Meet the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Infrastructure Stock Crushing Micron Technology in 2026. Its Red-Hot Earnings Growth Could Send It Even Higher The Globe and Mail
Meet the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Infrastructure Stock Crushing Micron Technology in 2026. Its Red-Hot Earnings Growth Could Send It Even Higher The Globe and Mail
In a world where a viral TikTok video can cause a brand to trend globally in mere hours, the traditional market research cycle — often spanning 12 weeks — is becoming a liability. The lag between a survey question and the answers from a wide (or targeted) pool of respondents has become a primary bottleneck for Fortune 500 decision-makers who are forced to navigate volatile geopolitical and economi...
In a world where a viral TikTok video can cause a brand to trend globally in mere hours, the traditional market research cycle — often spanning 12 weeks — is becoming a liability. The lag between a survey question and the answers from a wide (or targeted) pool of respondents has become a primary bottleneck for Fortune 500 decision-makers who are forced to navigate volatile geopolitical and economic shifts with data that is frequently outdated by the time it reaches a slide deck, as industry experts have observed . Brox , a predictive human intelligence startup, recently announced a strategic funding round following a year where they reported 10X revenue growth. Their proposition is as ambitious as it is technical: the creation of a "parallel universe" populated by 60,000 digital twins of real, living human beings and their entire demographic profiles and consumer preferences, allowing enterprises to run unlimited experiments in hours rather than months. “These digital twins are one-to-one replicas of actual, real individuals," said Brox CEO Hamish Brocklebank in a recent video call interview with VentureBeat. "We recruit real people like a normal panel company does, pay them to interview them, and capture all the data around them — fully consent-driven.” The company, currently a lean 14-person operation, is positioning itself as the antithesis of the "insane" research industry. By replacing statistical models with behavioral replicas, Brox aims to transform how the world’s largest banks and pharmaceutical giants anticipate human reactions to high-stakes global and market-shifting events, or narrow, targeted product releases and personnel news, and everything in between. The kinds of surveys and specific questions that Brox asks its digital twins are completely open-ended and can be customized to fit any conceivable business customer's use cases and goals. According to Brocklebank, examples of survey questions include: “What happens if America invades Iran or Greenla...
Earnings Call Insights: Celanese (CE) Q1 2026 Management view Scott Richardson (President, CEO & Director) said the company’s focus “remains on cash generation while we position our businesses for long-term success,” adding that “demand continues to be low at an end use level” while Celanese looks to capture near-term supply chain disruption in Q2. Richardson framed second-half assumptions around ...
Earnings Call Insights: Celanese (CE) Q1 2026 Management view Scott Richardson (President, CEO & Director) said the company’s focus “remains on cash generation while we position our businesses for long-term success,” adding that “demand continues to be low at an end use level” while Celanese looks to capture near-term supply chain disruption in Q2. Richardson framed second-half assumptions around normalization: “we do believe the right one to assume in the second half is one where supply chains start to unwind here by the end of the quarter here in Q2, and you see that kind of moderate on where volumes and margins are in the second half.” On operating flexibility, Richardson said Celanese is “being positioned to respond,” citing swing operations at “Frankfurt” and “Singapore” and the ability to “pivot our supply chain in Engineered Materials as customer demand shifts and changes.” Chuck Kyrish (Senior VP & CFO) quantified Engineered Materials (EM) inventory and absorption items tied to nylon changes: “in the second half, in Engineered Materials, we would expect an additional $50 million of absorption hit on the income statement.” He added the company is “reducing costs, reducing complexity, taking this inventory permanently out of the system.” Kyrish also reiterated divestiture posture: “we continue to work that very aggressively,” and “we do feel good about signing another deal this year,” while noting “we have not baked in any assumption for cash proceeds from a deal just from the uncertainty of kind of signing versus closing.” Outlook Richardson confirmed the key EPS marker embedded in management’s framework for the back half: “the $3 per share in EPS you're guiding towards for the back half of the year,” and said the second-half scenario assumes supply chains unwind by end of Q2 with moderation in volumes and margins. Richardson said the guide also considered downside demand effects from higher costs: “there's also a potential offset to demand with feedstock pri...
SAN FRANCISCO—At its Code with Claude developers' conference, Anthropic has introduced what it calls "dreaming" to Claude Managed Agents. Dreaming, in this case, is a process of going over recent events and identifying specific things that are worth storing in "memory" to inform future tasks and interactions. Dreaming is a feature that is currently in research preview and limited to Managed Agents...
SAN FRANCISCO—At its Code with Claude developers' conference, Anthropic has introduced what it calls "dreaming" to Claude Managed Agents. Dreaming, in this case, is a process of going over recent events and identifying specific things that are worth storing in "memory" to inform future tasks and interactions. Dreaming is a feature that is currently in research preview and limited to Managed Agents on the Claude Platform. Managed Agents are a higher-level alternative to building directly on the Messages API that Anthropic describes as a "pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure." It's intended for situations where you want multiple agents working on a task or project to some end point over several minutes or hours. Anthropic describes dreaming as a scheduled process, in which sessions and memory stores are reviewed, and specific memories are curated. This is important because context windows are limited for LLMs, and important information can be lost over lengthy projects. On the chat side of things, many models use a process called compaction, whereby lengthy conversations are periodically analyzed, and the models attempt to remove irrelevant information from the context window while keeping what's actually important for the ongoing conversation, project, or task. Read full article Comments
Space-related funds are seeing a surge of inflows as investors eagerly await the IPO of Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPAX.PVT). In the latest installment of Yahoo Finance's ETF Report, TMX VettaFi head of research Todd Rosenbluth to talk about the ETFs that could draw in the most investors — like the Procure Space ETF (UFO) — as interest in the broader space economy grows. Rosenbluth goes on to weigh in on...
Space-related funds are seeing a surge of inflows as investors eagerly await the IPO of Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPAX.PVT). In the latest installment of Yahoo Finance's ETF Report, TMX VettaFi head of research Todd Rosenbluth to talk about the ETFs that could draw in the most investors — like the Procure Space ETF (UFO) — as interest in the broader space economy grows. Rosenbluth goes on to weigh in on prediction market ETFs that are set to launch.
It's been a tough year for Spotify 's (NYSE: SPOT) stock, and things didn't get any better when it reported its Q1 results late last month. The stock is now down about 28% on the year, as of this writing. Let's take a closer look at the company's recent results and prospects to see if investors should buy the dip. After raising prices in the U.S. earlier this year, there has been a worry among som...
It's been a tough year for Spotify 's (NYSE: SPOT) stock, and things didn't get any better when it reported its Q1 results late last month. The stock is now down about 28% on the year, as of this writing. Let's take a closer look at the company's recent results and prospects to see if investors should buy the dip. After raising prices in the U.S. earlier this year, there has been a worry among some investors that Spotify's premium subscriber growth would slow. That finally showed up in its guidance, as it projected premium subscribers to grow 8% year over year to 299 million in Q2, falling just shy of analyst estimates for 300.3 million. Continue reading
Give Peace A Chance By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank It was TACO Tuesday again in the United States this week as President Trump announced that he was pausing Operation Freedom “for a short period” after it had been underway for just one day. Channelling John Lennon, Trump indicated that progress in negotiations with Iran had convinced him to ‘ give peace a chance ’, but th...
Give Peace A Chance By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank It was TACO Tuesday again in the United States this week as President Trump announced that he was pausing Operation Freedom “for a short period” after it had been underway for just one day. Channelling John Lennon, Trump indicated that progress in negotiations with Iran had convinced him to ‘ give peace a chance ’, but that the US blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place for now. The Dow Jones, S&P500 and NASDAQ all closed higher and US stock futures are pointing to further gains. Asian stocks are mostly higher with the KOSPI breaching 7000 for the first time and Samsung joining the USD 1 trillion market cap club. Bond yields are mostly lower but UK Gilts are a conspicuous outlier in that respect, with the 10-year up 9.7bps to 5.06% and the 2-year rising even further. The Dollar is down, the VIX is down, spot gold is a little over 1% higher and Brent crude (July contract) has fallen to $108.46/bbl at time of writing. Trump characterized the pause as coming in response to requests from Pakistan and others and told media that the indefinite ceasefire was still in effect despite Iranian strikes on the UAE port of Fujairah, commercial shipping, and US destroyers engaged in guiding commercial ships through the Strait over the last 24 hours. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that the operation which began on Monday was purely defensive, stating that “we’re not looking for a fight”. Trump had earlier characterized the effort as a “humanitarian gesture” to free trapped merchant mariners who were running short of provisions, but there is undoubtedly an added element of seeking to ease the squeeze on commercial shipping supply chains by bringing the 1,600 vessels trapped in the Persian Gulf back into the active shipping fleet. As Operation Freedom was put on hold, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a White House news briefing that Operation Epic Fury had already concluded, thereby sidesteppi...
The dollar index (DXY00 ) tumbled to a 2.5-month low today and is down by -0.46%. Optimism that a peace deal between the US and Iran is near is weighing on safe-haven demand for the dollar today. Also, today's -6% plunge in crude oil prices eases inflation expectations and could...
The dollar index (DXY00 ) tumbled to a 2.5-month low today and is down by -0.46%. Optimism that a peace deal between the US and Iran is near is weighing on safe-haven demand for the dollar today. Also, today's -6% plunge in crude oil prices eases inflation expectations and could...
KanawatTH/iStock via Getty Images Following Lumentum’s ( LITE ) earnings I became even more confident in my bullish rating as it seems that the company is getting more and more positioned within the realm of core AI infrastructure bottlenecks. Meaning that Lumentum is still experiencing supply constraints on several key products, while the hyperscalers' momentum on spending on AI is very healthy. ...
KanawatTH/iStock via Getty Images Following Lumentum’s ( LITE ) earnings I became even more confident in my bullish rating as it seems that the company is getting more and more positioned within the realm of core AI infrastructure bottlenecks. Meaning that Lumentum is still experiencing supply constraints on several key products, while the hyperscalers' momentum on spending on AI is very healthy. Furthermore, I believe that the market does not appreciate how intense optical density will become as compute clusters are expanding which favors its next cycle of growth. It Is Margin Dynamics That Matter Not Top-Line Growth The first thing that the investor community might react to is the tremendous year-over-year revenue growth that reached 90% . Both Components and Systems delivered exceptional acceleration, suggesting AI optical demand is broadening across the stack rather than relying on a single transceiver cycle. Q3 2026 Still, in my view, much more interesting is the margin trend. Particularly, the company posted a staggering sequential growth in non-GAAP gross margin, which amounted to 47.9% up by 540 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Similarly, Lumentum saw a sharp sequential improvement in the operating margin that amounted to 32.2%. The fact that both metrics grew significantly at such an early phase of the AI cycle is very unusual. In my opinion, it is noteworthy that Lumentum has exceeded its own expectations regarding the current performance. Earlier, the management announced an intermediate target for the margin framework of 35% for operating margins above $1.25 billion in revenues. However, currently, the firm achieved 32.2% operating margins with slightly above $808 million of quarterly sales. Thus, I would approach the current quarter's results differently. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that there are several important factors behind the margin improvement. Firstly, they relate to the enhanced utilization rates, more favorable product mix, select price ...
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here's a recap of Wednesday's key moments. 1. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq touched record highs on Wednesday on progress toward a possible U.S.-Iran peace deal. "Oil went down, interest rates [bond yields] went down, and that allowed a roaring tech rally," Jim Cramer said. AI and data center i...
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here's a recap of Wednesday's key moments. 1. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq touched record highs on Wednesday on progress toward a possible U.S.-Iran peace deal. "Oil went down, interest rates [bond yields] went down, and that allowed a roaring tech rally," Jim Cramer said. AI and data center infrastructure stocks continued to lead the market higher, helped by a new optical fiber partnership between Corning and Nvidia . "It does matter," Cramer said, reiterating his view that the economy is increasingly being driven by compute and AI. Corning shares rose 11%. We're putting together a story on all of Corning's Investor Day news, including new guidance. Check your inboxes and texts shortly for our alert. 2. Shares of Arm Holdings climbed 12% ahead of earnings, but Jim warned investors not to expect a huge post-report rally even if the chip maker delivers strong results. "The problem is Arm is going up ahead of the news," Jim said, noting that sharp pre-earnings gains can limit upside afterward. Investors will be watching for royalty growth and updates on new customers when Arm reports Wednesday evening. While Arm-based CPUs continue gaining traction with hyperscaler customers like fellow Club names Amazon and Alphabet, Jim emphasized that competition remains intense. "It's Intel , it's them [Arm], and it's AMD — and that's a very powerful series of enemies," he said. 3. Alphabet and Amazon "may be the two best" members of the Magnificent Seven , Jim said, adding that Nvidia still belongs in that conversation as well. Cramer said he is "so glad we own Amazon." He also called it "very right" that the Club re-bought Alphabet at the end of last year after exiting the stock in March 2025. The discussion came after reports that Anthropic committed to spend as much as $200 billion with Google Cloud over the next five years. Jim said he regrets not re-buying Advanced Micro...
Horizon Technology Finance ( HRZN ) declares $0.06/share monthly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 16.33% The company also announced a special monthly distributions of $0.03 per share payable in third quarter 2026. Both payable July 15; for shareholders of record June 17; ex-div June 17. Payable Aug 14; for shareholders of record July 16; ex-div July 16. Payable Sept. 15; for shareho...
Horizon Technology Finance ( HRZN ) declares $0.06/share monthly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 16.33% The company also announced a special monthly distributions of $0.03 per share payable in third quarter 2026. Both payable July 15; for shareholders of record June 17; ex-div June 17. Payable Aug 14; for shareholders of record July 16; ex-div July 16. Payable Sept. 15; for shareholders of record Aug. 17; ex-div Aug. 17. See HRZN Dividend Scorecard, Yield Chart, & Dividend Growth. More on Horizon Technology Finance Horizon Technology Finance: HTFC Is Not As Attractive As It Seems Horizon Technology Finance (HRZN) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript Horizon Technology Finance: A Textbook Case Of A Value Trap Horizon Technology Finance NII of $0.19 Horizon Technology Finance Q1 2026 Earnings Preview
Palantir Technologies (NasdaqGS:PLTR) reported its fastest revenue growth since listing after Q1 2026 results. First quarter revenue grew 85% year over year, driven by stronger U.S. government and commercial demand for its Artificial Intelligence Platform. Management said demand for the platform is now outstripping supply and raised full year guidance significantly. For investors tracking NasdaqGS...
Palantir Technologies (NasdaqGS:PLTR) reported its fastest revenue growth since listing after Q1 2026 results. First quarter revenue grew 85% year over year, driven by stronger U.S. government and commercial demand for its Artificial Intelligence Platform. Management said demand for the platform is now outstripping supply and raised full year guidance significantly. For investors tracking NasdaqGS:PLTR, this update comes with the stock at $135.91 and a very large 3 year return, alongside a...
Nikola Stojadinovic/E+ via Getty Images Investment Summary My previous investment thought on Equifax Inc. ( EFX ) was an upgrade to a buy rating because I was positive on the revised guidance and underlying momentum. Fast forward to today, I am downgrading EFX to hold. The Q1 2026 quarter was strong, but the setup is now less clean. Growth was helped heavily by mortgage, underlying 2026 guidance w...
Nikola Stojadinovic/E+ via Getty Images Investment Summary My previous investment thought on Equifax Inc. ( EFX ) was an upgrade to a buy rating because I was positive on the revised guidance and underlying momentum. Fast forward to today, I am downgrading EFX to hold. The Q1 2026 quarter was strong, but the setup is now less clean. Growth was helped heavily by mortgage, underlying 2026 guidance was not raised, and margins did not show clear operating leverage. I still like the business, especially EWS, but I do not think the near-term evidence supports staying bullish. 1Q26 Results Update This was a strong quarter at the headline level for EFX. Q1 2026 total revenue was up ~14% y/y to ~$1.65 billion, while organic constant-currency revenue growth came in at 13%. USIS (US Information Solutions) was the main driver, with revenue up ~21% y/y to $605.6 million. Workforce Solutions (EWS) also had a solid quarter, with revenue of $683.1 million, up 10.4% y/y, and organic growth of 10%. Within Workforce Solutions, Verification revenue grew 13.8% y/y to $571.4 million, while Employer Services declined 4% y/y to $111.7 million. International revenue was $360.2 million, up 11.3% y/y, but organic growth was only 4.5%. Profit-wise, adj. EBITDA was up ~13% y/y to $477.4 million, with an adj. EBITDA margin of 29%, down 39 bps y/y. Of all the segments, Workforce Solutions remained the highest-quality segment from a margin perspective, with adj. EBITDA of $357.3 million, up 15.2% y/y, and a 52.3% margin. USIS adj. EBITDA was $183.6 million, up 7.6% y/y, with a 30.3% margin. And lastly, International adj. EBITDA was $89.9 million, up 15.1% y/y, with a 25% margin. Adjusted cash EPS for the quarter was $1.86, up 21.6% y/y. Mortgage And EWS EFX’s equity story is still very much supported by mortgage and EWS. As you can see from how strong USIS growth was this quarter, it shows that EFX can print strong growth when mortgage activity improves. The logic here is that when more mortgage a...
Israel’s central bank accused the competition watchdog of making an “extreme and disproportionate” decision following a move to categorize the country’s top lenders as an oligopoly. At stake is a move by the Competition Authority to declare Israel’s five largest banks a “concentration group,” a legal term that grants it jurisdiction over the lenders’ retail operations and adds to routine scrutiny ...
Israel’s central bank accused the competition watchdog of making an “extreme and disproportionate” decision following a move to categorize the country’s top lenders as an oligopoly. At stake is a move by the Competition Authority to declare Israel’s five largest banks a “concentration group,” a legal term that grants it jurisdiction over the lenders’ retail operations and adds to routine scrutiny from the central bank. “The declaration harms regulatory certainty and could, therefore, deter investors from operating in Israel without generating any competitive benefit,” the Bank of Israel said in a statement on Wednesday. Israel’s two largest lenders — Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi Le-Israel — controlled just under 50% of the banking system’s assets at the end of 2024, Competition Commissioner Michal Cohen said. Together with Israel Discount Bank , Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd and First International Bank of Israel Ltd , the level rises to 98%, she added. All five banking groups are traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where their shares had little reaction to the news. Cohen said that, as a first step, banks would be issued with four directives that will take effect within a year. These include baring lenders from discriminating between clients when applying deposit rates, improving transparency on deposit remuneration and facilitating free transfers between banks. The intention is to give customers more bargaining power, “curbing bank practices that make it difficult to compare prices and to switch to competing banks and financial institutions,” Cohen said. The immediate focus is on the deposit market, but future moves could span further. The central bank said it had not consented to the directives as is legally required. While formal dialog took place, it said, the bank was not convinced “that the proposed instructions would yield competitive benefits exceeding their costs, or that systemic risks and consequences were considered.”