Bank of America delivered one of the strongest quarterly results of the current earnings season on Tuesday. The Charlotte-based megabank reported Q2 2026 revenue of $31.6 billion — a 15% jump year-over-year — while earnings per share came in at $1.21, a 34% surge from the same period in 2025. CEO Brian Moynihan called it a standout quarter driven by broad-based strength across nearly every business line, and the results are raising the bar for peers still to report this week. The market's response is being watched closely as a bellwether for the broader financial sector's second-half trajector...

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a cloud software story. The next phase of the AI boom is happening in the physical world — inside robots, smart glasses, autonomous vehicles, and edge devices that can see, hear, and act in real time. This shift, which analysts are calling "Physical AI," represents a fundamentally different investment opportunity than the data center and chip plays that have driven markets over the past two years. And the proof points are piling up fast. In recent weeks, Microsoft's AI laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 began shipping to consumers. Nvidia par...

Warren Buffett made a landmark personal and financial decision on Tuesday: for the first time in 20 years, he omitted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from his annual charitable gifts of Berkshire Hathaway stock. Instead, the 95-year-old chairman directed all of this year's donations to four family-linked foundations — donating 9 million Class B Berkshire shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million shares each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the Novo Foundation. At current Berkshire Class B prices, the total donation is worth several b...

IBM delivered one of the most brutal earnings surprises of the season on Tuesday. The company released preliminary second-quarter results that badly missed Wall Street expectations, sending shares plunging more than 23% in premarket trading. IBM reported adjusted earnings of $2.93 per share on revenue of $17.2 billion — versus analyst expectations of $3.01 per share and $17.86 billion in revenue, according to FactSet. That is a $660 million revenue shortfall, driven by a confluence of market disruption and operational stumbles that CEO Arvind Krishna candidly acknowledged. Krishna pointed squ...

Inflation just delivered a surprise gift to investors. The Consumer Price Index fell 0.4% in June — its biggest single-month drop since April 2020 — bringing the annual inflation rate down to 3.5%, well below the 3.8% economists had expected. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, was flat on the month, pushing its 12-month rate to 2.6%. Both figures came in significantly below Wall Street forecasts and below May's readings, signaling a meaningful turn in the inflation story that markets have been waiting for all year. The biggest driver was energy. The energy index plummeted 5.7% in Jun...

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller delivered a carefully worded but unmistakably hawkish speech in New York on Monday that directly challenges the market's expectations for interest rate cuts in 2026. Waller acknowledged that inflation has remained stubbornly above the Fed's 2% target and explicitly stated that a rate hike remains "an equally plausible" scenario alongside one where inflation eventually cools. His remarks arrive at a sensitive moment: investors had been quietly pricing in the possibility of rate cuts later this year, and Waller's speech is a direct challenge to that th...

Oil markets were jolted on Monday after President Trump declared the United States the self-proclaimed "Guardian of the Hormuz Strait" and announced a 20% fee on all cargo transiting the critical waterway. West Texas Intermediate crude spiked 7% on the news, pushing through $75 a barrel, while Brent crude nearly touched $80. Trump's post on Truth Social also confirmed the reimposition of a blockade of Iranian ports near the strait, escalating a conflict that had already been straining oil markets since the U.S.-Iran war began in late February. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the wo...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company just delivered a number that should make every technology investor sit up. TSMC reported June revenue of NT$442.68 billion — a staggering 67.9% increase year over year. For the full first half of 2026, TSMC's total revenue hit 2.4 trillion New Taiwan dollars, equivalent to roughly $75 billion — a 35.6% jump over the first half of 2025. The world's largest contract chipmaker is now on track to report its full second-quarter results on Thursday, July 17, and analysts already know those numbers will blow past the company's own guidance of $40.2 billion. ...

Biogen is heading into one of the most significant weeks in its recent history — and Truist Securities just stepped in with a timely upgrade. The investment bank lifted Biogen to buy from hold on Monday, raising its 12-month price target to $235 from $190. That implies roughly 18% upside from Friday's close. The catalyst: new Phase 2 data from Biogen's investigational Alzheimer's drug is set to drop on Tuesday, July 14, at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in London. If the data is strong, the stock could move significantly. And the signals heading in are unusually po...

JPMorgan just handed American Express one of the more compelling upgrade stories of the summer. The bank lifted AXP from neutral to overweight on Monday, with a $400 price target — implying roughly 14% upside from current levels. The thesis isn't complicated: in a market rattled by the Iran war's revival and the oil price shock that comes with it, American Express's customer base is uniquely insulated. That's a rare quality right now, and JPMorgan thinks Wall Street isn't pricing it in fully. The core argument centers on who American Express actually serves. Unlike mass-market credit card iss...