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Good morning.
This has been Wall Street’s version of Lost in Space.
With SpaceX’s stock down nearly 20% from its IPO price last month, Wall Street is cooking up strategies to protect wealthy investors against further losses. (The stock has tumbled as much as 50% from its later peak, wiping out as much as $1.2 trillion in market value, or the equivalent of Berkshire Hathaway, the 12th-biggest company in the world.) According to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday, at least five financial institutions including Morgan Stanley are looking to offer SpaceX-linked notes that would both limit downside risk and cap gains. Some $50 million worth of such notes have already been sold.
The Morgan Stanley note offers a fixed payout of 40% so long as SpaceX stock is down by less than 50% by early 2028, though noteholders will be fully exposed past that point. In other words, in the event of a rapid unscheduled share price disassembly, investors are on their own.
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MARKETS
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Stock data as of market close on July 29, 2026.
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In his final earnings call as Apple CEO, Tim Cook is leaving the Mac-maker exactly as he found it: the biggest company in the world by market value.
Shares of Apple have risen 26% this year, enough to help it retake the market cap throne from momentary usurper Nvidia earlier this month, and push it past the $5 trillion market cap threshold for the first time ever this week. As Cook bows out and incoming CEO John Ternus prepares to take over, the company seems to have a renewed focus on what it has always done well: consumer products.
Home Is Where the Smart Is
In some ways, investors have nowhere to turn but Apple, which is blessedly (or, rather, strategically) removed from the capital spending craze now legitimately squeezing tech-giants-turned-hyperscalers. Google parent Alphabet announced the first quarter of negative cash flow in its history during an earnings call last week, and shares of Meta were hammered in after-hours trading yesterday following second-quarter earnings that trailed analysts’ expectations. Chip stocks, meanwhile, are caught between a brutal memory crunch and a seeming disbelief that the capex boom can and will continue as promised.
Even that memory crunch isn’t enough to sink Apple. Despite raising prices on iPad tablets and computers, Apple has held the line on the iPhone, a gambit that has paid off. The company is expected to report a 20% increase in iPhone sales during its last quarter, even as global smartphone shipments fell 11% in the same period to their lowest level since 2013, according to Counterpoint Research. Simply put, downstream players have less pricing power and less resilient customers than Apple.
With its core product on sales cruise control, Bloomberg reported this week that Apple now plans to renew its effort in the home-based smart device category:
- That includes a brand new “smart hub” device featuring a 7-inch display screen (placing it somewhere between a very large iPhone and a very small iPad), capable of FaceTime, home security monitoring, smart device control and more. The smart hub will be built around the company’s new Siri AI and can sit on counters or walls via a magnetic hanging system.
- Apple also plans to soon launch refreshed, AI-ified versions of its longstanding Apple TV set-top box and its HomePod Mini smart speaker, part of a product family it has sold since 2018. The goal, according to Bloomberg, is to convince users to have multiple interconnected iDevices throughout the home.
  Scroll Now, Pay Later: Analysts expect Apple to raise the price of iPhones eventually, but the company has a plan to maintain sales volume, too. On Tuesday, it launched Apple Upgrade, a tie-up with Klarna that will allow consumers to lease devices; iPhones can be leased for up to two years at a price starting at $17.99 per month.
Written by Brian Boyle
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Photo via MIzuho
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At Mizuho’s 2026 Technology Conference, leaders from across the technology ecosystem — including Lumentum, Salesforce, IBM and others — described a market shifting from building AI capability to deploying it at scale across enterprises, data centers and the infrastructure that connects them.
Just a few years ago, AI adoption was defined by pilots and productivity tools. Today, companies are embedding AI into workflows, reallocating budgets around deployment and confronting the operational, economic and physical constraints of increasingly autonomous systems. The result is a new phase of AI adoption defined less by possibility and more by integration.
Read the insights.
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Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh pledged Wednesday that the central bank is “going to deliver 2% inflation and not a whisper more,” citing the Fed’s long-held target.
Bond markets gave him some side-eye. The yield on 30-year Treasury bonds hit the highest level in 19 years on Wednesday, following Warsh’s comments after the Fed held its benchmark interest rate at 3.5% to 3.75%, suggesting traders aren’t confident the new chair is ready to raise rates to tame inflation.
‘Play the Ball, Not the Referee’
Warsh emphasized his goal of reducing the amount of forward guidance the Fed offers. He prefers markets act more independently of the central bank, which he says will give policymakers a “direct and unfiltered” view of the US economy. “Market participants are learning to play the ball, not the referee, and market prices will continue to respond in the direction and magnitude they see fit,” Warsh declared. “This is, in my view, a change for the better.”
After his remarks, the 30-year breakeven, a key bond market measure of inflation expectations, rose the most in a single day since November 2024. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, said the lack of guidance was contributing to volatility, sending yields “up and down like a yo-yo.”
Many believe the Fed still has wiggle room in dealing with inflation. While the PCE index, the Fed’s preferred gauge, rose 4% year over year in May, more recent data have indicated cooling. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to release June PCE data today. Additionally, labor and economic growth have remained solid amid economic uncertainty, which some economists believe supports the central bank’s holding pattern:
- “While inflation remains elevated, we believe a cooling labor market and the limited effectiveness of monetary policy against supply-driven inflation pressures will make additional rate hikes difficult this year,” said Vanguard senior economist Adam Schickling.
- “The most important uncertainty facing markets today isn’t Fed messaging; it’s the combination of geopolitical risks and the long-term economic impact of AI,” he added.
Hawks Behind the Hold: Three regional Fed presidents, who serve on the monetary policy committee along with the central bank’s governors, broke ranks and voted for a rate hike Wednesday, the most officials to dissent in one direction in a decade. “Not only do they represent other Federal Reserve governors who also think rates should be going up at this stage of the game, but they could also represent members of the board of governors not wanting to undermine Kevin Warsh,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said, adding those others could vote for a hike in September. KPMG expects two before the end of the year.
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Oracle NetSuite
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Taco Bell customers have found a culprit besides beans, cheese and sour cream to blame for their post-meal indigestion: the “diarrhea parasite” known as Cyclospora.
Parent company Yum Brands is a few shreds of lettuce away from heartburn as it heads into earnings today. Though the fast-food corporation is expected to post sales gains of 3%, fueled in part by Taco Bell’s six straight years of growth, a single-celled organism could see investors flush their shares.
Not What Customers Ordered
The CDC linked the Mexican-inspired chain’s shredded lettuce to nearly 2,000 cases in which people who reported eating Taco Bell were infected with cyclosporiasis, and regulators subsequently tied the parasite-riddled produce to Taylor Farms de Mexico. Both brands reacted quickly: Taco Bell nixed lettuce from all US locations the day after the FDA’s first report, while Taylor Farms stopped sourcing iceberg lettuce from central Mexico. Customers, however, already had the ick:
- Both foot traffic and sales fell sharply at Taco Bell after the FDA’s July 16 report, with Placer.ai finding foot traffic declined more than 20% on July 23 from the chain’s Thursday average for this year through July 6. Consumer Edge says daily sales have notched a similar drop. At least three lawsuits have already been filed against the chain.
- To win customers back, Taco Bell has rolled out deals on some lettuce-less fan favorites. The chain sold $1 Enchiritos and nacho fries last Wednesday, and this Tuesday it sold $1 Mexican Pizzas. Experts still expect a short-term impact on Yum’s earnings for the year, with several industry analysts lowering their expectations.
Protozoan Problems: This isn’t the fast-food industry’s first battle with parasites, and the past paints a sunny picture for Taco Bell’s future. Chipotle has been able to win back customers after being linked to a cluster of outbreaks in the 2010s. The burrito-bowl chain beat expectations in the quarter reported yesterday, opening 100 new stores. McDonald’s sales recovered within weeks of removing the slivered onions likely responsible for its 2024 Quarter Pounder crisis, when its burgers were linked to E. coli. Taco Bell could be on a similar timeline, especially considering the social media love it’s getting from diehard fans.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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- Coming Soon to a Door Near You: Delivery service DoorDash is launching its own US drone delivery program, after getting a key approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
- Hmm & Huh: The FTC sued telehealth company Hims & Hers, alleging it shared users’ sensitive health information with advertisers including Meta (Hims & Hers denies the claims).
- Stop Digging, Your P&L Has the Answer. Ask Oracle what’s driving the numbers this quarter, and it delivers an answer straight from your financials. Oracle Netsuite’s Tom Kelly shows how the AI agent works in this free session. Watch now.*
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