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Rising traffic in the fried chicken dining sector, which rose 3% industrywide in 2025 according to Circana, wasn’t enough to prevent Popeyes franchisee Sailormen’s financial distress and bankruptcy filing in January 2026.Sailormen’s economic issues prompted it to divest of all of its restaurant locations.Bankrupt Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen franchisee Sailormen Inc., which operated 136 fried chicken locations when it filed for bankruptcy, won approval to sell its 23 Orlando area stores a second time after its first sale fell through.

Popeyes franchisee Sailormen Inc. has divested all 136 of its locations by sales or closings.Shutterstock

Popeyes sells Orlando area locationsJudge Robert A. Mark of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami signed an order on July 23 approving Sailormen’s sale of its 23 Orlando region Popeyes restaurants to SBH Foods PLK LLC for $2.67 million.Sailormen had already won approval from Mark on June 23, 2026, to sell 97 of its restaurants, which included a sale of 5 Savannah, Ga., locations to SBH Foods PLK for $650,000. The debtor also won approval in the deal to sell the 23 Orlando-area restaurants to RFI Ventures LLC for $2.5 million.Buyer didn’t close the saleRFI Ventures, however, failed to close on the acquisition of the 23 Orlando locations by its July 12 deadline, which led to SBH Foods PLK agreeing to purchase the restaurants, according to a July 17 court motion.Sailormen’s sale of the 97 Popeyes locations included 50 units sold to Pulse Restaurant Group LLC for $2.69 million, 16 Miami-area stores sold to Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc. for $9.6 million, and 3 West Palm Beach, Fla.-area restaurants sold to 61 Biscuits LLC for $1.11 million, according to court orders.Franchisee closed 39 locationsThe Miami, Fla.-based wholly owned subsidiary of Interfoods of America Inc. also closed 39 locations that it could not sell.Sailormen filed for Chapter 11 protection after a failed sale of certain locations, a default on credit facilities, and a series of lawsuits and store closings caused the company financial distress.Popeyes Louisiana Chicken Inc., the parent company of the worldwide chain, did not file for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy involved Sailormen Inc., a major franchisee of the chain.The debtor submitted a motion in January in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida to reject 17 leases retroactively to Jan. 15 after closing eight locations on Jan. 19, five locations on Jan. 20, and four locations on Jan. 22, according to court papers.The debtor asserted that the leases should be rejected as of the petition date, since the restaurants were closed within one week of the petition date and before the hearing on the debtor’s first-day motions.Closing locations could save $1 millionSailormen believed that closing the 17 unprofitable locations would reduce its expenses by over $1 million annually.The debtor had won approval to reject 18 restaurant leases, consisting of 15 locations in Florida and 3 in Georgia, on June 24.Mark approved an amended motion on June 27 to add four lease rejections, which amounted to 19 leases for properties in Florida and 3 leases for Georgia locations.The franchisee, which was founded in 1987 with 10 locations, was one of the largest domestic Popeyes franchisees in the company’s system, with 136 locations in Florida and Georgia before it began closing and selling locations. It employed about 2,900 workers before the closures.Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc., which was founded in 1972, operates over 2,700 restaurants worldwide, according to its website.Related: 97-year-old aerospace manufacturer files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are preparing to unveil major supply agreements with American technology companies during President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Silicon Valley.The negotiations behind these deals have been running for months. What changed is the venue, and that detail says something about how Seoul wants this relationship read going forward.Chief Presidential Secretary for Policy Kim Yong-beom told reporters on Thursday, July 23, that the agreements would likely include new long-term memory chip supply deals, strategic investment partnerships, and memorandums of understanding, according to Bloomberg.He declined to disclose the value of the deals ahead of company announcements. Kim called the July 24-25 presidential trip a catalyst that helped close talks, which had dragged on between Korean firms and their U.S. counterparts, Reuters noted.What Seoul actually confirmedLee began the trip in San Francisco on Friday, July 24, where he attended an AI summit and held separate meetings with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Broadcom’s Hock Tan.Samsung Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also attended, alongside Hyundai Motor’s Euisun Chung and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin.Kim said the deals build on an investment plan Seoul revealed last month, worth at least $880 billion and backed by Samsung, SK Group, and Naver.The initiative aims to cement South Korea’s position in the global AI supply chain by building a massive domestic mega-cluster for memory chip manufacturing and AI data centers. He added that American technology companies already account for 80% to 90% of the underlying orders driving that expansion.That figure explains why this trip reads more like a formalization exercise than a new courtship, especially after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Samsung and SK Hynix earlier this month to expand memory production on U.S. soil, according to Bloomberg.

Samsung and SK Hynix are set to announce major U.S. memory chip supply deals during President Lee Jae Myung’s Silicon Valley trip.JUNG YEON-JE / Getty Images

The timing lines up with SK Hynix’s Nasdaq debutHere’s the part that other coverage of the trip has mostly skipped: The announcement lands two weeks after SK Hynix completed a $26.5 billion American depositary receipt offering, the largest first-time U.S. share sale by a foreign company.The listing gave American investors direct access to the world’s leading producer of high-bandwidth memory chips for the first time.Related: After beating Samsung, tech titan files for IPOBefore July, buying SK Hynix meant trading on the Korea Exchange during Seoul hours.That access changes how this week’s news will land. A Silicon Valley supply deal used to be a story that mostly moved Korean trading screens overnight. Now it moves a Nasdaq-listed stock that American fund managers can buy the moment the headline crosses.July 24 trading shows how fast that sensitivity has becomeSamsung and SK Hynix (SKHY) shares swung sharply through the session. Both stocks opened lower after an overnight Wall Street sell-off tied to renewed Middle East tensions dragged the Kospi down nearly 5%, triggering a temporary halt on program selling, according to Seoul Economic Daily.More Tech:Microsoft cuts thousands as Xbox faces rude awakeningSpectrum makes significant decision as customer losses mountGiant troubled satellite TV company files Chapter 11 bankruptcyBy the close, Samsung had climbed 7.51% and SK Hynix had gained 8.53%, according to Bloomberg market data, as the deal news overtook the earlier macro jitters.That reversal is the real story for investors. Korean memory stocks used to trade mostly on domestic sentiment and U.S. chip earnings. They now move on South Korean diplomacy too, with a meaningful slice of that ownership sitting in American hands for the first time.The structural shift investors should trackWashington has spent months pushing Samsung and SK Hynix toward deeper U.S. manufacturing commitments, and Seoul has spent that same stretch insisting its expansion was demand-driven rather than coerced.The Silicon Valley trip narrows that gap into paperwork. It also marks the first time a Korean chip diplomacy story and a Nasdaq listed equity story are the same trade, which means future announcements like this one will move markets in Seoul and New York at the same moment, not on a delay.Related: SK Hynix denies Intel Ohio fab deal, but the market didn’t care

For years, the AI chip conversation has had one dominant name and a long list of challengers trying to close the gap. Most of them haven’t. One of them is starting to look different, and Bank of America just made that case in writing.Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya, who covers semiconductors for the firm, spent July 23 in San Francisco watching AMD make its most ambitious AI pitch to date. By the following morning, he had a new price objective and a significantly expanded view of how large AMD’s AI market opportunity could become. The bank raised its price objective on AMD to $620 from $560, reiterating a buy rating, with AMD shares trading at $554.23 on July 24. But the more significant part of the note isn’t the number. It’s how the bank is now describing AMD’s place in the AI market.How Bank of America is reframing AMD’s AI market positionThe language Bank of America used in the note is worth paying attention to. The bank said AMD has “successfully transitioned from a merchant GPU vendor to a full-stack, rack-scale accelerator systems supplier.” That’s a meaningful distinction. AMD is no longer being compared only to Nvidia on chip-by-chip specifications. It’s being evaluated as a systems-level competitor with an integrated hardware and software offering.More Bank of America:Bank of America warns America now has 2 economiesBank of America answers a tough stock market questionBank of America gives stock market investors a summer reality checkAnalyst Vivek Arya set the $620 price objective at 47 times the bank’s 2027 estimated non-GAAP earnings per share, toward the middle to upper range of AMD’s historical 13x-to-58x multiple. He said that multiple is supported by AMD’s potential for 50% or higher annual EPS growth and its share gains in AI CPUs and GPUs.AMD also updated its total addressable market forecasts at the event. The company now targets a total compute market of more than $2 trillion by 2030, up from a prior estimate of $1 trillion. Its AI accelerator TAM estimate rose to $1.4 trillion from $500 billion, and its server CPU TAM target increased to $220 billion from $120 billion earlier this year, Investing.com reported.Why AMD’s Helios rack is central to the Bank of America thesisThe product at the center of the upgraded thesis is AMD’s Helios rack, which the bank said is now in full production with deployments beginning in the third quarter and ramping into the fourth. Each rack integrates 72 MI455X GPUs with 18 EPYC Venice CPUs, Pensando networking chips, and ROCm software support. AMD’s shift into full rack-scale AI systems has been building all year, as TheStreet reported.The specs are notable. Each Helios rack delivers roughly 2.9 exaflops of FP4 compute, 1.4 exaflops of FP8, and 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory. Against Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72, AMD says Helios offers about 15% more FP4 compute for training, 50% more HBM capacity, and up to 30% more tokens per dollar on memory bandwidth, all at a rack price of around $5 million, compared to $6 to $7 million for Nvidia’s system.

The product at the center of the upgraded thesis is AMD’s Helios rack.David/Getty Images

Why AMD’s customer pipeline is what investors should track most closelyThe customer announcements are what give the Bank of America note its momentum. Anthropic will deploy up to 2 gigawatts of Helios, with the first gigawatt beginning in the first half of 2027. AMD is also investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic as part of the deal, CNBC reported. Because Anthropic already runs AMD’s MI355X chips, the bank views this as the start of a multi-generational relationship extending through the MI500 and MI600 product cycles rather than a one-time win. The Meta relationship follows a similar pattern, with a six-gigawatt, four-year AI infrastructure partnership already in place, as TheStreet reported.OpenAI and Meta each appeared at the AMD event with initial contractual deployments of 1 gigawatt set to begin in the second half of 2026, out of 6-gigawatt total agreements, respectively. Bank of America’s view is that AMD does not expect any customer to go through the design-in effort for a single generation of systems. If that holds, these wins could become recurring infrastructure relationships across multiple product cycles.The roadmap underpinning those relationships now extends through 2028. MI450 begins shipping in the second half of 2026. MI500 arrives in 2027, paired with the Verano CPU. MI600 follows in 2028 with the Zen 7 Ferrara CPU and the next generation of Helios.What the software picture means for AMD’s long-term competitivenessHardware specs alone won’t close the gap with Nvidia. Bank of America acknowledged that and pointed to AMD’s ROCm software ecosystem as an increasingly important part of the investment case. AMD introduced ROCm.ai at the event, an AI-native developer experience built on ROCm 7, which delivers roughly 3.5 times the inference performance and 3 times the training performance compared to ROCm 6.Third-party validation from SemiAnalysis and InferenceX showed AMD’s MI355X achieving up to 40% lower cost-per-token than Nvidia’s B200 on the SGLang FP8 framework. That kind of independent confirmation matters. It shifts the software conversation from a narrative about catching up to a data point about competing on economics.Bank of America’s $620 target reflects a view that AMD’s combination of hardware, software, and customer relationships is becoming more durable than the market has historically assumed. The bank still lists execution risk on its first rack-scale product among the key downside risks, along with reliance on a single manufacturing partner. But the overall tone of the note is that AMD’s AI window is opening wider, and the bank thinks the market is underestimating how quickly that’s happening.Related: Wells Fargo doubles down on AMD stock after Anthropic deal

McDonald’s revolutionized fast-food breakfast with the creation of the Egg McMuffin in 1971 and the item’s national rollout in 1975. Herb Peterson, a McDonald’s franchisee in Southern California, created the breakfast sandwich, which was meant to be a portable version of Eggs Benedict.”It was breakfast in a sack, and just the kind of finger-food that busy American consumers had been missing in the morning,” according to NPR.Bob Goldin, a food industry consultant with Technomic, shared how the seemingly simple product was actually revolutionary.”I don’t think there were a whole lot of products that fit that need at that point in time,” he told NPR. “Breakfast tended to be a sit-down occasion, eggs and bacon, cereal. And here comes this Egg McMuffin that people could eat on the go.”And while McDonald’s expanded the Egg McMuffin line to include bacon and sausage versions, the English muffin remained the chain’s signature sandwich bread offering. That changed in 1986 when the chain added biscuit-based sandwiches.Now, the fast-food giant has quietly borrowed from one of its biggest rivals for morning supremacy with its new biscuit sandwich.McDonald’s adds honey butterWhile biscuits aren’t new to McDonald’s, honey butter is. The chain has introduced the new Honey Brown Butter Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit at participating restaurants nationwide. “This breakfast sandwich is the perfect spin on the classic bacon egg and cheese, taking those ingredients and nestling them between two freshly baked biscuits with creamy, toasty Honey Brown Butter,” according to the McDonald’s website. Honey butter has long been a staple at Chick-Fil-A. It’s brushed onto every biscuit the chain sells, and at some locations, you can add even more as a dipping sauce. It’s not an official side item or sauce packet, so whether a store will give you extra depends on local management.For McDonald’s, the new biscuit continues its long-term innovation policy of offering new takes on familiar items. The Honey Brown Butter Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit was launched July 21 and will be available for an unspecified limited time.

McDonald’s has expanded breakfast well beyond the classic Egg McMuffin.Shutterstock

McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A battle over breakfastMcDonald’s does not break out its sales by daypart, and Chick-fil-A, as a privately held company, does not share financial information regularly. As both chains have faced increased competition from convenience stores, they appear to be winning that battle, according to Ian O’Neil, director of consumer intelligence for Rubix Foods.He said that while competition is intense, breakfast has been a bright spot for QSRs.“We’re seeing some interesting shifts in visitation by daypart, with QSRs gaining share at breakfast from C-stores,” O’Neil told Food Institute (FI).More Restaurants:74-year-old fast food giant closes 207 U.S. restaurantsIconic burger chain closes 89-year-old restaurant for good86-year-old nationwide ice cream chain closes 46 storesFast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A do have room to grow breakfast sales.”Despite a recent focus on the daypart, QSRs only represent roughly 23% of the market, while casual dining claims nearly 28%, suggesting its position as a growth lever in the year ahead,” FI noted, based on a report from Menu Data.McDonald’s admits the breakfast challengeMcDonald’s CEO Christopher J. Kempczinski, during the chain’s second-quarter earnings call, talked about the challenge in selling breakfast when consumers are worried about the economy.”You’re seeing people either skip occasions, so they’re skipping a daypart like breakfast, or they’re trading down either within our menu, or they’re trading down to eating at home,” he said. The morning meal, he noted, has been hit harder than the rest of the chain’s offerings. “The breakfast daypart is the most economically sensitive daypart because it’s the easiest daypart for a stressed consumer to either skip breakfast or choose to eat breakfast at home. And we, as well as the rest of the industry, are seeing that the breakfast daypart is absolutely the weakest daypart in the day,” he added.McDonald’s faces another key headwindIn addition to cost concerns, fast-food chains also face the growing number of Americans taking a GLP-1 weight loss drug.As one of those Americans, I can say my personal reaction to the medicine mimics what the data show. I’m skipping breakfast most days and replacing it with a protein drink.”The pullback in restaurant visits isn’t spread evenly across times of day, according to Dana Baggett, executive director of restaurant client strategy at RRD, which works with more than 200 restaurant brands,” CNBC reported.The morning meal has been hit hardest.”Lunch, so far, hasn’t been impacted,” she said. “But breakfast has taken a hit, particularly from high-income GLP-1 users, who represent a bigger percentage of current patients, she said. In practice, that means fewer sugary coffee drinks and doughnuts, although options like Starbucks’ protein cold foam could encourage those consumers to return.”A few years ago, before taking the medication, I probably would have tried McDonald’s new Honey Brown Butter Biscuit. Today, I’m the kind of breakfast customer the chain is trying to win back.Related: Taco Bell and Chipotle face a problem bigger than lettuce

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

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

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

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

Sears only has five locations left. Shutterstock

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

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

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

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

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

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

Although some people might complain about having to pay a membership fee, Costco has one of the most loyal customer bases in retail. The company reported that its U.S. and Canada membership renewal rate reached 92.2%, while the worldwide renewal rate was 89.7%, during its most recent quarter. Those figures show that most members remain committed to the warehouse club, despite growing competition.But even Costco’s biggest fans have long had one major complaint — checkout can be frustrating.The retailer’s massive shopping carts, crowded warehouses, and high-volume shopping trips can create long lines, especially during busy periods. For years, Costco has focused heavily on maintaining low prices and a treasure-hunt shopping experience. But improving convenience has become increasingly important as consumers expect faster and easier transactions.Now, Costco is making changes designed to make the final step of the shopping trip less of a hassle. After rolling out updates aimed at improving the checkout process, the retailer is also expanding its payment options.Costco adds a new way to pay at checkoutCostco has introduced an update to its digital membership card that allows members to add any Visa card to the Costco app and use their phone as a payment method in warehouses. Previously, many shoppers relied on carrying a physical credit card or using the Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi.Related: Recalled Costco product poses big threatThe new feature allows members to connect a Visa card directly to their digital membership experience, meaning shoppers can scan their membership card and pay without searching through a wallet or purse. It’s a more efficient — and faster — way to pay.The change addresses a common pain point.Costco shoppers often purchase large quantities of items, meaning that even small delays at the register can create bigger bottlenecks throughout the store. Investing in a faster payment option aligns with Costco’s recent push for a more seamless checkout and digital experience.As CEO Ron Vachris said during the company’s most recent earnings call, “In digital, we are making meaningful strides to deliver a more seamless and convenient experience for our members across the warehouse and online.”

Costco members can now add any Visa card to the Costco app and use their phone as a payment method.Image source: Shutterstock

Why improving checkout and payments matters for CostcoCostco’s membership model gives the company a unique advantage. Unlike traditional retailers, Costco does not need to convince shoppers to return every week through promotions alone. Members have already paid for access, creating a strong incentive for the company to deliver an experience that makes the membership feel worthwhile.More Retail:Costco sees major shift in member behaviorRetail chain shuts all locations as legal changes hit industryCostco makes major investment in online shopping for membersBut reducing friction matters.A customer who enjoys Costco’s prices but consistently faces long checkout lines or inconvenient payment options may eventually question whether the shopping experience justifies the effort and up-front membership cost. Making payments faster helps protect one of the company’s biggest assets: member satisfaction.The payment update also fits with Costco’s broader digital strategy. The company has been investing in technology, including a stronger mobile app and digital membership features.For Costco, the goal is not to transform the warehouse into a fully automated shopping experience. Costco’s appeal still comes from walking the aisles and enjoying the treasure hunt. Instead, Costco is looking for ways to remove unnecessary frustrations. And for members, the benefit is simple — less time fumbling at checkout and more time enjoying the savings that keep them coming back.Maurie Backman owns shares of Costco.Related: Big changes could be in store for Costco

Quantum computing is one of the most talked-about emerging technology themes on Wall Street right now. The Trump administration revealed plans to invest more than $2 billion into the sector on May 21. Stocks across the space surged. Investors poured in, massively.But Jim Cramer confirmed that he’s not one of them.On the Wednesday, July 22, “Mad Money” Lightning Round, a caller asked about IonQ (IONQ). Cramer’s answer was brief and direct, just like every other day in the Lightning Round.When rates go up, these stocks are very tough to own, so I am going to steer clear of it because I see what the rates are doing, and they’re not going in the right direction.As of this reporting, IONQ is trading at $33.03, down 3.11% on the session, and is down 24.07% year to date against the S&P 500’s 8.22% gain, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock peaked to a $72 high in late May before giving back more than half its value in just under two months.Also Read: Jim Cramer’s Recent StoriesWhy Cramer’s rate argument is the right one for a stock like IonQCramer’s objection is not about IonQ’s technology or even its commercial traction. It is about the macro environment that surrounds any high-growth, deep-loss company with a long runway to profitability.The rate sensitivity argument is specific and well-established in market history. Companies like IonQ, which are burning significant cash today in exchange for future cash flows that remain years away, are valued using long-duration discount models. More Jim Cramer:Jim Cramer says it may be time to trim comeback stock after 441% surgeJim Cramer’s cryptic comments on key AI supplier turn headsJim Cramer says investors are getting the Mag 7 all wrongWhen interest rates rise, those future cash flows get discounted more aggressively, compressing valuations. When rates fall, the reverse happens. The playbook is familiar.Cramer’s read of the current rate environment is cautious. The stock carries an expected full-year 2026 Adjusted EBITDA loss of $310 million to $330 million on $260 to $270 million in revenue, according to its first quarter 2026 financial results. It means the profitability gap is wide enough that rate sensitivity is a legitimate first-order concern, not a secondary one.What IonQ’s Q1 2026 results actually showedBut there’s something genuinely interesting here because the fundamental momentum inside IonQ is real, even if Cramer is choosing to sidestep the stock on macro grounds.Q1 2026 revenue was $64.7 million, up 755% year over year and 30% above the midpoint of guidance.Remaining performance obligations grew 554% year over year to $470 million.The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $260 million to $270 million, implying organic growth of more than 100% year over year.
Source: IonQ First Quarter 2026 Financial Results
Commercial momentum is real. Approximately 60% of revenue came from commercial customers, 35% from international customers, and 35% from multi-product customers, according to the release. IonQ also sold its first sixth-generation, chip-based, 256-qubit system to the University of Cambridge. Related: Jim Cramer gives his two cents about Netflix stockIt was selected for DARPA’s HARQ Program and awarded a $39 million contract under the Space Development Agency’s HALO Program for next-generation tactical space communications.The EPS story is where the market’s concerns surface. Q1 adjusted EPS came in at -$0.34. According to Zacks data, for Q2, the consensus expects -$0.29 per share. Profitability is not on the near-term horizon.

IonQ Q1 2026 revenue was $64.7 million, up 755% year over year and 30% above the midpoint of guidance.Zhou Mu/Xinhua via Getty Images

The May quantum rally that inflated expectations, and the deflation sinceWhat happened in May actually explains a lot of the current setup.The Trump administration on May 21 announced plans to distribute $2.013 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act targeting quantum foundries and computing companies. IonQ was not among the nine named recipients. Yet the stock rallied sharply alongside peers. Why? Investors bought the idea of quantum computing as a national priority rather than picking individual winners within the sector.Related: IonQ stock spikes on massive quantum announcementThat sentiment-driven move carried IONQ to $72 before reality reasserted itself. From the start of June, the stock has given back more than half of that gain in under two months.I find Cramer’s framing of this situation accurate. The May rally was a thematic trade, not a fundamental one. When thematic trades run into a less favorable rate environment and earnings miss EPS estimates, the compression is predictable. IonQ’s Q2 earnings are estimated for Aug. 5. For the stock to rebuild momentum from $33, it either needs a material beat with improved EPS trajectory, or a shift in the rate narrative that makes long-duration growth stocks broadly more attractive again.Looking at it, neither of those is guaranteed in the near term. And that is exactly what Cramer is saying when he steers clear.Related: Jim Cramer reveals 4 surging chip stocks he likes best