China posted its slowest quarterly economic growth since 2022 in the second quarter of 2026, falling short of Beijing's own full-year growth target range of 4.5% to 5% — the least ambitious goal China has set in decades. The miss was driven by a slump in domestic investment and persistently soft consumer demand, even as the export sector had shown relative resilience earlier in the year. Alongside the GDP data, retail sales figures disappointed, and the property sector continued to drag on both household confidence and broader economic activity. The combined picture is one of an economy losing...

June's Consumer Price Index report delivered a genuine upside surprise: headline CPI fell 0.4% for the month — the largest single-month drop since April 2020 — pulling the annual rate down to 3.5% from May's 4.2%. Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was flat month-over-month and fell to a 2.6% annual rate, well below the 2.9% consensus. The cooldown was broad-based. Shelter costs — the largest CPI component — rose just 0.1%, against a typical monthly pace of 0.3%. Services prices were flat. Goods prices fell. By most measures, it was a clean print. Markets responded with ...

PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ: PYPL) spiked more than 17% on Wednesday, closing at $55.52 per share, after reports emerged that the struggling digital payments giant is set to be taken private in a deal worth approximately $53 billion. According to Reuters, fintech powerhouse Stripe and private equity firm Advent International are teaming up to acquire PayPal at $60.50 per share — a premium of roughly 27.7% over the stock's prior close of $47.37. If the deal proceeds, Stripe and Advent would take equal ownership of the company. Shortly after, CNBC reported that Block Inc. — the payments company behi...

AI memory stocks have been among the market's biggest winners — and now they're pulling back hard. Micron (MU) surged over 700% in the past year after revealing it had sold out its high-bandwidth memory production through all of 2026. Western Digital (WDC) soared 800% in the same stretch. Then this month, both stocks fell sharply. Micron is down roughly 20% from its June high. Western Digital is off 26%. That kind of correction rattles investors and triggers the obvious question: Is the AI memory trade over, or is this a healthy pause? The answer may not depend on earnings calls or supply chai...

The first phase of the AI boom made fortunes for companies selling software, data centers, and cloud compute. The next phase may reward a completely different set of players — the hardware makers powering AI that lives inside real-world devices. Microsoft's new AI laptops powered by the Snapdragon X2 chip are shipping now. Nvidia and Hugging Face just launched open robotics tools. Mobileye is transitioning from chip supplier to robotaxi operator. Applied Materials partnered with EssilorLuxottica to build AI-powered smart eyewear. These aren't isolated announcements — they're proof points that ...

SpaceX's public stock (SPCX) is down from its IPO highs — and the next big move higher may have almost nothing to do with the company's business. That's the unusual position retail investors now find themselves in after one of the most hyped IPOs in years. SPCX hit an all-time intraday high of $225.64 shortly after going public, then fell sharply as a $20 billion bond offering flooded the market. As of mid-July, it's trading below $140 — meaning nearly every investor who bought after opening day is underwater.Here's what's driving the expected recovery: mechanics, not fundamentals. On July 7, ...

When the Fundrise Innovation Fund (ticker: VCX) listed on the NYSE on March 19, 2026, it gave ordinary retail investors something genuinely rare: a publicly traded vehicle holding private stakes in Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Databricks — all in a single ticker. The debut was extraordinary. VCX opened around $19 per share, briefly rocketed past $400 in the weeks that followed, then settled back to the mid-$60s range as early enthusiasm faded. That trajectory — stratospheric peak, sharp correction, still-impressive long-term gain from the launch price — has since become the defining story of...

A wave of selling hit AI-adjacent stocks last week, triggered by a surprise revenue miss from IBM and spreading fast across the enterprise tech sector. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna revealed that clients spent the final weeks of June pulling capital out of software and consulting deals to panic-buy supply-constrained servers and memory ahead of expected price hikes. That announcement sent IBM shares down more than 20% — the stock’s worst single-day drop since the 1987 crash — and dragged Workday (WDAY), ServiceNow (NOW), Salesforce (CRM), and Accenture (ACN) lower in sympathy. The selloff is being ca...

June’s inflation report handed markets a genuine surprise to the upside. The Consumer Price Index fell 0.4% for the month — the biggest monthly drop since April 2020 — pulling the annual rate down to 3.5% from May’s 4.2%. Economists had expected a much smaller decline. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, came in flat for the month and its annual rate dropped to 2.6%, well below the 2.9% consensus. Shelter costs — typically the stickiest part of the index — rose just 0.1%, about one-third of the usual pace. By nearly every measure, it was a broad, genuine cooldown in price pressures.Her...

Shopify stock is getting renewed attention from Wall Street. On July 13, Jefferies upgraded shares from Hold to Buy and raised its price target to $160 from $140 — a move that signals growing confidence in the e-commerce platform's ability to capture market share as the consumer environment improves. The upgrade arrives after a prolonged rough patch for SHOP, which has traded well below its 2021 highs even as broader tech has rebounded strongly in 2026. But the valuation reset, combined with a string of new enterprise deals and AI-powered merchant tools, is convincing analysts that the risk-re...