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Novo, Lilly fall after Trump says "the fat loss drug" will go down in price

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly fell in after-hours trading after President Trump told reporters on Thursday that "the fat loss drug" will go down in price.

Trump said GLP-1s like Novo's Ozempic will be less than $150 out of pocket. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, interjected to say that those deals have not yet been finalized.

The Trump administration has been negotiating with drugmakers to bring down drug prices in the US. Currently, the popular weight loss drugs made by Lilly and Novo cost between $300 and $500 a month out of pocket through the drugmakers' direct-to-consumer platforms.

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44%

JPMorgan economists estimate that the basket of stocks they use as a rough gauge of AI’s market impact is now worth about 44% of the S&P 500’s total market cap, up from 26% in 2022.

Using a basket of 30 AI stocks picked by the bank’s equity analysts as a barometer of AI, the economists find that American households have seen their aggregate wealth go up by about $5 trillion over the last year as a result of AI, they reported in a note published Thursday.

They also estimate the surge in stock market wealth could raise annualized US consumer spending by some $180 billion, due to wealth effects.

JPM acknowledges some uncertainty around this estimate, noting that the spending impact could be lower “if the wealth gains are accruing disproportionately to upper income households with lower [marginal propensity to spend].”

tech

Report: Apple’s next MacBook Pro will have a touch screen, a decade after everyone else

Steve Jobs would NEVER!

Apple’s next iteration of the MacBook Pro could have a touch screen, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Apple will be late to the party, as the rest of the industry adopted touch screens years ago. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs famously resisted the idea of a touch screen Mac, but over the years, the lines between Macs and iPads have been blurring.

The new high-end touch screen MacBook Pros are expected to have a slimmer design, run on Apple’s custom M6 chips, and feature a “hole-punch” at the top of the OLED display, matching the design of the iPhone, which allows the camera and sensors to be surrounded by screen at the top of the display.

This week, Apple released an updated MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro running on the M5 chip.

The new high-end touch screen MacBook Pros are expected to have a slimmer design, run on Apple’s custom M6 chips, and feature a “hole-punch” at the top of the OLED display, matching the design of the iPhone, which allows the camera and sensors to be surrounded by screen at the top of the display.

This week, Apple released an updated MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro running on the M5 chip.

markets

Fedspeak in line with market’s view on rate cuts

Comments from Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller Thursday calling for another quarter-point rate cut is in line with views from both financial and prediction markets.

Since the Fed cut interest rates at its last meeting on September 17, positions taken by traders in both markets suggest increased certainty that the central bank will continue to ease at its two-day meeting later this month.

Market-implied odds derived from event contracts offered on Robinhood suggest traders see a 94% chance the central bank cuts its Fed Funds rate target by 0.25 percentage points when it announces its next decision on October 29, as of market close Thursday.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own stock as part of my compensation.)

Odds implied by prices in the Fed Funds futures markets are an even higher 97%. That’s up from roughly 74% a month ago.

In comments to the National Association of Business Economists earlier this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also hit notes supportive of rate cuts.

The Fed chief — who has been the target of a public pressure campaign from President Trump to deliver lower rates — told listeners that a sharp slowdown in hiring in the US is raising worries about economic weakness at the central bank, despite the fact that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge is still running nearly a full percentage point above its 2% long-term target.

“Rising downside risks to employment have shifted our assessment of the balance of risks,” Powell said.

Since the Fed cut interest rates at its last meeting on September 17, positions taken by traders in both markets suggest increased certainty that the central bank will continue to ease at its two-day meeting later this month.

Market-implied odds derived from event contracts offered on Robinhood suggest traders see a 94% chance the central bank cuts its Fed Funds rate target by 0.25 percentage points when it announces its next decision on October 29, as of market close Thursday.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own stock as part of my compensation.)

Odds implied by prices in the Fed Funds futures markets are an even higher 97%. That’s up from roughly 74% a month ago.

In comments to the National Association of Business Economists earlier this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also hit notes supportive of rate cuts.

The Fed chief — who has been the target of a public pressure campaign from President Trump to deliver lower rates — told listeners that a sharp slowdown in hiring in the US is raising worries about economic weakness at the central bank, despite the fact that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge is still running nearly a full percentage point above its 2% long-term target.

“Rising downside risks to employment have shifted our assessment of the balance of risks,” Powell said.

markets

More bad news on loans crushes US banks

Regional banks are cratering on Thursday following more news of souring loans.

Zions Bancorp tanked after announcing that it’s taking a $50 million charge-off relating to loans of more than $60 million made to investment funds that purchased distressed commercial mortgage loans. It’s suing the borrowers, alleging that their collateral was not protected in accordance with the terms of their loans. Zions said it “believes this is an isolated situation, it plans to engage counsel to coordinate an independent review.”

Western Alliance Bancorp is also facing significant selling pressure, as it made a loan with an outstanding balance of nearly $100 million to the same investment funds, which it is also suing, alleging fraud. However, Western Alliance also reaffirmed its full-year guidance while disclosing this news.

More signs of credit stress are not what the doctor ordered for financials, which were already on edge in the wake of the high-profile busts at Tricolor and First Brands. The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund and SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF are poised for their biggest one-day drops since April.

Adding to the risk-off tone are indications of funding stress in interbank markets. The secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) has traded above the top end of the Federal Reserve’s target range for its policy rate amid anecdotal reports of elevated demand for short-term financing from regional banks. However, this also coincides with the timing of corporate tax payments and US Treasury settlements, which also act as drains on cash.

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Partnering with Peacock won’t put the “plus” back in Apple TV

Apple and NBCUniversal inked a deal to bundle their streaming services for a 30% discount.

markets

Oracle jumps as it says AI cloud gross margins can reach 35%, predicts $166 billion in infrastructure revenue by 2030

Oracle shares jumped as executives said the company expects 35% gross margins on large AI infrastructure projects, while speaking at the Oracle AI World conference in Las Vegas, according to Bloomberg.

Reuters also reported that the company today said it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

The stock has had a strong run and is up 87% this year, though investors were momentarily spooked earlier this month after a report of weak GPU rental margins.

Reuters also reported that the company today said it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

The stock has had a strong run and is up 87% this year, though investors were momentarily spooked earlier this month after a report of weak GPU rental margins.

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tech

Report: Hollywood talent agencies were blindsided by OpenAI’s Sora and its hazy opt-out scheme

Just before OpenAI unleashed its Sora app on the world, reports emerged that the company was taking a novel approach to dealing with intellectual property rights: rights holders would have to opt out of the service to prevent their likeness or characters from being featured in objectionable or disturbing ways.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and Sora now sits atop the App Store leaderboards and new details are emerging about how OpenAI engaged with Hollywood talent agencies seeking to protect their clients’ rights. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the agency heads felt blindsided by the company’s approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

One talent agency executive said OpenAI was “purposely misleading” in heated discussions about the use of represented clients’ likenesses, per the report. OpenAI executives reportedly told talent agency heads that individual clients would have to individually opt out of the platform, but did not yet have a streamlined process or dedicated staff to process the requests.

Days after Sora’s launch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on his blog that the company would “give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.”

But that hasn’t stopped calls from groups like the Motion Picture Association for OpenAI to respect copyright law and “prevent infringement” of rights owners’ intellectual property.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and Sora now sits atop the App Store leaderboards and new details are emerging about how OpenAI engaged with Hollywood talent agencies seeking to protect their clients’ rights. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the agency heads felt blindsided by the company’s approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

One talent agency executive said OpenAI was “purposely misleading” in heated discussions about the use of represented clients’ likenesses, per the report. OpenAI executives reportedly told talent agency heads that individual clients would have to individually opt out of the platform, but did not yet have a streamlined process or dedicated staff to process the requests.

Days after Sora’s launch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on his blog that the company would “give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.”

But that hasn’t stopped calls from groups like the Motion Picture Association for OpenAI to respect copyright law and “prevent infringement” of rights owners’ intellectual property.

markets

Retail traders’ favorite risky, speculative stocks are getting taken to the woodshed

Call it the spec wreck.

Speculative pockets of the market, featuring companies with no to low revenues, are getting clobbered on Thursday.

There’s no material news driving the price action in these groups, which have very different business models but a thing or two in common: most are names that retail traders love and/or had displayed strong positive price momentum that now seems to have flipped on its head. In other words, they’re stocks with common owners, and that has given them common cause to act alike.

In quantum computing, sentiment continues to sour on the pure-play names in the space, with Rigetti Computing off double digits and D-Wave Quantum, IonQ, and Quantum Computing also sharply lower. Per SwaggyStocks, negative references to Rigetti have been running hotter than positive mentions on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit for three consecutive days now. Twice as many puts have traded on Rigetti versus calls through 1:56 pm. ET.

It’s the same story in the crypto-adjacent space, where Riot and MARA Holdings are getting walloped.

Zero-revenue Oklo, whose market cap recently exceeded that of alternative energy giant First Solar, has been hammered, along with peer Nuscale. Oklo’s put/call ratio had been averaging about 0.8 over the prior 10 sessions; that’s up to about 1 today.

Cipher Mining and IREN, the crypto-miner-turned-data-center duo, are each seeing elevated selling pressure.

Unfortunately, there’s no turning to pot stocks to blunt the pain: Tilray and Canopy Growth are both off more than 5%, too.

This broad speculative pain is short sellers’ gain, as many of these stocks have high levels of short interest in light of their unproven business models and elevated valuations. A Goldman Sachs basket of the most shorted companies in the Russell 3000 is down more than 3% as of 2 p.m. ET.

United and rival airlines are getting battered as analyst criticizes the industry’s capacity growth

Shares of United Airlines fell as much as 9.3% in Thursday afternoon trading amid the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

Traders exchanged about 16 million shares of UAL as of 1:10 p.m. ET, nearly 3x the full-day average volume over the past 30 days. Potentially spooking investors were comments from Bloomberg Intelligence analyst George Ferguson, who, speaking with Yahoo, criticized United’s capacity growth considering a relatively slower economy.

An airlines capacity is measured by the number of seats on flights that are available for purchase. Increasing capacity involves more flights, which increases costs. That can be worth it if more capacity leads to a higher number of seats purchased.

But Ferguson questioned whether Uniteds 7% increase in capacity in the third quarter was warranted giving that overall US economic growth is somewhere around half that level.

“It looks to us like the market is saturated. Definitely at the basic economy level it looks like theres just far too much capacity and fares are pretty soft there. Some of the premium is probably softening as well,” said Ferguson, who also said Delta’s capacity growth seemed a bit high.

The continuing government shutdown may also be playing a role in airline stock performance. Along with United, JetBlue, American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, and other rivals were also trading lower.

business

Uber launches “digital tasks” in the US, paying some drivers to train AI

Beginning later this fall, US Uber drivers will be able to earn money by completing short “digital tasks” like uploading restaurant menus or recording audio samples.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi teased the new gig income stream back in June at the Bloomberg Tech conference.

At that time, Khosrowshahi said drivers and couriers were “labeling maps, translating language, looking at AI answers, and grading AI answers.” According to Thursday’s announcement, the tasks won’t be so focused on Uber’s business, but instead on connecting workers with “companies that need real people to help improve their technology.”

Per Uber, digital tasks can be done when drivers aren’t on a trip, be it at home or when not driving, and will take only “a few minutes” each.

At that time, Khosrowshahi said drivers and couriers were “labeling maps, translating language, looking at AI answers, and grading AI answers.” According to Thursday’s announcement, the tasks won’t be so focused on Uber’s business, but instead on connecting workers with “companies that need real people to help improve their technology.”

Per Uber, digital tasks can be done when drivers aren’t on a trip, be it at home or when not driving, and will take only “a few minutes” each.

tech

Apple suffers another AI setback as it loses key AI search leader to Meta

Apple’s efforts to get back into the AI race took another hit with news from Bloomberg that the head of AI search for a revamped Siri is leaving for Meta.

According to the report, Ke Yang took charge of Apple’s “Answers, Knowledge and Information” team just weeks ago. The team is reportedly targeting a March 2026 launch for the new version of Siri, which will feature the ability to search the web for answers to user queries.

Yang’s exit is the latest in a series of executive departures that have plagued Apple, and continues Meta’s hiring spree across the tech industry to lure top AI talent to the company with reported eye-popping nine-figure pay packages.

Bloomberg reports that roughly a dozen members of the Apple Foundation Models team have also departed recently, many joining Meta’s “superintelligence” team.

Yang’s exit is the latest in a series of executive departures that have plagued Apple, and continues Meta’s hiring spree across the tech industry to lure top AI talent to the company with reported eye-popping nine-figure pay packages.

Bloomberg reports that roughly a dozen members of the Apple Foundation Models team have also departed recently, many joining Meta’s “superintelligence” team.

markets

Snowflake jumps on Palantir partnership announcement

Snowflake jumped after announcing a partnership deal with AI software and defense data company Palantir Technologies, in which Snowflake’s AI-focused data storage product — called “AI Data Cloud” — is integrated into Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform software.

Data storage and management has emerged as a popular market theme this year as an offshoot of the all-things-AI trade.

Providers of relatively cheap, hardware-based storage options like hard disk drives — such as Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital — have been some of the S&P 500’s top performers.

Data management software firms like Snowflake and Datadog have also picked up momentum recently. Snowflake has doubled over the last 12 months, while Datadog has seen a 27% gain.

RBC analysts spotlighted Snowflake in a note Wednesday, writing, “We continue to believe Snowflake is well-positioned as an AI beneficiary as organizations turn to the company to prepare their data for AI workloads.”

Providers of relatively cheap, hardware-based storage options like hard disk drives — such as Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital — have been some of the S&P 500’s top performers.

Data management software firms like Snowflake and Datadog have also picked up momentum recently. Snowflake has doubled over the last 12 months, while Datadog has seen a 27% gain.

RBC analysts spotlighted Snowflake in a note Wednesday, writing, “We continue to believe Snowflake is well-positioned as an AI beneficiary as organizations turn to the company to prepare their data for AI workloads.”

tech

DoorDash jumps on news it’s partnering with Google’s Waymo for Phoenix deliveries

DoorDash is up more than 4% in early trading following news that it has partnered with autonomous car company Waymo to help deliver food and other goods in Phoenix. The service, which is meant to keep Waymos busy when they’re not in use as taxis, is currently in testing and is slated to roll out publicly later this year.

The Google-owned driverless car company has had a similar partnership with Uber in Phoenix since 2024. Waymo currently operates taxi services in five US cities, including Phoenix, with plans to expand to six more next year.

The Google-owned driverless car company has had a similar partnership with Uber in Phoenix since 2024. Waymo currently operates taxi services in five US cities, including Phoenix, with plans to expand to six more next year.

tech

Report: Anthropic is catching up to OpenAI, on track for $9 billion annual run rate by the end of 2025

Strong demand for its enterprise AI tools like Claude Code has pushed Anthropic’s annual revenue run rate to $7 billion this month, according to a report from Reuters, with the Amazon-backed company on track to hit $9 billion ARR by the end of 2025.

The company was targeting a $5 billion annual run rate as recently as September.

The acceleration of revenue is helping Anthropic catch up to its larger rival OpenAI. Recently, OpenAI told its investors that the company has a $13 billion annual run rate target, according to The Information.

According to the report, things are picking up so fast for Anthropic that it is nearly tripling its annual revenue targets for 2026 to as much as $26 billion.

Anthropic recently raised an series F round of $13 billion, giving the startup a valuation of $183 billion.

The acceleration of revenue is helping Anthropic catch up to its larger rival OpenAI. Recently, OpenAI told its investors that the company has a $13 billion annual run rate target, according to The Information.

According to the report, things are picking up so fast for Anthropic that it is nearly tripling its annual revenue targets for 2026 to as much as $26 billion.

Anthropic recently raised an series F round of $13 billion, giving the startup a valuation of $183 billion.