The AI boom now runs on borrowed money
The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52 per cent on Thursday, to 24,315, its worst day since April 2025.
Business
Why Treasury buybacks can't cap the 10-year
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to about 5.2 per cent on Monday, its highest level since July 2007, after closing last week at around 5.18 per cent.
Rising costs threaten company profits
The producer price index rose 0.4 per cent in August from July, and core wholesale prices rose 0.2 per cent.
Special Report
Anniversary: Four years, 500 pieces
This column turns four this month, with exactly 500 essays published since its launch in September 2022.
What company filings say about tariff risk
Second-quarter 10-Q filings from across the Fortune 500 split companies into two groups.
Which companies can pass on higher costs
Headline consumer price inflation picked up again in July to 3.4 per cent year on year.
The peace deal collapses, and oil jumps
Front-month Brent rose 16 per cent in five trading sessions to $88 a barrel after Middle East peace talks broke up without an agreement on 28 July.
The tariff refund boost to earnings
Court-ordered tariff refunds have taken over the second-quarter earnings calls. Big consumer-products groups and retailers are reporting large net income beats, and the refunds, not their operations, account for all of the gain.
Proving your supply chain is clean will cost you
The administration launched its broad Section 301 investigation into alleged forced labour in foreign supply chains on 2 June, and compliance and logistics teams are now counting the cost.
A peace deal nobody has signed
The Persian Gulf peace agreement that mediators had talked up so loudly was still unsigned on 9 June, and markets lurched.
Oil tankers stuck at sea
More than twenty-two merchant ships, twelve of them ultra-large crude carriers and eight of them container ships, are still at anchor and going nowhere across the northern Indian Ocean.
$35bn of refunds, and where it goes
US Customs and Border Protection said on 22 May that it has paid out roughly $35.5 billion in court-ordered tariff refunds to importers.
Refiners are winning the war
Airlines are losing money and carmakers have stalled, but refiners are doing very nicely out of the Gulf crisis.
Saudi Arabia's pipeline around the war
With ships still unable to move through the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has turned to its back door.
Which airlines are protected from $100 oil
Jet fuel prices soared after Hormuz closed, and airlines split into two camps: those that had hedged their fuel and those buying at spot prices.
Who gets the $166bn tariff refund?
With the IEEPA tariffs struck down, boardrooms have started fighting over $166 billion in refunds.
AI is coming for software companies
Enterprise software stocks crashed in early February, and specialist software ETFs fell deep into correction territory.
Big Tech's AI spending passes $600bn
Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon together now expect to spend more than $600 billion on capital projects in 2026, according to guidance given with their fourth-quarter results.
Companies brace for a tariff refund
More than $130 billion of emergency IEEPA customs duties hang on the Supreme Court's tariff ruling, and company accountants and the Big Four audit firms are busy drafting contingency disclosures.
Special Report
New Year: 2026 hinges on one court case
Executives and fund managers back at their desks for 2026 find their forecasts hanging on one outside event.
Paramount goes hostile
Paramount Global made a hostile all-cash bid of $30 a share for Warner Bros Discovery on 19 December, an open attempt to wreck the all-stock merger Netflix had already agreed.
Special Report
Cyber Monday: Record spending, more buy now, pay later
Americans spent more than $13 billion online on Cyber Monday, a record according to Adobe Analytics.
Nvidia's $57bn quarter doesn't end the bubble debate
Nvidia reported $57 billion of revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2026, another huge number and comfortably ahead of Wall Street's consensus forecast.
Meta borrows $30bn for AI
Meta Platforms has sold $30 billion of investment-grade bonds in several tranches, a deal of a size rarely seen, to pay for its artificial intelligence spending plans.
The AI money loop
Look closely at the venture deals financing the artificial intelligence boom and a circular pattern appears, one that recalls the worst speculative habits of the dot-com era.
First Brands and the debt nobody saw
First Brands, a big car-parts maker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Tricolor, a subprime auto lender, had already collapsed into a Chapter 7 liquidation weeks earlier.
Oracle's $455bn order book
Oracle's remaining performance obligations (RPO), the measure of contracted but unbilled customer backlog that software analysts trust most, rose by 36 per cent year-on-year to a record $455 billion.
Stablecoins get their rulebook
The GENIUS Act became law with the president's signature on 18 July, giving payment stablecoins a federal rulebook.
The tax break that could spark a factory boom
The OBBBA, signed into law on 4 July, contains one corporate tax provision that deserves more attention than it has had.
Walmart warns prices are going up
Walmart used its first-quarter results to warn that it can no longer absorb tariffs and that shelf prices for consumer goods, clothing and general merchandise are about to rise sharply.
Britain gets the first trade deal
Up to 100,000 British-built cars will enter the United States at a 10 per cent tariff under a new agreement, instead of the 25 per cent levy hanging over other European carmakers.
Tariffs haven't dented Big Tech's AI spending
Alphabet has confirmed that its capital spending will run above $75 billion a year, and Microsoft and Meta have repeated their own large plans for AI infrastructure.
Companies stop giving forecasts
Dozens of Fortune 500 companies have withdrawn their annual earnings forecasts, saying they cannot put numbers on the next few months.
Carmakers face 25% tariffs
Washington has imposed 25 per cent tariffs on imported cars and on key car parts and sub-assemblies, the outcome carmakers had dreaded most.
Nvidia's margins slip
Nvidia reported fourth-quarter revenue of $39.3 billion, evidence that demand for its chips is still enormous.
Steel tariffs squeeze American manufacturers
The White House has put a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel and aluminium and scrapped the exemptions that long covered friendly suppliers.
Big Tech keeps spending after DeepSeek
Meta raised its 2025 capex forecast to $60–$65 billion in late January, and Microsoft said annual infrastructure spending would approach $80 billion.
Wall Street banks bet on deregulation
JPMorgan Chase earned a record net income of nearly $58 billion in 2024, the high point of a long boom in net interest income.
Biden blocks the US Steel deal
The White House has formally blocked Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9 billion takeover of United States Steel, putting domestic industrial politics ahead of cross-border capital.
Honda and Nissan: merging to survive
Honda and Nissan have confirmed they are in early talks about a merger, which could also take in Mitsubishi Motors.
Special Report
Cyber Monday: The hidden debt of buy now, pay later
Online spending on Cyber Monday hit a record $13.3 billion. The number retail finance analysts noticed was smaller: close to $1 billion of it was paid for with 'Buy Now, Pay Later' (BNPL) plans, the most ever for deferred consumer credit.
Companies are stockpiling before the tariffs hit
American companies are stockpiling. Purchasing managers expect heavy import tariffs soon after the inauguration in January, and corporate treasurers are trying to get ahead of them by bringing forward orders from Asia and Europe.
Special Report
Diwali: India's record IPO rush
Hyundai Motor India raised ₹27,870 crore ($3.3 billion) this Diwali season, the largest IPO in the country's corporate history.
Tesla's profits: look closer
Tesla shares jumped twenty-two per cent after the company reported that third-quarter automotive gross margins had widened to 17.1 per cent.
Banks' interest income bottoms out
Third-quarter results from the biggest US commercial banks show the windfall from high interest rates is fading.
Microsoft reopens Three Mile Island
Microsoft has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement that will bring the shuttered Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island back into service.
