vadishzainer Stock index futures were muted as Wall Street looked to kick off the month of May on an optimistic note. Now, here are 5 news stories that broke overnight to watch out for: Meta shifts spending toward AI, signals more layoffs possible: Meta ( META ) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s planned job cuts stem from increased capital spending for artificial intelligence and did not rule...
vadishzainer Stock index futures were muted as Wall Street looked to kick off the month of May on an optimistic note. Now, here are 5 news stories that broke overnight to watch out for: Meta shifts spending toward AI, signals more layoffs possible: Meta ( META ) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s planned job cuts stem from increased capital spending for artificial intelligence and did not rule out further layoffs, Reuters reported. “We basically have two major cost centers in the company: compute infrastructure and people-oriented things,” he said during a town hall on Thursday. “If we’re investing more in one area to serve our community, then that means we have less capital to allocate to the other.” Blue Owl crystalizes tenfold return on SpaceX stake: Blue Owl Capital ( OWL ) co-CEO Marc Lipschultz said the company has sold about half of its stake in SpaceX ( SPACE ) at a $1.25T valuation, realizing roughly a tenfold return. “We made about 10x our money,” Lipschultz said on an earnings call, noting the firm still holds about half of its position. Blue Owl was among SpaceX’s earliest lenders and later converted its exposure into an equity investment. Trump maintains Iran naval blockade amid oil price surge: The U.S. and Iran continue to lock horns in a prolonged standoff, with President Donald Trump reaffirming his commitment to a naval blockade of Iranian ports despite surging oil prices and global economic concerns. Trump said the blockade is effectively “choking” Iran’s economy and signaled it would remain in place until Tehran agrees to curb its nuclear program. “Their economy is crashing; the blockade is incredible,” Trump told reporters at the White House. Trump signs executive order to expand retirement savings access: President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create a government website allowing people in the U.S. to find and compare private-sector retirement savings plans. The aim is to help more Americans sign on for retirement p...
Michelle Brittain/iStock Editorial via Getty Images I believe that Alphabet ( GOOG )( GOOGL ) is making the transition from being a recipient of AI benefits to an owner of AI infrastructure, which adds a new perspective on the whole picture. The decision to invest in TPUs has nothing to do with competing with Nvidia ( NVDA ), but I believe it is related to being able to control the economics of sc...
Michelle Brittain/iStock Editorial via Getty Images I believe that Alphabet ( GOOG )( GOOGL ) is making the transition from being a recipient of AI benefits to an owner of AI infrastructure, which adds a new perspective on the whole picture. The decision to invest in TPUs has nothing to do with competing with Nvidia ( NVDA ), but I believe it is related to being able to control the economics of scaling. There is demand for cloud services, although there are limitations. Search may be changing, but it is not breaking. On the contrary, it becomes more complex and, at least currently, more lucrative. Alphabet’s TPU Pivot Quietly Rewrites the Economics of AI The TPU announcement this quarter did not come out of the blue. A TPU is a specialized chip designed by Alphabet to run AI tasks faster and more efficiently than traditional processors. For a long time, Alphabet has been selling itself as a vertically integrated infrastructure company disguised as an application layer. What has changed now is the willingness to monetize that infrastructure directly, without having to abstract it away in Cloud services first. TPU sales change the economic dynamics in a subtle but meaningful way. Revenue will become more lumpy, more tied to project economics. However, what concerns me the most is a different buyer dynamic, where Alphabet starts dealing not with a developer creating a proof-of-concept instance but with an institution allocating capital. After all, once an institution installs a TPU on-premise, its relationship with Alphabet will go well beyond the mere purchase of hardware. This will involve a certain amount of customizing the stack, making it compatible with software applications. As far as I understand, this will give Alphabet more bargaining power in this relationship. I am not saying this move directly attacks Nvidia or other competitors. Instead, this seems like a carefully considered approach, which is limited to those cases where Alphabet has a unique competitiv...
While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a da...
While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a dame just for doing their jobs is one of life’s mysteries. The rest of us have to make do with the occasional email from the boss. But in the last week, two top civil servants have been reluctantly made to give evidence on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador before the foreign affairs select committee and very instructive it has been, too. Not least to see how much they dislike any extra attention from the public. Their obvious discomfort at being held to account was excruciating to watch. Continue reading...
Islamabad has reportedly switched to lower-profile role but believes peace can make progress without face-to-face meetings Pakistan is passing proposals between Iran and the US to keep talks alive behind the scenes and inch towards a peace agreement, officials and experts say. Pakistani officials say that they are conscious of the fact that at stake is not only regional peace, but the health of th...
Islamabad has reportedly switched to lower-profile role but believes peace can make progress without face-to-face meetings Pakistan is passing proposals between Iran and the US to keep talks alive behind the scenes and inch towards a peace agreement, officials and experts say. Pakistani officials say that they are conscious of the fact that at stake is not only regional peace, but the health of the global economy and the livelihoods of millions of the poorest people in the world – including in Pakistan, whose monthly energy import bill has almost tripled as a result of the war. Continue reading...
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images My first two buy recommendations for Rubrik (NYSE: RBRK ) have not worked out so well so far . A major reason the stock dropped is a sector-wide sell-off in software, as illustrated by the performance of the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF ( IGV ) since the beginning of 2026. Data by YCharts The software sector has tapered off since hitting high...
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images My first two buy recommendations for Rubrik (NYSE: RBRK ) have not worked out so well so far . A major reason the stock dropped is a sector-wide sell-off in software, as illustrated by the performance of the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF ( IGV ) since the beginning of 2026. Data by YCharts The software sector has tapered off since hitting highs in September 2025, and the downside accelerated in February 2026, after the start of what people call the SaaSpocalypse , which are fears that generative AI from AI companies like Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) and OpenAI ( OPENAI ) would disrupt the "seat-based" pricing model used by a large amount of Software as a Service ("SaaS") companies. A seat‑based model scales revenue based on the number of human employees using the software, which can pose a problem for a SaaS company's revenue streams if Agentic AI (Artificial Intelligence) reduces the number of employees. Rubrik, being a SaaS company, has not been immune to the downturn. However, it doesn't use a seat-based model. In contrast with a seat-based model, Rubrik’s revenue scales with the volume of data protected, the number of workloads/Virtual Machines ("VMs")/databases/cloud assets, storage capacity under management, sales of RSC (Rubrik Security Cloud) tiers (a capacity-based and feature-based subscription model), and add‑on services (support, recovery team, training). As a result, its revenue growth shouldn't be threatened by the SaaSpocalypse in the same way it threatens ServiceNow ( NOW ), Salesforce ( CRM ),HubSpot ( HUBS ), and Microsoft's ( MSFT ) 365, which some may consider "nice-to-have" services but not essential. In contrast, Rubrik is analogous to selling data insurance to enterprises for the AI era. Some enterprises may consider it a necessary service to survive in a more dangerous world. Rubrik protects an organization's data wherever it is located (on‑prem servers, public cloud, sovereign cloud, SaaS apps, ...
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft (NYSE:DB) highlighted what it described as a strong start to 2026 during its first-quarter fixed income call, pointing to record net profits, improving profitability metrics, and a capital and liquidity position that management said remains comfortably above regulato
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft (NYSE:DB) highlighted what it described as a strong start to 2026 during its first-quarter fixed income call, pointing to record net profits, improving profitability metrics, and a capital and liquidity position that management said remains comfortably above regulato
Microsoft’s earnings beat meets cautious market reaction Microsoft (MSFT) just reported quarterly revenue of US$82.9b, with Azure up 40% and AI revenue at a US$37b annual run rate. However, the stock fell after management outlined a US$190b AI focused capex plan for 2026. See our latest analysis for Microsoft. Despite strong cloud and AI results, Microsoft’s recent earnings sparked a 3.9% one day ...
Microsoft’s earnings beat meets cautious market reaction Microsoft (MSFT) just reported quarterly revenue of US$82.9b, with Azure up 40% and AI revenue at a US$37b annual run rate. However, the stock fell after management outlined a US$190b AI focused capex plan for 2026. See our latest analysis for Microsoft. Despite strong cloud and AI results, Microsoft’s recent earnings sparked a 3.9% one day share price decline and contributed to a year to date share price return of a 13.78% decline...
The Morning Bull - US Market Morning Update Friday, May, 1 2026 US stock futures are slightly higher this morning, as investors balance slower growth with hotter inflation. First quarter US GDP grew at a 2.0% annual pace versus forecasts of 2.3%, meaning the economy is still expanding but not quite as quickly as economists expected. At the same time, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge...
The Morning Bull - US Market Morning Update Friday, May, 1 2026 US stock futures are slightly higher this morning, as investors balance slower growth with hotter inflation. First quarter US GDP grew at a 2.0% annual pace versus forecasts of 2.3%, meaning the economy is still expanding but not quite as quickly as economists expected. At the same time, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, PCE, is running at 3.5% a year, while employment costs and jobless claims signal a very tight...