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The sun is a welcome sight come summer, particularly after such an overcast, frigid winter, but there’s only so much your body can handle sometimes. Not only is it not smart to expose your skin to constant rays, especially if you’re not wearing sunscreen, but when the heat really gets brutal, scoring time in the shade is the much-needed respite from those summer heatwaves. The right umbrella not only offers you shade to keep you cool and dry, but it keeps you from constant sun exposure when you’re enjoying some time outdoors on the patio or deck. These days, though, patio umbrellas don’t just provide covering. Many newer models have 360-degree adjustable angles to pivot as the sun moves and provide more shade, as well as have additional features like lights, cupholders, and wind-vents. With those extra perks, many models often have an expensive price tag, but if you know where to look and start shopping early, you can get quality patio furniture for a fraction of the cost. 

Walmart’s bestselling Ainfox LED Patio Umbrella is on sale for $62. And if you’re looking for something a bit smaller or in a different style, you’ll be thrilled to know that this umbrella comes in multiple colors, tier designs, and heights ranging from 7.5 feet to 13 feet — most are on sale right now — so you can find the one that best suits your needs if this LED 10-footer isn’t quite right for you. 

Ainfox LED Patio Umbrella, $62 (was $131) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

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Why do shoppers love it?

Patio umbrellas, for the most part, look pretty similar, but it’s the details and extra accessories that differentiate between the many models available on the market right now. The Ainfox one, which measures in at 10-feet tall, has a sturdy aluminum pole with reinforced zinc at its center to properly support the umbrella. It uses a special rib construction where the pole is reinforced with ribs, either internally or externally, to increase rigidity, structural strength, and durability so your umbrella doesn’t go sailing at the slightest hint of a breeze. 

The umbrella portion, which is perfect for providing shade in your yard, over parts of your pool, garden, deck, backyard, or porch, has a single wind vented canopy that’s made with UV-resistant, fade-resistant, water-resistant polyester fabric that allows heat and wind to escape preventing excessive movement or warmth underneath it. To put it up, the umbrella pole has a built-in crank that’s pulley-assisted to easily open and close the umbrella. That’s also where you’ll find a push button that allows you to freely adjust the angle of the umbrella and then lock it in place.

And since it’s not quite enough for an umbrella to offer shade these days, this one has the extra bonus of including LED strips that provide light when the sun sets and it gets dark out. The eight light strips, which turn off and on with a single button built into the pole, are solar powered by the detachable solar panel. Five to six hours “charging” in the sun gives you up to five hours of light before the solar panel needs another charge. It’s the perfect way to add some subtle light to your outdoor area without it being overly harsh or bright. 

Related: Walmart’s $99 4-piece patio set comes with two armchairs, a loveseat, and a table

The umbrella offers about 9.55 feet of coverage underneath in total when fully opened up. An umbrella stand is not included.

What to expect from a $62 umbrella: Pros and cons

Pros

Weather-resistant construction: The umbrella is made with zinc reinforced aluminum and UV-resistant, fade-resistant, water-resistant polyester fabric.

Versatile: The umbrella offers shade and protects you from the sun during the day, and the LED light strips provide subtle lighting when it gets dark out. 

Easy-to-maneuver: The pulley-assisted built-in crank and angle adjustment button make it easy to maneuver and set the umbrella to your liking. 

Cons

Additional pieces required: An umbrella stand is highly recommended, but not included in your purchase. 

Shoppers are impressed with the quality of the umbrella’s fabric, the effective shade coverage it gives off, and how easy it is to adjust its positioning. They find it to be very well made and sturdy, and appreciate how well it holds up even in windy conditions. “Sturdy enough to handle the sun and rain without throwing a tantrum,” one shopper said. “Keeps you cool without breaking the bank. 

An umbrella offers you both protection and a place to escape the heat when it gets really bad come July and August, and the Ainfox LED Patio Umbrella goes the extra mile by also offering you light once the sun goes down. Take advantage of the great deals and score this 10-footer for only $62.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

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No wardrobe is complete without a few basics, and layering tops like the Automet Long-Sleeve Shirt are among the handful of must-haves that are versatile and can work all 365 days of the year. Not only does having a handful of plain-looking long-sleeves you can dress up or down with jackets, skirts, pants, and even shorts save you money, but on those days you want to keep it simple, it’s easier than ever to quickly go into your closet and grab a top with little care or thought. Now that it’s on sale for 53% off at Amazon, you can add “affordable” to the growing list of benefits to having a basic long-sleeve t-shirt.

The Automet Long-Sleeve Shirt, already a steal at its original price of $15, is now just $7 for a limited time, and with so many colors and patterns to choose from, it’s the style you’ll be adding to your closet more than once this fall. 

Automet Long-Sleeve Shirt, $7 (was $15) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

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Why do shoppers love it?

Designed with a flattering fit and super soft fabric, this long-sleeve is perfect for the shopper who wants to look comfy and cute. The shirt is made from a fabric blend of polyester, rayon, and spandex. Together, they create a highly breathable material with a smooth, comfortable feel that’s stretchy and flexible, easily moving with your body. The polyester provides long-lasting durability and wrinkle resistance, while the rayon and spandex provide moisture absorption, a silk-like texture, and great elasticity. It’s a winning combination all around. 

The long-sleeve has a classic crew neckline that, with the sleeves, create a clean timeless silhouette that works well as a standalone top or as a layering piece under a sweatshirt or jacket. Both the sleeves and the bottom of the shirt have a raw edge hemline, giving the shirt a casual, relaxed look. It’s designed to fit close to your body without being an overly form-fitting top. 

Related: Spyder’s waterproof rain jacket is only $34 at Amazon right now

Available in over 30 colors and patterns, and in sizes ranging from X-Small through 3X-Large, this long-sleeve is machine washable. In order to preserve color and quality, it’s recommended you only wash with cold water and use low heat in the dryer, but overall, the shirt will keep its shape and fabric quality with little to no change no matter how many trips it takes through the washing machine. 

Details to know

Material: Polyester, rayon, and spandex. 

Colors: 30+ colors and patterns.

Sizes: X-Small through 3X-Large.

Care: Machine wash with cold water and tumble dry on low heat.  

Shoppers from the over 8,000 five-star ratings definitely love this shirt. The fabric is warm but thin, making it great as a base layer in the colder months when you’re wearing additional clothing tops, and it feels so soft. The color holds up well, even after lots of washes, and it fits very well in a flattering way. “It is absolutely the most comfortable T-shirt I have,” one shopper said. “Definitely one of those basic tops that gets a lot of use!” another said. 

Shop more deals 

Zeagoo ¾-Sleeve V-Neck Top, $11 (was $17) at Amazon

Anrabess Long-Sleeve Ribbed Fitted Top, $9 (was $20) at Amazon

Astylish Wide-Leg Jeans, $27 (was $37) at Amazon

Anytime something is marked down by 53%, we’ve got our eye on it, but the fact that you can get the Automet Long-Sleeve Shirt for only $7 right now? That’s an incredible deal we’ll be taking advantage of as much as we can before the limited-time discount expires.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

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There’s one thing that every room in your home could surely use more of, and that’s storage. Whether you’re a consummate packrat who likes to keep every odd and end, or you’re simply organization-minded and like to keep everything in its place, a good storage cabinet should probably be in your future. Luckily, Amazon has some of the best deals on pantries and storage cabinets anywhere on the internet. Not only does the online giant have a huge selection of models to choose from, but it also offers some of the best prices you’ll find on furniture anywhere. 

The Kepptory Freestanding Farmhouse Storage Cabinet is available at Amazon for only $99. Over 600 of these cabinets have been bought in the past 30 days, so you’d better consider getting yours now if you want one before they sell out. According to Amazon’s price tracker, the cost was previously $130, so this reduction is obviously causing a run on the pantry.

Kepptory Freestanding Farmhouse Storage Cabinet, $99 at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

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Why do shoppers love it?

This storage cabinet is the perfect solution to all of your storage and organization woes. With impressively large dimensions of 23.62 inches long by 15.7 inches wide by 47.24 inches high, you can fit just about anything inside, no matter which room you use it in. In the kitchen, it makes for a great food pantry, while in the dining room you may choose to keep your dinnerware there so it remains close at hand. Not only is the cabinet large, but it’s also designed for efficient organization.

The double doors have an attractive farmhouse motif on the outside, and six spacious shelves on both sides of the inside. Each shelf also has a dowel railing, so any jars or other delicate items you choose to store behind them will stay in place. The cabinet is made from engineered wood, which is sturdy, lightweight, and water resistant. That makes it ideal for use in the kitchen or bathroom where spills and splashes can happen. The cabinet comes in seven sizes and configurations as well as three color variants, so there’s something for every buyer and every room. 

On the inside, there is a lower cubby, plus four additional shelves for added storage. The spaciousness of this cabinet should not be understated: it’s massive. For added safety, the pantry includes a wall-mounting kit. It allows you to attach the upper half of the cabinet to the nearest wall, thereby avoiding any tipping hazards that may arise once you have the shelves completely full. This piece looks great and holds a lot of household goods. If you get it at the current price, then you’re ahead of the organization game.

Related: Amazon’s $139 farmhouse storage cabinet is 6 feet tall and has 5 spacious shelves

Amazon shoppers were very happy with this cabinet. One claimed “I might buy a second one,” before adding that it’s “beautiful” and “spacious.”

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Gaious Metal Kitchen Pantry, $100 at Amazon

Ristern White Metal Storage Cabinet, $75 (was $90) at Amazon

Washsemba Bold 2-Door Storage Sideboard, $100 at Amazon

If you value extra storage space and keeping your space organized, then the Kepptory Freestanding Farmhouse Storage Cabinet is a great buy. At just $99, you won’t regret adding this to your home’s floor plan. 

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 deal

While a laptop computer is perfect for complicated tasks and busy work, sometimes all you need is a tablet. They’re great for streaming, communications, and playing games, among other things. While a tablet can be somewhat cost-prohibitive, it doesn’t have to be, thanks to Walmart. The retail giant is currently selling one of its most popular Android tablets for just a fraction of the usual cost.

The Veatool F11 Android Tablet is on sale for only $109 right now. That’s a discount of 73% off the regular price of $400. If that doesn’t encourage you to click buy, then we don’t know if anything will.

Veatool F11 Android Tablet, $109 (was $400) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

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Why do shoppers love it?

The first thing you might notice about this tablet is the impressive wide-view screen. Its 10.1-inch, 1,280-by-800-pixel resolution screen offers vibrant high-definition images that practically come out of the device at you. The 64GB of ROM and powerful Quad-Core processor make this a fast and efficient option for just about all of your needs. It can easily manage multiple open apps and tasks at once without lag or interruption.

Not only is this tablet a treasure on the inside, but it comes with its own set of free goodies on the outside! In addition to the high-resolution dual camera, the tablet also comes with a charging cable, a tablet case, and a stylus. There’s not much more you’ll need to get started with this tablet straight out of the box.

Related: Amazon has a $499 AI-integrated HP laptop for nearly 40% off during its Labor Day sale

Why do shoppers love it?

Walmart shoppers were blown away by this tablet. One described it as “powerful,” and added, “I’ve had my Android device for months, and it has not disappointed. The speed is incredible, apps open quickly, and the customization features are perfect.”

Another customer called it “magic,” saying, “This device’s dual camera takes fantastic, high-quality photos. It’s a great all-around device for anyone who loves fast and reliable connectivity.”

The Veatool F11 Android Tablet will make surfing the internet a breeze. However, once others catch wind of the $109 sale price, inventory may not last long. Get yours while you still can. 

By its own admission, Tesla’s growth plans for Europe hinge on the European Union’s approval of its Full-Self Driving (Supervised) advanced driver assistance system.

Tesla sales in the continent have rebounded from the pronounced decline they experienced last year, according to eCarsTrade, but the electric vehicle maker said its sales would be even better if FSD was available across the EU.

Honesty is the best policy, and Tesla is using transparency as the latest tool to convince regulators at the European Commission to approve FSD on its roads and highways.

Tesla posted an open-source safety dashboard online this week, featuring the same safety information it previously shared with regulators.

“We have decided to open-source one of the key pieces of evidence used to support the Netherlands approval,” Tesla said.

What does Tesla’s open-source data show?

Tesla’s dashboard is a portfolio of data suggesting that EU regulators should approve FSD, including studies on everything from mileage distribution across all road classes to comparisons of manually driven Tesla vehicles with active safety features versus FSD-driven safety metrics.

Tesla FSD has been approved in five European countries so far: the Netherlands, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, and Lithuania.

Related: Tesla headed for its biggest fight in Europe yet

FSD has recorded 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Telsa cars, according to the company, based on more than 100 million km (62 million miles) of driving data accumulated between April and August.

FSD-equipped vehicles were involved in three collisions on highways and nine on non-highway roads. At the same time, manually driven Teslas were involved in 137 highway collisions and 490 non-highway ones.

For FSD to be approved, committee members representing 55% of member states and 65% of their populations must vote in favor of the measure.

The European Commission’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles is expected to vote on EU-wide approval of FSD Supervised on Oct. 6.

FSD has recorded 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Telsa cars, according to the company.picture alliance / Getty Images

Tesla FSD European Union approval faces opposition from Sweden

The decline in sales from Sweden was a big factor in Tesla’s overall decline in Europe last year. 

Tesla’s sales in the Nordic country dropped 70% in 2025, according to Investing.com, with its ongoing labor dispute, as described by the IndustriAll European Trade Union, undoubtedly playing a part.

But now, at least one of Sweden’s transportation regulatory bodies is recommending that the nation become one of the highest-profile opposers to Tesla’s FSD dreams in Europe. 

The Swedish Transport Administration (TRV) sent a letter recommending that Tesla FSD (Supervised) not be approved for the European Union unless the system’s ability to ignore speed limits is removed, Reuters reported, citing a previously unreported letter obtained through a freedom of information request.

The TRV sent the letter, dated April 30, to the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles, which is scheduled to reconvene on June 30 to discuss Tesla’s approval ahead of an official vote at a later date. 

Tesla FSD provides users with a “Speed Offset” setting that lets them exceed posted speed limits by a margin of their choosing. But “allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits… risks undermining both the legal framework and the expected safety benefits of vehicle automation,” according to the letter. 

“Failing this (limiting ‘speed offset’), the Swedish Transport Administration recommends that TCMV vote against the proposed introduction,” the letter said, according to Reuters. 

The TRV is only one of Sweden’s transportation agencies. The Swedish Transport Agency (STA), Sweden’s other transportation regulator, reportedly also raised concerns with Tesla and Dutch regulator RDW during a two-hour meeting on June 4, according to Reuters.

But the RDW approved FSD in April and is backing its approval across Europe. 

The STA says it is still “assessing the matter to establish a Swedish position.”

Related: U.S. Senators say Tesla FSD data presents ‘urgent safety problem’

You learn early in life which voices are worth pricing. The friend who says 7 o’clock and shows up at 7. The contractor who quotes three weeks and hands you the keys in three weeks. You stop double-checking those people, and the trust saves you real money.

You learn the reverse just as fast. Someone tells you the same thing enough times without it landing, and you quietly stop rearranging your week around it. There is no argument and no falling out. You simply stop believing hard enough to act on it.

Markets run that same calculation, only faster and with money on the line. Oil is the purest version of it, because a barrel of crude is mostly a wager on what happens next in places where almost nothing is settled.

When a credible official signals that the risk is easing, traders unwind positions, and prices drop long before a single extra barrel reaches a refinery.

Which brings us to a Treasury secretary who has now told you three times in four weeks that oil is about to get cheaper.

Why oil traders price what a Treasury secretary says

Crude is not priced off what is in the ground. It is priced off what people expect to be available six months from now, and expectations move on information.

The Strait of Hormuz has been the whole ballgame since the war with Iran began in late February. Roughly one in five barrels of the world’s oil normally passes through that 21-mile channel, and the market has spent months adding and subtracting a risk premium based on how open it looks that week. 

Related: Bessent just escalated his financial war on Iran

A Treasury secretary occupies an unusual seat in that calculation. He is not a forecaster with a spreadsheet. He is inside the negotiations, which means his words carry information nobody else has, and traders pay for information.

That is why the Aug. 4 “Squawk Box” episode mattered. Bessent went on CNBC and said a deal to reopen the Strait could come within a day or two.

Brent settled at $79.36, down 5.3%. West Texas Intermediate settled at $75.77, down 5.7%, according to CNBC. The market moved before he finished the interview.

Bessent says oil prices will fall, marking his third such prediction in just four weeks.Melissa Sue Gerrits / Getty Images

What Bessent said about oil prices on Aug. 31

Bessent sat down with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on Aug. 31, hosting Group of 20 finance ministers in Asheville, N.C. Asked to tie together growth, trade, and the conflict, he said “the oil prices are going to come down,” according to CNBC.

He layered other signals on top. He said the sanctions campaign against Tehran is designed to force Iran to the table, and that he expects Japan’s government and central bank to act in ways that strengthen the yen.

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On monetary policy, Bessent said, “Traditionally, you don’t raise rates into a supply shock,” FXStreet reported.

That last line is the tell. It is a Treasury secretary telling the Federal Reserve, in public and without saying so, that an oil-driven price spike is not the kind of inflation you fight with rate hikes.

The call itself was not new. On Aug. 20, he told the same network that Washington was confident everyone wanted “energy prices to come back down,” according to CNBC.

Eisen pointed out in that same conversation that oil was marching higher again. Back on May 28, at a Cabinet meeting, he had described elevated oil costs as transitory and pledged that oil would end up below pre-conflict levels.

3 calls in 4 weeks and a fading market response

Here is where I stopped taking the statement at face value and lined up what the market actually did each time. The forecast has been consistent. The reaction has not.

Aug. 4: Bessent signaled a Hormuz deal within days. Brent fell 5.3% to $79.36 and WTI fell 5.7% to $75.77, according to CNBC.

Aug. 20: Bessent said all parties wanted energy prices lower. Eisen noted on air that crude was climbing again, CNBC noted.

Aug. 31: Bessent said oil prices were going to come down. Brent pushed above $90 the same day as U.S. forces struck Iranian positions on Larak Island, according to Trading Economics.

Read that sequence as a price chart rather than a news cycle, and the shape is obvious. The first call was worth more than five percentage points of crude in a single session. The third arrived while barrels were moving the other way.

Brent was at about $96 on Sept. 2, according to Fortune, and WTI was at about $90, according to Trading Economics.

The market is not calling the Treasury secretary dishonest. It has simply repriced how much a forecast is worth when the thing being forecast keeps failing to happen.

Refinery strikes in Russia have tightened global refining capacity, and a supertanker caught fire in the Strait after striking naval mines. Words do not clear mines.

What the cheaper oil promise means for your gas budget

The national average for regular gasoline sat at roughly $4.10 a gallon on Sept. 2, according to AAA. A year ago, you were paying meaningfully less for the same tank.

Run that against your own driving. If you cover 13,000 miles a year in a vehicle averaging 25 miles per gallon, you burn about 520 gallons. Every 10 cents on the national average is roughly $52 a year out of your pocket. The dollar-plus move since the war began is closer to $550 annually, and that is before you count what the pump has actually done to household budgets.

What I would take from the past four weeks is narrow and useful. Do not build a household budget around a forecast from a podium, however well informed the person at the podium is. Build it around what physically moves.

The observable signals are tanker traffic through Hormuz, refinery capacity, and the risk premium sitting in Brent. Those are the things that show up on your receipt. A televised prediction shows up on your receipt only if it turns into cargo.

There is a second consequence sitting underneath all of this. The supply-shock argument Bessent made about interest rates is the case for the Fed cutting, despite hot headline inflation.

If crude cooperates, that argument gets easier, and your mortgage and car loan eventually get cheaper. If crude does not, the Fed stays frozen, and you pay for the same barrel twice, once at the pump and once on your credit card statement.

That is the real stake in whether this third call lands. Not whether a Treasury secretary is right, but whether the market ever starts believing him again before the barrels arrive on their own.

Related: Oil prices tumble as Oman and Iran make an unexpected move

When people picture a Warren Buffett dividend stock, they probably imagine something stodgy: a soda company, a railroad, an insurer with a decades-long payout streak.

Apple does not fit that mold, and its 0.4% dividend yield looks almost like an afterthought next to the payouts income investors typically chase.

Yet Apple remains Berkshire Hathaway’s largest equity position, and dismissing it as a dividend stock because of that modest yield may be a bigger mistake than it looks.

Why Apple’s ecosystem keeps the growth story alive

Buffett bought Apple because of the ecosystem, not the dividend.

Buy an iPhone, and you are probably not switching. You upgrade every couple of years, add a few subscriptions, spend something on the App Store, and each of those transactions carries a margin the hardware business can’t touch.

The numbers back that up. Apple’s fiscal third quarter ended June 2026 produced $109.4 billion in revenue, up 16% from a year earlier. Diluted EPS came in at $2.02, up 29% year over year. Quartz reported it was Apple’s strongest June quarter on record.

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Apple has also taken deliberate steps to widen its ecosystem to price-sensitive buyers. The MacBook Neo, an entry-level laptop starting at $599, has drawn strong early demand, particularly from first-time Mac buyers who previously might have chosen a cheaper Windows machine or Chromebook instead, MacRumors reported.

To lower the barrier further, Apple launched Apple Upgrade in July, a leasing and subscription program built with Klarna that lets customers finance an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch over monthly payments.

Mac leases start at $24.99 a month, giving Apple another lever to pull new customers into its ecosystem, CNBC reported.

The buyback math that actually helps dividend investors

Critics of Apple as a dividend stock often point to how much cash the company funnels into share buybacks instead of dividend payments.

Apple spent $82 billion on repurchases over the past four quarters through June and has cut its total share count by roughly 45% since 2012, according to The Motley Fool.

That should not necessarily scare dividend investors away. A shrinking share count means Apple’s existing profits get divided among fewer shares, which mechanically lifts earnings per share and gives the company more room to raise its dividend over time even without much growth in total net income.

Apple has already been putting that flexibility to use. The company raised its quarterly dividend by 4% to $0.27 per share earlier this year and added another $100 billion to its buyback authorization in the same announcement, according to The Motley Fool. Despite the modest headline yield, the payout represents just 12% of analysts’ expected 2026 earnings, leaving substantial room for future increases.

Related: Warren Buffett has a stark message for stock market investors

Wall Street’s growth expectations back up that room to grow. Goldman Sachs raised its Apple price target to $370 ahead of Q3 earnings, maintaining a Buy rating and citing growing optimism around the iPhone replacement cycle and AI efforts.

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan holds a $380 price target based on 37 times his calendar 2027 EPS estimate of $10.32.

Morgan Stanley has separately projected fiscal 2027 earnings per share of $10.23, roughly 7% above the broader Wall Street consensus, citing share gains and higher average selling prices heading into next year’s product cycle, according to TheStreet.

What Berkshire’s continued bet on Apple signals

Despite trimming roughly three quarters of its original Apple stake since the end of 2023 to manage concentration risk, Berkshire has not walked away from the position. Apple still accounts for about 22% of Berkshire’s stock portfolio, making it comfortably the conglomerate’s largest holding even after the selling, The Motley Fool reported.

The Motley Fool has noted that even after years of selling, Berkshire’s roughly 228 million remaining Apple shares are worth around $60 billion. A position so large that it remains larger than Berkshire’s next biggest holding by a wide margin.

Buffett repeatedly praised Apple as an exceptional business, even as Berkshire manages the size of the stake under new CEO Greg Abel.

Apple has taken deliberate steps to widen its ecosystem to price-sensitive buyers. Cristina/Getty Images

What this means for Apple investors

Apple at 0.4% will never win a yield comparison. But that is not the point.

The point is that the dividend has been growing, the buyback is aggressive, and the business keeps finding new ways to pull customers in. Someone chasing 4% yield from a stagnant payout is playing a different game entirely.

Berkshire’s own decision to keep Apple as its largest publicly traded stock, even after years of trimming, suggests it still views the combination of ecosystem strength and capital return as durable.

For dividend investors willing to accept a lower starting yield in exchange for growth, Apple’s shrinking share count and rising payouts give the stock room to compound in a way that traditional high-yield names cannot.

The risk, as with any premium-priced growth stock, is that Apple’s valuation already reflects much of that optimism. But for investors comfortable holding a company Buffett himself refuses to sell, Apple’s dividend story looks far more compelling than its headline yield suggests.

More on Apple & its stock: 

Does Apple pay dividends? A history of rewarding shareholders

Apple’s stock split history: Everything you need to know

John Ternus’s net worth as Apple’s next CEO

Casino bankruptcy filings have not been a common occurrence in the last 10 years.

The last major casino operator bankruptcy was Caesars Entertainment, then-owned by Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital, which filed for Chapter 11 in January 2015 with about $16 billion in debt.

RunItOnTime LLC, the parent of a much smaller casino operator Maverick Gaming, filed for bankruptcy protection on July 14, 2025, and has closed facilities as part of its reorganization.

Maverick Gaming is closing two casinos in Washington as part of the company’s reorganization.Shutterstock.

Maverick Gaming closes 2 casinos

Maverick Gaming revealed that it is closing two casinos in Tukwila, Wash., and laying off 238 employees, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices filed with the Washington Employment Security Department.

The debtor’s affiliate, Maverick Washington LLC, will close its Great American Casino and Riverside Casino in Tukwila by Nov. 1, 2026, according to the WARN notices filed on Aug. 31, 2026.

The casino operator will lay off 142 employees of the Riverside Casino and 96 workers at the Great American Casino, the notices said.

Operator closes other venues

The closing of the Tukwila casinos will come just three months after Maverick closed the Silver Dollar Casino Mill Creek in Bothel, Wash., laying off 41 workers, and the Crazy Moose Casino Mountlake in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., laying off 82 employees, both on July 31. The casino operator also closed the Silver Dollar SeaTac Casino in September 2025, laying off about 65 employees.

Maverick Gaming operated 24 casinos in Nevada, Colorado, and Washington and one gas station/convenience store in Nevada and another in Colorado, when it filed for bankruptcy protection.

Company buys undervalued properties

The debtor was founded in 2017 by former Las Vegas Sands executives Eric Persson and Justin Beltram, who purchased undervalued gaming assets and implemented operational changes seeking to improve profitability, according to a declaration by Maverick Chief Restructuring Officer Jeff Seery.

“Despite successes in turning around many of the gaming assets it has acquired, the company has faced a variety of factors that have severely limited its growth in the last few years, precipitating the current financial distress and inability to address its capital structure that have led to commencement of these Chapter 11 cases,” Seery said in the bankruptcy declaration.

The Kirkland, Wash., debtor blamed significant competition from tribal casinos in Washington, operational misalignments, and industry headwinds for its distress, according to the declaration. It also cited liquidity pressure arising from debt service obligations from its $305.8 million prepetition credit facility, which is secured by substantially all of the debtor’s assets.

Minimum wage jumps 46%

The Tukwila casinos also had a significant labor cost increase as the city’s minimum wage increased by 46% between 2022 and 2025, while the remainder of Washington state only increased by 15%, according to the declaration.

RunItOnTime Holdco Inc. is the ultimate parent of all of the debtor’s entities, except for licensed operator affiliate debtors that hold the gaming licenses of the casino businesses.

Persson holds 57.9% ownership of RunItOnTime’s outstanding common stock, while Bertram holds 12.8%. Persson owns 100% of the equity in the licensed operator affiliate debtors.

Related: 107-year-old iconic furniture retailer shutters location for good

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Salesforce (CRM) effectively became software’s standard-bearers against Wall Street’s “SaaSpocalypse” narrative over the past month.

Investors had been spooked by the notion that AI might hollow out traditional software businesses for much of 2026. However, according to Seeking Alpha data, Palantir surged 51% during August, while Salesforce climbed nearly 40%. Over the trailing three months, the stocks shot up nearly 22% and 28%, respectively.

Jim Cramer says the reversal wasn’t accidental and has a pointed explanation for what changed their fortunes. 

The comeback was remarkably striking, though, as both stocks entered August as 2026 laggards.

Palantir was punished despite the rapid AI-led demand, while Salesforce remained trapped under questions about sluggish subscription growth and whether generative AI might erode its seat-based model. 

Then earnings overwhelmed the narrative. Palantir posted 93% Q2 sales growth and raised its full-year outlook as U.S. government and commercial demand accelerated. At the same time, Salesforce beat quarterly expectations by a substantial margin, raised its annual forecasts, and expanded its partnership with Anthropic.

Still, Cramer believes earnings are only part of that turnaround. 

His more fleshed-out argument ties company execution to a broader market force that continues distorting software valuation, then abruptly goes into reverse.

Cramer sees more than earnings behind the software comeback

On the Aug. 31 episode of “Mad Money,” Jim Cramer argued that the August rallies in Palantir and Salesforce reflected a combination of improving fundamentals and the unwinding of an aggressive anti-software trade. 

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Cramer traced that pressure to Situational Awareness, a leveraged hedge fund that once controlled $45 billion and bet against enterprise software names, as Forbes reported, assessing that AI might potentially render established platforms obsolete. 

When its positions soured and the fund imploded, the selling pressure that weighed down the group disappeared. “Once that hedge fund blew up, the whole group came roaring back,” Cramer argued.

The unwinding, though, was supported by fundamental strength. 

Palantir, in particular, was up more than 50% in August as its quarterly results challenged doubts about its valuation and growth prospects. Cramer pointed to its revenue-growth and profit-margin score of 155, soaring above the Rule of 40 benchmark.

“I don’t know how you sell something with that kind of profitable growth,” he said.

Moreover, Salesforce’s nearly 40% rally offered a second test. Marc Benioff attacked the “SaaSpocalypse” narrative, and a blowout quarter, Cramer said, “obliterated the shorts.”

Other SaaS stocks, such as Veeva Systems, jumped 40%, while ServiceNow advanced 33% after layering AI into its business.

So the recovery was not exactly a company-specific squeeze, but rather a broader reassessment of the narrative that AI will kill software. 

 Jim Cramer says Palantir and Salesforce rebounded as software fears began fading.Noam Galai/Getty Images

Cramer’s AI playbook is getting more selective

Cramer separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to AI, backing stocks of companies with defensible platforms, monetization, and bottleneck control.

Nvidia is still central to that thesis.

Cramer dismissed OpenAI’s Jalapeño chip as a threat, saying that a specialized accelerator cannot easily replace Nvidia’s sticky software ecosystem and tremendous developer loyalty. Nevertheless, despite enormous demand, capacity and politics could limit sales.

His preferences of late reveal discipline. Cramer named Alphabet his favorite stock, Gokhshtein reported, and he also cited Search, Gemini, Google Cloud, YouTube, and Waymo. On top of that, he favored Lam Research, KLA, and Applied Materials, as memory scarcity makes chip-manufacturing equipment a major picks-and-shovels route into AI spending.

At the same time, the software side of his thesis has shifted immensely. 

After Workday’s results, Cramer said on X (the former Twitter) on Aug. 28 that the feared “SaaSpocalypse” still hadn’t arrived and that Salesforce’s growing Anthropic partnership backs that view. It showed that AI models can become a lot more useful when linked to a company’s customer data, security systems, and daily workflows. 

Palantir makes a similar case by enabling businesses to effectively use AI to make real-world decisions. For Cramer, though, strong earnings and proven benefits matter a lot more than AI hype. 

Cramer’s rebound call raises the bar for software stocks

Cramer’s argument shifts the debate from whether “AI will destroy SaaS” to which businesses could turn it into durable earnings. That helps the sentiment, but it doesn’t eliminate the pricing risk. 

Palantir Technologies trades at nearly 98 times forward earnings and 44 times forward sales, according to StockAnalysis, leaving hardly any room for error. Cramer’s Rule of 40 defense somewhat supports the remarkable premium, but merely meeting estimates might not prevent multiple compressions.

At the same time, Salesforce faces a lower hurdle. It trades near 18 times forward earnings and 4.4 times forward sales, with a 7% free-cash-flow yield. Investors still price Salesforce like a mature vendor, though.

If Agentforce and Anthropic accelerate organic growth, the stock could potentially re-rate on Palantir-like performance. If growth stays near 11%, August’s rally might have captured much of the improvement.

Another major narrative involved Palantir CEO Alex Karp sharpening Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s criticism that companies are paying twice for AI.

Karp argued that frontier labs can efficiently absorb the “alpha,” while customers receive limited value.

Palantir’s sovereign-AI approach aims to prevent that leakage. Its software connects external models to customer data under strict permissions, without retraining those models on that data, Tom’s Hardware noted. This makes Palantir valuable, regardless of which model wins.

For broader software, Cramer’s take underscores a split market. Companies that are controlling trusted data and essential workflows will continue to benefit from AI.

Those offering replaceable features might still deserve an AI-disruption discount over the long term.

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Every few years, a company decides that a boring household product is actually an unsolved engineering problem. Sometimes that instinct produces something people genuinely want. Sometimes it produces a $400 juicer that squeezes bags.

The tell is almost always the price.

When a company enters a mature category at double the going rate, it is not competing on the product. It is competing on the story, and it is betting on a slice of buyers who treat expensive as proof of better.

Oral care has been one of the steadiest corners of consumer staples for decades. Three companies own most of it.

Procter & Gamble (PG) sells Oral-B and Crest. Colgate-Palmolive (CL) sells Colgate. Koninklijke Philips (PHG) holds the third spot with Sonicare.

The economics have been stable for years. Manual brushes and toothpaste move steady volume at low prices, and power brushes carry the margin.

Growth comes from walking people up the ladder, from a $5 manual brush to a $60 rechargeable to a $400 flagship. Every rung is a mix-shift win.

That ladder just got a new top rung, and neither incumbent built it.

Dyson launched the CameraJet on Sept. 1 for $499, putting a 100,000-pixel macro camera and a machine learning system inside the handle of a toothbrush. The camera reads the gaps between your teeth while you brush and fires a conical burst of mouthrinse at them.

Dyson has done this before with expensive hardware

The privately held company has a well-documented habit of walking into categories it has no obvious claim to and pricing itself above everyone already there.

It did it with hair dryers. It did it with air-purifying headphones that TheStreet covered when they reached the U.S. market. Now it has done it with the thing sitting next to your bathroom sink.

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The engineering claim is real enough. Dyson says the camera captures 28 images per second and can trigger the jet within 100 milliseconds of spotting a gap, with the targeting system trained on 470,000 dental images.

“Flossing is an awkward and time-consuming chore,” founder James Dyson said in a statement, according to The Next Web.

Oral-B power brush volume is moving the wrong way

Here is the part of this story I have not seen anyone else connect, and it is the part that actually matters if you own consumer staples.

Dyson is entering premium oral care at the exact moment the category leader is shrinking in it.

P&G’s oral care organic sales “decreased mid-single digits driven by a volume decline,” led by North America and Greater China, according to the company’s fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results. Health care was P&G’s worst-performing segment that quarter, with volume down three percent.

That is the segment that houses Oral-B.

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Colgate’s growth, meanwhile, is coming from the bottom of the ladder rather than the top. Its oral care gains were driven by “toothpaste and manual toothbrush categories,” the company said in its second-quarter 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Colgate held 41.3% of the global toothpaste market and 32.7% of manual toothbrushes on a year-to-date basis, per that same filing.

Read those two disclosures together and a picture forms. The cheap end of oral care is holding up fine. The premium end, the part that carries the margin, is where the pressure is.

Dyson has walked directly into that gap with a device priced roughly $100 above the Philips Sonicare Prestige 9900 and the Oral-B iO Series 10, according to Engadget.

The refills are the actual business model

The $499 is the part that will drive the headlines. It is not the part I would watch.

Dyson built the CameraJet so that ordinary toothpaste and mouthwash interfere with it. Standard formulas foam too much for the camera to see through, so the company has developed its own low-foaming mouthrinse and a toothpaste made without sodium lauryl sulfate.

That is a razor-and-blades model wearing a lab coat. Here is what the ongoing bill looks like:

Replacement brush heads run about $25 for a pair and need swapping every three months, according to TechRadar. 

Dyson’s own toothpaste and mouthrinse each cost roughly $11.50, per that same TechRadar review.

A 400-milliliter bottle of mouthrinse covers about 32 brushing sessions, per TechRadar.

Annual spending on Dyson consumables could reach $200, according to Stuff, which tested the device for a week before launch.

Each brush head carries an RFID tag that tracks usage and prompts replacement, per Engadget.

Run that math and the five-year cost of ownership clears $1,400 before you replace the handle.

That is the number that should interest anyone holding PG or CL. Not because Dyson will take meaningful share from either one in the next year. It will not.

Because Dyson just demonstrated that a household with disposable income will accept a subscription-shaped relationship with its toothbrush. Incumbents with distribution in every drugstore in America will notice.

Dyson’s premium strategy now pairs a $499 camera-equipped toothbrush with recurring consumables revenue.Galina Vetertsovskaya / Getty Images

What Dyson’s 69% plaque claim rests on

The company says lab testing found the CameraJet removed nearly 70% more plaque in hard-to-reach areas than premium electric toothbrushes, according to Fox Business.

That claim deserves a closer look before anyone treats it as settled.

The testing was conducted by Dyson, using a synthetic plaque substitute the company developed over five years with the National University of Singapore’s dentistry faculty.

That is a controlled comparison against a proxy material, not a clinical trial measuring outcomes in actual mouths over time. It is a reasonable engineering benchmark. It is not the same thing as evidence that your gums will be healthier in two years.

My reading of the disclosure is that Dyson is being careful with its language, which is usually a sign a company knows exactly where the limits of its data sit.

What this means for the oral care trade

The CameraJet will not move P&G’s or Colgate’s numbers this quarter. Dyson sells through its own website and its own stores, which is a rounding error against Walmart, Target, Amazon, and every pharmacy chain in the country.

The signal is what matters.

Consumer staples companies have spent three years telling investors that premiumization is the growth story, that shoppers will pay up for better versions of ordinary things. P&G’s fiscal 2026 numbers just showed that thesis failing in oral care specifically.

Then a vacuum company walked in and priced a toothbrush at $499 anyway.

One of those two readings of the consumer is wrong. If Dyson sells through, the incumbents have a product problem rather than a consumer problem, and that is fixable with better hardware.

If the CameraJet sits on shelves, then the ceiling on what an American household will pay to clean its teeth is lower than the staples pitch has assumed. That is a harder problem, and it shows up in mix and in margin.

Watch the reorder rate on those brush heads. That number will tell you which one it is long before either company puts it in a filing.

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