Unitree Robotics, the world's biggest humanoid robot maker, closed its first trading day in Shanghai up 460% from its IPO price, after briefly spiking nearly 630% intraday. The close valued the Hangzhou-based company at roughly $50 billion -- a debut that blew past the average 279% first-day pop for Chinese IPOs this year, and one that happened even as China's benchmark index fell 3% on the same day. For U.S. investors, it's the clearest signal yet that humanoid robotics is moving from lab demo to investable sector.The scale of investor demand was extraordinary: nearly 9.8 million retail accou...

Apple is separating itself from the rest of the Magnificent Seven, and the reason is unusual: it's spending less, not more, on artificial intelligence infrastructure. While Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to chips and data centers -- some of it funded through debt -- Apple's comparatively conservative capital spending has turned its stock into a hedge against the AI trade's volatility. That contrast has caught investor attention as the broader group wrestles with the cost of the AI buildout.The numbers explain why. Industry-wide AI-related c...

Target delivered its second straight quarter of encouraging results on Wednesday, sending shares up 4% as investors warmed to signs that the retailer's turnaround plan is finally taking hold. Net sales climbed 5.3% year-over-year, while comparable sales jumped 3.8% -- blowing past Wall Street's 2.4% estimate. The company also raised its full-year guidance, a signal that management believes the momentum is more than a one-quarter blip.The numbers get more interesting under the hood. Target's net income hit $1.88 billion, or $4.11 per share, roughly double the $935 million it posted a year earli...

Gold is staging a sharp comeback after months in the doldrums. The metal hit an all-time high of $5,354 an ounce in late January before sliding 25% over the following five months, dropping below $4,000 by mid-July. Since then it has reversed hard, climbing roughly 8% in under two weeks to trade near $4,400 -- and Wall Street thinks the move has further to run. UBS forecast last week that gold could reach $5,000 again in the first half of 2027, putting it back within striking distance of its record. The catalyst is a shift in Fed rate expectations. A weak July jobs report has traders pricing in...

The bond market just sent a loud signal that investors can't ignore. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond climbed to 5.327% this week, its highest level in 19 years, as stalled U.S.-Iran talks pushed oil prices above $90 a barrel and reignited inflation fears. The 10-year note yield rose to 4.739%, and the selloff wasn't confined to the U.S. -- Japanese, German, and French long-dated bonds all hit multi-year or multi-decade highs at the same time. Several forces are converging at once. Oil's jump above $90 is the immediate trigger, threatening to filter into everything from diesel to fo...

Lowe's delivered a mixed report card Wednesday that captures where the U.S. consumer stands right now: still spending, but far more selectively. The home improvement giant topped Wall Street's profit target for the quarter, yet management quietly nudged its full-year guidance down to the bottom of its previous range -- a signal that the housing slowdown squeezing its business isn't easing anytime soon. The numbers tell the story. Lowe's posted adjusted earnings of $4.40 per share, ahead of the $4.22 analysts expected, while revenue came in at $25.96 billion, slightly below the $26.16 billion f...

Reddit officially joined the S&P 500 index on Tuesday, replacing AvalonBay Communities as the apartment REIT merges with Equity Residential. The announcement sent Reddit shares surging more than 12% on the Friday before inclusion, closing at $178.09 as investors positioned ahead of forced buying from index funds that must now hold the stock to track the benchmark.JPMorgan estimates the inclusion creates demand for roughly 16.7 million Reddit shares, worth close to $3 billion at Friday's closing price. That figure represents about 8.1% of Reddit's fully diluted share count and is nearly thr...

Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius told clients this week that a Federal Reserve rate hike at the September 15-16 meeting has become "very unlikely," arguing that markets remain too hawkish even as the economic data softens. His call landed just as CME FedWatch odds of a 25 basis point hike fell to roughly 30%, down sharply from above 60% earlier in the month. Bitcoin and U.S. stock futures both ticked higher on the news, a sign traders are already leaning into Goldman's read.Hatzius pointed to three straight months of underwhelming data — soft retail sales, weaker payrolls, and cooling...

Qualcomm stock rocketed as much as 20% intraday this week after the company revealed something Wall Street wasn't expecting: a custom AI chip agreement with a major, unnamed hyperscaler. The stock traded as high as $180.97 during the session, a stunning move for a company whose headline earnings numbers actually came in soft. Investors clearly cared more about where Qualcomm is going than where it's been.The deal marks Qualcomm's formal entry into custom silicon for cloud data centers, a market long dominated by Nvidia, AMD, and in-house chips from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Management sta...

Brent crude broke above $90 a barrel Tuesday for the first time since late July after the fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran officially lapsed, with President Trump ruling out any extension and threatening to bomb Oman if it interferes with efforts to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The escalation matters well beyond the Middle East — roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil normally moves through that narrow waterway, and traders are now pricing in the risk of a prolonged disruption rather than a brief spike.U.S. crude climbed 2.6% to settle at $84.50 a barr...