that a white-collar jobs crisis is coming fast and coming hard, Fortune reported. The data McCrory found tell a different story.What Peter McCrory found when he looked at U.S. labor market dataMcCrory started with the basics. The U.S. unemployment rate sat at 4.2% in June. The Federal Reserve considers that full employment. Job openings roughly matched the number of unemployed workers. Prime-age employment was near multi-decade highs.He also ran a more specific test. McCrory looked at unemployment rates among workers whose jobs have the highest concentration of tasks that Claude is used to automate. He compared those workers to people in roles with less AI exposure. He found no relative deterioration in the more-exposed group.”I don’t expect unemployment to be noticeably higher a year from now — at least not because of AI,” he wrote.McCrory traces that finding to what he calls AI’s “stubbornly jagged” capability profile, a term borrowed from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick. No occupation in the Labor Department’s taxonomy has all of its tasks handled by Claude. When McCrory looked at how people actually use Claude at work, the pattern was workers bringing it into their process to iterate and refine, not handing entire tasks over to it.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made very different prediction on AI jobs impactAmodei has not been quiet about where he thinks this is heading. In May 2025, he told Axios AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment to somewhere between 10% and 20% within one to five years. He said companies and policymakers were sugarcoating the risk and needed to stop.In January 2026, he published an essay calling AI a “general labor substitute.” He said it would push work from lower-skill roles up toward upper ones, potentially leaving workers without jobs or stuck on very low wages for good. By June 2026, he was calling for universal basic income and wage insurance. He said significant job loss might be “an intrinsic property of the technology.”McCrory’s data don’t prove that wrong. What they show is that the crisis scenario Amodei has described hasn’t arrived yet, at least not in the aggregate labor statistics. Both men point to the same vulnerable group: early-career workers in AI-exposed roles. The disagreement is over how bad it will get, and how fast.

McCrory points to a growing gap between workers who use AI as a core part of how they work and those who don’t.Eric/Getty Images

Where early warning signs already appear in U.S. employmentMcCrory isn’t saying everything is fine. Hiring has softened for young workers in roles with high AI exposure over the past year. Stanford researchers studying the same trend have called those workers “canaries in the coal mine.”The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects slower employment growth through 2034 for technical writers, data entry workers, and customer support roles. Those are exactly the categories McCrory’s analysis flags as most exposed to AI automation.McCrory also points to a growing gap between workers who use AI as a core part of how they work and those who don’t. Power users are getting more productive. Everyone else is mostly staying the same. That shows up first in hiring and wages, before it ever reaches unemployment data.What a delayed AI labor shock means for U.S. economyMcCrory’s data raises a specific question. If AI is lifting productivity among a subset of workers without causing broad job losses yet, where are the economic gains going?Companies with AI-fluent workers are producing more without hiring more. That runs straight to the earnings line. But that gain is sitting inside a relatively small group of companies and workers. The broader consumer economy isn’t seeing the same lift.Most of the productivity gain is concentrated among high-skill, high-income workers. If that stays true, the income gap between AI-fluent workers and everyone else keeps widening. Spending by lower and middle-income households tends to be more consumption-driven, so a widening wage gap at the bottom eventually shows up in slower consumer spending growth, which is an economic problem that compounds over time.McCrory’s essay points to one more practical implication. If the job disruption is real but still building, companies and policymakers have more time to respond than Amodei’s timeline suggests. Retraining, education, and safety net adjustments are all easier to build before unemployment rises than after. That window is open right now. Nothing in McCrory’s data says it stays open forever.Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on AI companies and job losses

There are only a handful of industries in America where the infrastructure advantage is so deeply embedded that new competitors, regardless of their capital or tech, face a decade-long climb to approach parity. Telecom is one of them.But SpaceX’s Starlink is not a typical competitor. And AT&T (T) CEO John Stankey knows it.Stankey appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, July 22, to discuss AT&T’s strong second-quarter results and field questions about the satellite threat directly. And his answers were measured, confident, and revealing. AT&T closed the week on Friday, July 24, at $24.13, up 5.10% on the session following earnings, according to Yahoo Finance. The company reported Q2 revenues of $31.6 billion, up 2.3% year over year, and announced an accelerated $10 billion share buyback program for 2026.Stankey’s core message on Starlink was that competitors are welcome. Yes. But they are arriving very late to a party that AT&T has been hosting for decades.Also Read: History of AT&T: Timeline and FactsWhat AT&T CEO actually said about Starlink — the infrastructure argumentStankey did not dismiss satellite competition. In fact, he contextualized it in a way that tells you how AT&T thinks about the threat internally.There are going to be new competitors, and they’re going to be folks that come in. But the reality is that they’re coming to the game very late after this industry has been established.Stankey continued on Squawk Box. “They have to catch up with substantial amounts of infrastructure investment that’s been going on for decades inside hospitals, on university campuses, in stadiums, in tall buildings.”That last sentence matters the most, and here is the reason why. Indoor coverage is the problem satellite cannot solve with the same economics as terrestrial networks. More AT&T:AT&T stock price target cut puts dividend investors on alertAT&T may be left out of the Starlink deal everyone wantsAT&T leaves rivals flat-footed as bankrupt carrier foldsEvery high-rise apartment building, every hospital basement, every stadium concourse represents infrastructure that Starlink cannot serve from 340 miles above Earth. AT&T handles more than 98% of traffic generated by its converged customers on terrestrial networks today, according to the Interview. Satellite addresses the remaining fraction of time a customer walks off-grid. In fact, Stankey says AT&T will address that by next year through the partnerships they’ve already established.Related: AT&T may be left out of the Starlink deal everyone wantsThe scale comparison supports Stankey’s confidence. AT&T generated $31.6 billion in revenue in Q2 alone. According to a Reuters report, Goldman Sachs projected full-year 2026 Starlink revenue is approximately $15.6 billion. AT&T notes that it has more than 100 million U.S. consumers across mobile and broadband. As noted by Idem Est Research & Advisory, Starlink has approximately 12 million globally, as of June 2026.The wholesale strategy and why AT&T is not signing with Starlink as a main partnerStankey drew a specific line on wholesale network agreements that has direct implications for how AT&T approaches Starlink and the broader satellite ecosystem.We do wholesale agreements when we think there’s a part of the market that we can’t address with our distribution, our brand and our product.In U.S. suburban and metropolitan markets, AT&T can address those customers itself. The U.S. is also more disciplined than European markets, Stankey noted, precisely because American carriers have “very robust distribution, very well recognized brands, very pervasive infrastructure.”Rather than a bilateral deal with any single satellite operator, AT&T prefers a consortium approach.Related: Oppenheimer downgrades AT&T stock on SpaceX threat”We want to partner with everybody in the satellite ecosystem,” Stankey said, explaining that aggregating volume across multiple low-Earth orbit constellations, including AST SpaceMobile, Amazon Kuiper, and SpaceX, gives AT&T coverage for the small percentage of off-grid traffic at economical pricing without creating dependency on any single provider.This matters for investors tracking the AST SpaceMobile story, which I covered when Cramer called it a buy for the two-year horizon. AT&T’s consortium framing suggests the relationship is complementary but not exclusive, which limits both the upside and the risk for either party.

AT&T is raising prices by $5 per month for fiber and copper internet plans, starting August 16, targeting customers established between June 2024 and July 2025.Kevin Carter/Getty Images

AT&T’s Q2 results and the buyback signalThe financial performance underneath Stankey’s July 22 Squawk Box commentary was genuinely solid, according to AT&T’s earnings release.Revenue of $31.6 billion, representing growth of 2.3% year over yearAdjusted EBITDA reached $12.3 billion, up 5.2% year over year. Free cash flow was $4.7 billion, up from $4.4 billion. Advanced Connectivity service revenue of $23.5 billion grew 5.1%, with Advanced Connectivity operating income up 20.3%. Added more than 646,000 total internet net adds, including 367,000 fiber and 279,000 fixed wireless. Postpaid phone churn was 0.86%.The $10 billion buyback acceleration is the number that sent the stock up 5.10% on the last session of the week. AT&T returned $4.1 billion to shareholders in Q2 alone, including $2.2 billion in common share repurchases. The company is also on track to reach 40 million total fiber locations by the end of 2026 and 60 million by 2030, according to the same statement.On the consumer side, my colleague reported that AT&T is raising prices by $5 per month for fiber and copper internet plans, starting August 16, targeting customers established between June 2024 and July 2025. Price increases alongside volume growth are the combination that drives the margin expansion embedded in the Q2 results.Also Read: AT&T Inc.Latest News and StoriesAT&T is up 0.64% year-to-date but has returned 89.07% over three years, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock had been range-bound for much of 2026 as investors debated the satellite threat. Stankey’s direct engagement with that question, paired with a buyback acceleration and strong free cash flow, is why the Friday, July 24 session looked the way it did.Related: AT&T quietly raises prices again as customer behavior shifts

International Business Machines (IBM) CEO Arvind Krishna has spent the past 10 days apologizing.On July 14, he told shareholders his company had faltered. Eight days later, he opened the second-quarter earnings call by admitting that IBM fell short on execution.Krishna then told CNBC on Thursday, July 23, that only 2% of IBM’s software could be replaced by applications built by artificial intelligence models. Everything else, he argued, helps clients get ready for AI rather than compete against it.That is a bold number from a chief executive whose stock recently recorded the worst single trading day in its 115-year history.IBM shares rose 4.01% to $214.94 by midday Friday, July 24, up $8.30 from Thursday’s close of $206.65, but the stock is still down more than 18% over the past month and sits near its 52-week low of $199.19.What Krishna’s 2% claim means for IBM software revenueSoftware is IBM’s profit engine. It brought in $7.76 billion in the second quarter, up 5%, and makes up roughly 45% of the company’s revenue, CNBC reported.Krishna’s argument rests on a distinction most investors skip. More AI Coverage:The AI honeymoon appears over amid stock sell-offGoldman Sachs backs surprising non-AI stocksMark Cuban sees a problem with the AI spending spreeMost of that revenue is infrastructure software, the layer that manages data, security, and hybrid cloud plumbing. AI tools need that layer to run.Applications are the exposed category. IBM’s Tririga lease management product, acquired in 2011, earns about $2 million a year from Starbucks (SBUX), which is phasing it out before a 2027 support cutoff.Put a dollar figure on it. Two percent of a $7.76 billion quarterly software business is about $155 million a quarter, or roughly$620 million a year.Krishna made the same case to analysts on the earnings call, telling them IBM’s AI strategy is the right one and the shortfall came down to execution, Yahoo Finance reported.

IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna told CNBC that only 2% of the company’s software faces real replacement risk from AI-built applications.Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda / Getty Images

The 42% mainframe collapse behind IBM’s AI defenseIBM’s Z mainframe revenue fell 42% in the second quarter, and the transaction processing software tied to those machines dropped 9%, according to CNBC.One quarter earlier, Z revenue had grown 48%.The reversal came from IBM’s own customers. Krishna wrote in IBM’s July 14 letter to investors that clients spent late June redirecting capital toward servers, storage, and memory to lock in supply ahead of price increases.Memory prices are climbing because AI chip production absorbed manufacturing capacity. So IBM’s clients bought hardware first and pushed software purchases into the next quarter.That sequence hurts twice, because IBM collects about $3 of software revenue for every dollar of mainframe hardware it sells.Inside IBM’s second-quarter 2026 resultsRevenue: $17.2 billion, up 1% year over year, according to IBM’s earnings releaseSoftware: $7.76 billion, up 5%, with Red Hat up 11% and data offerings up 19%Consulting: $5.33 billion, flatInfrastructure: $3.84 billion, down 7%, including the 42% drop in IBM ZOperating earnings: $2.93 a share, up 5%Free cash flow: $4.8 billion for the first six months, flat year over yearWhy Wall Street cut IBM stock price targets anywayKrishna handed analysts a second data point. About one-third of the deals that slipped out of the second quarter have already closed in July.  IBM normally recaptures two-thirds to three-quarters of slipped deals within six months, Benzinga noted. Krishna called that a deferral rather than destroyed demand.Related: Oppenheimer sends warning on IBM after shares crashWall Street trimmed targets regardless. Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring cut his target to $190 from $293 on July 23 while holding an equal weight rating, according to GuruFocus. Stifel analyst David Grossman moved to $235 from $290 and kept a buy rating, Investing.com reported.Grossman told clients IBM’s stock will likely stay stuck in a narrow range, with more room to fall than to rise.Guidance came down with them. IBM now expects full-year constant currency revenue growth of 4% to 5%, trimmed from more than 5%. Oppenheimer had already downgraded the stock after the July 14 warning.How IBM stock compares with the S&P 500 and software peersThe scoreboard is unforgiving.IBM: Down about 30% in 2026 through Wednesday’s close, according to CNBCS&P 500: Up about 10% across the same stretchiShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF: Down 17%IBM is trailing its own sector by 13 percentage points, which points to execution problems specific to Armonk on top of the industry-wide anxiety about AI.IBM now trades at 19.08 times earnings against a 52-week high of $332.46, and yields 3.15% on a quarterly payout of $1.69 a share. Its free cash flow held at $4.8 billion for the first half.IBM has paid consecutive quarterly dividends every year since 1916. That streak is the biggest reason income investors held on through a 25% one-day crash.What has to happen before IBM stock earns back its valuationKrishna and CFO Jim Kavanaugh are asking investors to accept a two-part promise: The delayed deals come back, and mainframe demand recovers.Kavanaugh told Yahoo Finance that IBM sees no evidence of clients walking away from the mainframe, and that installed capacity points to a record year against prior programs.Four things have to land for that promise to hold:The remaining two-thirds of slipped deals close by the fourth quarterSoftware growth reaches the 6% to 8% full-year range management now guides toFree cash flow rises by about $1 billion for the year, as reaffirmed on July 22Z mainframe revenue stops declining by early 2027IBM is also committing more than $10 billion to quantum computing over five years, which will not offset a 42% mainframe decline inside 2026.What IBM’s next two quarters mean for ordinary investorsKrishna’s 2% claim is testable, which is what makes it useful.Red Hat grew 11% in the quarter, while transaction processing software fell 9%. Transaction processing is tied directly to the mainframe cycle, so that split supports his timing argument.Here’s the practical read. At $214.94, IBM’s stock price already assumes 4% to 5% revenue growth and stable cash flow. It assumes nothing more. If software growth jumps back into double digits, that upside isn’t priced in yet.Buying now means trusting that the delayed deals land on schedule. Waiting costs you the first leg of any rebound and buys you one more quarter of evidence.The number to watch on the October earnings call is Z mainframe revenue. Krishna has said software should catch back up within a year, and the mainframe line is where that claim will show up first.Related: OpenAI just disclosed something genuinely alarming