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On Aug. 22, the U.S. Navy pulled the cover off a new missile called AIM-424 Malice, built by Raytheon Technologies Corporation (RTX) to extend the reach of American fighters. Two days later, Bloomberg reported that China had built its own version of that reach.

Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles can now fire air-to-air weapons at aircraft thousands of miles from any front line.

Nobody planned that timing, but together the two stories explain why RTX and Lockheed Martin (LMT), the F-35 manufacturer, keep turning up as the default answer to the same question: Which company builds weapons with the longest reach?

Two missile stories collided in one week

The Malice, unveiled at the Navy’s Tailhook Symposium in Reno, can strike targets more than 250 nautical miles away and fits inside the internal weapons bay of an F-35, according to Naval News.

It effectively restores a range advantage American carrier aviation lost when the Navy retired the AIM-54 Phoenix in 2006.

Bloomberg said China has developed hypersonic glide vehicles capable of striking aircraft far behind the front line, citing a person familiar with the program.

Beijing has also added air-to-air functions to some hypersonic cruise missiles and equipped others to strike ships. No other country is known to operate a hypersonic glide vehicle built to carry air-to-air missiles.

China’s ballistic missile inventory has grown 147% since 2015, and its stock of ground-launched cruise missiles has risen 50% over the same period, according to Pentagon estimates cited by Bloomberg.

The Pentagon counted more than 3,150 Chinese ballistic missiles in 2024, a stockpile now taking on new jobs rather than simply growing in size.

RTX and Lockheed Martin sit at the center of a Pentagon buildup responding to China’s expanding hypersonic missile reach.Chris McLoughlin / Getty Images

China’s new missiles threaten support aircraft

The targets at risk are not fighter jets. They are the tankers, airborne radar planes, and flying command centers, such as the Air Force’s E-4B Nightwatch, that normally operate far from danger while supporting a combat mission.

A missile traveling that distance can take 20 minutes or longer to arrive. China would also need to track a moving aircraft continuously through a chain of sensors and data links to hit it, and launching a ballistic missile risks being mistaken for the opening move of a nuclear attack.

Related: Jim Cramer says surging defense stock is a sensational buy

That tension is exactly why the story matters more as a spending signal than as a battlefield certainty.

The Pentagon does not need China to fire the weapon to justify buying more range of its own. It only needs the capability to exist.

RTX and Lockheed become the default trade

RTX, whose Raytheon business builds the Malice along with the AIM-174B, an air-launched version of the Navy’s SM-6 interceptor, trades near $209 a share.

Lockheed Martin, which builds the still-developing AIM-260 successor to the long-serving AMRAAM missile, trades near $564. The military has already put roughly $1 billion behind AIM-260 production, though the missile’s range remains classified, Bloomberg noted.

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That answer already shows up in recent contracts. RTX won a $22.9 billion, seven-year Navy deal on Aug. 17 to lift Tomahawk cruise missile output from about 60 missiles a year to more than 1,000, according to the company.

Lockheed Martin holds a $58.6 billion Patriot interceptor agreement running through 2032 and a separate award to quadruple production of the THAAD interceptor, Defense News reported.

Wall Street has priced in some of that momentum, though perhaps not all of it. Based on a MarketBeat consensus, 21 Wall Street analysts currently covering RTX have assigned the stock a “Moderate Buy” rating.

These analysts have established an average price target of $228.59, which points to a 9.26% upside from the recent $209.22 trading level.

Meanwhile, a MarketBeat consensus for Lockheed Martin shows 20 Wall Street analysts maintaining a “Hold” rating with an average price target of $632.39, implying a 12.20% upside from its recent $563.65 trading level.

Production capacity is the real risk to track

The bigger constraint is not political will. The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request raised missile procurement funding by 188%, a jump that already outstrips what the defense industrial base can produce today, according to Breaking Defense.

Both RTX and Lockheed Martin have responded by locking in seven-year contracts instead of one-year orders, a sign that Washington expects this buildup to last well beyond any single headline about China.

China’s hypersonic reach is a symptom of a broader arms race that has already reshaped how the Pentagon buys weapons, not just what it buys.

The next test for RTX and Lockheed Martin will not be whether the government wants more range.

It will be whether either company can staff, supply, and build fast enough to deliver, and that answer will show up in earnings reports long before it shows up in any missile test.

Related: Why Rocket Lab is becoming a bigger defense player

Wall Street trading giant Jane Street Capital just made a big bet on one of the market’s most unpredictable AI plays.

The quantitative trading firm disclosed a sharp jump in its stake in SanDisk, the flash memory maker that split off from Western Digital last year. 

According to regulatory filings complied by Tikr, Jane Street now holds one of its largest single stock positions in the company, trailing only its stake in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.

Valued at a market cap of $269 billion, SNDK stock has returned over 3,000% in the last 12 months. However, it is also down 36% from all-time highs.

For a stock that has swung wildly through 2026, Jane Street’s conviction stands out. 

Jane Street boosts SanDisk stock stake

According to a 13G filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dated July 29, Jane Street held 7.41 million shares of SanDisk (SNDK), worth roughly $9 billion. It makes SanDisk the firm’s second largest holding overall, at 5.47% of its total portfolio.

The filing shows Jane Street added 6,251,642 shares, up nearly 540% from its prior position.

The firm now owns just over 5% of all SanDisk shares outstanding, a stake large enough to require public disclosure.

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Only Jane Street’s SPY position, worth about $33 billion, ranks higher in the firm’s portfolio.

Based on the filing, SanDisk now sits ahead of Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft on the firm’s list of top holdings.

Why SanDisk stock price has taken off in 2026

SanDisk makes NAND flash memory chips, used in phones, laptops, and massive AI data centers.

The company separated from Western Digital in February 2025 and has since leaned significantly into the data center business.

A year ago, data center sales accounted for 12% of SanDisk’s bit shipments. By the end of fiscal 2026 (ended in June), the number climbed to 38%. Full-year data center revenue rose 437% year over year to $5.15 billion. 

“We expect data center share of total TAM to expand from approximately 30% in calendar year 2025 to approximately 50% in calendar year 2026, and to continue outpacing the market in 2027,” SanDisk CFO Luis Visoso stated. 

“Demand from our customers is growing faster than our supply. We therefore expect bits to remain on allocation beyond calendar year 2027.”

The broader NAND flash market is booming too, fueled by AI inference demand.

Chief Executive David Goeckeler said the market is expected to top $300 billion in 2026 and approach $500 billion in 2027.

SanDisk’s full-year revenue reached $20.25 billion, up 175% year over year. 

Non-GAAP gross margin climbed to 84.6% in the fourth quarter, up from just 26.4% a year earlier. 

Non-GAAP earnings per share hit $39.25 for the quarter, compared with $0.29 in the same period last year.

New contracts reshape the SanDisk stock story

Instead of negotiating prices with customers every quarter, SanDisk signs what it calls New Business Models, or NBMs, long-term supply agreements with its biggest buyers.

SanDisk currently has NBMs with eight customers, including three U.S. hyperscalers. Visoso said these deals average more than four years in length, with total expected revenue of at least $93.9 billion. 

Related: JPMorgan revamps SanDisk stock with massive price target

The remaining performance obligation tied to these agreements stood at $91.1 billion, including two deals signed after the quarter closed.

The contracts also carry $16.5 billion in financial guarantees, meant to protect SanDisk if a customer fails to meet its purchase commitments. Visoso said the company expects roughly 80% gross margins on this business, even at the lowest agreed pricing.

Goeckeler told investors during the Aug. 13 Analyst Day that the shift moved SanDisk from just three months of demand visibility to more than four years, in the span of two quarters.

SanDisk CEO David Goeckeler provides investors with revenue visibility.Bloomberg/Getty Images

What is the SanDisk stock price target?

SanDisk is also investing in newer technology called High Bandwidth Flash, or HBF, aimed at AI inference workloads. 

The company said it had taped out its first HBF memory chip and expects to ship samples to customers next year. 

Chip industry veteran Jim Keller, chief executive of Tenstorrent, recently joined SanDisk’s technical advisory board to help guide the project.

However, investing in SanDisk carries certain risks. The tech stock has a reputation for sharp swings, and the memory chip industry has a long history of boom-and-bust cycles. 

Goeckeler himself referenced the industry’s rough 2023, when oversupply crushed prices across the sector.

Out of the 16 analysts covering SNDK stock, 14 recommend “Buy,” and two recommend “Hold.” The average SanDisk stock price target is $2,203, 48% above the current price target. 

Jane Street’s filing does not include a price target or public commentary on where the firm expects SanDisk shares to head next. As a trading and market-making firm, Jane Street typically does not publish investment theses the way traditional research analysts do.

Still, a stake increase of that size in one of the market’s most volatile AI-related names sends its own message about where big money sees value right now.

Related: SanDisk sends strong signal to Micron investors, BofA says

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The best way to keep your home’s outdoor spaces lit up is with a good set of solar lights. There are solar string lights, in-ground solar lights, and a host of other options that can keep your patio looking bright. We found a version of these convenient illuminators that may be the most versatile of all. That’s because they’re able to clip onto a fence, onto your patio, or just about anywhere else that has an exposed edge. This adaptable design allows you to place the lights wherever you need them most at any given time, making them perhaps more adaptable than any other form of lighting you’ll find when shopping for outdoor lights.

There are so many reasons why clip-on solar lights for your yard are a good idea. With inflation impacting just about everyone’s monthly budget, having a light source that doesn’t add to your electricity bill is highly desirable. What’s more, these lights allow for constant repositioning if that’s something you need. Finally, they add a level of security that you won’t find with other types of outdoor fixtures. If this all sounds appealing to you, then keep reading, as you’ll find a lot more details below.

Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

Check price at Amazon

The Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights are on sale for only $38 at Amazon. When you break down the price of the four-pack, that equals just $9.50 per light. These lights may be some of the best you can buy for keeping your space nice and bright even on the longest and darkest nights. Included are four flood-light style fixtures with helpful mounting clips on the back of each light. Each lamp includes 176 mini LED lights that shine at an impressive 800 lumens. The motion sensor has a range of 120 degrees, covering up to 600 square feet of space. The lights come in both black and white variants, so they’re easy to match with your patio decor. And if the four-pack doesn’t meet your needs, the set is also available in packs of one, two, and six. 

Benefits of motion sensor clip-on solar lights 

As mentioned above, there are a number of advantages to this style of lighting for your backyard. Financially speaking, the benefits are two-fold. For starters, this type of light, as evidenced by the Lifengsoler example, can often be purchased at a discount. Even at the original price, many of these solar lights are quite affordable. Additionally, their solar charging capabilities allow you to have outdoor lighting year-round without adding any additional cost to your utility bill. At a moment when energy costs continue to rise, this is absolutely a welcome benefit.

As for positioning, clip-on lights never leave you stranded in the dark. They can be placed on railings, patio umbrellas, fences, gutters, or even tree branches. These lights offer far more options as to where they can be placed than string lights or even in-ground lights. Also, since they’re not wired to one another, you’re not forced to place a cluster of lights in any one area. While you can certainly group them together if you wish, you can also spread them out throughout your yard to be sure you can brighten every nook and cranny. 

Perhaps the favorite feature of these lights is what they mean for your sense of security. Because they have a sensitive motion detection capability, this type of floodlight allows you to feel safe and secure at any time of the night. They shine brightly and can be placed all around your yard so that any motion is captured. There’s nothing like laying your head to rest on your pillow knowing that your home is protected from every possible angle. That peace of mind is worth every cent you may spend on outdoor motion lights. 

More motion sensor clip-on solar lights

If the Lifengsoler Motion Sensor Clip-On Solar Lights aren’t what you need, then the following list may be helpful. We’ve compiled some of our other favorite picks from both Amazon and Walmart. Both retailers have great selections of outdoor lights of every sort, and their inventories of clip-on solar lights have something for just about everyone. Take a look for yourself and see what you find. There are many that are sure to brighten your day (and your nights).

Thumok 2-Pack Clip-On LED Solar Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

Check price at Amazon

Etetale 3-Mode Clip-On Motion Lights

Courtesy of Amazon

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Mehoom Clip-On Motion Solar Lights

Courtesy of Walmart

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Daybetter Clip-On Solar Outdoor Motion Sensor Light

Courtesy of Walmart

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TheStreet Shopping is your guide for shopping insights and advice. We look beyond the price tag to find the best value in home, tech, and wellness gear based on product features and real-world use. Read more about our Editorial Standards and How We Choose Our Shopping Deals.

Here’s a scenario worth thinking about. You hire a brilliant junior analyst. Instead of learning to build financial models from scratch, he or she asks Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do it. Instead of structuring arguments from first principles, they prompt a chatbot. 

And yes, they get the right answer. Most of the time. But five years later, can this analyst think without the machine?

That’s the question keeping one Goldman Sachs partner up at night. And the fact that it’s coming from inside one of Wall Street’s most aggressive AI adopters makes it worth taking seriously.

Chris Churchman, who leads Goldman’s Marquee platform — the firm’s digital hub for institutional clients including hedge funds and trading desks — went on Goldman’s Exchanges podcast and called overreliance on AI a “huge danger.” Not a risk. Not a concern. A huge danger.

“There’s a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us from being able to reason from first principles ourselves,” Churchman said, according to a CNBC transcript.

That’s a striking thing to say when your firm is simultaneously deploying AI across trading, banking, and client services at record speed.

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Churchman didn’t just raise an abstract concern. He shared a specific moment that had me pausing when I first read it.

While building out Marquee’s internal AI capabilities — still only available to Goldman employees for now — the team pushed the system hard on accuracy. The response the AI gave back was remarkable for its candor.

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“When we challenged it hard, at least it was honest,” Churchman said. “It was like, ‘Look, in the end, I’m better at sounding thorough than being thorough.’”

That’s the core tension at the heart of AI in high finance. Consumer chatbots can get away with confident-sounding errors. In a trading environment where a misquoted risk figure or a hallucinated covenant can cost millions, honestly, the tolerance for such a mistake is essentially zero. 

Related: Goldman Sachs sees an upside in a new industry

Churchman acknowledged Goldman hasn’t yet “figured out” how to manage that transition. That’s notable honesty from a co-chair of the firm’s Global Banking and Markets AI working group.

This isn’t a fringe view inside Goldman. I covered a similar warning back in June from AMD CEO Lisa Su, who told MIT graduates that technical AI proficiency alone won’t define future leaders. 

Her point? AI can process datasets and generate answers, but it can’t determine which problems actually deserve attention or take moral responsibility for outcomes. Human judgment, she argued, remains irreplaceable. This is something we all agree on.

Churchman’s version of that argument is more specifically Wall Street. In fact, more urgent.

The apprenticeship problem Wall Street hasn’t solved

Here’s the structural issue Churchman is really pointing at that I would want you to take some time to reason through. 

Investment banking runs on tacit knowledge. I mean the kind that was never written down, that gets transmitted by watching a senior trader price a client request under pressure, through sitting beside someone who has navigated three market crises, through learning not just what to do but how to think.

You learn by doing, and a lot of knowledge is tacit. It was never written down.

The danger isn’t that AI replaces senior bankers. No. It’s that AI replaces the training ground that creates them. 

Junior traders traditionally learn by fielding client pricing requests under supervision. Churchman acknowledged Goldman could automate that workflow entirely.

Related: Goldman Sachs sends strong message on AI and jobs

The question he raised is whether automating it produces the next generation of senior traders who actually understand what’s happening or just competent prompt engineers.

Sep. 2025 CNBC report showed that Wall Street firms were examining ways to use AI to lower the ratio of junior bankers to senior employees.

If that ratio shrinks, so does the pool from which future senior talent develops. The apprenticeship culture and the headcount math are on a collision course.

Goldman Sachs signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Goldman is using AI to post record numbers while warning about AI

Digging deeper, I found an irony. The context makes Churchman’s warning more compelling, not less. Goldman isn’t a firm that’s struggling with AI adoption. It’s actually thriving because of it.

Goldman reported Q2 2026 net revenues of $20.34 billion, up 39% year-over-year (YoY), with Global Banking and Markets generating $15.52 billion, up 53% YoY, according to Goldman’s Q2 presentation. 

Related: Goldman Sachs spots huge twist ahead of Nvidia’s earnings

Equities revenue hit $7.42 billion, up 72% YoY (a record). Diluted EPS came in at $20.98, up 92% YoY. Return on equity reached 23.5%, according to the same presentation.

Management explicitly credited AI-driven trading strategies and AI infrastructure investment banking as structural drivers of that performance, according to Goldman materials. Goldman is making more money, faster, with AI deeply embedded in its operations.

Also Read: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Latest News and Stories

GS shares were trading at $1,036.28, up 19.04% year-to-date and 42.49% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance data as of this reporting.

So Goldman is winning with AI. And one of its most senior AI architects is publicly warning that winning today could cost the firm the talent it needs to win tomorrow. You may think of it as a contradiction. 

But that’s exactly the kind of honest tension that sophisticated institutions grapple with. In fact, most prefer not to say it out loud. Churchman said it out loud. And I think Wall Street should probably pay attention to this. I mean, really pay attention.

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Mark Cuban has never been shy about airing his opinions on money, and lately his favorite subject is who gets to keep it.

The “Shark Tank” investor, whose fortune is estimated at $10.2 billion, has spent years pushing the idea that workers deserve not just a paycheck, but also a bigger piece of the companies that employ them.

Cuban has now sharpened that argument into something closer to a proposed policy. Rather than simply encouraging founders to be generous, he now wants the tax code itself to enforce it by rewarding companies that share ownership broadly and penalizing those that don’t.

Mark Cuban employee equity proposal and corporate tax code plan

Cuban laid out his thinking after a follower on X (the former Twitter) asked what he would do to close the wealth gap.

His answer was blunt. “Increase the taxes of any company that doesn’t offer equity to every employee on a pro rata basis to non-founder executives,” he wrote. “If they get rich from the market, so do they,” Fortune reported.

He expanded on the idea on the “What It Takes” podcast, describing to host Sarah McCammon a system where the standard 21% corporate tax rate becomes a reward rather than a default, according to Fortune.

Related: Mark Cuban predicts radical change for American workers

“You can give them incentives to say, ‘Look, if you want that 21% tax rate, then you need to give every single employee the same percentage in stock warrants, options, whatever it may be, of their cash compensation that you give to the CEO,’” he explained.

If a chief executive receives stock worth 10% of their cash pay, a janitor earning far less would receive stock worth the same 10% of their own salary, not the same dollar figure, but the same proportion, according to Inc.

Cuban points to his own track record as proof the idea can work. When Yahoo bought his streaming company Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in 1999, Cuban had already given stock to 330 employees, and roughly 300 of them became millionaires overnight.

He did something similar years earlier at his first company, the IT consulting firm MicroSolutions, handing out equity and cash bonuses to staff.

That history is central to why Cuban frames this as responsibility rather than charity. Most people who build serious wealth do it by selling a company or taking one public, he has said, and if founders accept the tax bill that comes with wealth creation, they should let employees share in the gains, too.

SpaceX IPO millionaires: what employee stock ownership does for workers

The math on this is not complicated. A 2021 Harvard Business School analysis found that if private companies nationwide got to roughly 30% employee ownership, household wealth would effectively double, as TheStreet reported.

Cuban’s argued that the only thing stopping it from happening is that nobody has made it worth the founders’ while to try.

The clearest recent proof of concept came from SpaceX. When the company went public earlier this year, more than 4,400 current and former employees became paper millionaires, and roughly 400 of them are sitting on stakes worth more than $100 million, according to Fortune.

The windfall was not limited to engineers and executives. Welders, machinists, and technicians who had been offered modest stock grants years earlier suddenly found their equity worth six and seven figures.

One widely told story involves Juan Hernandez, a welder who joined SpaceX in 2015 earning $28 an hour and was offered $10,000 in stock as part of his hiring package.

He told CBS News he did not think much of the offer at the time, since none of his previous jobs had included equity. His roughly 6,500 shares were valued at close to $900,000 near the IPO price.

Coverage of the IPO noted that the newly minted millionaires spanned far beyond the engineering ranks, touching cafeteria staff and contract workers alongside rocket designers.

It is exactly the kind of broad-based wealth creation Cuban says should be the norm, especially as pay gaps between executives and staff keep widening.

Not everyone is convinced that Cuban’s tax proposal would work as his own success stories suggest.Billy/Getty Images

Elon Musk KKR and Cost Plus Drugs on employee ownership in 2026

Cuban is not alone among prominent business figures making this case. Elon Musk has said he has always believed everyone at a company should hold stock so they can participate in its upside, according to Business Insider. It’s a philosophy he shared with Texas Governor Greg Abbott shortly before SpaceX’s record-breaking listing.

Private equity has also taken notice. KKR, through partner Pete Stavros, has pushed similar ownership models across its portfolio companies, an approach highlighted alongside the SpaceX story as evidence that helped turn broad-based equity from an individual founder’s philosophy into mainstream strategy used by major investment firms.

Cuban’s other major venture, the online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, follows a related instinct, even though it targets consumers rather than employees.

Co-founded with radiologist Alex Oshmyansky in 2022, the company sells drugs at their cost plus a 15% margin, using transparent pricing to challenge the traditional pharmaceutical industry, TheStreet reported.

CEO worker pay gap and what Mark Cuban equity plan means for investors

Not everyone is convinced that Cuban’s tax proposal would work as his own success stories suggest. Critics note that higher costs on companies, whether from taxes or tariffs, can be passed along to consumers rather than absorbed entirely by shareholders, squeezing budgets already stretched by inflation.

Cuban has pushed back, arguing that margin decisions are a choice founders make for competitive reasons, not an inevitable outcome of higher taxes. He has also pointed to the widening gap between executive and worker pay, noting that S&P 500 chief executives now earn roughly 285 times what their median employee does, up from 268 times a year earlier.

Congress is not passing Cuban’s tax proposal this year. That is not really the point. The companies worth watching are the ones already moving this way on their own.

Broad equity plans tend to show up in lower turnover and higher output before they show up in stock prices. If a company’s compensation disclosures show meaningful equity distribution below the executive level, that is worth knowing before the headline numbers do.

Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on taxes and wealthy Americans

A major financial institution just published research suggesting that AI is preparing to do something far more significant than summarize earnings reports or screen for trade ideas.

The research describes a future in which AI systems act inside financial markets independently, without waiting for a human to decide.

Fidelity Digital Assets argues in its latest research that AI agents could become an entirely new class of participants in financial markets, executing trades, arranging loans, managing portfolios, and processing payments with limited human direction.

The report is careful to add something the broader AI-in-finance conversation often skips: More activity does not automatically mean more value for the systems supporting it.

That distinction could define which parts of the financial industry actually benefit from the shift.

What Fidelity’s research says about AI agents in financial markets

The core argument in the Fidelity research is that AI agents will not just assist financial professionals. They will begin operating as participants in their own right, processing market information continuously and acting on it without stopping to check in with a human at each step.

Fidelity identifies several areas where this shift could have the most immediate impact. Trading, lending, and portfolio management all involve high volumes of decision-making, access to large pools of capital, and the generation of significant fees.

Payments, while potentially the highest-volume activity, produce narrower margins and may generate less lasting economic value for the infrastructure supporting them.

Related: Google DeepMind prepares for risk of AI agents going rogue

The report also raises a less comfortable question for investors watching the AI-in-finance space closely.

If AI agents can shift between financial platforms quickly, optimizing for cost and execution quality at each step, then higher overall activity may not translate into durable value for any single platform or institution.

The competitive advantage could belong to the platforms that give AI agents the most reliable access to liquidity, data, and settlement, not necessarily the ones generating the most raw volume.

Why AI agents in trading and lending could reshape capital management

Fidelity places AI-driven trading, lending, and portfolio management ahead of payments in terms of economic impact. That sequencing reflects where AI already has measurable advantages.

Evaluating risk, synthesizing market signals, identifying pricing inefficiencies, and rebalancing positions across multiple assets are areas where AI systems can operate at a speed and scale that no human team can match.

Logan Xie, leader of KuCoin AI Lab, told TheStreet in an interview that the most significant opportunity is a structural one. “The greatest near-term value will come from AI turning capital from something that is periodically allocated into something that can continuously interpret markets, manage risk, and act within defined mandates.”

That shift would be significant for institutional and retail investors alike.

A hedge fund running an AI agent on its long-short book does not pause for a bank holiday. A fixed-income desk using an AI system to evaluate duration risk does not take a week off between reviews. Capital that currently sits idle between investment decisions could instead be continuously managed within a framework of predefined objectives.

The portfolio manager is not replaced by a single AI decision. It is replaced by an ongoing process that never pauses for weekends, holidays, or human availability.

The lending market offers a parallel opportunity. AI agents could continuously evaluate creditworthiness, match borrowers to lenders, price risk in real time, and adjust loan terms based on changing conditions.

For financial institutions, that could mean faster deployment of capital, lower defaults from better risk assessment, and reduced operational costs from fewer manual reviews.

An autonomous system making lending or investment decisions needs reliable data.Cravetiger/ Getty Images

Why more AI activity in finance does not automatically mean more value

Fidelity’s warning is about the gap between activity and value. More transactions do not automatically mean more lasting economic benefit for the financial infrastructure behind them. This is the part of the AI-in-finance thesis that receives the least attention.

GoMining CEO Mark Zalan told TheStreet the distinction matters. “What actually accrues to a network is settlement demand, and the thing that generates settlement demand at a scale nobody has seen before is machines paying machines.”

That points to a category of financial activity the current system was not built to handle. AI agents transact with one another, buying computing resources, data access, and services from other automated systems in amounts too small for traditional banking infrastructure to process.

Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa are all actively building infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments, Seeking Alpha reported.

These transactions do not appear in standard models of trading or lending volumes. They represent a different kind of demand altogether.

“The asset that ends up doing machine settlement is the one that wins this era, and right now that layer gets far less attention than the trading story,” Zalan added.

Fidelity identifies a similar dynamic in its analysis of what happens when AI makes financial software faster and cheaper to build.

If AI lowers the cost of replicating the technology behind financial platforms, the technology itself stops being the competitive advantage. What remains is the accumulated weight of real economic activity: the users, the liquidity, and the trust built over time.

Scott Dykstra, co-founder of Space and Time, told TheStreet that verification becomes the critical issue as AI takes on more financial responsibility. “AI agents need trustworthy inputs and auditable execution.”

That requirement extends to the institutions deploying autonomous systems. If an AI agent makes a bad lending decision or misreads a market signal, the financial institution behind it needs a record of what the system was told, the data it used, and the logic it followed.

Without that trail, the accountability question is unanswerable.

Related: AMD CEO doubles down on AI and the stock market

“Code can be copied quickly, but liquidity, users, and established economic activity are much harder to recreate,” Dykstra added.

An autonomous system making lending or investment decisions needs reliable data. The financial institutions and customers it serves need ways to confirm that the agent followed the strategy it was supposed to follow.

As automation increases, the systems that verify what happened inside those decisions could become as important as the systems carrying out the decisions themselves.

What the shift to autonomous AI means for financial infrastructure

The Fidelity research points to a broader transformation in what financial infrastructure will need to look like when the customer is increasingly not a person. AI agents require identities, permissions, access to assets, and mechanisms to audit their actions. Those are governance and infrastructure problems, not just technology problems.

For banks, asset managers and financial technology firms, the question is whether they build infrastructure suited for human customers and then adapt it, or design systems from the start around the idea that the primary user may be automated.

The firms that solve that problem earliest could gain access to a category of financial activity that did not previously exist.

The same dynamic applies to asset managers and payments providers. Institutions that adapt their infrastructure to serve AI agents as clients, rather than treating automation as an internal efficiency tool, open themselves to a new category of revenue that does not require acquiring a single additional human customer.

Fidelity is specific about one potential outcome. AI could accelerate the development of financial technology broadly, lowering the cost of building platforms and enabling new entrants to compete, Benzinga reported.

That competition would benefit AI agents optimizing for cost and performance. But it could also concentrate activity on the platforms with the deepest liquidity, most reliable execution, and strongest existing user base, because those are the factors AI systems will optimize toward when choosing where to transact.

Xie put it plainly: “AI will commoditize code, but it will not commoditize network effects. The networks that have accumulated deep liquidity, strong user trust, and regulatory clarity will become even more valuable as AI floods the market with new entrants.”

The financial institutions that understand that distinction and build around it may be the ones best positioned when AI agents become active participants in markets.

Fidelity’s warning is not that AI will disrupt finance. It is that much of the disruption may end up benefiting infrastructure players nobody is currently watching closely.

Related: Microsoft makes a controversial decision that changes its AI story

The S&P 500 fell 0.92% over the past five trading days, but investors still sent $4.3 billion in cash into the fund that tracks it, TipRanks reported.

That reaction extends a pattern that has defined the Vanguard S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (ETF), trading under the ticker VOO, throughout a volatile and event-driven 2026: Buy the dip and hold.

The fund has pulled in roughly $69 billion in net inflows this year, more than any other ETF in the world, Bloomberg data confirmed.

For VOO holders, the next two weeks bring two catalysts that could change the fund’s near-term trajectory. The fund’s two largest holdings face events before September that could change expectations for the entire portfolio and its future direction.

How VOO crossed $1 trillion in net asset value

VOO became the first ETF to cross $1 trillion in net asset value on June 2, 2026, a milestone Morningstar confirmed on June 3, 2026.

The S&P 500 has climbed roughly 11% year to date, hitting multiple all-time highs even as geopolitical uncertainty and trade tensions have rattled short-term traders, Bloomberg data show.

The 2026 pace follows two straight years of annual net inflows above $100 billion, a run unmatched by any competing fund. VOO has pulled in new money every single calendar year since its 2010 launch, a streak that no rival ETF can match, Bloomberg noted.

How VOO overtook SPY to become the world’s largest ETF

Investors poured more than $400 billion into VOO between June 2021 and May 2026, according to Morningstar’s Daniel Sotiroff, associate director of U.S. passive strategies research.

The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF attracted about $250 billion over the same period, and SPY drew roughly $88 billion, Sotiroff noted.

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VOO charges an annual expense ratio of 0.03%, which translates to $3 for every $10,000 invested, while SPY charges 0.09%, Vanguard data show.

VOO overtook SPY as the world’s largest ETF early in 2025 and has steadily widened the gap over the past year, Bloomberg reported.

“This milestone is just the latest sign that ETFs are all grown up,” Ben Johnson, head of client solutions, asset management at Morningstar, told Bloomberg.

“What was once a fringe category has become the default investment wrapper for millions of investors around the world,” he added.

VOO surpassed SPY as the world’s largest ETF, fueled by lower fees and more than $400 billion in investor inflows since 2021.ANGELA WEISS / Getty Images

What VOO’s top-heavy structure means for holders now

The fund’s top 10 positions controlled approximately 37.6% of total assets as of the end of July 2026, according to Stock Analysis data, down from the 41.5% index-level figure the American Association of Individual Investors reported in early June 2026. 

A single earnings miss from Nvidia, which controls about 7.55% of the index, could move the entire benchmark on its own, RBC Wealth Management warned.

Passive fund inflows push up prices on the largest stocks, which then attract more capital as their index weight increases, RBC Wealth Management noted.

Dave Nadig, president and director of research at ETF.com, warned at the Future Proof Citywide conference in March 2026 that the mechanics of indexing are creating measurable distortions in the market.

There are real passive effects happening in the markets. As somebody who spent my entire career on the index side, I want to acknowledge there are real impacts on the indexation of financial wealth.

The largest holdings drive most of VOO’s gains when markets rise and most of its losses when they fall, VanEck cautioned in May 2026. That dynamic means the two catalysts ahead carry outsized weight for every VOO holder.

The open question is whether the buy-the-dip pattern that has sustained $69 billion in inflows in 2026 can survive a challenging earnings season.

VOO’s two largest holdings face major events before September

Technology stocks now represent roughly 37% of VOO’s total portfolio, a concentration level that TipRanks’ latest data confirmed.

Nvidia holds the fund’s largest individual position at about 7.55% and reports second-quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings on Aug. 26, 2026, Nvidia’s newsroom reported.

Wall Street consensus is $91.85 billion for the quarter, roughly double the $46.74 billion Nvidia reported a year earlier, according to a poll of 40 analysts compiled by RexShares. Nvidia’s own guidance is $91 billion plus or minus 2%.

Apple, the fund’s second-largest holding at 7.05% as of July 31, 2026, faces a chief executive officer transition on Sept. 1, 2026, when John Ternus replaces Tim Cook, Apple announced on April 20, 2026.

At that weight, any sustained uncertainty around Ternus’s direction on services revenue, AI integration, or capital allocation would be large enough to register in the fund’s performance on its own.

What the next earnings cycle means for VOO holders buying the dip

The buy-the-dip pattern that pushed VOO past $1 trillion survived tariff scares, the Iran conflict, and broad growth concerns throughout 2026, Bloomberg noted.

But that pattern has been underwritten by a specific condition: The largest holdings have continued to deliver earnings growth that has justified their expanding index weight. 

If Nvidia’s Aug. 26 report points to slowing AI spending, the fund could face pressure from its largest holdings. Apple’s leadership transition could deepen that pressure, testing the link between passive inflows and mega-cap valuations this year.

Nadig at ETF.com observed that the passive inflows rewarding long-term VOO holders also increase their portfolio concentration in whichever stocks have the largest market capitalizations.

What Nvidia reports regarding forward AI demand on Aug. 26, and how investors price Apple’s incoming CEO, will shape whether VOO’s 2026 inflow streak holds.

Related: Vanguard’s VOO may be quietly exposing your portfolio

IBM (IBM) unveiled the first mainframe processor built to run two rival computing architectures on a single core, disclosing the design at the Hot Chips conference on Monday, August 24, according to a press release.

Any enterprise architect who has ever been told a piece of software will not run on the mainframe knows the usual workaround: pay a vendor to port it, or route the workload somewhere else entirely. IBM just spent two years building a chip designed to remove that excuse for one of the fastest-growing software ecosystems in computing.

Why mainframes couldn’t talk to modern AI

For three decades, IBM Z has run on z/Architecture, an instruction set almost no software outside mainframe shops has ever targeted. The new chip’s 11 cores execute both z/Architecture and Arm instructions natively, without an emulation layer or a separate block of Arm-only cores bolted onto the die, the firm found.

That distinction matters because the mainframe now inherits software already built for Arm, including AI servers, smart virtual assistants, and instant search tools that power modern AI, instead of waiting for someone to build a mainframe-specific version first.

Related: IBM CEO sends blunt message on quantum computing

Without an emulation layer, the chip avoids the slowdowns that happen when hardware constantly translates foreign code. Think of it like a speaker fluent in two languages instead of relying on a middleman interpreter.

It allows real-time AI tools to run natively at full speed without stalling mission-critical operations.

Built on a 2 nanometer process, the chip packs 11 cores running above 5.7 GHz continuously, according to IBM’s announcement. It also includes AI inference accelerators aimed at catching fraudulent transactions in real time, a capability banks lean on for split-second decisions during a live payment.

IBM’s new processor lets mainframes run Arm-native software directly, ending a decades-old barrier that kept modern apps off IBM Z systems.IBM press release

The mainframe coder shortage

The Arm partnership has as much to do with staffing as silicon, according to Rachita Rao, a senior analyst at Everest Group, in comments to Network World.

Banks and insurers resist changing core architecture because of the risk to their ledgers, Rao said, but they also face a dwindling pool of specialists who know how to run z/Architecture systems.

Native Arm support lets those firms modernize without retraining an entire workforce or ripping out systems that still process the bulk of global financial transactions.

Rao also framed the move as IBM targeting sovereign and air-gapped computing, the regulated workloads that cannot move to public cloud infrastructure. That is a narrower market than the hyperscale data centers where Arm has already won, but it is one where IBM faces little direct competition.

IBM leadership framed the move as a direct response to that modernization push.

By bringing Arm natively to our platform, we’re combining access to one of the industry’s fastest-growing software ecosystems with the qualities that have made IBM systems the foundation for how businesses run today.

Why was Wall Street quiet?

IBM shares were fractionally lower and Arm slipped 2.4% in premarket trading following the announcement. That muted reaction fits how early the product still is. IBM gave no shipping date, no pricing, and no name for the chip, so any financial impact sits years out.

The announcement lands amid a broader buildout of IBM’s AI infrastructure bets, including an expanded Nvidia partnership to bring Blackwell Ultra GPUs to IBM Cloud, an $11 billion acquisition of data-streaming company Confluent, and a partnership with OpenAI.

IBM’s parallel Nvidia expansion signals the company is not treating Arm compatibility as its primary answer to AI at scale, since large models still run on GPU-heavy infrastructure. Arm’s role is narrower: pulling the software that surrounds those models closer to the data that already lives on the mainframe.

IBM also cleared a pricing obstacle that had discouraged this kind of consolidation. Red Hat moved to per-socket-pair pricing with cost parity across x86, IBM Z, LinuxONE, and Power shortly after Arm partnership was announced in April, per Moor Insights & Strategy, removing a structural penalty that made mainframe deployments more expensive per core regardless of how efficiently that core ran.

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Arm’s last holdout is starting to open up

Arm chips already power roughly half of the new compute capacity added by the largest hyperscalers, with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each building custom Arm silicon for their own clouds.

The mainframe was the one corner of enterprise computing that shift never reached, walled off by decades of software written for a single instruction set.

IBM’s chip does not tear that wall down immediately. Pricing for non-IBM software, distribution certification, and vendor support on Arm workloads remain undefined, and the earliest systems are not expected before 2027.

What changes is the assumption underneath it. The architecture now dominating cloud and AI infrastructure is no longer locked out of the systems that still run much of the world’s banking and insurance backbone.

That shift will shape enterprise computing decisions for longer than any single quarter’s stock reaction suggests.

Related: IBM quietly cleared a quantum computing hurdle experts doubted

Are you prepared for what happens if you stop paying your student loans? In this eye-opening interview, college finance expert Mark Kantrowitz breaks down the serious consequences of default—including wage garnishment, seized tax refunds, and how the government can take up to 15% of your Social Security benefits at any age.

Subscribe To “Broadcast Retirement Network” On YouTube For Aging, Finance, Lifestyle, Privacy, Retirement, and Wellness programming Monday through Sunday at 7:30 AM ET.

Transcript

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And we’re gonna welcome back to the program, Mark Kantrowitz. Mark, it’s so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Thank you for having me.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And last time we chatted, we talked about student loans and you were actually gonna be teaching some students at MIT. Before we get into student loan developments, how did the session go with the brilliant students at MIT?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Absolutely wonderful. I mean, these students are the smartest students in the world in science and mathematics. It’s part of the Research Science Institute program at MIT.

And I was very pleased with the quality of the student research, as well as the fact that we had no illnesses or injuries during the program.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Well, I’m sure the parents appreciated that. And I guess it must be a hoot for you to shape eager, bright minds.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Yeah, and these are the students who are going to change the world. They solve unsolved math problems. They do a lot of new innovations in biotechnology and business.

And it’s amazing watching what the alumni do in the years after they leave the program.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

So is it like goodwill hunting? Do you remember the math? That was Harvard.

But do you remember the equation on the board? That’s what kind of triggered the whole storyline in goodwill hunting?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Well, I remember that it had something to do with number theory. I don’t remember the specific equation. Yeah, well, it was a great- These students are going to number theory too.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, well, kudos to you for doing that. And again, I think you show yourself to be very dynamic in terms of talking about student loans, but also helping shape the minds of the future. So Mark, the reason why I reached out is I’m very curious.

You and I had spoken, I think last month, about some of the changes that were effective July 1st, and they were substantive. And really, a lot of it had to do with restarting student loans. I’m paraphrasing here.

But my first question to you is, what happens if I don’t pay my student loan? Like I don’t even restart payments. What are some of the ramifications?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Well, if you don’t make payments on your student loans after 90 days delinquency, it starts getting reported on your credit history for the federal loans, 120 days for the private student loans after, well, let me restart.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Sure, three, two, one. Go ahead. Okay.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

If you don’t make payments on your student loans, they get reported to credit reporting agencies after 30 days for private student loans and after 90 days for federal student loans. If you don’t pay your private student loans for 120 days, they go into default. If you don’t pay your federal student loans for 270 days, they go into default.

And in addition to getting notices from collection agencies, the federal government has very strong powers to compel repayment. There are three main enforced collection methods. One is to garnish up to 15% of your wages.

The second is to offset your federal income tax refunds. And the third is to offset up to 15% of your social security disability and retirement benefit payments.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

So they really have pretty powerful reach into your current and future earnings potential Do you have, so I want to focus for a second, if I may, on social security, because what if I’m 22 years old, I just started working, this is a hypothetical, and I don’t make payments and I become, you know, I go beyond the threshold. My future social security, could they collect 15% of my future social security payments?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Absolutely. And if you get disabled, and it may not be just when you reach retirement age, it may be right away. And that’s the money that you need to live off of.

It’s not a very generous amount of money for your disability or retirement benefits. And it’s kind of odd, the federal government gives with one hand and then takes back with the other. And this just doesn’t seem very ethical for many people, including myself.

We wish there were another way for the government to get the student loans repaid. And the other two methods, and those are much more effective. And perhaps they should stick to just those.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Well, how long is that? You know, you seem to know a lot of facts. I’m hitting with questions.

You know, we don’t pre-plan the questions, but when did this garnishment of social security begin? I mean, is it something, and I guess we’re making people aware, but are people when they sign the dotted line on those loans, are they aware? Are they made aware?

Or is it in that little tiny disclosure at the bottom that nobody reads?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

It is in the disclosure, which you should read because it’s very important to know all the terms and conditions of your loans and as well as your rights and responsibilities. The garnishment of the offset of social security benefits started in the 1990s. There was a lawsuit to try to block it and that lawsuit failed.

And then the U.S. Department of Education started offsetting social security benefits. And the amount that was offset each year kept on increasing as more and more of ours were subjected to it.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

So I guess there is an opportunity to kind of right the wrong. And a U.S. Senator from Vermont has offered some legislation to try to do away with this particular provision to garnish social security. And by the way, I’m not naming him Mark, because not because I don’t like him, but because Google and YouTube don’t think that we’re doing an election ad when we do mention an office holder.

So that’s the only reason for the audience that I don’t mention the Senator’s name. But he, this Senator is trying to kind of right the wrong. In terms of the likelihood of, Senate’s out of session right now, I guess they come back after Labor Day right before the election, but is it likely that something like this could gain support?

It just seems so draconian to me, thinking about all the young people and all the older people like myself who may have loans.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Well, I think it potentially has bipartisan support. The administration, when they restarted repayment, they initially were going to collect from social security, but then they suspended that and they haven’t restarted that aspect of the enforced collection methods. So there might be interest on both sides of the aisle for eliminating this as an option for collecting defaulted federal student loan debt.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Mark, I know you’re not an expert in retirement, but I know you save for retirement, like many people. It just seems, and we’ve had the passage of the Secure Act, Secure Act One, Secure Act Two, that did a lot of really good things. It just seems like, like you said, the one hand, the left hand or the right hand, depending on how you’re looking at me on the screen, doesn’t seem to know what the other hand is doing.

It just seems like it doesn’t align with retirement security, let alone the wage garnishment and the financial security, but the retirement security, a lot of people depend on social security, Mark.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

The average amount of social security is roughly around $1,000. Imagine trying to live on that little money. Now, if you happen to have saved in an IRA or 401k, you may be in better shape, as well as if you have money in taxable accounts, but it’s still, it’s very difficult for our nation’s senior citizens to pay for their housing, their food, their medications, and even with Medicare, there’s still a lot of expense that they have to pay.

And so they are the group that is least capable of repaying the debt through losing 15% of their social security benefits.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, I guess with the trust fund, not being in good fiscal shape, it just seems, and I understand, look, I think borrowers or creditors should be paid back. I think there’s just gotta be a better way to do that because you can’t, you’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul is the terminology I would use. Before I let you go, Mark, are there any other, there’s been a lot of talk about these accounts versus 529 plans.

These are the accounts named, I’m trying not to say the office holder’s name, named after the current sitting president that have gained a lot of popularity. Are you seeing that of interest when people consider using a 529 or these accounts or getting a federal student loan? Has it come into the equation?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Well, I mean, several hundred thousand people have signed up for these accounts for their children in part because there is a $1,000 birthday gift if your child was born within a few recent years, and that’s free money, and it’s hard to ignore free money. Though I and others have pointed out that this money in the account may reduce the student’s eligibility for federal student aid pretty severely because these accounts have not been exempted from being considered assets on the free application for federal student aid. So that’s something that still has to be resolved.

The U.S. Department of Education has to give guidance. There may be need for subsequent legislation to change it so that it is not considered a resource available to pay for college, that they’re not required to pay for it and if you have the money in the account for several years while you’re in college, you may be left with no money at the end of that period because as much as a fifth of the money in an asset in the child’s name reduces aid eligibility for federal purposes, 25% for about 200 private colleges, and if you take a distribution, it can reduce your aid eligibility by as much as half of that distribution. So it’s not a really good situation.

But if you’re never going to college or you’re really wealthy, then it is a nice little gift.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And in terms of the 529 plan, you don’t hear that much. I mean, I hear about it because I’m kind of in tune and I read about it, but I think a lot of people don’t hear a lot about it. Is this a tool that, you know, obviously you’ve got the student loans, you have these accounts that I mentioned.

Are people taking advantage of this option as a way to pre-save for college?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Absolutely. There are now, I think, four or $500 million saved in 529 plans and it continues to grow every year. And when the stock market went down, the value went down temporarily, but since then it’s continued to go up and it is a tax efficient, financial aid efficient way of saving for college costs.

I mean, if you use it for qualified higher education expenses, the distributions are entirely tax-free and they have a minimal impact on eligibility for a need-based financial aid, especially if a grandparent is the one who’s the account owner. Then the qualified distributions do not affect the FAFSA and it’s not reported as an asset on the FAFSA. So if you manage it properly, it could have zero impact on aid eligibility as well as a minimal tax impact.

And it’s exempted from taxes if you do a qualified distribution. Contributions to 529 plans in two thirds of the states actually get a small tax deduction or a tax credit.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, that’s certainly positive for the taxpayer, but also for the account holder, or I should say the account holder, who’s also gonna be the taxpayer. Last question for you, Mark, and then I promise I’ll let you go. Just a question, just a general question just occurred to me.

Are we ever gonna see college tuitions go down or will they always go up? Are they gonna go up at less of a growth percentage?

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Well, I mean, college costs on a net price have been, in certain cases, some of the public colleges have been flat. Though they, because of the high cost, high aid model, there’s pressure on them to just keep on increasing. When the main impact that we’re starting to see and we will continue to see is several colleges each year will be closing because they can’t raise the money to pay their own bills.

And these colleges tend to be small, tuition dependent, that draw their involvement from a local region as opposed to national colleges.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, that’s unfortunate. And also there are towns, entire towns that are built around these schools. If they close, it could have a really detrimental effect to those communities.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

It’s a long-term demographic trend. The end of the baby boom echo means that there are fewer students going to college. And with fewer students, well, fewer traditional students going to college, these colleges struggle and compete with each other to enroll the new students who can pay the bills.

Now, the Ivy League colleges, MIT, Stanford, they have no problem attracting talented students, but it’s the second and third tier institutions that may have more difficulty recruiting students who are capable of paying the bills.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, very unfortunate because I think that’s a tier that we need. There are students to be served, obviously less than what we have seen in the past. Mark, we’re gonna have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us. And look, we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.

Mark Kantrowitz, College Financial Aid Expert

Thank you.

This live blog is refreshed throughout the day with the latest updates from the market. To find the latest Stock Market Today threads, click here.

Happy Tuesday. Stock futures were climbing Tuesday as Wall Street prepared for the release of chipmaking giant Nvidia’s (NVDA) quarterly results, along with a key inflation report and the Federal Reserve’s annual symposium.

The personal consumption expenditures price index for July is scheduled to be released Wednesday. In addition, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is expected to deliver a speech at the Fed’s annual event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Stocks finished mixed Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising slightly while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell amid losses in technology shares and renewed trade concerns.

“Wall Street dipped as tech stocks slipped ahead of Nvidia results on Wednesday, along with looming US inflation data and the all-important Jackson Hole Symposium at the end of the week,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com.

Nvidia reportedly informed customers that it would raise server prices, and Rodda said that this “weighed on sentiment towards tech firms as niggling doubts persist about rising costs, eroded margins, weaker profitability and lower return on investment.”

“The news narrowed the focus and sobered the minds of market participants looking for a good story about the AI trade in Nvidia’s quarterly results,” he said.

“Meanwhile, the path forward for Wall Street may still end up being a derivative of the path forward for rates, clarity about which market participants will hope to glean from the Jackson Hole Symposium.”