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TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealIf you’re doing lawn work this summer, it might surprise you to see how many outdoor tools you have at home. So much so that your garage may not have enough room to keep it all organized. Don’t worry, because Walmart has a Devoko Metal Storage Shed on sale for a price that won’t mow down the rest of your summer budget.Typically listed for $166, this backyard addition measuring 5 by 3 feet is now available for $110. You can choose between a white and brown shed that’s easy to assemble at home. It can fit in with your patio, driveway, or backyard, so you always know where the hedge clippers are.Devoko Metal Patio Shed, $110 (was $166) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Shop at WalmartDetails to knowThe compact size might not look like much, but the inner shed has plenty of room for leaning essentials on the walls, placing items on the floor, or building shelves to organize your gardening favorites. The shed’s roof features recesses on top that lets rain roll off of it while being strong enough to withstand rough winds. Its body is also made with high-quality steel so your tools will stay safe in stormy weather. There’s also a handy lock on its door so you can rest easy knowing everything will stay in its place.Related: Walmart is selling an outdoor storage shed with lockable doors for just $160Why do shoppers love it?Walmart shoppers were pleasantly surprised by the shed’s usefulness, throwing five-star ratings and reviews for the backyard accessory. One customer called the shed “sturdy and very attractive,” adding that it was “big enough for all [their] tools, yet small enough to fit on [their] driveway.” A different customer shared that the shed is high quality and easy to assemble in less than five hours. One shopper praised the shed’s large capacity while sitting on their patio, while another called it a “great outdoor shed.”The Devoko Metal Storage Shed is a great addition to your backyard setup. It has plenty of space for lawn care essentials, is easy to assemble at home, and can withstand the roughest storms in the summer and beyond. Get it at Walmart for this sturdy discount.

BT Group spent more than 18 months looking for a buyer for its international business. Nobody bit. So BT did something different: It gave half of its international business to Verizon and kept the other half.BT and Verizon announced on June 29 that they signed an agreement to combine their respective international enterprise operations into a new, jointly owned company. The deal comes with a price tag attached.The terms of the Verizon and BT joint ventureThe new venture is split 50:50 between BT and Verizon, with both companies holding equal voting rights. Verizon is paying BT a $625 million equalization payment to balance the relative value of what each company is contributing, according to Verizon’s official announcement.The combined entity brings together BT International with Verizon’s international enterprise wireline business. Related: Verizon CEO sends shocking message to employeesTogether, the two units are expected to serve more than 3,000 customers across over 180 countries, generating approximately $4 billion in combined annual revenue, Seeking Alpha reported. The new company will be incorporated in Jersey but headquartered and tax resident in the UK.The transaction is expected to close in 2027, pending regulatory clearance and consultation with employee representatives in countries where that is required. Until then, BT International and Verizon’s international operations keep running independently.Why BT chose a joint venture over a saleBT spent more than a year shopping its international unit and could not find a buyer at the price it wanted. A joint venture solves that problem. BT keeps half the business and half the upside, rather than selling at a discount or holding onto a unit that no longer fits its strategy.BT CEO Allison Kirkby has spent her tenure narrowing the company’s focus back toward the UK market, where BT generates most of its profit. She is running a cost-cutting program targeting £3.7 billion in savings by 2030, and BT’s total headcount is expected to fall to between 75,000 and 80,000 employees by the end of the decade.”Today’s announcement marks a major milestone for BT International, and an important step forward for BT as a whole, as we deliver on our UK-focused strategy,” Kirkby said.The joint venture lets BT redirect capital toward its UK fiber and 5G buildout while still owning half of a business serving thousands of multinational clients.

The combined entity brings together BT International with Verizon’s international enterprise wireline business.Zamek/Getty Images

What Verizon and BT Customers should expectMultinational companies want one telecom partner that can manage connectivity across borders and cloud environments. Right now, many of them juggle multiple providers in different regions just to keep their networks running. That is the gap this deal is meant to close.Verizon CEO Dan Schulman explained the thinking in the companies’ joint statement.”Our international customers require secure, flexible connectivity that works seamlessly across borders and cloud environments. When we thought about how to best support them, this joint venture was the clear answer: a cutting-edge, AI-ready and secure platform run by a single global organization dedicated to their needs,” Schulman said.More Verizon:Verizon, AT&T suffer major customer data setbackVerizon CEO sends shocking message to employeesStrict Verizon policy leaves customers waiting longer in storesSchulman also said Verizon’s relationship with its U.S. customers stays the same. Verizon will keep providing domestic connectivity directly. The joint venture only covers the international side of the business.Martijn Blanken has been named CEO-designate of the new company, pending the deal’s completion. Blanken brings nearly three decades of leadership experience across telecommunications and digital infrastructure, including roles at Telstra, EXA Infrastructure, and KPN. He joins BT on September 1, 2026, to help prepare the venture for launch. Clive Selley, who currently runs BT International, stays in that role until the transaction closes.How the market reacted to the Verizon-BT dealBT shares rose nearly 1% in London trading on the news. Verizon shares slipped slightly in U.S. premarket trading. Those are small moves, the kind that can reflect plenty of factors beyond a single announcement, but they line up with how differently this deal sits inside each company’s overall business.The math backs that up. The new venture’s $4 billion in combined revenue is a much bigger slice of BT’s total business than it is of Verizon’s, which pulls in well over $130 billion a year from its core U.S. wireless and broadband operations.For Verizon, this deal will not move quarterly earnings in any noticeable way. What it does is give Verizon a sharper enterprise story to tell investors, at a time when the company is trying to prove it can grow beyond consumer wireless. A dedicated venture with its own leadership and its own capital structure lets Verizon compete for global business clients without pulling resources away from its core U.S. operations.None of it happens until regulators in multiple countries sign off. Customers will not see any changes until the joint venture actually launches, and that is not expected before 2027.Related: Verizon acquires 35-year-old wireless carrier as it shuts down

The Iran war handed Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) their sharpest stock surge in years. Then the peace dividend arrived, and it had the opposite effect.West Texas Intermediate prices fell to about $69 a barrel on June 28, its lowest since late February.This happened as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased and Saudi Arabia began loading vessels at its Ras Tanura terminal.It is an event that indicates major Gulf producers are ramping up their output. Major Gulf producers ramping up output also sent Brent petroleum down by more than 10%, marking its steepest weekly decline in months.Both companies now face second-quarter earnings that look nothing like the ones Wall Street priced in two months ago.How quickly the trade reversed for Exxon and ChevronExxon Mobil is trading at $136.12, down approximately 23% from its 52-week high of $176.41. Chevron sits at $169.13, which is down about 21% from its $214.71 peak. Both stocks have declined in five of the past five sessions.More Energy Stocks:Exxon, Chevron investors cautious after oil newsMorgan Stanley changes its oil forecast for the rest of 2026Chevron warns gas-price relief may take timeOn June 22, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published General License X.General License X is a sweeping 60-day authorization that allows buyers worldwide to purchase Iranian crude with no volume cap. Brent fell more than 3.3% that day, CNBC reported.According to Bloomberg, Persian Gulf oil exports are back to 75% of pre-war levels. This supply is growing further as Saudi Arabia has restarted oil shipments from its Ras Tanura port.As a result, the war situation that drove both Exxon Mobil and Chevron stocks to their 2026 highs is fading faster than analysts expected. 

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic has accelerated the unwinding of oil’s war premium.hapabapa / Getty Images

What Exxon and Chevron’s first-quarter results say about Q2Exxon Mobil reported $85.14 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, Yahoo Finance confirmed, marking a 2.4% increase from the same period last year.Yahoo Finance also reported that Chevron’s revenue remained flat at $47.56 billion compared to the same period.However, despite stable revenue, Exxon’s net income fell 45% from the same quarter last year, while Chevron’s dropped 36%, according to CNBC. This decline is a result of previous financial hedging. Both companies missed out on maximum profits because they fixed their oil prices before the market jumped above $100.Now that oil is retreating toward $69, those price locks are no longer in play. Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s upcoming second-quarter profits will depend on current market prices. Earlier in May, CEO Darren Woods said that “the market hasn’t seen the full impact” of the war’s disruption, Barron’s noted.Today, that protective market cushion is gone.Oil supply is rising faster than the market expectedThe Hormuz reopening is only part of what is dampening oil prices. Iraq is threatening to consider all options, including exiting OPEC, if its production quota is not significantly raised, according to FXStreet. The United Arab Emirates has already left the organization, and Middle Eastern producers are racing to ramp up output after months of forced cutbacks.Related: Chevron surprises investors with eye-catching disclosureAs a result, major banks are changing their targets.Morgan Stanley changed its Brent forecast to $90 a barrelfor the third quarter of 2026 and $80 for the fourth quarter, while maintaining overweight ratings on both XOM and CVX. Goldman Sachs also moved its fourth-quarter 2026 Brent estimate to$80 and its 2027 average to $75, according to Investing.com.What the dividend floor means for Exxon and Chevron investorsDuring a market drop, energy investors are heavily drawn to the dividend floor, which is a company’s financial commitment to maintain steady payouts even when oil prices fall. ExxonMobil and Chevron are currently leveraging this dividend floor to keep shareholders invested.ExxonMobil pays investors $1.03 per share every three months, the company confirmed. Exxon Mobil also revealed that it is buying back $20 billion of its own shares to boost stockholder value, assuming reasonable market conditions. Meanwhile, Chevron’s quarterly payout is $1.78, a company press release indicated, and it’s targeting $3 to $4 billion in structural cost reductions by the end of 2026, the firm’s newsroom reported. These moves come as the broader oil market faces significant headwinds.The EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook projects global oil demand will fall by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2026. This contrasts sharply with earlier growth forecasts for the year. Until supply and demand stabilize, these dividend floors will soften the blow of market volatility, even if they cannot remove it entirely. What Exxon and Chevron investors should monitorQ2 2026 earnings: Without hedge buffers, upcoming Q2 earnings will rely entirely on lower $69 to $72 oil prices. Analysts expect filings to be in by late July and early August.U.S.-Iran Doha talks: U.S. and Iranian officials are scheduled to meet in Doha to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, Axios reports. A breakdown in the talks could send oil prices up sharply and quickly reverse losses for XOM and CVX.OPEC+ cohesion: Iraq’s production quota demands and any further departures from the alliance could accelerate the supply excess and push prices lower into the second half.EIA demand revisions: Any further decline in global oil demand would put additional pressure on Exxon and Chevron’s second-half profits.Related: Exxon, Chevron investors cautious after oil news

SpaceX went public on Nasdaq on June 12 with a $75 billion raise and a valuation that eclipsed every initial public offering in history.The stock surged 19% on its first day of trading, closing at $160.95 and briefly trading near a $2.25 trillion intraday valuation before paring gains to finish with a market capitalization of about $2.1 trillion, CNBC reported.If you were among the investors weighing a purchase during the post-listing frenzy, one prominent voice had a pointed warning.NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway argued in an analysis published by Prof. G Media that SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion target valuation had “no anchor.” His central argument was direct: not one investment bank on the deal could identify a clean public comparable to justify the asking price.SpaceX’s bankers could not find a valuation peerAt $1.75 trillion, SpaceX was set to trade at roughly 94 times trailing revenue on $18.7 billion in annual sales, Galloway noted.That valuation is far higher than any company in the S&P 500. Even Palantir Technologies, the index’s most richly valued stock by price-to-sales ratio, trades at about 67 times its annual revenue.Related: SpaceX gets brutal verdict from legendary Wall Street investorThe company’s underwriters tried Boeing, AT&T, Palantir, GE Vernova, and Vertiv as potential peers, but none fit cleanly, Galloway explained.To bridge the gap, bankers told investors that SpaceX’s total addressable market is $28.5 trillion, roughly equal to the entire United States economy. That estimate includes $22.7 trillion in projected enterprise application revenue, about 30 times larger than the current enterprise software market, Galloway noted.The 30% retail allocation raised red flags before SpaceX listingTypical initial public offerings reserve 5% to 10% of shares for individual buyers, with the bulk going to institutional investors. SpaceX set aside as much as 30% of its available shares and distributed them through Robinhood, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, SoFi, and E*Trade, the analysis stated.Galloway read the oversized retail allocation as a sign that institutional buyers were not willing to absorb the full deal at the requested price.More SpaceX:Elon Musk sets SpaceX IPO price in blunt message to Wall StreetVeteran hedge fund manager makes a brazen SpaceX betFranklin Templeton CEO sends strong message on SpaceXHe argued SpaceX was counting on the same retail enthusiasm that has powered Tesla shares for years to sustain a valuation with few precedents.He compared the dynamic to Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut, which held the previous record for the largest offering at a valuation of roughly $1.7 trillion, Bloomberg reported.Aramco shares have declined about 13% from the offer price, the worst total return among the 10 largest global IPOs, according to The Motley Fool.

SpaceX’s unusually large retail IPO allocation raised concerns that institutional demand fell short, signaling potential valuation risks before trading began.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Starlink shines, but xAI spending drove SpaceX’s $4.94 billion lossSpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue during 2025, reflecting 33% growth over the prior year, according to the company’s S-1 filing. Starlink, the satellite internet division, accounted for roughly 60% of that total and served more than 10 million subscribers as of early 2026.Nicolas Owens, equity analyst at Morningstar, warned in a research note that the xAI acquisition may ultimately harm SpaceX more than it helps.”We think long-term investors eager to participate in SpaceX’s future endeavors and potential success will have opportunities to do so with more margin of safety than the initial offering is likely to provide,” Owens said.Starlink delivered $1.19 billion in operating income in the first quarter of 2026 at a 36% margin, making it a genuine standout among growth businesses.The consolidated numbers tell a different story, as SpaceX swung from a $791 million profit in 2024 to a $4.94 billion loss in 2025, The Motley Fool reported.Of the company’s nearly $21 billion in capital spending last year, $12.7 billion went to AI infrastructure, exceeding its spending on rockets and satellites combined.Nasdaq’s fast-entry rule could trigger forced buying of SpaceX stockGalloway also raised concern about a structural change that he said benefits insiders at the expense of everyday index fund investors.Effective May 1, Nasdaq slashed its Nasdaq-100 seasoning period from roughly 3 months to just 15 trading days for the top 40 companies by market capitalization.Nasdaq confirmed on June 26 that SpaceX will join the index before the market opens on July 7, less than a month after listing, Yahoo Finance reported.J.P. Morgan estimates the inclusion could draw about $4.3 billion in passive inflows as Nasdaq-100 ETFs and index funds, including the Invesco QQQ Trust, mechanically rebalance into SPCX before the open on July 7, Reuters reported. The bull case rests on SpaceX having no equal peerNot everyone shares Galloway’s bearish view, and some analysts contend the absence of a clean peer validates the thesis rather than undermining it. Alphabet had no search competitor at its debut, and Amazon lacked any peer for its e-commerce and cloud combination, 24/7 Wall St. analyst Eric Bleeker argued in a rebuttal to Galloway.Both companies now carry multi-trillion-dollar valuations, and the inability to find a peer at listing turned out to reflect genuine uniqueness rather than overpricing.NewStreet Research initiated coverage with a $165 price target after the debut, making it one of the more optimistic early calls on the stock. James Ratzer, a senior analyst at NewStreet, told CNBC that SpaceX holds “at least a 10-year lead” over competitors in launch capabilities.The SpaceX valuation debate is far from settled, and both sides bring credible evidence to their respective positions on the stock. Galloway’s core warning to retail investors remains clear: When no one on Wall Street can justify the price, latecomers absorb the steepest losses.Related: The SpaceX $17 billion spectrum buy finally makes sense

With airlines using their highest fare classes to show off just how gourmet they can go with everything from rare liquors to caviar, it can be hard to stand out for travelers who are used to being served fine foods.As a result, some will go the other way and use the time that they have the passengers in the air to tap into very specific carvings.At the end of 2024, Delta Air Lines first tried serving the smashburgers sold at New York chain Shake Shack on first class routes longer than 900 miles and originating in Boston. American Airlines followed shortly after with Los Angeles condiment brand Smash Kitchen while United Airlines also went the route of New York classics with a period during which its served the viral banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery.Swiss International Air Lines starts serving Bastardo hot dog on first class flightsWhile the airline is insisting that the dish it serves is not fast food but gourmet, Swiss International Airlines has started offering a “Bastardo” hot dog that comes from a popular stand in the suburbs of Zürich.The hot dog developed in partnership with Winterthur-based Frau Hund is made from a Puntbier sausage topped with red coleslaw, apple chutney, sour cream, roasted walnuts and cress on a Swiss multigrain roll.Related: A very, very British restaurant is coming to NYC as a hotelThe “Bastardo” hot dog has been available since June 3 and will remain on the menu throughout the summer until September 1. It is meant to both highlight local Swiss ingredients and core memories of grabbing a hot dog at a stand that transcends the summer experience across many countries.”We chose a product that has a bit of a bad reputation in society, or at least one where quality offerings have been hard to find,” Chris Maurer, one of the chefs who founded Frau Hund alongside Alex Prack in 2021, said of the dish.The hot dog is presented as a warm snack alongside other warm and cold options as well as main dishes like linguine with lobster sauce and Zürich-style sliced veal served on international routes that have first rather than simply business class.

The “Bastardo” hot dog was developed by the two chefs behind Frau Hund.Swiss International Air Lines

Why the hot dog being served on Swiss Air is suddenly going viralOver the three weeks that the “Bastardo” has been served on Swiss flights, it caught the attention of social media users drawn in either by the appealing combination of toppings or the fact that a hot dog is being served in a class where guests normally eat fine foods.More Travel News:Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.There is a very cool Irish version of swimming pigs in the BahamasUnexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026Low-cost airline launches easier way to get to Sri Lanka”If I’m in first and you bring me a hot dog, there’s gonna be a problem,” one commentator wrote under the Instagram post in which Swiss presents the “Bastardo.””I’ll stick to my Sprüngli [famous Swiss chocolate brand] menu in my economy light seat,” another wrote.But as others pointed out, the hot dog is one of many options which guests can choose should they get a hankering for it on a long-term flight rather than the replacement for a main meal.Related: Luxury hotels are increasingly betting big on Rwanda travel

A discount only helps if someone shows up to buy. A fire sale with no customers is just a sad sign hanging in an empty store window.That tension sits at the center of the oil market, and it explains a comment out of Washington that should matter to anyone who drives or owns an energy stock.Crude has spent two weeks unwinding its war premium. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, settled below $70 a barrel on Friday, June 26, for the first time since late February, according to CNBC. Brent traded near $73. Drivers feel it at the pump, and the energy names in a typical 401(k), from Exxon Mobil (XOM) to Chevron (CVX), have eased, too.The calm follows a fragile truce. A U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June ended nearly four months of fighting, reopened the Strait of Hormuz, and lifted a U.S. naval blockade, CNBC reported. On paper, Tehran’s oil is open for business again.In practice, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says almost nobody wants to touch it. Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, June 30, according to Bloomberg, he said the only buyer still stepping up for Iranian crude is the one that never walked away. That country is China.How war and sanctions reset the oil marketOil prices come down to a tug-of-war among three forces:How much the major producers pump, led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPECHow much crude flows out of U.S. shale fields, especially Texas’s Permian BasinHow much global demand actually shows up to burn it allThe market had been bracing for an oversupplied, sleepy year. Then the region caught fire, and demand worries took a back seat to a simple question. Could the world get the barrels at all?For most of the past four months, a fourth force drowned out the rest. War. After the U.S. and Israel struck Iran in late February, Tehran throttled the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, Al Jazeera reported. Brent spiked above $115 a barrel. The U.S. naval blockade that followed left a daily shortfall of about 14 million barrels, the International Energy Agency estimated, as reported by Al Jazeera.More Oil & Gas:Gas price tumble since May buys a Big Mac and friesJPMorgan resets oil price target for rest of 2026Goldman Sachs sees an oil glut coming, but don’t expect much relief at the pumpThe peace deal flipped that script. Once the memorandum took hold, the war premium drained quickly, and Washington granted a 60-day license letting Iran sell crude again. Goldman Sachs cut its year-end Brent forecast to $80 and expects Gulf exports to normalize by late July, according to Morningstar. Still, Morningstar’s Allen Good warned against expecting “a return to prewar levels soon,” with shipments and storage still catching up. The supply scare is fading. What it left behind is a glut of cheap Iranian barrels hunting for a home, and a discount that exists for one reason — too few buyers.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said only China is buying Iranian crude, as other nations fear renewed U.S. sanctions.Thing Nong Nont / Getty Images

Why China became Iran’s only oil customerHere is where Bessent’s comment gets interesting. Iran can pump the oil. It can ship the oil. What it cannot easily do is find anyone willing to be seen buying it.The problem is risk. Refiners worry that if they stock up on Iranian crude now, Washington could snap sanctions back into place and leave them holding tainted cargo and frozen bank access. Iranian oil is “still trading at a discount,” Bessent said on Fox News, according to Bloomberg, precisely because that fear keeps most buyers on the sidelines.When I traced the buyer list, the striking part was not who is buying Iran’s oil. It was how completely it has shrunk to a single customer. The numbers tell the story.China buys “approximately 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department.China purchased more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped crude in 2025, according to commodities-data firm Kpler, as reported by Al Jazeera.Chinese imports of Iranian oil hit a record 1.8 million barrels a day in March, according to analytics firm Vortexa, Reuters confirmed.Most of those barrels flow to China’s “teapot” refineries, the small independent plants clustered in Shandong province that have spent years feeding on cheap, sanctioned crude while state-owned giants keep their distance, Al Jazeera noted. They are built to digest exactly the kind of discounted oil nobody else will touch, often moved through a shadow fleet of aging tankers and ship-to-ship transfers that hide where the cargo came from.The flows are not bulletproof. Iranian crude exports averaged about 1.85 million barrels a day in March before the blockade choked them to roughly 567,000, according to Investing.com. Related: Bessent drops a bombshell on Iran oil, dollarChina leaned on stockpiled reserves and barrels already at sea, with more than 100 million barrels estimated to be in transit outside the blockade zone. That cushion bought time, but it did not last forever.Washington has kept the pressure on the whole supply chain. The Treasury Department has sanctioned several teapot refiners, including Hengli Petrochemical, one of China’s largest independents, plus dozens of vessels tied to Iran’s shadow fleet, according to Al Jazeera. Beijing blocked the measures and called them illegal. The barrels kept moving anyway.What cheap Iranian oil means for your moneyMy analysis keeps landing on the same uncomfortable conclusion. The real upper hand in this standoff does not sit in Washington or Tehran. It sits in Beijing. When one country accounts for roughly 90 percent of your customers, that country sets the floor under your whole economy. Iran’s oil money, and the regime’s room to negotiate, runs straight through Chinese refinery gates.For Bessent, that is the entire point. A narrow buyer base keeps Iranian crude cheap, starves Tehran of full-price revenue, and gives the U.S. a way to nudge Iran toward a longer-term deal, he argued. The discount is not a market accident. It is the squeeze working as designed.For your wallet, the takeaway is quieter but more useful. The recent drop in gas prices is real, and it is feeding through to slower inflation and a calmer outlook for the Federal Reserve. But that relief is balanced on a 60-day clock and one dependable buyer. As long as the truce holds and China keeps soaking up the surplus, the floor under crude stays soft and pump prices stay friendly through the summer.If the truce cracks and the Strait closes again, the math turns ugly fast. Goldman Sachs has warned Brent could spike toward $130 a barrel under that scenario, according to Morningstar. At that level, a typical household pays hundreds of dollars more a year just to fill the tank and heat the house, the energy stocks easing in your portfolio today rip higher, and the calm evaporates inside of a week. The same barrels China is hoovering up at a discount today are the ones that would be missing from the market tomorrow.So watch China, not the photo ops out of Geneva. The country quietly buying the oil nobody else will is the one with its hand on the switch, and it will determine whether your next tank of gas stays cheap.Related: Bessent hints at major change in gas prices

The most consequential parts of your portfolio are usually the ones you never think about. Not the flashy name everyone argues about at dinner, but the boring component buried three layers down that quietly decides whether the whole thing works.For years, memory chips were exactly that kind of afterthought. Useful, commoditized, and famous mostly for brutal price swings that wiped out investors who showed up late. You bought the chip designer. You ignored the company making the memory that designer needed.That assumption has aged badly. Micron Technology (MU), the largest U.S. maker of the memory that feeds artificial intelligence systems, has turned into one of the market’s defining winners, with its stock climbing roughly 700% over the past year, according to CNBC. The shortage of high-bandwidth memory has rewritten the rules of a business once defined by boom and bust.Then, on June 25, HSBC raised its price target on Micron to from $1,100 to $1,700, the British bank’s fifth increase of the year, while keeping its Buy rating, according to MT Newswires.Why HSBC keeps raising its Micron targetHSBC analyst Ricky Seo has now lifted his Micron number five times in 2026, and each raise has leaned on the same argument. Demand for memory is running far ahead of supply, and prices are holding. Seo has framed the boom as a four to five year upswing, longer than the two to three year cycles that used to define the industry, with the next generation of AI chips needing several times more memory than today’s.The latest jump landed days after Micron posted a record-setting quarter that even doubters struggled to pick apart, as TheStreet reported. The company reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $41.46 billion and adjusted earnings of $25.11 a share, well above Wall Street’s roughly $35.7 billion and $20.49 estimates, according to Micron. Data center revenue alone cleared $25 billion in the quarter.Just as important, Micron has been signing long-term supply deals that lock in pricing. The company now holds 16 strategic customer agreements covering billions of dollars in committed memory, and management says the contracts cannot be canceled. For a stock long punished for unpredictable swings, that visibility is part of why analysts keep reaching for bigger numbers.Related: Micron just dethroned Nvidia in one key wayThe structure is what makes it stick. These are take-or-pay deals backed by roughly $18 billion in upfront cash deposits, according to its earnings call. A customer can walk away, but it forfeits what it already paid, which turns Micron’s order book into something far steadier than the spot market that used to set the company’s fortunes.The waypoints tell the story better than any single note:HSBC set a $500 target in January 2026, up from $350, according to Investing.com.It raised the figure to $1,100 on May 18, 2026, according to KuCoin.It moved to $1,700 on June 25, 2026, up from $1,100, according to MT Newswires.Wall Street’s mean Micron target now sits at $1,404.48, according to MT Newswires.Management is leaning into the same picture. Micron expects memory tightness to “persist beyond calendar 2027,” according to its earnings call, and guided fiscal fourth-quarter revenue to a record $50 billion. That is the kind of outlook that makes a $1,700 target read less like a moonshot and more like a spreadsheet.

HSBC raised its price target on Micron (MU) to $1,700 from $1,100 on June 25, the bank’s fifth increase of 2026.Bloomberg / Getty Images

What a $1,700 target means for your portfolioHere is the part that matters even if you have never bought a single share of Micron directly. The stock has been one of the best-performing names in the S&P 500 this year, which means your index fund almost certainly owns a slice of it already.So when a bank pushes its target to $1,700 on a stock trading near $1,150, the gap is more than a Wall Street talking point. It works out to roughly 48% of implied upside sitting inside funds that millions of people hold in their retirement accounts without ever checking the ticker.I ran the numbers on the run itself. A $10,000 stake in Micron a year ago would be worth around $80,000 today, based on the roughly 700% gain CNBC tracked. That is the kind of return that quietly reshapes a 401(k), placed by people who never meant to bet on memory chips at all.More Tech Stocks:Bank of America reconsiders Oracle stock price target after tumbleWhy Rocket Lab stock tumbled on Nasdaq-100 newsCathie Wood buys $529.7 million of popular new stockThe market value math is just as jarring. Micron is now worth more than $1 trillion, according to CNBC, which drops a company most shoppers could not name into the same weight class as the brands stamped on every phone and laptop.None of that shows up on a statement that just reads “S&P 500 index fund.” The exposure is real anyway. When a single stock runs 700% and crosses a trillion dollars in value, it tugs the whole index higher, and your balance climbs for reasons most savers would never trace back to a memory chip humming inside a data center.The memory cycle risk hiding behind the Micron rallyNow the cold water. Memory has always been a cyclical business, and I have followed enough of these cycles to flinch when analysts reach for the word “structural” near a peak.The bull case is clean. High-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips stacked beside AI accelerators, is effectively sold out, and Micron’s long-term contracts soften the swings that used to whipsaw the stock.The bear case is just as clean. When supply finally catches up, prices slide, margins shrink, and memory stocks tend to fall fast. A $1,700 target assumes this cycle ends differently than every one before it, and betting on “this time is different” has cost plenty of investors plenty of money.There is a competitive wrinkle too. Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix together control more than 90% of global DRAM supply, and SK Hynix is preparing a U.S. share listing, according to CNBC, a move that could pull investor dollars toward a direct rival. In my analysis, though, the sharper near-term risk is not a competitor but the valuation itself. A stock priced for a multiyear boom leaves almost no room for a single soft quarter.That tension is why several bulls are hedging. Some firms raised their targets after the quarter while holding their ratings below the most aggressive setting, a sign the fundamentals impress them more than the price you would pay to get in today.What Micron’s next print could decideThe real test comes with the next earnings report, when investors will hunt past the headline beat for proof that pricing is still rising rather than rolling over. If memory demand keeps outrunning supply into 2027, the boldest targets on the Street start to look cautious.If pricing wobbles, the same stock that minted roughly 700% gains can hand a chunk back in a single session. So the move is not to chase a number on a screen. It is to know what you already own, understand why a memory maker landed at the dead center of the AI trade, and decide how much of that cycle your portfolio can stomach before the next print settles whether HSBC was early or simply wrong.Related: Goldman Sachs resets Micron stock target with a twist

At the start of every console cycle, we ask the same question: How much better will the next system be?For Sony, the next cycle could bring a tougher question. How much more will gamers be prepared to pay?The PlayStation 5 remains one of the most vital platforms in gaming, but the console hardware business has changed. Component prices are increasing. Hardware prices are going up. Plus, gamers aren’t chained to the same living-room setting that defined past PlayStation generations.That puts Sony in a tough spot as it designs its next-generation platform, which gamers widely expect to become the PlayStation 6.Sony has not officially unveiled the PS6. It has not announced a pricing, release date, or final hardware design.But Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Hideaki Nishino has just given investors something more meaningful: a clearer look at how Sony is thinking about the next PlayStation era.The answer may thrill players wanting greater flexibility, but that may be a concern for gamers hoping for a cheaper console.“As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses,” Nishino said in Sony’s Game & Network Services Q&A.Sony wants PlayStation to escape the living roomThe PlayStation ecosystem was always easy to enter. You bought the console. You connected it to a television. You played from the couch.Now Sony is trying to expand the boundaries.In the investor Q&A, Sony said PlayStation is long associated with living-room gaming, but more customers are now playing on personal monitors. That change has led the corporation to expand how and where it uses PlayStation.This is important, since Nishino linked the same philosophy directly to the next-generation platform.Sony stated that it did not intend its future platform to be merely an alternative to a PC. Rather, the business is looking to broaden the usage modes of the PlayStation and build a more seamless experience outside of the living room.Related: Sony’s mirrorless camera and lens bundle is cheaper than buying the body alone — only at WalmartSony did not confirm that a PS6 portable is in development. It also did not support a hybrid console like the Nintendo Switch.But the direction is undeniable.The business already has a handheld remote play device called the PlayStation Portal, which offers gamers a way to access PlayStation games away from the main TV. PS Portal has seen significant demand across North America, Europe, and Japan, Nishino said. He added that cloud streaming takes little memory, which makes it even more desirable, since memory prices are growing.That leaves Sony with a few options.It could still release a powerful home console for dedicated players. It could add a handheld companion. It could lean more heavily on cloud streaming. Or, it could build a broader PlayStation family with different price points for different types of users.It’s a dramatic departure from the old console cycle. It may also be necessary.Sony’s PlayStation price problem is getting harderSony’s risk is not that gamers hate PlayStation; it’s that the hardware math is becoming worse.Sony raised U.S. prices for PS5 hardware in April. The standard PS5 moved to $649.99, the PS5 Digital Edition to $599.99, and the PS5 Pro to $899.99, according to PlayStation Blog. Sony cited continued pressure in the global economy.More Tech:Microsoft CEO sends a blunt warning on AI and the tech ecosystemAmazon CEO just made things uncomfortable for AnthropicMicrosoft has bad news for a key AI partnerThat pricing move impacted the PS6 discussion.A company that is already offering a PS5 Pro for about $900 has little room to surprise gamers with a significantly more expensive next-gen system. But Sony also made plain that it will not just absorb any rise in costs to keep hardware prices lower.Microsoft (MSFT) is not immune to the pressure.Xbox is hiking console prices globally Aug. 1, with 512 GB units climbing $100 and 1 TB versions increasing $150. Microsoft also indicated that console storage and memory prices had risen more than 2.5 times and could double again by fall 2027.Key takeaways for Sony and PlayStationSony has not officially announced the PlayStation 6.Sony says its next-generation platform should expand how and where people play.The company says it does not intend to sell hardware at significant losses.PS5 prices have already moved higher in the U.S.Microsoft’s Xbox price increase shows that component pressure is hitting the broader console market.Historically, consoles have been priced inexpensively so platform owners could generate money later via games, subscriptions, and digital sales. But that paradigm becomes difficult as memory and storage costs rise and consumers already demonstrate reluctance to increasing charges.The recent U.S. sales data show the resistance is real. PS5 spending was down 43% in May, and unit sales were down 58%, the lowest May unit-sales total for PlayStation gear since 2000, TechRadar reported, citing Circana.

Sony hints at a bold PlayStation 6 move as costs surge.KAZUHIRO NOGI / Getty Images

Sony must protect PlayStation margins without losing gamersThe actual PlayStation narrative for investors is that Sony is not merely attempting to sell another box.It’s trying to defend the profitability of one of its most important ecosystems while stopping gamers from moving to PC, Nintendo, or Xbox. Sony also said PlayStation 5 has an installed base of more than 93 million units as of March 31, 2026, with 125 million monthly active PlayStation users.It’s clear that although hardware gets you in the ecosystem, Sony’s longer-term profitability is more reliant on software, subscriptions, add-on content, digital transactions, and engagement. In the same Q&A, Sony stated that content and services remain essential drivers, since they generate recurring revenue and touchpoints with gamers.That’s why Sony may be ready to rethink the next PlayStation.A single expensive PS6 might be enough to satisfy the most ardent gamers, but could also price out many casual users. A cheaper device in the cloud could increase access, but may not be enough for users who want full local performance. A handheld or hybrid device could broaden the audience, but might also pose problems regarding power, battery life, and development expenses.There is no one best response to that. Still, Nishino’s statements suggest Sony is getting ready for a more flexible PlayStation business, not just a more powerful console.That could be the way to go, since the console industry is getting more expensive at a time when consumers are more discriminating. Sony has to convince players that the next PlayStation is worth the cost, and investors must believe the business won’t sacrifice margins to win the next hardware cycle.That’s a hard line to walk.The next PlayStation could offer users more opportunities to play than ever before. It could also test how much people want to spend to stay within the Sony ecosystem.Related: Xbox fans waiting on Project Helix get unexpected news from Wedbush

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealThere are some purchases we make out of necessity, and there are some that we make because the deal is so good we’d kick ourselves if we missed out on it, and the latter is certainly the case with the HP Flagship Touchscreen Laptop. Not only is the 17.3-inch laptop a high-quality, high-tech device with access to AI and touchscreen capabilities, but for a limited time, it’s 74% off as part of a Walmart clearance deal, and in a day and age where being caught without a computer can cause you more than enough problems, there’s no better incentive to click “add to cart.”The $2,640 bestseller is now just $690, saving you $1,950 for the 8 gigabyte (GB) random access memory (RAM) and solid state drive (SSD) sizes — the smallest of the sizes. Even the larger models which offer 16 GB RAM and 32 GB RAMs, although pricier, are also all on sale for under $1,000, meaning there’s truly no better time to secure this powerful device for your own use. HP Flagship Touchscreen Laptop, $690 (was $2,640) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Shop at WalmartWhy do shoppers love it?With an 8 GB RAM, 256 SSD and AMD Ryzen 5 7530U Processor, you’re able to get ample storage space and fast processing speeds even with the most entry-level model. The 8 GB RAM, also known as your device’s short-term memory, holds data for the operating system and what allows it to run efficiently and quickly, and it’s also what makes it easy to jump between apps and tasks without issue. 8GB is ideal for everyday use, and is considered the “baseline” for a moderately powerful device. Meanwhile, the 256 SSD is an excellent amount of space for storing files, apps, photos, and more. You have space for hundreds of thousands of PDFs, text files, and spreadsheets, as well as the space to hold up to 64,000 videos or 64,000 songs. Together, the 8GB RAM and 256 GB offer the perfect speed and space for everyday uses, students, and professionals who browse the web, create files and documents, email, take video calls and meetings, and stream shows, movies, and music for entertainment purposes.What’s most impressive about this laptop is that the device has a large 17.3-inch diagonal screen that’s easy to navigate and provides crystal clear graphics. With touchscreen capabilities and an HD+ display, you can use your finger to maneuver between programs and apps, making it easy to use on the go and navigate editing, browsing, and streaming in a more comfortable and efficient way. Related: Amazon has a 2-in-1 laptop and tablet for just $60 that comes in 3 colorsThe HP laptop has dual built-in speakers, dual-array digital microphones, a 720p HD webcam with a privacy shutter, and full-size keyboard with a numeric pad. Weighing approximately 5.5 pounds, the lightweight laptop is easy to travel with, perfect for toting around campus or commuting to work. It comes pre-installed with Windows 11 Pro, which gives you a highly secure operating system with access to the Microsoft Store where you can download apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, use OneDrive for additional cloud file storage, and access to security programs for better protection. What to expect from a $690 laptop: Pros and consProsLightweight and travel friendly: Weighing only 5.5 pounds, the laptop is easy enough to commute or travel with, whether that’s on the train to the office or across a college campus to class. Pre-installed with Windows 11: The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows 11, giving you access to a highly secure and efficient operating system upon first use. Bigger screen: Compared to other models, this laptop has a larger screen measuring 17.3-inches at the diagonal. ConsMicrosoft apps not included: Although the Windows 11 system gives you access to the Microsoft Store, you have to pay for the use of apps like Microsoft Word or Excel. Lacks battery info: There isn’t much information on the quality or battery life of the laptop. Shoppers really love this computer, and appreciate how great the storage system is and how fast it operates. “I have always had real good luck with HP products and this one is no different,” one shopper said. Basic set up is easy and there’s no lagging or buffering issues when you’re multitasking and jumping between programs. The touchscreen is also a major selling point for a lot of the shoppers. Shop more deals Asus Chromebook CX15 Laptop, $199 (was $235) at WalmartHP 14-Inch HD Windows Laptop, $259 (was $559) at WalmartMSI Vector 16-Inch Gaming Laptop, $1,970 (was $2,399) at WalmartAlthough we’re happy to invest in quality, paying over $2,000 for a laptop like the HP Flagship Touchscreen Laptop wouldn’t be first on our list of priorities. But now, thanks to this Walmart deal, you can get the high-quality, fast-operating device you’ve always wanted for almost a fourth of the original cost. 

Your own head has always felt like the last place no one else can get into. You can lie with your face, edit your words, delete a text before you hit send. But the half-formed sentence sitting behind your eyes, the one you have not decided to share yet, has stayed yours alone for the entire history of the species.That privacy has had exactly one serious threat, and it came with a scalpel. For years, the only way a computer could reliably turn brain activity into language was to get inside the skull. Elon Musk’s Neuralink drills a coin-sized hole and lays electrodes directly on the brain. Companies like Synchron thread sensors through blood vessels. The results can be remarkable, and so are the risks: infection, scarring, a device that degrades over months. High accuracy meant surgery, full stop.I have covered enough Musk brain-implant promises to treat any “mind reading” claim with a raised eyebrow. So when Meta Platforms (META) said on June 29, 2026, that it can now decode the sentences you type straight from your brain signals, with no implant and no incision, I went looking for the catch.What Meta’s Brain2Qwerty v2 actually decodesThe system is called Brain2Qwerty v2, and the name is a tell. It does not pluck free-floating dreams out of your head. It reconstructs the sentences you are actively trying to type, reading the brain activity that fires while your fingers move.Here is how it works. A volunteer sits inside a magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanner, a machine that picks up the faint magnetic fields thrown off by neurons, and types memorized sentences. The AI model reads those raw signals and rebuilds the words as they form. Two things make that work.
The model learns straight from raw brain signals instead of hand-built rules.

A fine-tuned language model rides on top, using context to repair the gaps and guess the likeliest word when the neural read comes back noisy. It is the “highest-performing end-to-end pipeline capable of real-time sentence decoding,” according to Meta.
The accuracy is the part that stopped me. When I lined up the new figures against what non-invasive decoding could manage a year ago, the jump was not incremental.Older non-invasive methods landed near 8% word accuracy, Meta confirmed.Brain2Qwerty v2 averaged 61% word accuracy across nine volunteers, Meta said.The best participant reached 78% word accuracy, with more than half of sentences decoded with one word error or less, Digital Trends reported.The model was trained on roughly 22,000 sentences gathered over 10-hour scanning sessions, according to Meta.That 61% figure means the system now “approaches levels of accuracy previously achieved only with techniques requiring brain surgery,” Decrypt explained. For a method that touches nothing and cuts nothing, that is a real leap. The earlier version, whose findings appeared in the journal Nature Neuroscience, could only spell out characters one at a time, according to Meta.

Meta unveils Brain2Qwerty v2, decoding brain scans into text. Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images

Why this brain-reading milestone still needs a room-sized machineBefore anyone panics about Mark Zuckerberg downloading their inner monologue, look at the hardware. A MEG scanner is not a headband. It is a multimillion-dollar instrument that sits in a magnetically shielded room and weighs about as much as a small car. Those scanners are “massive, expensive machines that belong in research labs, not living rooms,” according to Digital Trends.More Artificial Intelligence:OpenAl’s $1 trillion ambition could delay its IPOPalantir gets powerful Al signal from key ally of U.S.Amazon quietly raises price tag on the Al boomThere is a second limit that matters just as much. The system decodes typing, not unspoken thought. It leans on the brain’s motor signals as your hands move, which makes it closer to a very advanced read of your keystrokes than a window into your imagination. That distinction matters, because every leap in this field gets sold as telepathy long before it earns the word. Meta has announced no product, no timeline, and no plan to put this on a shopper’s head.The gap between a lab result and a thing you can buy is where most brain-computer breakthroughs go to wait. The invasive route shows why. Musk’s Neuralink gets clean signals because it lays electrodes on the brain itself, and it has shown a paralyzed patient move a cursor by thinking, as TheStreet covered in 2024. The price of that fidelity is a hole in the skull.What Meta stock and the brain-computer race signal nextFor Meta Platforms shareholders, Brain2Qwerty is not a revenue story. It is a flag planted in a field everyone suddenly wants to own. For Zuckerberg, that is partly the point. He has spent heavily to recast Meta as a frontier research lab rather than a social network with an ad engine bolted on, and a brain-decoding milestone buys exactly that kind of credibility. The company open-sourced the training code and is funding open neuroscience data through a new Digital Brain Project carrying a $5 million commitment, according to Meta.Related: Mark Zuckerberg sends stunning message to Meta employeesThe competitive map is filling in fast. Neuralink and Synchron are pushing implants you have to be cut open to receive. Merge Labs, a startup backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, is chasing the same prize from another direction, Decrypt noted. Meta’s wager is that it can get most of the way there without the scalpel, and that giving the work away will pull the whole field forward faster than guarding it would.I keep coming back to the uncomfortable part, the one Meta’s careful framing does not erase. This is the company whose business runs on knowing what you want before you do. The stated goal, restoring a voice to people who have lost the ability to speak, is real and worth cheering. But the same plumbing that gives someone their words back can, pointed differently, model intent. Anyone who shrugs at one more ad-targeting story should notice that the signal being decoded here is not a click. It is a sentence forming in your head.Where the brain-to-text race goes from hereThe most important number in the research is not the accuracy rate. It is the slope. Accuracy kept climbing as Meta fed the model more data, with no sign of leveling off, according to Meta. That is the same scaling logic that turned chatbots from novelties into tools, now aimed at the brain.So the honest forecast is patience, and then, all at once, none. For now, the MEG scanner keeps this locked inside the lab. The day a wearable version closes even part of that accuracy gap, the question stops being whether a machine can read the words in your head and becomes whether you ever agreed to let it. I would start deciding your answer now.Related: Meta launches smart glasses cheaper than Ray-Ban