The negotiations behind these deals have been running for months. What changed is the venue, and that detail says something about how Seoul wants this relationship read going forward.

Chief Presidential Secretary for Policy Kim Yong-beom told reporters on Thursday, July 23, that the agreements would likely include new long-term memory chip supply deals, strategic investment partnerships, and memorandums of understanding, according to Bloomberg.

He declined to disclose the value of the deals ahead of company announcements. Kim called the July 24-25 presidential trip a catalyst that helped close talks, which had dragged on between Korean firms and their U.S. counterparts, Reuters noted.

What Seoul actually confirmed

Lee began the trip in San Francisco on Friday, July 24, where he attended an AI summit and held separate meetings with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Broadcom’s Hock Tan.

Samsung Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also attended, alongside Hyundai Motor’s Euisun Chung and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin.

Kim said the deals build on an investment plan Seoul revealed last month, worth at least $880 billion and backed by Samsung, SK Group, and Naver.

The initiative aims to cement South Korea’s position in the global AI supply chain by building a massive domestic mega-cluster for memory chip manufacturing and AI data centers. He added that American technology companies already account for 80% to 90% of the underlying orders driving that expansion.

That figure explains why this trip reads more like a formalization exercise than a new courtship, especially after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Samsung and SK Hynix earlier this month to expand memory production on U.S. soil, according to Bloomberg.

The timing lines up with SK Hynix’s Nasdaq debut

Here’s the part that other coverage of the trip has mostly skipped: The announcement lands two weeks after SK Hynix completed a $26.5 billion American depositary receipt offering, the largest first-time U.S. share sale by a foreign company.

The listing gave American investors direct access to the world’s leading producer of high-bandwidth memory chips for the first time.

Related: After beating Samsung, tech titan files for IPO

Before July, buying SK Hynix meant trading on the Korea Exchange during Seoul hours.

That access changes how this week’s news will land. A Silicon Valley supply deal used to be a story that mostly moved Korean trading screens overnight. Now it moves a Nasdaq-listed stock that American fund managers can buy the moment the headline crosses.

July 24 trading shows how fast that sensitivity has become

Samsung and SK Hynix (SKHY) shares swung sharply through the session.

Both stocks opened lower after an overnight Wall Street sell-off tied to renewed Middle East tensions dragged the Kospi down nearly 5%, triggering a temporary halt on program selling, according to Seoul Economic Daily.

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By the close, Samsung had climbed 7.51% and SK Hynix had gained 8.53%, according to Bloomberg market data, as the deal news overtook the earlier macro jitters.

That reversal is the real story for investors. Korean memory stocks used to trade mostly on domestic sentiment and U.S. chip earnings. They now move on South Korean diplomacy too, with a meaningful slice of that ownership sitting in American hands for the first time.

The structural shift investors should track

Washington has spent months pushing Samsung and SK Hynix toward deeper U.S. manufacturing commitments, and Seoul has spent that same stretch insisting its expansion was demand-driven rather than coerced.

The Silicon Valley trip narrows that gap into paperwork. It also marks the first time a Korean chip diplomacy story and a Nasdaq listed equity story are the same trade, which means future announcements like this one will move markets in Seoul and New York at the same moment, not on a delay.

Related: SK Hynix denies Intel Ohio fab deal, but the market didn’t care

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This year looks different. The gains are smaller, debates are louder, and longtime investors are now asking new questions about what’s next for the world’s most valuable chipmaker. Nothing about the business has broken down so far, which is exactly what makes the pause worth examining.

Nvidia stock is barely beating the S&P 500 in 2026

Nvidia shares have gained 12% so far in 2026, Motley Fool reported. That is barely ahead of the S&P 500 index over the same stretch, a gap far narrower than investors have grown used to seeing from this stock.

Nvidia stock climbed 239% in 2023, 171% in 2024, and 39% in 2025, three straight years of returns most companies never see once, let alone in a session. Since late July 2021, shares are still up 978% overall, a figure few investors anywhere on Wall Street can match.

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TheStreet reported Nvidia closed at $212.06 on July 22, up 2.3% on the day, tied to Alphabet’s own capital spending update. The move came as Google lifted its 2026 capex forecast to as much as $205 billion, a figure that reassured investors watching for signs of intense AI spending.

Nvidia has still managed to hold its own against the broader tech selloff this month. Its stock is down about 16% from its May record high, a milder pullback than several of its semiconductor peers have absorbed. Micron and other memory chip names have actually outpaced Nvidia this year, spreading the AI trade across a wider set of stocks than before.

Record revenue tells a different story

While the stock has cooled, Nvidia’s underlying business has not. Revenue jumped 85% year-over-year in its fiscal 2026 second quarter, ended April 26, reaching a fresh record of $81.6 billion and beating what was already an aggressive set of Wall Street estimates.

Demand for AI computing power remains the driving force. Hyperscalers, the large cloud companies building data centers for training and running AI models, continue spending at a pace few predicted even a year ago, and Nvidia sits directly upstream of nearly all of it.

Chief financial officer Colette Kress told analysts on the latest earnings call that AI infrastructure spending is on track to reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by the end of the decade.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has echoed that confidence publicly, telling reporters in Seoul on June 8 that investors should treat any pullback as a buying opportunity, according to an interview recap as reported by TheStreet. “We’re at the beginning of it, and whatever happened to the stock market, you should be very happy because now you can buy at a discount,” Huang told reporters in Seoul. Huang pointed to roughly $500 billion in AI chip bookings covering 2025 and 2026 combined, as TheStreet reported.

Wall Street strategists have started treating Nvidia as something of a barometer for the entire AI trade. Nvidia functions as a stress test for the sector, since it usually captures the biggest share of corporate AI spending before anyone else does, making its results a useful early read on the health of the broader buildout.

Wall Street debates Nvidia’s valuation reset

Slower stock gains along with record revenue have left Nvidia looking unusually cheap by its own recent standards. The stock now trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 23.6, just a 10% premium to the S&P 500 index, a gap that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago.

That marks a real shift. Nvidia spent 13 years trading at a steep valuation premium above the broader market, a pattern that only recently broke, according to an earlier report from March. Some analysts have gone further, framing the reset as a genuine test of whether the AI trade has peaked.

Not every analyst reads the reset the same way. According to TheStreet, Wedbush’s Dan Ives has set one of the boldest 2026 targets of $250 for Nvidia, representing a 33% gain from the $187.67 price at the time the target was set, arguing capex estimates have consistently underestimated the actual AI buildout.

Meanwhile, BofA analyst Vivek Arya raised his target to $320 from $300 on May 13, pointing to a data center systems market he now estimates could reach $1.7 trillion from its prior estimate of $1.4 trillion by 2030, 24/7 reported.

Other AI-linked stocks have outrun Nvidia this year, with Micron among the standout gainers as investors spread their AI bets more widely across chipmakers, memory suppliers, and networking names. That broadening trade is part of why Nvidia’s own gains look modest by comparison, even with its business performing at record levels.

What comes next for Nvidia stock

Wall Street’s numbers hint at the deceleration ahead. Sell-side consensus estimates call for Nvidia’s revenue to rise 219% between fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2029, a meaningfully slower pace than the roughly 700% growth notched over the prior three years combined.

That is not necessarily bad news. A 219% multi-year growth rate would still be extraordinary for a company already generating record quarterly revenue, and Nvidia’s valuation has come down to reflect a more measured outlook rather than a business in trouble. Investors chasing the next parabolic move may be disappointed, but those looking for durable growth at a reasonable price now have more room to work with.

Nvidia’s next earnings report is expected August 26, and it will likely settle some of this debate one way or another. Until then, investors are left weighing a stock trading close to market multiples against a business still growing faster than almost anything else on Wall Street.

Related: Nvidia CEO doubles down on AI and stock market verdict

The post Nvidia stock is doing something it hasn’t done in years appeared first on Risk Front Digest.

After the announcement, the stock fell.

Shares dropped 6.4% on the day of the news, even though the company raised full-year revenue and cash flow guidance and posted record orders.

Morgan Stanley looked at the same quarter and moved in the opposite direction, raising its price target on the stock from $1,250 to $1,350 while keeping an Overweight rating.

The stock recovered sharply on July 23, trading around $1,028.86, up 4.45% on the session and up 51.40% from the start of the year.

What Morgan Stanley saw that sellers did not

Morgan Stanley analyst David Arcaro called the drop a knee-jerk reaction and a significant overreaction. His July 23 note put the decline at roughly 9%.

His reasoning centers on one line item that spooked the market: GE Vernova said it is taking steps to reach 30 GW of annual gas turbine manufacturing capacity by 2030.

That’s up from its previous 24 GW target for 2028.

Some investors interpret a capacity increase as a warning about future oversupply. That means too many turbines chasing too few buyers, which usually affects prices.

Arcaro read it as the opposite. He argued the demand signals in the quarter push the oversupply debate out by several years, to 2032 or beyond.

The order book behind the capacity call

The gap between those two calls comes down to demand. Most of that future capacity is already under contract.

According to GE Vernova, the company signed 20 GW of new gas equipment contracts in the second quarter, above its 10 GW to 15 GW guidance.

Morgan Stanley calculates that GE Vernova has signed 77 GW of new gas contracts over the last twelve months, a book-to-bill ratio of about 2.5 times. 

Book-to-bill compares new orders to shipments, so 2.5 means the company is signing two and a half times more work than it is delivering.

Arcaro’s note lays out where that capacity stands today:

• The higher 2029 turbine capacity is already sold out
• Most of 2030 capacity is expected to be sold out by year-end
• About half of 2031 capacity is already committed at the new 30 GW level
• Slot reservations are now pricing near $3,000 per kilowatt of implied combined cycle plant pricing, above last quarter

Selling out 2029 before building 2030 capacity is not the profile of a company heading toward an oversupply.

The earnings miss that drove the selloff

GE Vernova posted earnings per share of $2.47 against the expected $3.17. That’s a miss of about 22%, as LevelFields reported. 

The company’s revenue rose 22% to $11.1 billion, beating estimates.

Wind, on the other hand, was the drag. 

Segment EBITDAlosses widened to $275 million from $165 million a year earlier, and wind orders fell about 40%, according to the company’s SEC filing.

William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer said that investors had expected another EBITDA beat with margin expansion, and not getting one likely contributed to the selling, Reuters noted.

That’s the tension in this stock. Gas turbines are compounding, wind keeps losing money, and each quarter, the market picks which one it cares about more.

Where the raised guidance actually shows up

GE Vernova’s management responded to the quarter by lifting its outlook for the second consecutive time this year.

Full-year revenue guidance moved up by $1 billion at the midpoint. It is now $45.5 billion to $46.5 billion. 

Free cash flow guidance nearly doubled, from a prior range of $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion up to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion.

That free cash flow raise is the number worth analyzing, because it nearly doubled in a single quarter.

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Customers reserving turbine slots for 2030 and 2031 are paying deposits now, which showed up as $5.1 billion of free cash flow in the quarter alone.

That’s more than the company generated in all of 2025.

Morgan Stanley raised its revenue and EBITDA projections by $8 billion and $2 billion against its prior model.

It now assumes 30 GW of shipments in 2030 at a price of roughly $900 per kilowatt.

Not every analyst agreed

Not every analyst agreed with Morgan Stanley’s call.

Citi analyst Andrew Kaplowitzcut his target on GE Vernova to $1,125 from $1,219 and kept a Neutral rating.

The difference between a $1,125 and $1,350 target is huge. 

Related: Goldman Sachs sees an oil glut coming, but don’t expect much relief at the pump

Citi and Morgan Stanley are looking at the same 2030 capacity and reaching opposite conclusions.

Options pricing suggests the market leans toward Citi’s caution. Morgan Stanley itself puts the odds of the stock actually reaching $1,350 within a year at just 13%.

What the data center story adds

Electrification is where GE Vernova touches the AI buildout most directly.

Data center orders reached more than $5 billion from the start of the year, more than double the total for all of 2025, GE Vernova confirmed. 

Electrification revenue grew 29% organically to $3.6 billion.

That intersection is not limited to GE Vernova. Rising power demand from data centers is reshaping the market for natural gas itself, which is on track to pass oil as the top U.S. energy source by 2030.

Second-quarter electrification orders of $6.3 billion came in slightly below consensus, though large orders in that segment tend to land unevenly across quarters.

What has to go right from here

Several things still need to happen before GE Vernova grows into a $1,350 valuation.

• Wind losses have to narrow rather than widen further, since the segment offset much of the strength elsewhere this quarter
• The company has to physically build 30 GW of capacity by 2030 without cost overruns
• Backlog has to convert to shipped revenue on schedule
• Pricing above $3,000 per kilowatt has to hold as capacity expands
• Tariff costs, currently guided at $100 million to $200 million for 2026, have to stay contained

GE Vernova’s December analyst day is the next scheduled checkpoint, where its management is expected to refresh 2028 and 2030 guidance.

What this means for investors

Anyone buying GE Vernova today is paying for turbines that will ship in 2030 and 2031, and the deposits already collected on those slots are the strongest evidence that the orders are real.

The risk is not that demand disappears. It is that execution slips or that wind losses keep eating the profits the equipment business generates.

At about $1,029, the stock trades below both price targets. It is closer to Citi’s more cautious $1,125 than to Morgan Stanley’s $1,350. 

Investors who want confirmation before committing capital can wait for third-quarter results to show whether wind losses narrow and whether the 2030 order book fills as GE Vernova projects.

Related: JPMorgan resets oil price target for rest of 2026

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The decision comes as retailers increasingly shed underperforming brands to focus investment on their strongest businesses amid softer consumer spending and higher operating costs.

The latest decision adds to a growing list of retailers making similar moves.

Calida Group sells Cosabella

Calida Group has sold Cosabella to New York-based brand management and private equity firm Crown Brands Group through an Asset Purchase Agreement that closed on July 23, 2026.

The transaction includes the Cosabella trademark, related intellectual property rights, and the inventory. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Crown Brands Group specializes in acquiring consumer brands and expanding their reach through licensing partnerships, retail distribution, and long-term brand development.

Calida Group acquired Cosabella for $80 million in 2022 as part of an effort to strengthen its department store and digital businesses across the U.S. and Europe.

Founded in Miami in 1983, Cosabella is known for its Italian-inspired luxury lingerie.

Why did Calida Group sell Cosabella?

Founded in 1941, Switzerland-based Calida Group owns and operates premium apparel and intimate apparel brands.

The company has steadily simplified its portfolio in recent years. After owning as many as seven brands, it has been divesting businesses since 2020 and now focuses primarily on Calida and Aubade, according to its website.

In 2024, Cosabella underwent a major restructuring that included repositioning the brand and implementing cost-cutting measures to improve performance. However, those efforts failed to reverse its decline and ultimately weighed on the group’s overall results.

According to Calida Group’s half-year report 2026, net sales fell nearly 8% year over year, while net income declined roughly 12%.

Cosabella’s net sales dropped approximately 37% to 4.3 million Swiss francs (about $5.25 million), accounting for just 4.6% of the group’s total revenue.

The company said the first half of 2026 was marked by a persistently challenging retail environment, with performance slightly below expectations. It cited weaker consumer confidence, ongoing economic uncertainty, and heightened price sensitivity, particularly across European markets, as key factors weighing on demand.

Selling Cosabella marks the latest step in the company’s multi-year effort to simplify operations and improve profitability after several years of portfolio restructuring.

“With the sale of Cosabella, the Calida Group is further simplifying its brand portfolio and reinforces its focus on the strategic development of its core brands, Calida and Aubade,” said Calida Group CEO Thomas Stöcklin in the company’s shareholder letter.

“At the same time, the transaction creates additional operational and financial flexibility to further develop the brands and strengthen their positioning in the premium segment in a targeted manner.”

What’s next for Calida Group and Cosabella?

Looking ahead, Calida Group expects consumer sentiment to remain subdued across core markets while anticipating continued structural changes throughout the retail distribution landscape.

“We are confident that the strategic and operational measures we have initiated will gain increasing traction,” said Stöcklin. “Our focus remains on systematically delivering on our strategy.”

Here’s some of my previous coverage of store closures:

• Former retail giant closes more stores
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• 88-year-old retailer closing 75 stores, slows expansion

For 2026, the company projects improved operating contributions from its Calida and Aubade brands, as well as an operating EBIT margin of more than 6% of sales.

“The completion of the transaction represents a further step towards simplifying the group structure and focusing on the Calida Group’s core brands,” Stöcklin added.

Under its new ownership, Crown Brands Group will oversee Cosabella’s global brand strategy, marketing, and licensing through a licensing-focused operating model.

“Cosabella gives Crown a clear leadership position in premium intimates, and it validates the model we set out to build: acquire authentic heritage brands, pair them with best-in-class operating partners, and invest in their next chapter of growth,” said Crown Brands Group CEO Raymond Dayan, WWD reported.

“Intimates is our first vertical, and Cosabella strengthens our foundation there as we look ahead to new categories.”

Crown Brands Group plans to expand Cosabella’s presence through department stores, specialty boutiques, e-commerce, and international markets.

Currently, about 85% of Cosabella’s business comes from the U.S., while international markets account for the remaining 15%. Dayan also said opening freestanding stores, particularly overseas, is under consideration, as the brand currently operates no standalone retail locations.

The acquisition gives Crown Brands Group an established luxury intimates brand to expand globally, while allowing Calida Group to continue narrowing its focus on its remaining core businesses as both companies pursue very different growth strategies in an increasingly challenging retail environment.

Related: Sportswear giant continues store closures nationwide

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The stock fell 6.5% the next morning. Capital expenditures came in at $44.9 billion for a single quarter. Free cash flow turned negative. Most of the net income surge came from a one-time gain on the Anthropic stake. Strip that out and investors were left looking at a company spending at a rate that makes even strong revenue growth feel like it may not be enough.

Microsoft (MSFT) reports July 29 and Meta reports July 30. The next week is effectively a live test of whether the AI trade’s math actually works.

What Alphabet’s Q2 results reveal about the AI trade’s biggest risk

The Alphabet (GOOGL) reaction captures the problem in one quarter. Cloud revenue grew faster than at any point in the company’s history. Investors sold the stock anyway, CNBC reported.

The issue isn’t whether AI is generating revenue. It’s whether the capital required to generate that revenue is sustainable, and whether the returns will ever justify the scale of investment.

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Forty-four billion dollars in quarterly capex is not a small number. Annualized, that’s close to $180 billion from Alphabet alone.

When you add Microsoft, Meta (META), and Amazon (AMZN), the combined spending for 2026 is running toward $725 billion, with analysts projecting it could cross $1 trillion in 2027, CNBC reported.

The question the market is now pricing into every print is how long before the revenue catches up, as TheStreet reported ahead of Alphabet’s earnings.

The gap between AI spending and AI revenue that investors are watching

The capex-to-revenue gap is the central tension in the AI trade right now. Sequoia analyst David Cahn has calculated that there is roughly a $600 billion annual gap between what hyperscalers are spending on AI infrastructure and what the AI ecosystem generates in actual sales, Forbes reported.

Goldman Sachs has noted that to justify the scale of investment, hyperscalers would collectively need to generate more than $1 trillion in annual profits, more than double current consensus estimates, as TheStreet reported.

According to Allianz Research, the divergence between AI capital spending and revenue growth is running at 46%, already wider than the 32% divergence seen during the 2001 telecom cycle that preceded years of pain in tech stocks.

Michael Heinrich, co-founder and CEO of 0G Labs, which builds decentralized AI infrastructure, described the dynamic plainly in an interview with TheStreet:

“When the capital going into a technology outruns the revenue coming out of it by that margin, valuations are pricing perfection.”

Alphabet’s results were exceptional. And still, free cash flow went negative. That’s what “pricing perfection” looks like in practice: a quarter that would have been a strong earnings beat in any other sector, and a stock that still dropped because the bar for AI spending to produce proportional returns keeps moving higher.

How the AI rally compares to the dot-com era and where it diverges

The comparison to the late 1990s is now coming from serious voices.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said earlier this month that AI spending may not “pay off the way you expect and the timetable you expect.”

He drew a direct parallel to the internet boom, where the technology proved transformative but the timeline disappointed nearly everyone who priced it in early.

Heinrich sees both the parallel and where it breaks.

“The similarity is the reflexive bidding up of anything with the label attached, well ahead of proven business models. The difference is that the underlying technology this time is already generating real usage and real cash flows, so this is less a fiction problem and more a physics and economics problem,” he added.

The dot-com era was full of companies with no path to revenue. AI has actual enterprise customers paying for actual products. Google Cloud at 82% growth is not a fiction.

The risk isn’t that the technology doesn’t work. It’s that the cost of delivering it at scale may not produce returns proportional to the capital being committed, at the speed the market has priced in.

What Microsoft and Meta need to show for the AI test to pass

Microsoft’s July 29 report will be the next data point. Azure guided for 39% to 40% growth in constant currency. If it delivers at or above that, the market will read it as confirmation that cloud AI spending is translating into revenue acceleration. If it misses, questions about the return on $190 billion in annual capex get louder fast, as TheStreet reported.

Meta reports July 30 against its own complicated backdrop. The company has already cut 8,000 jobs this year and moved thousands of employees into AI roles, then acknowledged at an internal meeting that AI-agent progress has not accelerated as expected.

The question on Meta’s call is whether $125 billion to $145 billion in AI spending this year is producing the kind of product traction that justifies it.

Three things will tell investors whether the AI trade is facing a healthy correction or something more serious:

• Whether the gap between AI infrastructure spending and AI revenue is narrowing;
• If AI is moving from assistant to agent, meaning systems that complete tasks and get paid for outcomes rather than just answering questions, and
• Whether the unit economics of running AI inference are falling fast enough to make applications viable at scale.

The next two earnings reports will give investors more data on all three than any single quarter has provided yet.

Related: Scott Bessent sends unprecedented warnings to China on AI models

The post Wall Street’s AI trade faces its biggest valuation test appeared first on Risk Front Digest.

More than a decade later, the event has grown far beyond Amazon.

Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and other major retailers now routinely launch competing promotions around Prime Day, turning a once Amazon-centric sale into one of the biggest shopping periods of the summer.

U.S. shoppers spent a record $26.4 billion online during Amazon’s four-day Prime Day period from June 23 through June 26, according to Adobe Analytics.

That was up 9.3% from a year earlier.

But beneath the record spending, new data reveals a more complicated picture for Amazon.

Amazon shoppers spent less per order and per household than they did a year earlier, while competing retailers experienced significant increases in store traffic during the same promotional period.

The shift suggests consumers remain willing to spend when discounts are strong, but are increasingly spreading those dollars across retailers rather than concentrating their shopping on Amazon.

That trend is emerging just as Amazon prepares to report second-quarter earnings on July 30.

Amazon shares fell about 4.6% on July 23 to $233.66 as technology stocks came under pressure following Alphabet’s latest earnings report and renewed concerns about the cost of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The stock has declined 6.35% over the past five days and 8.26% over the past three months, while remaining up about 1.4% over the year.

Amazon Prime Day spending hits record, but growth slows

Prime Day continues to generate enormous consumer spending.

Adobe Analytics said U.S. retailers generated $26.4 billion in online sales during the four-day 2026 Prime Day period, up 9.3% year over year.

That set another record for the summer promotional period. However, the pace of growth was substantially slower than a year ago.

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During the comparable four-day Prime Day period in 2025, U.S. consumers spent $24.1 billion online, according to Adobe, representing 30.3% growth from the comparable four-day period a year earlier.

Although the 2024 comparison should be used within context.

Amazon’s official Prime Day event lasted only two days in 2024, compared with four days in both 2025 and 2026.

Adobe reported $14.2 billion in U.S. online spending during the two official Prime Day days in 2024, up 11% year over year.

The more recent figures nevertheless show that industrywide spending continued to reach records in 2026, even as growth slowed sharply from the previous year.

Amazon shoppers spend less per order

Numerator, a consumer data firm, found that the average Amazon Prime Day order in 2026 was $47.66, down from $53.34 in its comparable year-earlier analysis.

Average household spending also declined to about $143.45 from $156.37 a year earlier.

Nearly two-thirds of households that shopped during Prime Day placed at least two separate orders, suggesting consumers remained engaged with the event.

But they spent less each time they checked out.

In May, Bank of America Consumer Spend Collective data showed U.S. e-commerce spending increased 13% year over year, while online shopping penetration rose 1.8 percentage points to 29.8%.

The latest BofA data suggests that momentum continued into the second quarter.

In a July 22 research note shared with TheStreet, Bank of America analyst Justin Post said aggregated credit- and debit-card data showed online spending growth accelerated by 2 percentage points from the first quarter.

At the same time, the bank said the Prime Day sales-growth bump appeared more modest than in previous years.

The figures point to a consumer who remains willing to spend online but is becoming less loyal to any single promotional event.

Walmart, Target, Best Buy gain from Prime Week

When Amazon held Prime Day from June 23 through June 26, several of its biggest retail rivals launched overlapping promotions.

Placer.ai found that all four major chains it analyzed experienced increased store traffic during the promotional period compared with their typical day-of-week traffic.

On June 23, the opening day of Prime Day:

• Visits to Kohl’s were 18.4% above the retailer’s year-to-date day-of-week baseline
• Best Buy traffic increased 18.1%
• Target visits rose 16.3%.
• Walmart recorded a more modest but still positive increase of 4.7%

All four retailers continued to experience elevated traffic through the promotional period, according to Placer.ai.

Amazon’s competitors are increasingly using the event to capture consumers already in a deal-seeking mindset.

Placer.ai characterized the behavior as evidence of a pressured but engaged consumer who is increasingly willing to wait for promotional events before making purchases.

For Amazon, that creates both an opportunity and a challenge.

Prime Day can stimulate enormous consumer demand, but Amazon no longer has that demand all to itself.

Amazon earnings preview points to stronger retail growth

Despite more modest Prime Day growth, Bank of America expects Amazon’s broader retail business to accelerate when the company reports second-quarter earnings.

BofA maintains a Buy rating on Amazon, with a price objective of $310, ahead of the earnings.

Additionally, the firm forecasts Amazon will report total second-quarter revenue of about $198.8 billion, above the roughly $196.8 billion Wall Street estimate the bank cited.

The firm expects operating income of approximately $24.1 billion, also slightly above Wall Street’s $23.6 billion estimate.

North America could be a strong contributor: BofA expects North American revenue of about $116.3 billion, representing roughly 16% year-over-year growth.

Wall Street is expecting about $113.9 billion, according to estimates cited by the bank.

The stronger outlook reflects continued strength in online consumer spending and Amazon’s decision to move Prime Day from July to June.

This timing gave Amazon an additional sales boost in the second quarter, but the benefit will reverse when the company reports third-quarter results.

BofA expects North American retail revenue to decline by roughly $1 billion sequentially in the third quarter because Prime Day sales were pulled forward into June.

The timing could create an approximately 4-percentage-point headwind to year-over-year North American growth comparisons.

AWS expectations remain high

Investors will also be closely watching Amazon Web Services.

AWS revenue increased 28% year over year to $37.6 billion during the first quarter, its fastest growth rate in 15 quarters.

Bank of America raised its second-quarter AWS growth estimate to 33% from 31%, which would put revenue at roughly $41 billion.

Wall Street is expecting about $40.5 billion and approximately 31% growth, but investor expectations may be higher.

BofA said its conversations suggest investors could be expecting AWS growth of around 34%, meaning Amazon may need to outperform published consensus estimates to impress Wall Street.

The bank expects AWS growth to accelerate further to approximately 36% in the third quarter.

Amazon faces increased retail rivalry and AI costs

Amazon’s growth outlook raises another question: how much the company will need to spend to sustain it.

Amazon has said it expects approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, much of it tied to cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Bank of America believes the figure could increase to around $210 billion, partly because of higher memory costs and continued demand for computing capacity.

For the second quarter alone, BofA expects capital expenditures of roughly $49 billion.

That level of spending has increased investor scrutiny across Big Tech, particularly as companies race to expand AI infrastructure before the investments generate clear returns.

For Amazon, however, the upcoming earnings report will also reveal something more fundamental about its original business.

Prime Day still generates record levels of online spending, but shoppers now have more places than ever to chase the same deals.

Amazon’s challenge is no longer simply getting consumers to spend during Prime Day, it’s making sure enough of that spending still happens on Amazon.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg backs Elon Musk Silicon Valley decision

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The backdrop made that harder than it sounds. Investors had spent the prior week watching IBM and Pegasystems blame artificial intelligence spending shifts for wrecking their own software businesses, and the market was primed to punish any sign of the same weakness.

IBM shares fell 25% on July 14, after warning that clients were shifting technology budgets toward AI infrastructure instead of software.

Pegasystems followed on July 22, dropping more than 16% after missing revenue estimates and citing what it called unprecedented disruption from AI competition, according to Yahoo Finance.

Traders had started calling it the “SaaSpocalypse,” Forbes noted, a bet that enterprise software growth was about to slow across the board.

ServiceNow (NOW) avoided that fate. Subscription revenue reached $3.9 billion in the quarter, up 24.5% from a year earlier, a ServiceNow press release confirmed.

Shares climbed 5.5% in premarket trading Thursday, July 23, to $100.67, according to Benzinga, as the same release disclosed that artificial intelligence contract value had crossed $1 billion, the number that dominated most of the day’s coverage.

A different billion-dollar number tells ServiceNow’s real story

That AI milestone was not the most consequential number on the call. ServiceNow’s security and risk business sells cybersecurity and compliance tools bolted onto its main workflow platform.

It had already crossed $1 billion in annual contract value organically back in the third quarter of 2025, according to a ServiceNow press release, before two acquisitions extended the lead.

CEO Bill McDermott put it bluntly on the July 22 earnings call, describing “a 10-figure cybersecurity business that’s growing faster than all the other top cybersecurity companies.”

That is a different kind of claim than the artificial intelligence milestone, since it points to an already profitable, already scaled unit rather than a nascent product line.

ServiceNow’s 2 acquisitions built the business in 8 months

ServiceNow paid $7.75 billion in cash for cyber exposure firm Armis in December, its largest acquisition ever, and closed the deal in April.

Three weeks earlier, it had agreed to buy identity security company Veza for roughly $1 billion. Together, the deals were expected to more than triple ServiceNow’s addressable market in security and risk.

Related: ServiceNow gets bearish call before major earnings test

The spending mirrors a broader pattern among software companies. Google parent Alphabet paid $32 billion for cloud security startup Wiz, and Palo Alto Networks spent $25 billion on identity security firm CyberArk, both within the past year, according to CNBC.

Enterprise software companies increasingly treat cybersecurity as the growth engine that core subscription seats can no longer guarantee alone.

The same week, a critical flaw exposed the platform’s own risk

However, buying top-tier security firms does not automatically secure a company’s underlying foundation. The timing carries an uncomfortable irony. Nine days before the earnings call, ServiceNow disclosed a critical vulnerability in its AI Platform, tracked as CVE-2026-6875, that let unauthenticated attackers execute code without a username or password, according to SecurityWeek.

Researchers confirmed active exploitation beginning July 17, according to BleepingComputer, and ServiceNow said it had found no evidence the attacks reached instances it hosts, according to Help Net Security.

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That does not undercut the security business as a growth story, but it complicates the pitch. ServiceNow is asking enterprise customers to trust it as their cybersecurity vendor in the same week its own platform needed an emergency patch.

Neither McDermott nor the analysts covering the stock addressed the vulnerability on the call.

Software companies are betting security can outrun AI disruption

ServiceNow’s quarter offers a preview of how mature software companies plan to survive the reallocation of corporate budgets toward AI infrastructure. Rather than compete directly for that spending, they are acquiring their way into categories like cybersecurity, where demand keeps climbing, regardless of the macro environment.

Global spending on information security is projected to grow more than 12% in 2026, to roughly $240 billion, according to a ServiceNow press release.

That strategy worked for ServiceNow this quarter. It depends on integration going smoothly and on the acquired businesses outrunning the disruption that just hit IBM and Pegasystems.

Investors weighing enterprise software stocks may need to ask less about how fast a company is adopting AI and more about how fast it can buy its way into markets AI cannot replace.

Related: Jim Cramer gives his two cents about Netflix stock

The post ServiceNow’s quiet $1B cybersecurity boom appeared first on Risk Front Digest.

Three of the four founding companies have independently committed a combined $450 million to expand workforce training and fund apprenticeship pipelines across 30 states.

Carhartt, the fourth member, contributes through its For the Love of Labor program, which has supported more than 60 nonprofit and community organizations focused on trades training since 2022.

The announcement lands as the construction sector alone posted 298,000 open positions in May, up 32,000 from the prior month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. 

The alliance’s founders say skilled trades represent some of the fastest-growing and highest-paying career pathways in the U.S. economy.

Ford commits $300 million to skilled trades as the auto industry faces a technician drought

Ford is the largest single contributor, with $300 million earmarked for skilled trades workforce development and what the automaker calls its Essential Economy initiative in 2026.

The reason for that outsized commitment is visible in Ford’s own dealer network.

The U.S. auto industry will need more than 350,000 new technicians by 2029, according to Ford, and CEO Jim Farley has said the automaker alone has roughly 5,000 unfilled dealership service positions with annual wages reaching $120,000 for experienced candidates.

“At Ford, we recognize the skilled trades workforce shortage is a national crisis but also a generational opportunity,” Jim Farley said in the alliance announcement.

The automaker separately co-invested $5 million with Bloomberg Philanthropies in June to modernize auto technician programs at two Detroit public schools, targeting 300 new technicians over three years.

BlackRock and Google target infrastructure and data-center build-outs

BlackRock’s contribution comes through its $100 million Future Builders program, launched in March 2026, which aims to connect 50,000 workers with training over five years. 

Google committed $50 million to prepare more than 300,000 workers across over 20 states for careers tied to energy and technology infrastructure.

Both companies are pouring capital into physical infrastructure that requires enormous pools of trained electricians and HVAC technicians. 

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Electrician employment alone is projected to expand 9% from 2024 to 2034, triple the national average for all occupations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

“Building the physical infrastructure for America’s future requires significantly increasing the pipeline of skilled tradespeople across the country,” Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, said in the announcement.

The $1 trillion cost of 2.1 million unfilled trade jobs by 2030

The labor shortage driving these investments carries a price tag far beyond the companies involved. 

An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades positions could go unfilled by 2030, according to a JLL research report published in April 2026, with the U.S. Department of Education projecting annual economic losses of up to $1 trillion.

Courtney Brown, chief data and research officer at the Lumina Foundation, said bachelor’s programs remain prestigious but two-year schools are winning on cost.

A four-year degree is still the gold standard…community colleges are doing really well with affordability and value…more people gravitate towards that

Nearly 600,000 skilled trades jobs were posted last year, but only about 150,000 new workers entered through apprenticeship programs, the JLL report noted.

Skilled trades wages sit above the median for all occupations

The financial case for entering the trades has shifted over the past decade, with skilled-trades job postings growing three times faster than professional roles between 2022 and 2026, according to a Randstad USA analysis of more than 150 million U.S. job postings. 

Workers in infrastructure-related skilled trades earn above-average wages and frequently have access to employer-provided retirement savings and health care, the alliance’s press release noted.

“It is encouraging that more project owners are recognizing the need for greater private as well as public investment in training prospective construction workers,” Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, told Engineering News-Record. 

The median annual wage for construction and extraction occupations sits at approximately $58,360, compared with about $49,500 across all occupations, BLS occupational data showed. 

The top 10% of electricians earned more than $106,030 in May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and industry salary surveys show specialized welders in pipeline, nuclear and aerospace work regularly exceed $100,000.

The alliance plans a national report to track what training programs work

The coalition’s first initiative will be a Skilled Trades Report developed with Jobs for the Future and nonprofit research organization Burning Glass Institute, designed to measure workforce gaps and identify effective apprenticeship models as new partners join.

The alliance follows a broader pattern of corporate workforce bets in 2026. 

Meta Platforms announced a $115 million craft-training partnership with Associated Builders and Contractors in June.

Meta President Dina Powell McCormick said at an Axios event in March that artificial intelligence infrastructure growth could require about 500,000 electricians nationwide, Engineering News-Record reported.

“Investment in America’s infrastructure will help shape the country’s long-term economic trajectory, but its success ultimately depends on the skilled workforce that brings these projects to life,” Bayo Ogunlesi, chairman and CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, a unit of BlackRock, said in the announcement.

The coalition did not disclose a unified enrollment target or detail how the founding members’ programs would be coordinated beyond the initial 30 states.

Related: Bank of America doubles down on Google stock ahead of earnings

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Tesla reported second-quarter revenue of $28.2 billion, a record that topped analyst estimates of $27.6 billion. However, the 33 cents per share the company reported missed estimates from analysts polled by Tesla, who were expecting 55 cents per share.

So it seems that as Tesla chased volume, delivering 480,126 vehicles, a 25% increase from the same period a year ago, it sacrificed margins to get there. Net income for the quarter fell 17% to $1.15 billion. Analysts were expecting net income of $1.27 billion.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s results from the first quarter were flipped.

Tesla missed analyst revenue expectations, reporting $22.39 billion versus analysts’ $22.64 billion, but earnings of 41 cents per share topped estimates of 37 cents per share.

Revenue was 16% higher year over year, including a 16% increase in auto revenue to $16.2 billion from $14 billion last year.

Tesla delivered more than 358,000 vehicles in the quarter, a 6% increase over last year. But Tesla has reported falling deliveries for two consecutive years.

With such a topsy-turvy trajectory, it can be hard to grasp just exactly how well the electric vehicle maker is doing. So TheStreet obtained comments from three institutional investors who gave their early reactions to the Wednesday, June 22, release.

Tesla shareholders point out the negatives in Tesla Q2 earnings

Tesla CEO Elon Musk did a good job of preparing shareholders for the margin squeeze in the first quarter, finally taking the time to “inject some realism” (his words) into the Tesla story.

Musk shared that Tesla was raising its 2026 capital expenditure expectations above $25 billion, with CFO Vaibhav Raneja warning of “negative free cash flow impacts for the rest of the year.”

It’s an issue David Wagner, head of equity and portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, has been preparing for.

“Tesla’s earnings tonight highlight a core tension between short-term financial realities and an ambitious long-term AI vision,” Wagner said in comments emailed to TheStreet.

“While recent delivery rebounds demonstrate steady vehicle volume, heavy margin pressure from global price cuts and massive capital expenditure — projected at over $25 billion this year for AI compute, chips, and infrastructure — are squeezing free cash flow.”

Still, Bill Birmingham, managing director at REX Shares, seemed a bit surprised by just how disappointing the company’s profitability was in the quarter.

“Non-GAAP EPS of $.33 badly missed,” Birmingham told TheStreet. “More importantly, non-GAAP gross margin fell to 16.8% (ex-credits), substantially lower than the 18% floor that we set out in the preview.

“Tesla specifically attributed the pressure to lower vehicle ASP and mix, reduced regulatory-credit revenue, sharply higher AI/R&D, stock-based compensation and SG&A, as well as energy warranty charges. In other words, the record delivery quarter generated a top-line beat but not operating leverage.”

Tesla shareholders see some positives from Q2 results

Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, noted that the 47% increase in operational expenses in Tesla’s second quarter was tied to the investments the company is making in Optimus and robotics, sounding more forgiving of the company’s falling margins.

Instead, he was more focused on the company’s growth areas.

“Power generation and storage showed steady growth, showing +40% higher revenues and continued acceleration in demand,” Mulberry told TheStreet. “In Q2 2026, Tesla achieved a 25% year-over-year increase in deliveries to 480,126 vehicles, driven by inventory reduction and heavy promotions that, along with a 67% drop in regulatory credits, compressed automotive gross margins (ex-credits) to 16.3%.”

Strong demand is the biggest bullish takeaway from the quarter, as inventory improved, falling to 15 days of supply from 27.

“Tesla cited record deliveries across a broad range of smaller markets, which argues against the entire volume increase being inventory dumping,” Birmingham said. Still, he admitted the quarter left unanswered questions about durability.

“The release does not address the Chinese export/domestic demand split, European sustainability, nor does it provide a backlog update. All of these remain open for the call,” Birmingham said.

Tesla investors have to decide whether the positives outweigh the negatives, and David Wagner had a succinct breakdown of the company’s current investment picture.

“Ultimately, Tesla is asking investors to fund an aggressive infrastructure cycle: if its pivot into autonomous fleets and physical AI succeeds, the long-term upside is massive, but any regulatory or technological delays leave the stock vulnerable if judged solely on its core automotive margins,” Wagner explained to TheStreet.

Tesla shares were trading 12.5% lower shortly after the opening bell on Thursday, July 23.

The post 3 Tesla shareholders speak out after mixed Q2 earnings appeared first on Risk Front Digest.

For over a decade, Samsung ran a split system, selling some flagship phones with its own Exynos processor and others with a Snapdragon chip depending on the region, according to Android Authority.

That regional divide is largely gone now, and the new deal shows how far the consolidation has traveled, reaching into watches and smart glasses for the first time.

Samsung’s chip history goes back further than most buyers realize. The original 2010 Galaxy S ran on a Samsung designed chip called Hummingbird, and the Exynos name itself did not appear until the Galaxy S2 a year later, according to Android Authority.

Exynos then spent years as the weaker half of that dual sourcing strategy, falling behind Snapdragon most visibly in 2020, when the Exynos 990 trailed on battery life and speed.

By the Galaxy S23 launch, Samsung had quietly shifted to a single global Snapdragon chip for its top phones.

Qualcomm (QCOM) supplies the processors inside most non-Apple flagship phones sold worldwide, and Samsung is its largest customer by volume.

Related: Qualcomm’s datacenter ambitions win over Goldman Sachs

Snapdragon becomes the default across the whole Galaxy lineup

The new agreement covers the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Z Fold8 Ultra, the Snapdragon Wear Elite platform for the Galaxy Watch9 and Watch Ultra2, and the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 for Samsung’s new smart glasses, according to a press release distributed through Qualcomm.

The Wear Elite chip stands out on its own. It marks the first time Samsung has used a Snapdragon platform to power a smartwatch.

Samsung MX Business president Won-joon Choi framed the goal as giving users a “consistent, premium Galaxy experience” across every device they own.

Samsung is betting that owning the full hardware stack, phone, watch, and glasses, running on one chip family will keep customers inside its ecosystem the way Apple keeps buyers tied to iPhone, Watch, and AirPods.

A separate, larger Samsung story broke the same day

Samsung is also in advanced talks to invest about €1 billion in French AI startup Mistral, a deal that would value Mistral near €20 billion, or roughly $22.8 billion, according to Financial Times.

That would nearly double the roughly €11.7 billion valuation Mistral secured less than a year ago. Two Samsung headlines landing on the same day, one about chips and one about equity, are not really separate stories.

Both point to the same shift. Samsung wants deeper, stickier relationships with the companies building AI, whether that means supplying memory chips to an AI lab or letting Qualcomm’s silicon carry Samsung’s own AI features.

Related: Samsung cuts jobs as it shifts U.S. headquarters

A Mistral stake would also hand Samsung a customer relationship in high bandwidth memory, a segment where rival SK Hynix has moved faster in recent quarters.

Samsung currently leans on Google’s Gemini for Galaxy AI, so a stake in a foundation model lab would make it an investor, not just a customer.

The market’s reaction says more than the announcements did

Qualcomm (QCOM) shares rose about 1.3% to $175.70 on the news. Samsung’s Seoul listed shares gained a modest 0.6% to 260,500 won.

That muted reaction is worth noting. Investors appear to be treating the Mistral talks as unconfirmed and the chip deal as an expected renewal rather than new information.

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The bigger pattern is fewer chip platforms, not more

Qualcomm’s expanded Samsung deal fits a wider trend across consumer hardware. Companies with the resources to design their own silicon, Apple among them, increasingly do, leaving Qualcomm to compete by making itself indispensable to everyone else.

Samsung choosing one chip family across phones, watches, and glasses is that same logic playing out from the buyer’s side instead of the seller’s.

The regional Exynos versus Snapdragon split that once defined the Galaxy S series is fading into a footnote.

What is replacing it is a smartphone industry where the real competition sits between entire hardware and AI ecosystems, not between chip variants inside one phone line.

That shift also raises the stakes for Samsung’s own Exynos chip, since every device shipping with Snapdragon is one less proof point for it.

Samsung’s next earnings report, due July 30, will be the first real test of whether either bet shows up in the numbers.

Related: Qualcomm’s massive AI expansion already has 2 Mag 7 giants on board

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