| | Good morning. The National Basketball Association is an $11 billion-a-year business built on high-flying dunks. But any fan will tell you the humble "stick-slip" squeak is equally iconic. That's the noise rubber sole sneakers make as players cut, pivot, sprint and rotate on the hardwood. Squeaks are the symphony to the ballet of layups, putbacks and jumpers. And, after attending a Boston Celtics game, Harvard materials scientist Adel Djellouli decided they deserved a precise explanation. He and a team of researchers retreated to a lab, where they recorded a sneaker sliding on glass using a high-tech microphone and a high-speed camera for analysis. They published their findings in the academic journal Nature on Wednesday. It turns out the squeak comes from wave-like deformations that ripple through the raised patterns on a basketball sneaker's sole at speeds of up to 185 miles per hour. Tiny parts of each groove lift from and touch down on the ground thousands of times per second as the shoe grips the court. The waves ripple at a frequency in tune with the high-pitched sound you hear. Sliding a flat rubber against the glass produced no squeaks, proving that the sole patterns are essential to the squeak. Now we know. | | | | | | | | If AI is an unstoppable force, SaaS wants to be an immovable object. And investors are looking to the software giant from San Francisco's biggest building to decide whether the industry will crack under AI's pressure or just sway around a bit. Salesforce shared mixed fourth-quarter earnings yesterday. Revenue rose an expected 12%, boosted by software sales from Informatica, which Salesforce acquired in November. But Salesforce's sales and services products, its two biggest lines, slightly missed expectations. The company expects revenue from the fiscal year that ends in January 2027 to be in line with estimates at $46 billion and said it's on pace to hit $63 billion in fiscal 2030, surpassing Wall Street's forecast. But investors still worry SaaS may be a dead man walking. Last Software Standing Salesforce's stock has fallen about 37% over the past 12 months as investors convinced themselves that the AI wave would knock out legacy software sellers in the near future. Other software companies' shares were battered too, with Atlassian and DocuSign falling 74% and 47% respectively over the past year. Anthropic's recent release of Claude Cowork, an AI agent that performs tasks similar to some SaaS companies' core products, accelerated the slide. In response, SaaS companies aren't trying to beat AI startups. They're joining 'em: - Salesforce has tapped Anthropic's Claude to boost its Agentforce platform, an AI tool that surpassed $800 million in sales in the fourth quarter, up from $500 million the quarter before. Salesforce called it the company's "fastest-growing product ever." Agentforce has mostly been sold to Salesforce's existing clients, making it an upsell within its customer base. Salesforce isn't just earning money with AI, it's also saving it. The software company laid off 4,000 customer support roles this fall after saying Agentforce made its own workflows more efficient.
- Anthropic announced on Tuesday that it was integrating Claude Cowork into a host of SaaS tools, including Salesforce-owned Slack, DocuSign, and Intuit. The tie-ups could be a sign that AI will work in conjunction with, rather than eliminate, legacy software. Anthropic itself uses tools from Workday and Salesforce, venture capitalist Bill Gurley told CNBC.
  More Isn't Merrier: Goldman Sachs expects the software biz to keep growing, expanding by as much as 45% by 2030. However, the bank also predicts that AI tools will eat much of that growth, potentially stealing away legacy SaaS companies' share. More than 60% of the market could shift toward agentic AI. But that's unlikely to happen overnight. Customers are more likely to slowly consolidate tools, negotiate contracts, and limit usage of old-school software. Software companies could be slowly eroded, rather than quickly replaced. However, if legacy SaaS companies like Salesforce can instead carve out a place in the workflow that's integrated with new AI tools, they could grow alongside AI rather than be stunted by it. Written by Jamie Wilde | | | | | | | | | Photo via Fisher Investments | Planning your estate might not sound like the most exciting thing on your to-do list, but trust us, it's worth it. And with The Investor's Guide to Estate Planning, preparing isn't as daunting as it may seem. Inside, you'll find straightforward advice on tackling key documents to clearly spell out your wishes. Plus, there's help for having those all-important family conversations about your financial legacy to make sure everyone's on the same page (and avoid negative future surprises). Why leave things to chance when you can take control? Explore ways to start, review or refine your estate plan today with The Investor's Guide to Estate Planning. Download your free guide now.  | | | | | If there's anyone more exasperated by the locked-up housing market than your average millennial, it's Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe's. While the company reported a revenue beat during its fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, lower-than-expected 2026 guidance soured the mood. Shares dropped 5.5%, and, in an interview with CNBC, Ellison said there was an obvious culprit for the company's woes: "[The US is] still dealing with a housing market that does not have a lot of tailwind […] the greatest fuel for the home improvement industry is when you decide to put your house on the market." The Big Shill Potential homebuyers have been bludgeoned and rebuffed by the devastating one-two punch of rising prices and rising mortgage rates for years now. Finally, however, both forces are starting to lose a bit of their sting. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has fallen to 6.01%, according to Freddie Mac, the lowest level since 2022. Meanwhile, the latest S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index reading, out Tuesday, showed that the value of single-family US homes increased just 1.3% year-over-year in December, the slowest growth rate since 2011. On their surface, each stat looks encouraging for homebuyers. A look under the hood reveals significant market-force reversals that may spur even more optimism: - The home value growth shown by the Case-Shiller index is much lower than the 2.7% headline inflation rate in December, as reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index. "This marks a notable reversal: Over the prior decade, national home prices outpaced inflation by 3.7 percentage points annually," Nicholas Godec, head of fixed income tradables and commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told Realtor.com this week.
- Meanwhile, the number of homeowners with mortgage rates above 6% is now roughly equal to those with rates below 3% (about 20% of all US homeowners in each group), according to recent ICE Mortgage Technology data. In 2022, just 10% of homeowners had rates above 5%.
The shift toward more homeowners paying higher mortgage rates is "loosening the fiscal handcuffs that many potential sellers faced. They didn't want to give up that great rate," Alex Vidal, brand president at ERA Real Estate, told The Daily Upside. Signal and Noise: Still, the handcuffs appear bruisingly tight. Pending home sales in January fell 0.8% month-over-month and 0.4% year-over-year, according to National Association of Realtors data. That continues (though somewhat softens) a trend that began in December, when sales fell a full 3% year-over-year, marking the biggest dropoff for the month since 2001. In other words, the housing market is giving off more mixed signals than millennials have seen since their forays into middle school dating. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | | Deal activity is expected to rebound in 2026, but outdated systems can slow even the best teams down. This on-demand webinar explores how deal-ready technology is shifting from back-office support to strategic advantage. Learn how leading firms execute faster and smarter transactions. Watch now. | | | | | | | | What's good for Nvidia is good for … actually, finishing that sentence is a bit complicated. On Wednesday, the undisputed semiconductor king delivered a blowout fourth-quarter earnings report: a revenue beat of $68.1 billion, up 73% year-over-year and bringing full-year revenue for its 2026 fiscal year to an astounding $215.9 billion, plus the doubling of net income to $43 billion in the quarter. And that was all without significant data center sales to customers in China. Nvidia's Olympian performance underlines the key questions facing seemingly the entire stock market right now, both inside and outside the AI trade. Back to the Blackwell From the doomster perspective, Nvidia's booming success is only further proof of an upcoming AI firestorm that will dry up the moats protecting a wide swath of sectors: finance, law, software, media, advertising and beyond. (See also: the Citrini Substack post read 'round the world.) Others fear Nvidia's success comes from potentially reckless spending by tech hyperscalers, in concerningly circular fashion, despite scant returns. Goldman Sachs estimates that collective AI capex this year will top $1 trillion, while Morgan Stanley says it could reach $4 trillion by 2030. At Nvidia, the capexplosion is already manifesting in its order log, and its next-generation chips could actually cool fears of widespread overspending: - While Nvidia didn't announce guidance for its entire 2027 fiscal year, it did say its outlook for the current quarter is now $78 billion, plus or minus 2%. That blew past analyst expectations of around $72 billion, and soothed any remaining concerns about a short-term spending pullback.
- In the second half of the year, Nvidia expects to start shipping its next-gen AI-powering chip, dubbed the Vera Rubin, which the company told CNBC on Wednesday can deliver 10 times more performance per watt than its current-gen Blackwell chips while using "much less water" to cool. AI market research firm Futurum Group, meanwhile, expects Vera Rubin chips to be priced at around a 25% markup from Blackwells.
Up, Up and Away: Nvidia shares climbed as high as 4% in after-hours trading Wednesday evening, before paring much of their gains. Shares of hyperscalers mostly dipped during the same period, while fellow semiconductor players such as TSMC and Broadcom rose. So, to finish the first sentence: What's good for Nvidia continues to be pretty good for anyone holding semiconductor stocks. For now, at least. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | - More Power to You: The White House is planning to meet next week with leading AI and data center companies including Meta, Microsoft and Anthropic to discuss pledges that would insulate consumers from rising power costs related to their consumption.
- Tokyo Rift: Japan's antitrust watchdog raided Microsoft Japan's offices on Wednesday as part of an investigation into whether the tech giant hinders Azure customers from using other cloud computing services.
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