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U.S. retail sales rose 0.6% month over month in August, outpacing the 0.2% consensus estimate, with sales up about 5% from a year earlier. The headline figure points to a consumer that is still spending, but the composition beneath it is uneven. Higher-income households increased spending 2.2% year over year in August, compared with just 0.3% for lower-income consumers. Households in the top 10% of incomes now account for 49.2% of total spending, the highest share since 1989.

Gold fell 0.84% to about $4,263 an ounce on Tuesday, while silver traded near $62.99, as precious metals extended a pullback into the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting. Gold is down roughly 3.5% over the past month, though it remains about 15% higher than a year ago. Silver has declined nearly 12% since the start of the year. The immediate pressure comes from rates. With a September hike close to fully priced and the 10-year Treasury yield above 5%, the opportunity cost of ho

Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev said the company will introduce voting rights and direct one-for-one share redemptions for holders of its Stock Token products, a step that would tie the tokenized instruments more closely to the underlying equities. The change addresses a long-standing criticism that tokenized shares offer price exposure without the ownership rights attached to conventional stock. The announcement comes alongside continued growth in the platform's core me

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose about 8 basis points to 5.041% on Tuesday, its highest level since 2007, as a selloff in U.S. government debt deepened one day ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision. The yield had briefly crossed 5% on Monday before slipping back, marking the first move above that threshold since 2023. Money markets now price roughly a 93% chance of a 25-basis-point hike when the Fed announces on September 16, up from the low-80s range

Nike will be removed from the S&P 100 effective September 21 following a roughly 40% decline in the share price this year. The company retains its place in the broader S&P 500, so the change is a market-capitalization ranking adjustment rather than an index exit. The practical effect is narrower: funds tracking the large-cap 100 will sell, while S&P 500 trackers are unaffected. The operational picture is in transition. Jane Ewing, a 14-year Walmart veteran, began as chief com

Crude above $108 puts renewed pressure on carriers that built 2026 plans around cheaper fuel. American Airlines guided to roughly $4 a gallon for jet fuel, with Delta and United modeling closer to $4.30 for the second quarter. Prices well above those assumptions compress margins directly, since fuel represents roughly 25% to 30% of operating expense for most carriers according to the International Air Transport Association. The two airlines have responded very differently thi

The Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday, with the rate decision due September 16 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern and a press conference to follow at 2:30. The current target range is 3.50% to 3.75%, held since December 2025. Market-implied odds of a 25-basis-point increase to 3.75% to 4.00% sit near 83%, a level reached after Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish Jackson Hole remarks on August 28 and a solid August employment report. The August consumer price index gave both

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay on X calling for a slower pace of advancement in artificial intelligence, arguing that safety work needs time to catch up with gains in model capability and that stronger checks should be built around advanced systems. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman voiced support for the position, and xAI's Elon Musk said Amodei was right. The unusual alignment among rival labs is what gave the message market weight. The sel

Brent crude climbed above $108 a barrel Monday morning after a merchant vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member. October and November contracts each gained more than 3%, while West Texas Intermediate traded near $103. The move extends a rally of almost 9% last week and reverses Friday's pullback, when talk of Iran-Gulf negotiations in Oman briefly pulled Brent back toward $104. The second catalyst was infrastructure rather than shipping. Saudi Arabi

MGM Resorts remains in play. The board's special committee of independent directors continues to evaluate People Inc.'s proposal to acquire all MGM shares it does not already own for $48.30 a share in cash, valuing the company at roughly $18 billion. People Inc., associated with Barry Diller, already holds 26.1% of MGM's outstanding stock and would own just over 50.1% of the equity under the proposal, with other investors holding minority interests. The committee was formed s

Prediction market operator Kalshi said it intends to move into US stock trading, filing for regulatory approval to offer single-stock perpetual futures contracts. The announcement lands directly in the territory Robinhood has spent the past two years building out, and it arrived as HOOD shares slid roughly 10% from their yearly high. The stock closed near $112.57 on Friday against a prior close of $113.33. The competitive threat is narrower than the headline suggests, but it

US diesel reached a record national average of $5.85 a gallon, surpassing the prior high of $5.816 set in June 2022, as the six-month conflict with Iran continues to disrupt global fuel flows. Diesel powers most long-haul freight and parcel delivery, so the increase feeds directly into the cost of moving goods. The arithmetic is unforgiving for carriers. A truck running 125,000 miles a year at 6.5 miles per gallon burns roughly 19,231 gallons. At February prices that was a $7

Super Micro Computer reported fiscal 2026 net sales of $39.1 billion, up 78% from the prior year, driven by AI server demand and expansion across data center, enterprise and OEM channels. Management now expects AI-focused systems to make up the bulk of near-term revenue and pointed to an order book of roughly $60 billion. Capacity is the constraint the company is addressing. Super Micro is scaling its new Silicon Valley DCBBS campus and plans to lift monthly manufacturing cap

The International Energy Agency sharply lowered its global oil demand outlook, now forecasting a contraction of 2.5 million barrels a day in 2026 — the largest annual decline since the pandemic year of 2020. The agency attributed the downgrade to higher prices and tighter supply weighing on consumption rather than to any easing in production. The forecast cut landed in a week when prices moved the other way. Brent settled at $104.61 on Friday, down 2.81% on the day but still

DraftKings drew fresh analyst support this week as the 2026 NFL season got underway. Citizens raised its price target to $37 from $36 with an Outperform rating, arguing that prediction markets appear to be expanding total wagering activity rather than cannibalizing traditional sportsbook handle. Bernstein lifted its target to $29 from $27, citing expectations that regulatory treatment of sports-related event contracts will develop along fragmented state and federal lines rath

Silver fell 2.6% on Friday to roughly $64.90 an ounce as traders raised the probability of a Federal Reserve rate increase at next week's meeting to about 90%, up from roughly 70% before the August inflation report. Gold held comparatively firm near $4,386 an ounce, essentially flat on the session but close to a one-month low. The August consumer price index rose 0.4% on the month and 3.4% from a year earlier, with core prices up 0.3%, slightly above forecasts. Higher expecte

Morgan Stanley upgraded Robinhood Markets to Overweight with a $150 price target, pointing to growth engines the firm expects to build out through 2028 across retirement accounts, banking, credit cards, advisory services and prediction markets. The call adds to a cluster of recent target increases, with Citizens moving to $165 from $155 and Mizuho to $140 from $130. The upgrades follow an August business update in which Robinhood reported total platform assets of $384 billion

Super Micro Computer closed up 7.3% on Friday, leading a broad advance in AI infrastructure names that also carried Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise higher. The move followed Oracle's fiscal first-quarter report, released after Thursday's close, which beat expectations on the strength of its AI cloud business and sent Oracle shares up more than 4% in after-hours trading. Oracle is a significant buyer of AI server capacity, and its results were read as a signal

Crude oil retreated sharply on Friday, with West Texas Intermediate falling about 2.4% to roughly $100 a barrel and Brent dropping close to 3% to around $104. The move came after Iranian state media reported that talks with Gulf states are planned in Oman, easing the risk premium that had built up during a week of escalating regional tensions. Supply and demand forecasts added to the downward pressure. The U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its 2027 domestic crude

At the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum on September 10, David Sinclair defended his claim that the first 150-year-old is alive today — while warning that unproven peptide and drug self-experimentation is going mainstream.