Jennifer Johnston, senior vice president and director of research for municipal bonds at Franklin Templeton joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." The US municipal market’s worst month in more than two years has cheapened the debt enough to lure some investors looking to add to their tax-exempt holdings. (Source: Bloomberg)
Jennifer Johnston, senior vice president and director of research for municipal bonds at Franklin Templeton joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." The US municipal market’s worst month in more than two years has cheapened the debt enough to lure some investors looking to add to their tax-exempt holdings. (Source: Bloomberg)
Walter Cicchetti SpaceX ( SPACE ) has had talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about PIF potentially taking an anchor stake of about $5 billion in the rocket, satellite, and AI company's initial public offering. The Saudi investment would partly prevent dilution of PIF's existing stake of just under 1% in SpaceX, according to a Reuters report on Thursday, which cited people familiar wi...
Walter Cicchetti SpaceX ( SPACE ) has had talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about PIF potentially taking an anchor stake of about $5 billion in the rocket, satellite, and AI company's initial public offering. The Saudi investment would partly prevent dilution of PIF's existing stake of just under 1% in SpaceX, according to a Reuters report on Thursday, which cited people familiar with the matter. No final decision has been made, and any investment remains subject to change. SpaceX didn't respond to Reuters request for comment. PIF declined to comment. The latest update comes after multiple reports on Wednesday indicated that SpaceX ( SPACE ) filed confidentially for an IPO . SpaceX could look for a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion , Bloomberg has previously reported. An IPO for SpaceX would raise as much as $75 billion. More on SpaceX SpaceX IPO: What I Learned From ULA's Heydays SpaceX-xAI Deal: Building America's New Icon SpaceX IPO's $700 Billion Valuation Increase Benchmarked By Rocket Lab SpaceX is said to plan analyst day, data center tour amid IPO preparations SpaceX files confidentially for IPO - Bloomberg
hapabapa Palantir Technology's ( PLTR ) ontology layer—which turns raw enterprise data into real-world, actionable objects—has proven the enterprise software company's artificial intelligence moat, UBS said. “Our conversations with Palantir and its customers support a view that the value-add of Palantir’s ontology layer goes well beyond serving as a thin data semantic layer sitting on corporate da...
hapabapa Palantir Technology's ( PLTR ) ontology layer—which turns raw enterprise data into real-world, actionable objects—has proven the enterprise software company's artificial intelligence moat, UBS said. “Our conversations with Palantir and its customers support a view that the value-add of Palantir’s ontology layer goes well beyond serving as a thin data semantic layer sitting on corporate data to make that data more approachable (trusted, reusable) or easier to traverse,” UBS analyst Karl Keirstead wrote in a note to clients. “The competitive edge, what makes Palantir’s Foundry platform very tough to replicate, is a) Foundry’s strength at metadata graphing or mapping, defining relationships between data and mapping or connecting data to the customer’s relevant operations and systems, and b) the Palantir ontology layer can be used for operational decision-making, it is actionable and can quickly produce 'targeted outcomes' for business users. Customers are not citing any viable alternative to Palantir today and there is no evidence of this in the numbers.” Keirstead has a Buy rating and a $200 price target on Palantir shares. And while there is some evidence of large language models from companies such as OpenAI ( OPENAI ) and Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) being able to handle some parts of the software market, the likelihood of disruption for Palantir is “low,” Keirstead argued. “For Palantir, Snowflake ( SNOW ) and its peers, we’d argue that it’s low, even though we hear that AI models can already do some data engineering/pipelining tasks,” Keirstead explained. “Not a single Palantir customer or partner has cited any real risk from Claude models being used to DIY an equivalent of Palantir, likely because the data mapping and decision-making in Palantir is very sophisticated. Palantir seems too far right on the complexity spectrum.” More on Palantir Palantir Is Now U.S. Military's Critical System Palantir Is Becoming The System Behind Decisions Palantir's Old Narrative...
Here's a question almost nobody is asking: how do you get to the Times Square Olive Garden? Well, these beautiful weirdos are answering it - the team that made the Times Square Olive Garden compass . If that's not clear enough, let me explain. They're making a compass that points you exclusively in the direction of the Times Square Olive Garden. I thought this must have been an April Fools' joke w...
Here's a question almost nobody is asking: how do you get to the Times Square Olive Garden? Well, these beautiful weirdos are answering it - the team that made the Times Square Olive Garden compass . If that's not clear enough, let me explain. They're making a compass that points you exclusively in the direction of the Times Square Olive Garden. I thought this must have been an April Fools' joke when it came across my TikTok feed. Then I talked to the creators - Jason Goldberg and Steve Nasopoulos, who worked in collab with Glub Glub Labs - and learned it's, at least, not that kind of joke. Disclaimer: I can't say you should buy this, use i … Read the full story at The Verge.
President Donald Trump said the war in Iran is “very close” to completion, even as he said the US plans to launch fresh attacks on the country within the next two to three weeks. Trump in a rare prime-time address on Wednesday cast the war as a success, saying the operation had nearly achieved its military goals, including destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, air force, navy and indus...
President Donald Trump said the war in Iran is “very close” to completion, even as he said the US plans to launch fresh attacks on the country within the next two to three weeks. Trump in a rare prime-time address on Wednesday cast the war as a success, saying the operation had nearly achieved its military goals, including destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, air force, navy and industrial base. He said those steps would prevent Tehran’s proxies from destabilizing the region and cut off the country’s path to nuclear weapons. Rebecca Grant, vice president for defense programs at the Lexington Institute, joins Balance of Power to discuss and said the positioning of more US military resources off Iran's coast suggests that commanders still have a target list to finish. (Source: Bloomberg)
Binary bonds Yessss here’s a trade: You give me $100. I spend $96.90 buying a US Treasury bill that will mature at $100 in February 2027. I spend $2 buying Kalshi event-market contracts (that is, sports bets) on the Los Angeles Rams winning the pro football championship in February 2027. (The “pro football championship” is the Super Bowl .) The Rams have the best odds on Polymarket right now, but ...
Binary bonds Yessss here’s a trade: You give me $100. I spend $96.90 buying a US Treasury bill that will mature at $100 in February 2027. I spend $2 buying Kalshi event-market contracts (that is, sports bets) on the Los Angeles Rams winning the pro football championship in February 2027. (The “pro football championship” is the Super Bowl .) The Rams have the best odds on Polymarket right now, but there are 31 other teams, and the Rams’ probability of winning is only 10%. I can buy 20 contracts for my $2. If the Rams win the Super Bowl, those contracts will pay out $20; if not, they will pay out $0. I keep the other $1.10 for myself; I’ve earned it. In February 2027, I will pay you back $120 if the Rams win the Super Bowl, or $100 if they don’t: I will hand you the payoff of the Treasury bill plus the payoff of the Kalshi contracts. What is this trade, from your perspective? Well, I mean, it’s sort of like you have bought a bond from me, and the bond pays interest, and you have wagered all of your interest on the outcome of the Super Bowl. It’s a bond plus a football bet. But of course the financial industry is full of trades with the form “a bond plus an unrelated derivatives bet.” They are traditionally called “structured notes,” or “structured products.” They are sold, often by financial advisers, as a single package, a bond issued by a bank or broker with a payoff that varies based on some index or fact. The point is that the derivatives bet is fully embedded in the bond. The structured note is not a bond plus a separate derivatives bet; the derivatives bet is in the bond. This product thus has the following potentially interesting features: Your financial adviser could sell it to you. (As opposed to your bookie.) “I have a cool new structured product,” she tells you. “It offers 100% principal protection and high potential upside. The upside is risky but uncorrelated.” She’s right: Your returns on this trade depend on the Rams winning the Super Bowl, which is pro...
Tech heavyweights and crypto firms are converging to build a new financial layer for the internet. But this one is designed not for humans. A coalition of major technology, payments and crypto firms is forming around a shared vision of enabling AI agents to transact seamlessly without human ...
Tech heavyweights and crypto firms are converging to build a new financial layer for the internet. But this one is designed not for humans. A coalition of major technology, payments and crypto firms is forming around a shared vision of enabling AI agents to transact seamlessly without human ...
OpenAI has acquired the online technology talk show TBPN, an unusual purchase for the artificial intelligence model developer aimed at driving the conversation around AI. OpenAI and TBPN didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. The show will sit within OpenAI’s “strategy org,” reporting into chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane , according to a message from OpenAI Chief Executive Officer of App...
OpenAI has acquired the online technology talk show TBPN, an unusual purchase for the artificial intelligence model developer aimed at driving the conversation around AI. OpenAI and TBPN didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. The show will sit within OpenAI’s “strategy org,” reporting into chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane , according to a message from OpenAI Chief Executive Officer of Applications Fidji Simo . The AI firm has acquired businesses before — but its targets have primarily focused on recruiting talent from AI and AI-adjacent firms. Simo acknowledged the unusual nature of the company’s latest purchase in her message: “As I’ve been thinking about the future of how we communicate at OpenAI, one thing that’s become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us,” she said. “We’re not a typical company.” In explaining the reasons for the takeover, Simo said OpenAI has a responsibility to foster a conversation around the changes that AI is bringing about. She also noted TBPN’s “amazing comms and marketing instincts” and how they’ve helped brands promote online. TBPN is seen by OpenAI as a tech-forward outlet that understands AI well and can translate the potential of the technology to a wider audience. The TBPN team will maintain editorial independence, book their own guests and plan to cover and book competitors, a spokesperson said. In a separate statement, TBPN co-founder and co-host Jordi Hays said that, while the show has at times been critical of the industry, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and his team has expressed an “openness to feedback and commitment to getting this right.” The live show, which is popular in Silicon Valley , is hosted by Hays and John Coogan and primarily streams online. They’ve interviewed Meta Platforms Inc. ’s Mark Zuckerberg , Altman and Microsoft Corp. ’s Satya Nadella . The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal earlier on Thursday.
Giselleflissak The stocks with the highest short interest are concentrated in micro- and small-cap consumer-facing names, particularly within personal care, packaged foods, and niche beverage segments, with no single industry fully dominating bearish positioning. Among the most shorted stocks, Paranovus Entertainment Technology ( PAVS ) leads with 55.23% of shares outstanding sold short, signaling...
Giselleflissak The stocks with the highest short interest are concentrated in micro- and small-cap consumer-facing names, particularly within personal care, packaged foods, and niche beverage segments, with no single industry fully dominating bearish positioning. Among the most shorted stocks, Paranovus Entertainment Technology ( PAVS ) leads with 55.23% of shares outstanding sold short, signaling deep skepticism around its financial outlook and business sustainability. In contrast, the least shorted names reflect relatively limited bearish positioning despite their smaller size and volatility. Here are the five most shorted industrial stocks with market capitalizations of up to $2B (as a percentage of shares outstanding) Paranovus Entertainment Technology ( PAVS ), Short interest: 55.23% Innovation Beverage Group ( IBG ), Short interest: 45.82% Beyond Meat ( BYND ), Short interest: 29.43% LifeVantage ( LFVN ), Short interest: 29.05% Upexi ( UPXI ), Short interest: 28.01% Here are the five least shorted industrial stocks with market capitalizations of up to $2B (as a percentage of shares outstanding) CIMG ( CIMG ), Short interest: 0.52% Benson Hill ( BHILQ ), Short interest: 0.56% Planet Green ( PLAG ), Short interest: 0.60% Mannatech ( MTEX ), Short interest: 0.60% Caring Brands ( CABR ), Short interest: 0.63% ETFs linked to consumer staples: ( VDC ), ( XLP ), ( IYK ), ( FXG ), ( PBJ ), ( FTXG ), ( KXI ). More on consumer staples Gen Z Is Threatening The Alcohol Industry Consumer Staples Positioned For A Better-Than-Expected 2026 Wall Street Lunch: Staples Overtake Mag 7 Ex-Tesla On Forward Valuation Consumer staples win on defensive bets in Q1; Bunge, ADM lead gains S&P 500 logs weakest Q1 performance since 2022 - here’s what drove the moves
OpenAI Snaps Up TBPN, Slashes ChatGPT Pricing As Secondary Market Interest Fades Update (1400ET): In a surprise move, OpenAI has acquired TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), the influential daily technology talk show and media platform hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays . TBPN has become one of Silicon Valley’s most-watched programs for real-time tech news, M&A rumors, high-profile e...
OpenAI Snaps Up TBPN, Slashes ChatGPT Pricing As Secondary Market Interest Fades Update (1400ET): In a surprise move, OpenAI has acquired TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), the influential daily technology talk show and media platform hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays . TBPN has become one of Silicon Valley’s most-watched programs for real-time tech news, M&A rumors, high-profile executive interviews, and AI developments - often described as “SportsCenter for the tech industry.” The deal gives OpenAI a powerful owned-media channel to directly reach and engage the tech community while accelerating global conversations around AI. The show will continue unchanged: live weekdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT on YouTube and X , with Coogan and Hays retaining full creative control and editorial independence. TBPN has been acquired by OpenAI The world is changing quickly but TBPN will stay the same. Live every weekday just with a lot more resources. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of this journey big or small. We are 17 months in and unironically just getting started. pic.twitter.com/TLvPxxMGVe — Jordi Hays (@jordihays) April 2, 2026 Coogan, who has a long personal history with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (including funding from Altman for his earlier startups), called the acquisition a “full circle moment.” Both hosts emphasized that TBPN “will stay the same” but will now benefit from significantly more resources to scale. TBPN has been acquired by OpenAI! The show is staying the same and we’ll continue to go live at 11am pacific every weekday. This is a full circle moment for me as I’ve worked with @sama for well over a decade. He funded my first company in 2013. Then helped us fix a serious… — John Coogan (@johncoogan) April 2, 2026 At the same time, OpenAI is accelerating its consumer growth push by expanding access to its lower-priced ChatGPT Go subscription tier. Priced at roughly $8 per month in the US (a ~60% discount to the $20 ChatGPT Plus plan),...
AlexLMX/iStock via Getty Images Chevron Corporation ( CVX ) is set to be a major beneficiary of the recent escalation in the Middle East as the war between the U.S. and Israel on one side, and Iran on the other, is dragging on for more than a month now and seems unlikely to get resolved in the short term. With the U.S. government prepared to continue to attack the Middle Eastern country, it is als...
AlexLMX/iStock via Getty Images Chevron Corporation ( CVX ) is set to be a major beneficiary of the recent escalation in the Middle East as the war between the U.S. and Israel on one side, and Iran on the other, is dragging on for more than a month now and seems unlikely to get resolved in the short term. With the U.S. government prepared to continue to attack the Middle Eastern country, it is also likely that petroleum prices ( CL1:COM ) will continue to surge in the weeks and months ahead... which creates a powerful earnings and free cash flow catalyst for Chevron and other major oil and gas companies. I like the growth and investment setup here for Chevron, and while I recognize that the energy enterprise has already seen a significant increase in market cap since the war broke out, I believe Chevron is on track to post billions in additional earnings in 2026...if energy prices hold up. This gives the energy company potential for accelerating stock buybacks and could lead to a revaluation following the Q1'26 earnings report . Data by YCharts Previous rating I rated Chevron a Strong Buy in my last coverage on the oil and gas major -- Why More Upside Looms In 2026 -- because I liked the growth upside that was tied to investments in Guyana and the Permian Basin. Chevron has made strategic acquisitions in the Permian Basin in order to increase its net acreage in 2023 -- through the merger with PDC Energy -- which now benefits the company in terms of strong production growth rates. With significantly higher prices for petroleum now present in the market, Chevron is set to benefit handsomely in 2026 from higher earnings and free cash flows. Iran war creates powerful earnings catalyst for Chevron The U.S. and Israel teamed up for a major attack on Iran at the end of February, and this conflict is now officially in its fifth week, with no signs of a peaceful solution in sight. In response to the military attack, the Islamic Republic of Iran has threatened the closure of ...
Devrimb/iStock via Getty Images The conflict in the Middle East continues to be the primary concern for global investors. The United States is far less energy dependent and impacted by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz than either Asia or Europe. However, it still faces higher costs for oil, gas, jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, nitrogen, urea, phosphate, and various other chemicals and met...
Devrimb/iStock via Getty Images The conflict in the Middle East continues to be the primary concern for global investors. The United States is far less energy dependent and impacted by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz than either Asia or Europe. However, it still faces higher costs for oil, gas, jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, nitrogen, urea, phosphate, and various other chemicals and metals that will ripple across the U.S. economy in the weeks and months ahead. S&P Global, CRU, IEA, Wood Mackenzie, Bloomberg In addition, new " cockroaches" continue to emerge from the private credit markets, with both KKR & Co. ( KKR ) and Blue Owl Capital ( OWL ) "gating " new private credit funds on Thursday. Concerns around a potential AI bubble have faded to the background a bit here over the past month. This even as most members of the Magnificent Seven opened the first quarter with losses after driving most of the gains in U.S. equities from 2023-2025. Microsoft ( MSFT ) posted a just over 23% decline in 1Q2026, the stock's worst start to a year since 2008, into the Great Financial Crisis. MSFT Stock Chart (Seeking Alpha) In this article, I will circle back to one of the dark sides of the AI Revolution. As it will continue to negatively impact consumer sentiment, it should also drive accelerating job losses in 2026. And that is AI's impact on the jobs market. This is already starting to become more apparent as we get further into the year. FRED A 2026 Quinnipiac poll conducted at the end of March found that approximately 55% of Americans stated they believe that artificial intelligence will be more harmful than helpful. This is up from 44% in a similar April 2025 poll. A whopping three-quarters of Americans believe continuous advancements in AI will most likely lead to a decline in job opportunities, up from 56% in the April 2025 poll. In today's article, I will highlight the three types of job losses that will be attributed to AI in the months and quarters ahead. The...