The Street

Transcript:

Caroline Woods:Joining us now to preview a big week of tech earnings is Angelo Zino, equity analyst senior vice president at CFRA. Angelo, welcome back. So good to have you.

Angelo Zino:Great. Thanks for having me Caroline.

Caroline Woods:So of course Nvidia is the highlight this week. But we’ll also hear from names like Salesforce Marvell. Quite a few tech names. Before we get into those though, AI has already made investors a lot of money. Angelo, is there still easy money to be made here?

Angelo Zino:So, Caroline, I wouldn’t say there’s easy money to be made here, but I would say there’s still money to be made. And I think it all depends kind of at how long this kind of cycle really goes. And I do think kind of the narrative has now shifted away from, hey, listen, all the focus on higher CapEx to more of the focus now turning to the AI monetization strategy and kind of making sure that we’re seeing, you know, better kind of data points out there that point to AI monetization really ramping up.

Angelo Zino:And we actually did see some really good indications here during the early parts of Q2 earnings season, whether it had been from the hyperscalers, you know, in terms of posting some great cloud numbers and pointing to acceleration, even some of the Nio cloud players out, you know, when you think about it, and they get a lot of the kind of the residual demand out there away from the hyperscalers, but they’re, you know, they’ve seen some really good pricing, uplift on their end.

Angelo Zino:They’ve seen some really good, bookings momentum as well. So, we’re seeing really some really good AI monetization stories start to play out. We need to obviously see that continue, and get stronger as we go into 2027.

Caroline Woods:Dig into that a little bit more, though. What’s the best evidence that all of this spending is actually paying off?

Angelo Zino:Yeah, I mean, I do think right now it is some of the cloud numbers. I mean, you get the cloud numbers. What happens is, you know, you know, clearly you get the the greater capacity growth that’s coming out there from the hyperscalers. You want to make sure that, that capacity is being absorbed and taking taken out by their customers.

Angelo Zino:Right now, a lot of it clearly coming from the entropic open eyes of the world. But we need to see, you know, more of these enterprise companies really kind of absorb a lot of this stuff. You’re you’re now seeing better stories out there, I think, from, some of the software companies as well. It doesn’t seem like it’s all doom and gloom from the software companies.

Angelo Zino:They’re creating some great AI tools and we are seeing momentum there as well. I think this, again, is going to be an important week from the, you know, from the some of those SaaS players, like a Salesforce, for instance. So, you know, as long as we again continue to get those, you know, those positive stories out there and indications of the enterprise, purchases, I think, again, that, that helps.

Angelo Zino:And of course, you want to see that token usage continue to grow, which, you know, all indications are we are seeing.

Caroline Woods:Okay. So Nvidia reports Wednesday you have a strong buy on Nvidia. Still if I don’t own it already would I buy it before earnings.

Angelo Zino:I think you need to own some of it. So if you don’t own it ahead of earnings I think you you should buy some of it. And you know, I would say when you think about Nvidia here over the last couple of weeks, you know, you’ve clearly seen a lot of the momentum names really. I don’t want to necessarily say fall apart, but they’ve, you know, fallen clearly, you know, a good distance away from their their 52 week highs.

Angelo Zino:But when you look at Nvidia on a relative basis has actually started to perform better than the broader, semiconductor industry average. And the big reason for that is clearly they haven’t been kind of, you know, thrown into this momentum trade in the first half of the year. As we go into this print, all eyes are going to be on to on, Vera Rubin.

Angelo Zino:Vera Rubin, is that new? You know, that new kind of, server that they are ramping up here that we’re going to see, revenue in the October quarter. So if we stay stronger than expected demand for Vera Rubin, I think that could bode well here for for the stock. Looking ahead.

Caroline Woods:Angelo, on that note, Nvidia is reportedly raising prices more than 15% on some of its next gen, chips, servers. You know, do you look at that as pricing power or a reason for customers to look elsewhere?

Angelo Zino:No, I mean, I actually think, one, it’s pricing power. And, you know, clearly component costs are going up across, you know, the AI ecosystem. And a lot of those higher component costs are, you know, naturally, Nvidia is not going to absorb, but they’re going to look to pass on to their customers, especially the hyperscalers. The other thing I would say is, as you go into the some of these next gen, servers, the whole focus for Nvidia is to continue to improve the economics, right?

Angelo Zino:It’s kind of trying to lower the total cost of ownership out there for their, for their customers. So, from that perspective, it continues to make an extreme amount of sense for these customers to continue to migrate towards these next servers. So I think it’s the combination of the fact that, hey, listen, you’ve got to pass on these higher costs.

Angelo Zino:And I think as long as they continue to successfully pass those higher costs on, they’ll continue to do it. And second, it is the improving economics and what that means to the hyperscalers. And that, again, kind of allows them to have that pricing power.

Caroline Woods:We know, though, with a lot of these companies that the bar is pretty high, right? We’ve gotten used to these beat and raised quarters. So the stock might not react favorably favorably, even if it’s good news. What would actually disappoint you from Nvidia and what would Nvidia have to do wrong? I guess for you to change your Strong Buy rating.

Angelo Zino:Yeah, I mean, for us, I mean, the valuation is extremely enticing going into this print, which is why we continue to have the strong buy as long as the market continues to act rationally. From that perspective, I think it makes sense to continue to own the stock. As you go into this print, you know clearly what could go wrong of what, you know, could make this, you know, make us change our minds.

Angelo Zino:Clearly, if the the Vera Rubin brand is not as, as positive as we anticipate, you know, Street’s looking at about 104 billion here for the October quarter. You should suspect at least a 1 to 2 billion, beat from that perspective. But as you kind of, you know, you want to see that trajectory continue to play itself out.

Angelo Zino:Well. And if it’s not, you want to know why, right? Is it some something on the supply side? We do think the supply chain is much better positioned with Vera Rubin than they were with Blackwell. So we don’t think it’s going to be a supply issue here early on. So, if there is a demand problem, I would say, or if Jensen kind of provides guidance, into 2027, that may not be as positive as investors out there would hope.

Angelo Zino:That’s something that, you know, would make you kind of revisit your, your thought process on the stock. But at this point in time, there shouldn’t be any reason for that to be the case.

Caroline Woods:If Nvidia does stumble, does that help Marvell, which also reports this week, or a Broadcom which reports next week? Or do you think it hurts the the whole AI trade?

Angelo Zino:It probably hurts the entire AI trade. I mean, the entire AI ecosystem is going to hinge on Nvidia. And I think when you look at the other names that are reporting here over the next couple of days and weeks, there are a lot of off peak names, whether it be Marvell, Broadcom or even micron next month, which, you know, all eyes are now on.

Angelo Zino:As far as the, the the memory trade is concerned, it really all stems towards, Nvidia because they continue to have the lion’s share of the market here. And a lot of those companies are essentially all those companies to some degree, do rely on in on, in video, maybe Broadcom could be a little bit of an outlier.

Angelo Zino:But I would say nonetheless, I mean, all of those companies need to rely on Nvidia as well. So you want to make sure as far as customer spending is concerned and their visibility that that looks good. For the kind of the rest of the ecosystem to remain healthy.

Caroline Woods:Let’s talk about Marvell really quickly because it’s down about 4% today. But if you take a look, it’s a more impressive chart year to date and for the past one year than Nvidia. It’s a 167% year to date, more than 200% over the past one year. How are you looking at valuations on a marvell? Would you buy the weakness that we’re seeing today?

Angelo Zino:Yeah, I mean listen, we we like the Marvell fundamental story a lot. And we do think it has pulled back enough from its peak, where a lot of that, you know, maybe a lot of that fluff out there has kind of been taken out of the stock. I think this is one of those names you definitely have to keep an eye on in a name that we do like a lot.

Angelo Zino:Going into the print here, I mean, all eyes are going to be on a recent Google announcement that was made last week. We think it has the potential to drive significant, upside to expectations. So, we would own this stock. And, I think what dictates the, the move on Marvell has almost nothing to do with the actual numbers itself and everything to do with how they, articulate what that upside potential, and what reality for that contract is going to look like here over the next couple of years, because it really does have the potential to drive significant upside to some of our numbers.

Caroline Woods:Okay, let’s move on to Sales Force. It’s actually higher today and it’s well off the lows but still down about 20% year to date. What does Salesforce need to prove this week?

Angelo Zino:Yeah I mean Salesforce is a tough one. I will say you know what they’ve got going for them obviously right now is the fact that the the software trade up here is like, it’s getting some momentum here over the last couple of weeks. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that these multiples have gotten so depressed, and the fact that it doesn’t look like, at least at this point in time, you know, we’ve seen any sort of massive destruction in terms of the fundamentals on the software side of things.

Angelo Zino:So for Salesforce, I would say what you want to say is you want to see the core business, their subscription oriented business continue to remain healthy. We think that will be the case. There could be some weakness. Or they could disappoint slightly on that side of things. And then more importantly is what they have to say in terms of the momentum for Agent Force, what they’re seeing in terms of that inflection here in the second half of this year, because that is a big part of this story.

Angelo Zino:So if they see a really good inflection, if they start seeing a lot of kind of pilot use cases, you know, move to, full production and we see some really good growth numbers out of their eye oriented business. That might be enough to kind of convince some investors, to continue to buy up the shares and get a little bit more optimistic going into 2027.

Angelo Zino:On Salesforce.

Caroline Woods:I mentioned it’s well off the lows but still down on the year. Do you look at it as an eye bargain then, or is this a value trap for us?

Angelo Zino:We do look at it as a value trade. At this point in time. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a value trap because we do think the core business remains intact. We do think there are signs, in ways that they will continue to improve the margin trajectory of the, of their overall business. And then at this point in time, almost kind of hey, listen, if that AI business really starts to swing in favor, and, you know, it does what it needs to do.

Angelo Zino:You know, we do think you can kind of maybe see, you know, a rerating to the upsides at least slightly on the multiples. And that could drive, you know, easily another 20, 25% upside here in the shares. But I would say here it when you kind of think about just the broader software trade, what you do have to be mindful about is, hey, listen, there’s going to be you’ve got the anthropic IPO coming out probably in a couple of weeks.

Angelo Zino:You’ve got OpenAI probably in the first half of next year. When they actually do IPO, they’re going to be able to generate a ton of proceeds. They’re going to be able to reinvest in that business, you know, get a lot more, capacity built there. And it’s going to allow them to really announce a number of new, offerings on that side of things.

Angelo Zino:So I wouldn’t necessarily say you’re out of the woods at this point in time. As far as, the uncertainty in the software side is concerned.

Caroline Woods:What’s a software stock that you think will hold up and do? Well, regardless of what happens with AI and software?

Angelo Zino:I mean, I don’t know if I’m allowed to give this answer, but I would say Microsoft. I mean, that might be kind of a, you know, a, you know, a cop out. And but, you know, we continue to be extremely bullish on the Microsoft Play. And obviously they’ve got the cloud story and what have you. But it is the fact that we are still fairly bullish on the copilot momentum and what they’re doing in terms of the application software side of things.

Angelo Zino:So that’s something we do still like. And I would say maybe if you’re looking for pure play application software, ServiceNow is another name we like as well.

Caroline Woods:Okay. So you kind of said how to think about the software trade overall. Still not out of the woods. How should investors, especially retail investors, be thinking about the overall tech trade at this point in the cycle? What do they need to consider? You know what? How should they be thinking in terms of market leadership?

Angelo Zino:Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great question. I’d say right now, what I would say is you want to be a lot more balanced in nature across the, the, the tech, the overall tech space. And, you know, we continue to have an overweight weighting on the IT sector. We have since 2022. And what I would say is, you know, clearly the last three, three and a half years, it has all been on the the kind of the semi side of things, the AI infrastructure build.

Angelo Zino:The comps obviously get a lot more difficult from here and nobody knows kind of how long in the long in the two. This cycle really goes. Right. But all kind of indications are what you’re going to see on this moving forward is likely multiples continue to continue to impress. We know the the the metals on the AI infrastructure build probably hold up and remain very strong through 2027, just based on our forecast for, the hyperscale or CapEx spend.

Angelo Zino:What it looks like in 28 and beyond is what the market is trying to figure out. So as long as you know what we tell investors, as long as the market stays rational, and that’s and that means discount those risks, compress the multiples a little bit. But see that good growth earnings growth trajectory I think that’s why you will remain invested overall.

Angelo Zino:But you stay balanced across software semis as well as big tech because big tech should be able to provide some nice, you know, downside support if kind of if we see some volatility there.

Caroline Woods:Does balance mean 33.3% in tech, 33.3% and big tech and the rest in chips are how how does that balance look?

Angelo Zino:Yeah. I mean, what I would probably say is, I mean, I would probably be a little bit more, bullish right now on more of the still on a semi as well as the, let’s call it the, the, the hyperscalers side of things. So maybe 40, 40 and then 20 on software. And if we continue to see some better monetization stories on the software side of things, and maybe the cycle continues to get longer in the tooth, there may be some uncertainty on the semi side.

Angelo Zino:Then you increase your your exposure on software, but maybe be a 40, 40, 20 mix.

Caroline Woods:If I already own plenty of big tech through the S&P 500. So you know, I kind of have that covered. And I’m thinking about where my next dollar goes. Where should that go first.

Angelo Zino:Yeah I mean I think that’s a great question. I think, you know, we continue to be I’d say more more focused on growth at a reasonable price. So, I would say continue to, to invest in areas of growth, within tech, maybe kind of a growth oriented, you know, tech ETF over value. But nonetheless, I mean, you know, you still want that, that value exposure but still focus on on growth within the the IT sector is what I would say.

Caroline Woods:Okay. So before we even get to rapid fire, a quick answer here. Best growth stock that comes at a reasonable price is

Angelo Zino:Microsoft. In our view, I think I think that’s kind of the way to look at this. I mean, you kind of look at the, and, and this is if you’re a long term investor, right? We look three, five, seven years out. And there is a lot of uncertainty in this market still across the, the I infrastructure trade.

Angelo Zino:But Microsoft is a name that has been a very diligent in terms of how they spend their money, being very rational with it. And that’s a company that we just trust a little bit more when it comes to the management team relative to some of the others out there.

Caroline Woods:Okay. All right. I think this is a great time to pivot to our rapid fire, to officially pivot to our rapid fire game of this or that you’ve played before. Quick questions, quick answers. No hedging if you can help it. Are you ready, Angela?

Angelo Zino:Let’s go.

Caroline Woods:I boom early middle or late innings.

Angelo Zino:I’d say middle innings. But also be mindful of the fact that we are likely going to get some choppiness along the way. So there will be fear out there that maybe we are approaching an end, but our view is probably middle innings.

Caroline Woods:By any dip, yes or no.

Angelo Zino:So we. Yes.

Caroline Woods:Eye spending accelerating or peaking.

Angelo Zino:Peaking with semiconductor sales likely having peaked here mid-year. But nonetheless we do expect growth numbers on a year over year basis to remain attractive over the next 2 to 3 years.

Caroline Woods:So next wave of I winners chips or software.

Angelo Zino:We do think, chips are still a good place to be, but, the way you would play chips might be, different looking ahead. So it may not be memory like it has been over the last 12 months. It may be the shift towards more, networking oriented plays, potentially like a marvell, as we kind of look at that shift away from copper to laser, for instance.

Caroline Woods:Chips or data centers.

Angelo Zino:Or chips.

Caroline Woods:Software I winner or I victim.

Angelo Zino:It depends. But, we continue to be positive on the fact that you’re going to see a number of eye winners. It’s all about finding those winners.

Caroline Woods:One eye winner. That’s a software name. That’s not Microsoft.

Angelo Zino:I would say, ServiceNow.

Caroline Woods:One AI software name that will likely be a victim.

Caroline Woods:Adobe better value Salesforce or Nvidia.

Caroline Woods:Still Nvidia hyperscalers or semis?

Angelo Zino:Semis.

Caroline Woods:Nvidia ahead of earnings. Buy or wait.

Angelo Zino:It depends. We would we would buy again if you’re if you’re not invested at this moment in time we would buy and we do expect overall in video to perform well. It just may not see the reaction. Some investors want to see.

Caroline Woods:Broadcom or Marvell. Marvell AI stocks stick with the leaders or bet on the laggards.

Angelo Zino:Probably still, stick with the leaders because most of the leaders continue to see, at least on the semi side, continue to have some of the best content stories that are out there. And historically, the way to actually benefit or win across the semi ecosystem is to find the best content winners out there.

Caroline Woods:Okay, it’s time for fill in the blank. Finish the sentence. The AI leader I have the most conviction in is.

Angelo Zino:Microsoft.

Caroline Woods:The AI laggard most likely to become a leader is.

Angelo Zino:And I don’t know if this is a good answer, but I would say meta. They’re not necessarily a laggard, but the stock is absolutely lagged here of the last 12 months. We do think that it’s an opportunity.

Caroline Woods:The best AI stock to buy today is.

Angelo Zino:AMD. That is a company where we think the earnings power remains significantly underappreciated and we think has probably the longest tail among kind of the names within our AI semi ecosystem.

Caroline Woods:The AI stock I’d be most nervous owning is.

Angelo Zino:Probably.

Angelo Zino:Probably Adobe if you consider it. Or I would say kind of some of those, you know, content names out there that, you know, could potentially be easily replaced by.

Caroline Woods:What’s a content name. Give us an example.

Angelo Zino:Yeah. I mean, I think Adobe is a really good example. In terms of, you know, just if you’re if you’re a company that just relies on, you know, just, you know, if you don’t own the actual data out there, it’s maybe the best way to put it. The companies that do own the data, specifically on the software side, will be the biggest winners there.

Caroline Woods:The first sign the AI boom is in trouble is.

Angelo Zino:When NIO clouds start, start cutting CapEx or can’t, you know, can I would say get the actual funding that they need to, you know, meet some demand expectations out there.

Caroline Woods:The market is underestimating blank.

Angelo Zino:We think meta, may might be the best way to put it. We think they are not properly, pricing in, or factoring in the, the potential AI monetization story. They’re across a number of different levers that they have.

Caroline Woods:Nvidia’s biggest threat is.

Angelo Zino:Probably hyperscalers, with their own custom, custom silicon chips. I would say, a close second would, would be a. And we do think AMD is doing a lot in terms of some of their software initiatives. If that kind of ramps up, and gets more formidable quicker than people anticipate, you know, that that could potentially be problematic for Nvidia.

Caroline Woods:One of the biggest year to date winners, SanDisk, micron, Dell and Seagate. The one I’d still buy here is micron.

Angelo Zino:We expect them by the end of this year to announce a, significant CapEx plan. And, we do think there’s, there’s fairly, there’s a really good floor here for the stock, just given our view of the fact that, hey, you look at the free cash flow potential as well as the balance sheet. We we think that’s it.

Angelo Zino:Just a name that you continue to stick with.

Caroline Woods:Of the biggest losers Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Zscaler, Salesforce I bet on.

Angelo Zino:Salesforce.

Caroline Woods:When all is said and done, the company that wins the I arms race is.

Angelo Zino:The company that can continue to grow. But also, be prudent in terms of their spending plans.

Caroline Woods:If I had to guess which company that is, it is.

Angelo Zino:I would say, I would say Microsoft. Obviously. I would also say, I would also say Amazon as well. There are two names that we do like a lot. I would also say a name that we haven’t brought in is Apple. As we eventually kind of shift towards, edge devices, we do expect them to be a big winner.

Caroline Woods:So the one I bet I’d make for the next five years is.

Angelo Zino:I would say, and followed by, but by Qualcomm, actually, it’s a name that we, that really hasn’t, had the move yet, but it’s a name again, as we shift towards edge devices. And you look at the multiple there, as well as the fact that they will be a big beneficiary of six G towards the end of the decade.

Angelo Zino:There are enough levers, whether be tied to AI or even not tied to AI, that should make them a huge winner, especially given the valuation there.

Caroline Woods:All right. We managed to squeeze in so many names there. Angela Zeno, thank you so much for playing along and for for getting us ready for tech earnings this week. That’s Angelo Zino Equity Analyst, Senior Vice President, CFRA. Always a pleasure. Thanks so much, Angela.

Angelo Zino:Great, thanks for having me.

Caroline Woods:If you enjoyed this street talk, check out our full interview with Ahmed Riesgo. He has a 7800 price target on the S&P 500, and explains where he’d take profits and what he’s rotating into.

Views online aren’t counted the same as views on television, at least not in the eyes of advertisers.

An advertiser will pay a much different rate for a television show that averages more than 3 million viewers per broadcast than it will for a YouTube video or TikTok reel that garners 3 million views.

Part of the reason for that pay discrepancy is that a social media user’s commitment to that TikTok video or Instagram Reel is measured in seconds, not minutes, Paramount Ads Manager noted. But that is where sports comes into play on social media.

More than any other form of entertainment, live sports draws in audiences that are willing to watch for hours on television. Social media companies such as TikTok are beefing up their sports offerings to attract those engaged audiences.

Over the weekend, for the first time ever, TikTok was the exclusive broadcaster for Most Valuable Promotions’ boxing card. According to the BBC, 3.4 million total viewers tuned in to watch women’s featherweight champion Amanda Serrano retain her titles on Friday, Aug. 21.

But traditional boxing isn’t the most engaging sport on TikTok right now. It’s bare-knuckle boxing.

TheStreet recently spoke with BKB CEO David Tetreault about how his sport garners the most engagement on TikTok by far, and how the company is using its TikTok presence to bring a new generation of fight fans into the fold.

Bare-knuckle boxing pushes to go mainstream

Bare-knuckle boxing is exactly what it sounds like. It is the sweet science of boxing, minus the gloves. Also, instead of a square ring, the bare-knuckle ring is triangular, giving fighters less room to maneuver and forcing them to engage more than they would in a traditional boxing match.

Matches can be brutal, but they tap into something primal for the audiences that love it, according to Tetreault.

“The fact that our fighters are fighting with no gloves goes to our base levels as humans. Human beings have a visceral reaction to seeing two athletes step into the ring and just let go,” he told TheStreet in a recent interview.

Tetreault comes from a boxing background. He was the chief business officer at mainstay boxing promotional company Golden Boy for years. He was later hired by Mike Vazquez, the veteran sports entrepreneur who brought NASCAR to Mexico and started BKB as a promotional company for bare-knuckle boxers.

Now he is tasked with bringing this type of boxing into the mainstream, and he is using TikTok to do it.

“TikTok is absolutely at the top of the funnel. We love our Vice (television broadcaster) relationship, but one of the issues we have is that Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha didn’t grow up with cable,” Tetreault said.

“They work everything off apps. So with Vice being an established cable channel, we miss the opportunity to reach those audiences. With TikTok being the exclusive broadcast partner for our preliminary fights, we are opening up the world for a younger audience to find BKB.”

David Tetreault (R) spent years as the CBO of Golden Boy Promotions. Sye Williams/Golden Boy / Getty Images

BKB takes over TikTok

BKB recently struck a deal with TikTok to serve as the sole broadcaster of the preliminary matches on BKB’s fight cards.

While the most well-known boxers fight on the main broadcast, the up-and-comers duke it out in front of viewers exclusively on TikTok Live. The partnership has turned out to be a huge success for both parties.

During the recent BKB 57 event on July 12, for example, the company garnered 7.1 million video views and nearly 800,000 engagements during the exclusive TikTok Live broadcast.

According to TikTok’s internal numbers that BKB shared with TheStreet, BKB has the highest average watch time across its live sports portfolio.

The typical watch time for sports on TikTok Live is about 1 minute and 20 seconds. Anything over two minutes is considered very good. BKB is averaging over four minutes of watch time, and its last event, BKB 57, had an average watch time of more than 7 minutes.

While that might not sound like a lot coming from the world of television, think about the last time you watched something on social media for seven full minutes. Not even the NFL garners that type of attention on social media, according to Tetreault.

“We’re sitting at the table currently with the likes of Fox, ESPN, Red Bull, and MVP. On the three previous cards, what we’ve been able to achieve is the highest watch time of any sport in the history of live TikTok sports… and it’s because of how we collaborate with the TikTok team,” he added.

TikTok helps guide BKB to young people

When asked what the secret sauce has been for BKB on TikTok, CEO David Tetreault gave his answer immediately: TikTok gave them advice on how to attract their audience, and BKB listened.

TikTok suggested that BKB use TikTok influencer Taylor Feingold for live fight night coverage. TikTok also suggested pairing Feingold and Power Slap competitor Ellie Dempster. BKB did both.

“We took a page from how ESPN does the simulcast of Monday Night Football with the Manning brothers. We brought in Ellie Dempster and paired her with Tara Feingold,” Tetreault said. “Instead of having the traditional commentary, we allowed them to take the show and turn it into a more curated TikTok live show.”

Specifically tailoring their prelim broadcast to TikTok has helped BKB become the unlikely leader for sports on the platform.

BKB believes it can bridge the gap between traditional boxing fans who are used to watching on cable and BKB fans watching the sport on their phones. But BKB fashions itself as a “fighters first” promotional company that looks to serve not only boxers, but also the sport of boxing itself.

“Our goal is to get the whole attention of the boxing community and the mixed martial arts community. It is the sweet science. It’s beyond the idea of the brawl,” Tetreault said. “We run our company as an athlete-first driven company. Without the athletes, we don’t have a sport.”

And without the viewers, it can’t pay those athletes.

BKB is tapping into an audience that traditional boxing has been unable to crack on social media. If it can translate that influence back to broadcasting, the sky is the limit for the fledgling company and sport.

Related: Jeff Bezos just made his boldest move yet, into soccer

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Why do shoppers love it?

This tool set can handle almost anything you throw its way. The set is made from extremely sturdy materials that will stand the test of time. It has all the standard hand tools that you might need for smaller DIY projects, plus a high-quality cordless drill for bigger jobs. Each hand tool is made from high-durability carbon steel. The steel is also heat-treated making it virtually unbreakable. What’s more, each piece is rustproof and corrosion resistant, so there’s no worries if you’re working in a humid or wet environment. The ergonomic rubberized handles ensure that you don’t drop your tools at inopportune moments as well.

Included in the set are a tape measure, a hex key wrench set, multiple screwdriver bit sets, six screwdrivers, 100 assorted screws, a utility knife, a socket kit, an extension bar, needle nose pliers, a hammer, an adjustable wrench, a cordless drill with battery, a charger, and a carrying case. No matter what you need to repair or adjust, you should have what you need for any fix, big or small. The real cherry on top with this set is the cordless drill. It’s rare to find a set at this low of a price that includes an electric drill.

The 12-volt drill is powerful enough for any projects you may have a need for. It has a ⅜-inch keyless chuck, which is convenient for changing bits in a hurry. Also included are a variable-speed trigger, built-in LED light, and soft-grip handle. The lithium ion battery charges quickly thanks to the included high-speed wall charger. Just the drill alone is worth the price of purchase, so add to that the rest of the set and you have an absolute steal. 

Related: Amazon is selling a $39 multi-tool for $24 that’s easy to carry

Amazon shoppers were very happy with this set. One called it a “great tool kit to use around the house” adding that the tools “feel sturdy and durable and get the job done”.

Shop more deals 

Pulituo 149-Piece Home Drill Set, $50 (was $60) at Amazon

Hi-Spec Electric Screwdriver, $20 (was $25) at Amazon

Craftsman V20 Max Cordless Drill Driver and Impact Driver Set, $150 (was $170) at Amazon

The Sundpey 166-Piece Tool Set with Drill is a must-buy for anyone who likes to keep their home running in tip-top shape. With a regular price of just $40, you should probably buy this while the inventory lasts. 

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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Why Rocket Lab is becoming a bigger defense player

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

Check price at Amazon

Mehoom Clip-On Motion Solar Lights

Courtesy of Walmart

Check price at Walmart

Daybetter Clip-On Solar Outdoor Motion Sensor Light

Courtesy of Walmart

Check price at Walmart

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.

Related: Goldman Sachs uncovers key AbbVie stock signals before earnings

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