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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 dealAfter primping and preening for a day at the office or a night out with friends, it can all be undone by stepping out into the unbearable heat of summer. Getting stuck in the sweltering outdoor temperatures means getting covered in sweat or having your makeup melt away, and no one wants that. When I lived in NYC, the worst culprit in this scenario was the stuffy subway system, where you’d wait several minutes for your train to arrive without any airflow or breeze.I quickly found that having a portable battery-powered fan in my bag made all the difference between becoming a sweaty tomato or arriving cool and confident at my next location. Compact travel fans are actually quite affordable too, usually ranging from $15 to $25, depending on the device. The bestselling Whatook Portable Handheld Mini Fan is a complete bargain with 71% off at Amazon. Without this limited-time deal, you’d pay $17 to snag this highly rated personal fan, but now you can score it for just $5. It’s not as tall or wide as most smartphones, so you can slip it into your pocket for on-the-go convenience. Whatook Portable Handheld Mini Fan, $5 (was $17) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

Shop at AmazonWhy do shoppers love it?The mini and mighty machine measures 1.8 inches deep, 2.4 inches wide, and 5 inches high, making it the perfect size to throw in your bag and get out the door. Weighing only .3 pounds, you won’t even notice the fan is there, but when you do need it, you’ll be so thankful it is. It has five adjustable speed levels, ranging from a slow, calming breeze to a powerful gust of continuous wind. The high-speed motor reaches up to 18,500 rotations per minute, which produces turbo wind speeds up to 9.9 meters per second — that’s up to three times stronger than traditional handheld fans. “Super powerful and cools hot air,” raved one shopper. They shared their experience, “I use this all the time when I’m golfing.”Related: Walmart’s popular $399 portable air conditioner is on sale for 49% offThe compact device is great for traveling. If you’re taking a scenic hike on a hot day, you can use the complimentary wrist strap lanyard to keep it nearby and secure. The long-lasting battery runs up to 9 hours with continuous use, so it can keep you cool all day. You’ll know when it’s time to charge the fan because it has a smart LED display that shows the battery percentage and speed levels. Once it’s time to recharge, the USB-C fast-charging capabilities will have it ready to go in just two hours. Details to know Size: 1.8 inches deep, 2.4 inches wide, and 5 inches high.Power source: Battery-powered.Colors: Only the purple fan is on sale for $5, but three other colors are available for $10.Average shopper rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.One reviewer reported, “It puts out a surprisingly cool breeze, charges quickly with the included Type-C charger, and is compact enough to fit easily in a pocket or bag.”Shop more dealsPlayHot Portable Handheld Cooling Fan, $18 (was $20) at AmazonDuludulu Portable Handheld Fan, $11 (was $16) at AmazonGaiatop Portable Handheld Mini Fan, $13 (was $19) at AmazonDon’t let the sweltering heat ruin your outdoor fun this summer with the help of the Whatook Portable Handheld Mini Fan at Amazon. It won’t be on sale for just $5 for long, so don’t wait to snag this one for yourself.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $853.54 million in net inflows last week, the strongest since mid-April, with BlackRock’s IBIT taking the bulk.

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” falls from No. 1 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart as Morgan Wallen’s new hit “Been By Now” debuts in first place.

Energy companies in the S&P 500 have put up a 42.5% revenue gain in the second quarter, powering the index’s sales performance.

Datadog Inc. (DDOG) spent last summer defending itself against one accusation: that its biggest customer was quietly building its way out the door.In July 2025, Guggenheim downgraded the stock to sell, warning that OpenAI was developing in-house monitoring tools that could carve a $150 million hole in Datadog’s revenue. The stock brushed it off and nearly doubled over the following year.On August 6, the warning arrived anyway, delivered not by a bearish analyst but by Datadog’s own management.The company beat second-quarter revenue and earnings estimates and raised its full-year guidance for a third straight quarter. Investors sold the stock down as much as 19% the same day, according to The Motley Fool.Related: Datadog’s largest customer renews deal but cuts usageThe reason wasn’t the quarter that just happened. It was the one ahead of it. Datadog told investors its unnamed largest customer, widely believed by analysts to be OpenAI, would pull back usage starting in the third quarter, despite recently signing a nine-figure renewal covering 17 products, Benzinga reported.Bank of America read the same guidance and reached a different conclusion. Analysts Koji Ikeda and George McGreehan reiterated their buy rating and $305 price objective in a note to clients that was shared with TheStreet, arguing the market is treating one account’s slowdown as a company-wide problem.That target implies 33% upside from where the stock closed after the selloff.The stock sold off for a reason that’s mostly already overThe scariest figure in Datadog’s guidance is a growth rate. The more useful figure is a dollar amount, and it’s the one BofA’s note focused on.Third-quarter guidance implies roughly $19 million of new revenue beyond what the company just booked, compared with $115 million of new revenue added in the second quarter alone.That’s close to a six-fold drop in pace within a single quarter, on paper. BofA’s read is that management built maximum caution into the number around one customer’s pullback rather than a broad slowdown.On the third quarter guidance earnings call, CEO Olivier Pomel put it simply: the company doesn’t control what happens with a specific customer, Benzinga reported. That framing turns an alarming growth number into a bounded, known risk instead of an open-ended one.

BofA reiterated its $305 Datadog price target even after a single AI customer’s usage pullback triggered a 19% stock selloff.NurPhoto / Getty Images

Datadog’s business outside its biggest customer is getting strongerThe detail overshadowed by the selloff is that growth outside Datadog’s largest account has now accelerated for four straight quarters, reaching the high-20% range, according to BofA’s note.That trend predates this year’s AI spending surge and instead reflects customers consolidating monitoring tools onto a single platform.Customers paying Datadog at least $100,000 a year grew 23% year over year, up from 21% growth the prior quarter, according to Datadog’s earnings release.That acceleration came from a base of roughly 4,720 large accounts, not from one AI lab.BofA’s view is that this breadth undercuts the bear case that Datadog is simply riding one customer’s AI spending wave. The firm called the concentration overhang de-risked rather than resolved, a distinction that matters for anyone deciding whether to buy the drop.More BofA:BofA downplays China’s threat to Micron’s AI businessNvidia dominates AI chips, but BofA sees AMD closing inBofA refuses to embrace cybersecurity darling ahead of earningsBofA’s price target didn’t move, and that’s the tellBofA set its $305 price objective on July 22, weeks before the earnings report, according to the note’s coverage history.The fact that Wednesday’s guidance didn’t budge that number is itself informative: the firm is signaling it had already modeled this scenario.The target rests on a 20.6x multiple of Datadog’s expected 2027 revenue, versus roughly 5x for infrastructure software peers including MongoDB, Snowflake, and Dynatrace.BofA justifies the premium with Datadog’s projected 19% revenue growth in 2027, against an 11% peer average. That’s a rich multiple, and it means the stock still has to earn that gap through execution, not just survive one customer’s retreat.A single customer can now move an entire sector’s stock priceDatadog’s selloff previews a risk every AI-infrastructure vendor increasingly shares. A handful of AI labs and hyperscalers have grown large enough that their internal build decisions can swing a public company’s quarterly growth rate by double digits.Observability, cloud data, and adjacent software vendors all carry some version of the concentration math investors just repriced into Datadog.The next few quarters will show whether Datadog’s other 4,700-plus large customers can grow fast enough to make one account’s habits irrelevant to the stock.If they can, this selloff becomes the buying opportunity BofA is calling it. If they can’t, Guggenheim’s year-old downgrade will look less like a bad call and more like an early one.Related: Bank of America doubles down on Sandisk stock after earnings

As it leads Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart again, “I Just Might” by Bruno Mars ties as the second-longest-running No. 1 of all time.

Many couples use joint accounts to plan finances together. That makes it convenient when Social Security checks arrive, but it can get a little complicated when someone passes away.
Sometimes, Social Security will require that you send back the money received after a beneficiary passed away, even if the deposits cleared.

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Why a Social Security payment may have to be returned
When someone passes away, you may need to return their Social Security benefits. “If the deceased was receiving Social Security benefits, you must return the benefits received for the month of death and any later months,” per the Social Security Administration. “If the payment was received by direct deposit, contact the bank or other financial institution.”
The administration recommends giving the deceased’s Social Security number to the funeral director, who typically reports the recipient’s death to the administration. It also says to not cash checks of the deceased beneficiary and return them to Social Security as soon as possible.

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What to do when the money is deposited
If the money is deposited into your account, do not withdraw or spend it. Even though the funeral director usually reports the death to Social Security, you should confirm that the agency has been notified and call promptly if necessary.
You can also have your bank or credit union return any payment from Social Security that occurs after the death. The Treasury can reclaim federal benefit payments sent after a recipient’s death. The bank may end up freezing the deceased’s account and removing money from the account if an extra Social Security check was processed.
Money survivors may still be entitled to receive
A deceased recipient’s family members may still be entitled to some Social Security benefits. A qualifying surviving spouse or child may be eligible for a $255 lump-sum death payment, and survivorship benefits for eligible spouses can range from 71.5% to 100% of the deceased spouse’s benefit. The amount depends on how old the surviving spouse was when they claimed benefits.
You must call 1-800-772-1213 to apply for survivor benefits, since it’s not something you can do via an online application. However, you cannot collect your benefit and the survivor benefit. Social Security will review both benefits and give you the higher of the two each month.

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Automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans is now common, but the default contribution rate selected at enrollment may have a greater impact on retirement savings than later investment choices. Vanguard’s 25th annual How America Saves report, published in June 2026, tracked the retirement behavior of nearly five million defined contribution plan participants.Participation reached a record 86% among eligible employees, the highest rate in the study’s 25-year history, driven by automatic enrollment.The report exposed a tension between how many workers are enrolled and how much they are setting aside. For many workers, the gap begins with a single setting they never chose and may never have revisited since their first day on the job.Vanguard’s 401(k) report reveals a split in default contribution ratesAutomatic enrollment has changed retirement saving since the 2006 Pension Protection Act first encouraged employers to adopt the feature across their plans.By the end of 2025, 61% of Vanguard plans had adopted automatic enrollment, including 79% of plans with at least 1,000 participants, the firm reported.Among those plans, 62% now cover employees who have chosen a deferral rate of 4% or higher, up from 43% in 2015, Vanguard’s report showed.That progress still leaves roughly 38% of auto-enrollment plans starting new workers at a deferral rate of 3% or below, the data showed.For a worker earning $65,000 who is defaulted at 3%, the annual employee contribution comes to $1,950 before any employer match is included.Even adding the record-high average employer match of 4.7%, that worker’s combined rate lands near 7.7%, well below Vanguard’s recommended 12% to 15% range.What Vanguard’s 12% to 15% savings target means for 401(k) participantsVanguard has long recommended that workers aim for a combined savings rate of 12% to 15%, covering both their deferrals and any employer contributions.Participants’ average combined savings rate reached a record 12.1% in 2025, rising nearly two percentage points over the prior decade, Vanguard reported.The median total rate, a more revealing measure because it reflects the typical saver rather than high earners pulling up the average, sat at 11.6%.More Vanguard:Vanguard names 401(k) oversights that hurt your retirementVanguard drops playbook on retirement incomeVanguard warns workers losing thousands in 401(k)sOnly 51% of participants met the 12% to 15% target or hit the statutory maximum in 2025, up from 47% in 2021, Vanguard reported.The average employee deferral rate climbed to 7.6% of pay last year, while employer matching contributions reached a record average of 4.7%.Those gains reflect a decade of incremental improvement, but they confirm that the typical worker is not yet deferring enough to close the gap.

Vanguard’s 12% to 15% savings target remains out of reach for nearly half of 401(k) participants despite steady contribution gains.Ridofranz / Getty Images

How auto-escalation helps close the 401(k) default rate gapOne feature designed to push workers past a low starting rate is automatic escalation, which raises a participant’s deferral by 1% to 2% each year.About 71% of auto-enrollment plans on Vanguard’s platform included this feature in 2025, and 45% of all participants increased their savings rate during the year, the data confirmed. 31% of participants got a bump through annual automatic escalation, and another 14% raised their rate on their own.The combination of higher default contribution rates, automatic escalation, and strong employer matches has driven the record savings rates, the report noted.A worker who defaulted at 3% with a 1% annual escalation would need five years of increases just to reach an 8% personal deferral rate.Combined with a typical 4.7% employer match, that timeline still leaves the worker short 15% for half a decade after enrollment.Fidelity’s first quarter 2026 data confirms the 401(k) savings patternFidelity Investments reported a similar trajectory in its first quarter 2026 retirement analysis, tracking more than 54 million IRA, 401(k), and 403(b) retirement accounts.The total average savings rate for 401(k) participants at Fidelity reached 14.4%, with the average employee contribution rate hitting a record 9.6% in that period.Sharon Brovelli, president of Workplace Investing at Fidelity Investments, noted in the firm’s first quarter 2026 retirement analysis that participants who kept contributing through market volatility were positioning themselves for stronger outcomes as retirement nears.While it can be tempting to make changes to retirement savings during market volatility, it is positive to see participants stay the course with their contributions, an approach that will ultimately strengthen outcomes as retirement nearsFidelity has shown that consistency through a down quarter tends to pay off later, not right away.Contributions that continue through a drawdown are the ones that benefit most when the market recovers, a mechanism that rewards inaction over reaction in a way that few other financial decisions do.What 401(k) default contribution rate signals about retirement readinessThe picture emerging from both Vanguard and Fidelity’s data has a direct implication for workers who were automatically enrolled and never adjusted their contribution rate.The default contribution rate, any built-in automatic escalation, and how much the employer matches are the three plan-design levers that largely determine whether a worker’s retirement savings stay on track, according to Vanguard.”More than 25 years of data and insights make it clear, strong default contribution options and automatic features have made saving for retirement more accessible and effective for more Americans than ever before,” Lauren Valente, Vanguard’s Managing Director of Workplace Solutions, said in announcing the 2026 report.Vanguard’s 25-year dataset leaves one question unanswered: Are participants still being held to the contribution rate they were given at enrollment, even if they have never revisited it?Related: Vanguard says one gap could risk decades of savings

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Soccer purists spent June and July complaining that World Cup hydration breaks turned fast-moving matches into stop-start slogs padded with extra commercial time.Broadcasters cashed in on those minutes. So did Coca-Cola, the tournament’s longtime beverage sponsor, whose in-stadium marketing during those very breaks helped power one of the more unusual quarters in the company’s recent history.Coca-Cola is a 64-year Dividend King, the kind of stock retirees hold for consistency rather than surprises. Its latest numbers were not consistent in the usual sense.Volume, revenue and profit accelerated together, and management raised its full-year outlook for the second time this year.Coca-Cola revenue and profit grew faster than company’s own targetsSecond-quarter net revenue climbed 7% to $13.4 billion, according to Coca-Cola’s earnings release. Comparable earnings per share rose 11% to 97 cents, beating Wall Street estimates by five cents, Reuters reported.Global unit case volume grew 5%, a pace the company has not matched in years outside pandemic-recovery comparisons.Not all of that growth came from legacy Coke. Zero Sugar volume jumped 16% in the quarter, more than triple the company-wide pace, per the earnings release.That gap matters because it shows the acceleration is coming from a reshaped portfolio, not just price increases on old products.Diet Coke volume rose 7%, and Trademark Coca-Cola grew 5%, its strongest pace in 17 years outside pandemic-related swings, the company said on its earnings call.Powerade volume jumped 8%, helped by placement during actual World Cup hydration breaks. A soda company long defined by one flagship drink increasingly looks like one making several bets pay off at once.

Coca-Cola closed near its 52-week high on Friday, Aug. 7, as Wall Street kept raising price targets after the Q2 beat.Yona Elsner / Getty Images

The World Cup turned into more than a sponsorship dealCFO John Murphy told Reuters the company was “not unhappy” with how the hydration breaks played out for Powerade.The campaign also generated tens of millions of new first-party customer data records, executives said on the earnings call, a haul of consumer information a decades-old beverage company rarely collects this fast.Not everyone is convinced the bump will stick. One analyst quoted by Reuters framed the real question as whether World Cup-driven demand turns into sustained consumer behavior rather than a one-tournament spike.That skepticism sits at the center of the growth-stock framing investors are now testing on a name built for stability.Coca-Cola management raised guidance for second time this yearCoca-Cola now expects 2026 organic revenue growth of about 5%, up from a prior range of 4% to 5%, per the earnings release. It also raised comparable EPS growth guidance to 9% to 10%, from 8% to 9% previously.Two upward revisions in one year is not typical behavior for a stock known mainly for its payout.More Coca-Cola:Convenience store giant takes on Coca-Cola and PepsiCoca-Cola absorbs margin hit for expansion in key marketCoca-Cola keeps beating its rivals, and Wall Street noticedThat payout remains very real. Coca-Cola’s board approved its 64th consecutive annual dividend increase in February, lifting the quarterly payment 4% to 53 cents per share, according to the company’s dividend announcement.As a Dow Jones 30 component with a streak that long, Coca-Cola usually gets valued on consistency, not acceleration.India shows where the KO growth story runs into troubleWhile North American performance led the momentum, global operational challenges still tested the company’s supply chain.The quarter was not clean everywhere. Coca-Cola lost value share in India’s ready-to-drink beverage market, CFO Murphy told Reuters separately, as aluminum can shortages left the company without the right packaging at mid-tier price points.Rising aluminum and PET plastic costs are also pressuring margins company-wide.India market share loss: Aluminum can shortages limited mid-tier packaging just as demand recovered, Reuters noted.Input cost inflation: Aluminum and PET prices rose more than Coca-Cola had budgeted for 2026.World Cup fade risk: The tournament ended July 19, and the real test is whether the demand it generated shows up again once Coca-Cola reports results without a tournament behind it.Coca-Cola closed the week near a record highCoca-Cola (KO) shares closed at $87.05 on Friday, Aug. 7, up 0.23% on the day. That leaves the stock within about $4 shy of the 52-week high of $90.92 it set in the days after the July 28 earnings report.The stock is up roughly 26% so far this year, consistently beating its rivals like PepsiCo. That kind of gain is unusual for a stock most investors buy for its dividend rather than its price appreciation.Related: Convenience store giant takes on Coca-Cola and PepsiWall Street kept raising price targets for two weeks after the report. More than a dozen banks moved higher, with new targets ranging as high as $104 at Jefferies and UBS, and the average 12-month target now sits at $94.70 across 24 analysts with a consensus Buy rating.MarketWatch described the stock as bucking broader consumer weakness on its way toward that record.A defensive playbook is starting to look differentThe World Cup itself is already over, with Spain winning the final on July 19.The real test now arrives with Coca-Cola’s third-quarter report this fall, when the tournament’s marketing spend disappears from the comparison and volume growth has to justify itself on its own.If that momentum holds, other mature Dow components may face the same question soon: whether decades of dividend consistency can coexist with a genuine growth phase, or whether this was simply what one very good marketing year looks like on a balance sheet.Related: Coca-Cola keeps beating its rivals, and Wall Street noticed