Salma Makboul

Apple Didn't Reclaim the Crown. Nvidia Dropped It.

For a few hours, Apple was once again the world's most valuable company without really going anywhere. Nvidia fell. Apple held its ground. That aborted handoff raises an increasingly pressing question on Wall Street: in a capital-intensive arms race, how much is the option to wait worth?

July 20, 2026 at 02:15 am EDT

Is Big Tech Dressing Up the AI Bill?

Since November 2025, Michael Burry has been casting a suspicious eye on the accounting wizardry behind the AI boom, accusing hyperscalers of stretching the useful lives of their servers and flattering profits in the process. The tale resurfaced in July, as Meta pushed Hyperion's price tag above $50 billion just as bond investors began charging more to finance the AI build-out. We retraced the saga, checked the numbers against company filings and examined whether this juicy accounting case involving one of Wall Street's best-known prophets of doom amounts to aggressive accounting or a legitimate judgment call.

July 15, 2026 at 03:27 am EDT

Irrational Exuberance?

The AI boom has a cash-flow clock, but talking about an expiry date is slightly absurd simply because bubbles are said to have an average lifespan of three to five years. The real clue is who gets paid in the meantime, for how long, and with whose money.

July 10, 2026 at 10:58 am EDT

AI promised lower costs until the Fed opened the invoice

They teach you pretty early in economics that technology is supposed to be deflationary. Better tools make workers more productive, productivity raises potential growth, and over time the same unit of output should require less labor, less waste and less capital. That is the clean textbook version, the one that sits comfortably next to Moore's law, Schumpeter's creative destruction and the old idea that competition eventually passes efficiency gains on to consumers.

July 09, 2026 at 12:39 pm EDT

Buy the rumor, sell the AI earnings ?

Samsung's results did not weaken the AI narrative. They showed that investors are no longer debating the strength of demand, but the durability of the earnings cycle. The question turns to whether the earnings cycle can continue to exceed expectations that are already embedded in prices.

July 07, 2026 at 11:16 am EDT

Microsoft's AI equation: 4,800 fewer jobs, billions more for GPUs

Microsoft said on Monday that it would cut 4,800 jobs, equivalent to about 2.1% of its global workforce. Xbox is among the divisions most affected, with 1,600 immediate job cuts and a broader restructuring that could reduce the unit's headcount by around 20% by fiscal 2027. Commercial teams will also be affected.

July 06, 2026 at 11:26 am EDT

The Fed Is Taking Away the Market's Map

The June payroll surprise has revived the rates debate. But Kevin Warsh's larger shift is not about one data point: it is about asking investors to price more of the terrain themselves, and that raises the burden of proof for the AI trade.

July 02, 2026 at 10:52 am EDT

AI's picks and shovels: the investment case moves down the value chain

After the first wave of enthusiasm for model builders, investors are increasingly trying to isolate the segments of the AI supply chain where scarcity, pricing power and free cash flow may ultimately emerge. After looking at AI through the lens of infrastructure costs, then through the valuations implied by the market's enthusiasm for model builders, the next question becomes more practical for investors: where is economic value actually being captured? To make that question more concrete, we have built a set of representative market baskets designed to benchmark specific segments of the AI value chain. The objective is to break a broad (and sometimes rather imprecise) investment theme into smaller building blocks that can be compared across performance, valuation, margins and financial quality.

June 26, 2026 at 10:41 am EDT

What does a $1 trillion valuation actually mean for OpenAI and Anthropic?

Is AI really a productivity revolution? Can companies building it turn its vast (mostly free) usage into vast free cash flow? Artificial intelligence is being sold as a productivity engine for the global economy. It is expected to help companies accelerate research, support customers, assist doctors and lawyers, and reduce the cost of repetitive knowledge work. In the optimistic version of the story, AI allows companies to produce more with fewer resources, lifting margins while reducing inflationary pressure. On the demand side, if AI "threatens" qualified employment, what happens to purchasing power and consumer demand? But before asking whether AI can replace workers, investors need to know whether AI is actually cheaper than the work it claims to replace.

June 25, 2026 at 10:54 am EDT

SpaceX, Reflection AI and the Compute Boom: When AI Starts Looking Like Heavy Industry

The latest signal from the artificial-intelligence boom is not a new chatbot, a consumer application or a software feature, but a multibillion-dollar compute agreement that underlines how physical the industry has become. SpaceX's reported $6.3 billion deal with Reflection AI, including roughly $150 million a month for access to compute capacity, has become a useful case study in the economics now sitting behind the sector's growth story. Reflection AI, backed by Nvidia, is trying to secure the processing power needed to compete with leading frontier laboratories, while SpaceX, still better known for rockets, satellites and Starlink, is increasingly being discussed as a supplier of large-scale AI infrastructure. The arrangement has therefore been presented as part of the open-source AI race, but its more important message may be financial rather than strategic. The market reaction was notably restrained. SpaceX shares fell on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that investors are no longer prepared to treat every AI-related announcement as an automatic positive. The question now being asked is less whether demand for AI exists, and more whether the cost of serving that demand can support the valuations already attached to the sector.

June 24, 2026 at 04:21 am EDT

Hormuz: The Hidden Cost of Dependency

The conflict involving Iran has served one primary purpose: reminding us that globalization still relies on very real and highly vulnerable physical bottlenecks. The Strait of Hormuz measures barely 29 nautical miles at its narrowest point, with two navigable channels of approximately 2 miles each. Some 20m barrels pass through it daily, representing nearly 20% of global liquid fuel consumption and a quarter of the world's maritime oil trade. For liquefied natural gas, the scale is comparable.

June 18, 2026 at 11:49 am EDT

Five Stocks to Play a Geopolitical De-Escalation Scenario

Donald Trump's signing of the Iran deal on Wednesday in Versailles is a welcome relief for markets and for global trade. However, it does not guarantee a lasting de-escalation. Many risks could still materialize, from implementation setbacks to renewed regional tensions. But if we assume that peace holds, five stocks look particularly interesting to play this theme.

June 18, 2026 at 09:56 am EDT