Home Depot delivered better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results Tuesday, but the home improvement giant's own executives admit the housing market remains "frozen" — a signal worth watching for anyone invested in retail, housing, or consumer discretionary stocks. The company posted revenue of $47.9 billion, up 5.7% from a year earlier, and net income climbed to $4.77 billion, or $4.79 per share, compared with $4.55 billion a year ago. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $4.92, topping Wall Street expectations on both the top and bottom lines.The standout number was comparable s...

European Central Bank economists just delivered a blunt warning to investors riding the artificial intelligence boom: history says a sharp correction is coming, and it may not matter whether AI valuations are justified. In a research note published this week, ECB staff economists argued that U.S. and European stocks scaling record highs on AI enthusiasm are following the same script as past technology manias — the 19th-century railway boom, 1920s electrification, and the 1990s dot-com bubble. In every one of those cases, a boom eventually gave way to a bust, regardless of whether the und...

Wells Fargo is betting big on Texas's financial rise -- and on Huntington Bancshares to capitalize on it. The firm initiated coverage of the Ohio-based regional bank this week with an overweight rating and a $23 price target, implying about 28% upside from Friday's close of $17.91. Analyst Mike Mayo dubbed the phenomenon "Y'all Street," pointing to Texas's outsized economic growth as a reason regional banks with a strong presence there deserve a fresh look from investors who may have written off the sector.The numbers behind the call are striking: Texas's economy is now larger than Canada's, t...

Jefferies believes cancer-screening company Freenome is on the verge of a major growth phase, initiating coverage this week with a buy rating and a $17 price target -- implying roughly 47% upside from Friday's closing price. The call comes as Freenome prepares to broadly commercialize its diagnostic services this fall, a milestone analyst Tycho Peterson says could unlock significant value for shareholders after years of clinical development. "We see FRNM as uniquely positioned from a development and commercial standpoint, with a multi-year penetration ramp ahead," Peterson wrote in his note in...

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller significantly ramped up his bets on artificial-intelligence-linked stocks in the second quarter, according to a regulatory filing from his Duquesne Family Office released this week. The timing is notable: the buying spree happened just before AI and semiconductor shares suffered a sharp reversal in July, when investors began questioning stretched valuations and the pace of AI infrastructure spending. Druckenmiller, who rose to fame helping engineer George Soros's legendary bet against the British pound in 1992, is one of the most closely watched macro...

The open-source AI race just got more crowded. Alibaba launched a new AI model on Monday, Qwen3.8-27B, built to run directly on laptops, and released the full weights of its most powerful model, Qwen3.8 Max, making it freely downloadable. The move lands just a week after Meta announced its own laptop-ready open-source models under the name Muse Glimmer, as the U.S. tech giant tries to position itself as the American alternative to more proprietary labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.The numbers suggest Alibaba already has real developer traction. The company says Qwen3.8-27B matches the performance...

Peter Thiel's hedge fund just made a splashy new bet on South American energy. A fresh SEC filing published Friday shows Thiel Macro LLC built a stake worth about $76 million in Vista Energy, Argentina's largest independent oil producer, sending the stock up nearly 4.3% in Monday's premarket trading. The position, made up of almost 1.2 million American Depositary Shares as of the second quarter, is now Thiel's second-largest disclosed holding behind Amazon.The filing reveals more than just one trade — it shows a broader energy and power thesis. Six of Thiel Macro's seven new positions disclose...

Wall Street's so-called “fear gauge” just sank to its lowest level of the year, and strategists are warning investors not to get too comfortable. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, dropped to 14.2 on Friday even as the S&P 500 sits roughly 16% higher year-to-date and keeps notching fresh record highs. A low VIX typically signals calm markets, but this time it may be masking growing complacency right before one of the market's historically rockiest stretches of the year.The numbers behind the warning are stark. BTIG's chief market technician, Jonathan Krinsky, points out that in every mid-t...

Consumers just sent Wall Street a warning shot. U.S. retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the steepest monthly decline in more than a year, according to Census Bureau data released Friday. The drop caught economists off guard — many had expected a modest gain — and followed a much smaller 0.2% rise in June. Major indexes reacted unevenly: the Nasdaq slipped roughly 0.5% while the small-cap Russell 2000 actually outperformed with a 0.4% gain, a split that signals investors are rotating rather than fleeing broadly.The details point to a genuine pullback rather than noise. The decline was led by weake...

A single executive order just rewired the drone industry's stock chart. President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on foreign-made drones and drone components Friday, and the market reacted instantly: Unusual Machines popped 25%, Red Cat Holdings jumped roughly 8%, and defense names AeroVironment and Kratos climbed as well. The White House framed the move as a national security necessity, warning that outsourcing drone parts — especially from China — creates unacceptable cybersecurity risk for a technology now central to modern warfare.The tariff structure is aggressive by design. Large drones...