Installment-lending stocks are running well ahead of the broad market at midday Wednesday as Treasury yields retreat and a fresh price-target raise on the group’s largest name pulls peers along with it. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 0.5% to $765.19, a modest gain that makes the buy-now-pay-later sector’s move stand out.

Affirm Holdings (NASDAQ:AFRM) stock is up 6% to $73.82, leading the group after a Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) price target raise landed late Tuesday afternoon while shares were still slipping on rates. Also higher, Sezzle (NASDAQ:SEZL) stock is up 4% to $119, bouncing off a low base after a bruising month.

PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL) stock is up 3% to $54.14, riding the same rate backdrop. Meanwhile, Klarna (NYSE:KLAR) stock is up 2% to $14.47, rounding out the sympathy bid across the group.

Bank of America Lifts Affirm Target to $104

The catalyst came from Bank of America analyst Matthew O’Neill, who raised his 12-month price target on Affirm to $104 from $93 and kept a Buy rating. O’Neill treats Affirm’s own fiscal 2027 outlook as a conservative floor, pointing to guidance for more than $64 billion in gross merchandise volume, at least 27% growth from $50.2 billion in fiscal 2026.

O’Neill also flagged drivers sitting entirely outside guidance, including a possible bank charter, a business-to-business payments push, long-duration lending in the United Kingdom, and brand-sponsored promotions. His $104 target applies a 10x multiple to forward revenue less transaction costs, which gives the setup a specific analytical hook.

The price target raise slots into a rising cluster of Street estimates. BMO Capital moved to $101 from $86, J.P. Morgan to $105 from $90, Needham to $100, RBC Capital to $96, and Citigroup sits at $115. That range makes the current print at $74 look inexpensive relative to consensus if Affirm executes on its fiscal 2027 plan, and it explains why one analyst call could carry a 6% move on a rates-friendly day.

Why Affirm Is Outrunning Its Peers

Sezzle, PayPal, and Klarna are trading up on the rate backdrop alone, since each funds receivables and benefits when yields fall or duration risk quiets down. Affirm carries that same tailwind plus a fresh target raise from a firm arguing management’s own guidance understates the underlying business. That’s the reason today’s leader is outrunning its own group by a wide margin.

Affirm’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report on August 27 gave the setup its foundation. The company posted gross merchandise volume of $14.1 billion, up 36%, and its revenue of $1.17 billion beat the $1.11 billion expected. Adjusted earnings came in at $4.62 per share versus $3.77 expected, and revenue less transaction costs rose 39% to $589 million, capping the company’s most profitable quarter on record.

Sezzle stock had fallen 26% over the past month through Tuesday’s close, so part of today’s move reflects a bounce from a lower base rather than the same repricing that lifts Affirm. Affirm stock itself was down 2% over the past month heading into Wednesday, meaning today’s rally recovers a portion of that drag.

What to Watch Next

Affirm CEO Max Levchin told CNBC’s Squawk Box the day after earnings that “the U.S. consumer undoubtedly sees the higher gas prices, so can’t, can’t ignore that,” and that “in times of inflation, we see more demand because folks are budgeting.” The national average for regular gasoline was $4.09 a gallon on August 28.

Rising installment demand can reflect disciplined household budgeting or genuine strain, and Affirm’s credit quality over the next few quarters is what separates the two readings. Investors can watch for whether Affirm’s approval rates and 30-plus day delinquency ticks stay in check as Pay-in-X mix keeps growing. The bank credit-card delinquency rate sat at 2.85% as of April, inside the normalizing range rather than stress territory.

Traders may want to check for whether the broader group holds its bid through the close and into upcoming macro prints. Your position sizing here should reflect both the single-name analyst catalyst on Affirm and the group’s shared rate exposure across Sezzle, PayPal, and Klarna.

The post Affirm Rallies 6% on $104 Price Target From BofA, Sezzle Climbs 4%, PayPal Rises 3% appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Crypto was built around removing financial middlemen. Nearly two decades later, some of the world’s biggest financial institutions are preparing to become the middlemen on blockchain. A consortium of 21 banks and financial firms plans to create a new company in the second half of 2026 and launch a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin in the first half of 2027. 

The group includes Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citi (NYSE:C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), UBS (NYSE:UBS), and Fidelity Investments. The irony is hard to miss. The institutions crypto was designed to bypass are now building its payment rails.

Wall Street Is No Longer Watching Crypto

The consortium’s announcement, published by Wells Fargo on Sept. 1, represents a major change in strategy. The original group contained 10 banks when the project was announced last October. It has now more than doubled to 21 institutions spanning North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The proposed stablecoin would be pegged 1-to-1 with the U.S. dollar and designed for wholesale, institutional, and retail uses, including cross-border payments and digital-asset settlement. The group also intends to expand into other G7 currencies, with the euro first in line.

It is an important development because stablecoins are increasingly becoming the bridge between traditional money and blockchain networks. The banks aren’t merely offering custody or allowing customers to trade crypto. They want to issue the digital dollars themselves.

Banks Want to Keep the Money in the Banking System

The strategic motivation is straightforward: stablecoins can compete with bank deposits.

A dollar sitting in a traditional checking account supports the banking system’s existing business model. A dollar moved into a stablecoin issued by a nonbank can potentially leave that ecosystem. Bank executives have increasingly recognized that risk as stablecoins have grown. Now banks have an alternative: compete.

The proposed venture would combine their existing distribution, compliance systems, customer relationships, and risk-management infrastructure with blockchain settlement. That could make stablecoins considerably easier for corporations and institutions to adopt.

Regulation is helping open the door. The U.S. Treasury said in August that the GENIUS Act is expected to take effect Jan. 18, 2027, establishing federal rules for payment stablecoins. The consortium says its product will comply with the GENIUS Act and Europe’s MiCA framework.

In other words, the regulatory plumbing is being built at roughly the same time as the financial plumbing.

Crypto Gets Legitimacy — and Competition

That creates a fascinating trade-off for investors. Crypto-native issuers such as Tether (CRYPTO:USDT) and Circle Internet Group (NASDAQ:CRCL) — the issuer of one of the world’s largest regulated stablecoins, USDC (CRYPTO:USDC) — have spent years building stablecoin networks. Now 21 major financial institutions are bringing enormous customer bases and established payment relationships into the market.

That could pressure existing issuers. But it could also expand the entire market.

If banks make blockchain-based dollars easier to use for international payments and securities settlement, more financial activity could migrate on-chain. Tokenized assets, decentralized finance, and digital-asset markets could all benefit from deeper liquidity and easier settlement.

Granted, bank involvement removes some of crypto’s original rebelliousness. It also introduces centralized governance and regulatory constraints. But investors shouldn’t confuse decentralization with adoption.

Key Takeaway

In short, while Wall Street is hijacking crypto to an extent, it is also validating one of crypto’s most commercially useful ideas — programmable digital money — and preparing to distribute it at institutional scale.

The biggest investment opportunity may therefore not be choosing between traditional finance and crypto. It may be identifying the companies that provide the infrastructure for both.

The 2027 launch will be the real test. If these banks can turn stablecoins into everyday payment and settlement tools, blockchain could finally move from an alternative financial system toward becoming part of the financial system itself.

The post Banks Just Hijacked Crypto’s Original Promise: The Revolution Against Wall Street Is Now Owned by Wall Street appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Whether your investments are in the hedge fund or mutual fund arena, one thing is for sure: it’s a good bet that the portfolio managers are fond of many of the same stocks. Goldman Sachs just published its Hedge Fund Trend Monitor and Mutual Fund Fundamentals reports, which analyzed $10 trillion in equity positions at the start of the third quarter of 2026. The report had this to say about the overall performance of the two:

Hedge fund portfolios remain closely tied to the AI trade while mutual funds are underweight the complex. The returns of hedge funds and their most popular holdings have been closely correlated with swings in the AI trade during the last few months. The weight of AI infrastructure stocks in mutual fund portfolios has risen sharply this year. Still, it has failed to keep pace with benchmark weights, leaving mutual funds significantly underweight the complex. Outside of AI, hedge funds and mutual funds generally agree on sector tilts. While hedge funds are not benchmarked, comparing their net sector positions to the Russell 3000 reveals tilts similar to mutual fund portfolios. Both groups carry large overweights in Health Care and large underweights in TMT. The most notable area of disagreement is in the consumer sectors, where hedge funds are overweight in Consumer Discretionary and underweight in Consumer Staples. In contrast, mutual funds hold the opposite tilts.

What we found interesting was the list of stocks Goldman Sachs held that were “shared favorites” of the two investment vehicles. Interestingly, four of the six were large-cap financial stocks that pay dividends. Two were popular money-center banks, and two were among the world’s largest credit card companies.

Here are the four financials that hedge fund and mutual fund portfolio managers share as favorites. Notably, Goldman Sachs rates all four companies a Buy.

Bank of America

While Warren Buffett has trimmed his position significantly over the past two years, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 1.74% dividend yield. The dividend was raised from $0.26 to $0.28, then to $0.32 per quarter, with two increases over the past 12 months. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is a bank holding company and financial holding company that reported impressive Q2 results.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM)
• Global Banking
• Global Markets

Consumer Banking segment offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.

Two businesses comprise GWIM:

• Merrill Wealth Management offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products.
• Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.

The Global Banking segment offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services. The Global Markets segment offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Goldman Sachs has a $74 target price.

Capital One Financial

The well-known banking giant has significant upside potential to the Goldman Sachs target. Capital One Financial (NYSE:COF) is a diversified financial services holding company with banking and non-banking subsidiaries. It offers a wide range of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients through multiple channels.

It operates through three segments:

• The Credit Card segment comprises domestic consumer and small business card lending, as well as international card businesses in the United Kingdom and Canada.
• The Consumer Banking segment includes deposit gathering and lending activities for consumers and small businesses, as well as national auto lending.
• The Commercial Banking segment provides treasury management services to commercial real estate and commercial and industrial customers.

Its principal operating subsidiary is Capital One, National Association, which offers banking products and financial services.

Goldman Sachs has a target price of $247.

Mastercard

The credit card giant remains a top holding for both hedge funds and mutual funds and pays a 0.59% dividend. Mastercard (NYSE:MA) is a technology company in the global payments industry. It connects consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments, digital partners, businesses, and other organizations worldwide by enabling electronic payments and making those transactions secure and accessible.

Mastercard provides a range of payment solutions and services using its brands, including Mastercard, Maestro, and Cirrus.

The company operates a payments network that provides choice and flexibility for consumers, merchants, and their customers. Through its proprietary global payments network, it authorizes, clears, and settles payment transactions. Its additional payments capabilities include automated clearing house (ACH) transactions (both batch and real-time account-based payments). It offers security solutions, consumer acquisition and engagement, business and market insights, gateway, processing, and open banking, among other services.

The Goldman Sachs price target for the stock is $701.

Visa

Coincidentally, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel closed the entire holdings of Visa and Mastercard in the first quarter of 2026. Visa (NYSE:V) is a global payments technology company that pays a small 0.74% dividend. It facilitates global commerce and money movement across more than 200 countries and territories for consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities through its technologies.

It operates through the Payment Services segment and provides transaction processing services (primarily authorization, clearing, and settlement) to its financial institution and merchant clients through VisaNet, its proprietary advanced transaction processing network.

The company offers a range of Visa-branded payment products that its clients, including nearly 14,500 financial institutions, use to develop and offer payment solutions or services, including credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs for individual, business and government account holders.

Visa also provides value-added services to its clients, including issuing solutions, acceptance solutions, risk and identity solutions, open banking solutions and advisory services.

Goldman Sachs has set its target price at $438.

The post Goldman Sachs Says Hedge Funds and Mutual Funds Love These 4 Dividend-Paying Financials appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

A global bond selloff pushed the 10-year Treasury yield  to 4.79% this afternoon, above its prior 52-week high of 4.75% set on July 31. Rising long rates typically help banks, yet the money-center group is soft, and so is the sector fund.

Notably, the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLF) was is 5% year to date (YTD) to $57.31, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 12%. This year so far, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) stock is beating both of those funds.

Morgan Stanley stock was up 19% year to date through Monday’s close, leading every money-center peer this year on the strength of wealth management fees and capital markets activity. Shares are down 0.6% to $212.03 this afternoon as the rate spike tips risk sentiment negative. Breaking $250 requires Morgan Stanley to clear a 52-week high it hasn’t touched in a year, and analyst targets have to move higher.

Ranking the Big Six Banks

Five of the six largest U.S. banks beat XLF this year, and the fund’s lag reflects its broader mix of insurers, exchanges, and payment networks diluting money-center strength. Morgan Stanley led the group by a clear margin, while Wells Fargo’s more balance-sheet-oriented mix has left it below where it started 2026. The separation was earned in the earnings line.

Morgan Stanley’s mix is what set the firm apart from the pack. Its year-over-year (YoY) earnings growth reached 62.4%, classed as strong earnings acceleration, and its beta of 1.209 sits above the money-center average, which cuts both ways. The 2026 story combines that earnings acceleration with a rate environment that rewarded fee-based and capital markets revenue over pure spread income.

Q2 2026 anchored the year for Morgan Stanley. The firm posted record revenue of $21.35 billion and EPS of $3.46, a fifth consecutive beat. Equity trading revenue climbed 69% to $6.30 billion, investment banking rose 58% to $2.44 billion, and total client assets across wealth and investment management reached the $10 trillion milestone.

What It Takes to Reach $250

Morgan Stanley stock trades at $212.03, and its 52-week high is $230.98, so the first step is clearing a level Morgan Stanley shares haven’t reached in a year. The average analyst price target is $236.62, which sits below $250. Ratings break down as 2 Strong Buy, 9 Buy, 13 Hold, 1 Sell, and no Strong Sell.

Morgan Stanley’s forward EPS is $13.42, and the implied P/E ratio comes to 17x. That’s a reasonable multiple for a firm producing record wealth management fees and capital markets revenue, but it doesn’t leave much room for multiple expansion without stronger earnings revisions.

24/7 Wall St.’s price model puts Morgan Stanley’s base case at $248.27, implying 17.2% upside, with an optimistic case of $258.86 and a conservative case of $212.41. So $250 sits just above the base case and inside the optimistic case, marking it as an achievable bull-case level. That’s a materially different answer from stocks whose targets sit below their price.

Rising Rates Complicate the Setup

The 10-year Treasury yield at 4.79% sits above its prior one-year peak, and the move up in long rates has been sharp enough to unsettle risk assets even where it ought to help earnings. Higher long rates conventionally support bank net interest income, yet Morgan Stanley shares and XLF are both lower. A rate spike large enough to trigger risk-off can outweigh the margin benefit in a single session.

The yield curve stayed positive, with the 10-year minus 2-year spread at 0.41% at the latest read, a supportive backdrop for bank earnings over time. Morgan Stanley’s Q2 wealth-management net interest income rose to $2.3 billion, helped by higher sweep deposits and lending growth. The tension is between what today’s move does to trading positioning and what tomorrow’s curve does to lending economics.

What to Watch

Two things have to happen for $250 to come into view. Morgan Stanley stock has to clear $230 with heavy trading volume, and analyst targets have to move up toward the 24/7 Wall St. base case, which in practice depends on capital markets activity holding through year-end. Traders can watch for signs that IPO and M&A pipelines convert to booked revenue in Q3 2026.

Capital return also supports the case, with a reauthorized $20 billion repurchase program starting Q3 and the quarterly dividend raised to $1.15. Given Morgan Stanley’s higher beta and its dependence on markets activity, investors should size their positions with room for the volatility that comes with a fee- and capital-markets-heavy mix. Both the base case and the bull case rely on those revenue lines holding.

The post Morgan Stanley Stock Is Up Nearly 20% in 2026: What Will It Take to Break Through $250? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The 2026 scoreboard among these three big financial names is decisive. BNY Mellon (NYSE:BNY) stock has vastly outrun both Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) year to date (YTD), reframing what winning the bank trade means this year. Certainly, today’s bond-market news is relevant, but the 2026-so-far story has other nuances.

BNY Mellon stock is up 38% YTD at $160.69, Bank of America shares have climbed 15% to $63.13, and Wells Fargo shares are down 8% at $85.80. For sector context, the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLF) is up just 5% at $57.71.

The gap reflects a business-model divide. BNY Mellon operates as a fee-driven capital markets platform, with revenue anchored in custody, servicing, clearing, and collateral fees that scale with asset values and transaction volumes rather than net interest margin. Bank of America and Wells Fargo carry heavier lending exposure, a structural reason the three diverged so widely.

BNY Mellon Leads the Field

BNY Mellon sits at the center of global capital markets, providing custody, administration, investment management, wealth management, payments, clearing, collateral management, corporate trust, depositary receipts, and foreign exchange services. The company oversees $62.6 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration and $2.2 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2026.

Furthermore, BNY Mellon serves over 90% of Fortune 100 companies and nearly all of the top 100 banks globally, with approximately 46,500 employees and a history spanning more than 240 years.

That fee-heavy mix has been the tailwind in 2026, since BNY Mellon monetizes rising asset values and active transaction volumes simultaneously. CEO Robin Vince stated on the Q2 2026 call that the period marked “our 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth”, alongside two consecutive record sales quarters. That commercial momentum aligns with what worked in the market this year.

Bank of America Runs Second

Impressively, Bank of America serves nearly 70 million clients through Consumer Banking, Global Wealth & Investment Management, Global Banking, and Global Markets. The bank operates roughly 3,500 retail financial centers and approximately 15,000 ATMs, holds the top U.S. consumer deposit position, and manages around $4.9 trillion in client balances and $2.3 trillion in assets under management.

Bank of America stock’s 15% YTD gain places it a distant second to BNY Mellon. The Global Markets and investment banking franchises have been standouts, yet lending economics still anchor a large revenue share. That likely explains why Bank of America shares didn’t keep pace with BNY Mellon’s more purely fee-driven engine.

Wells Fargo Is the Laggard

Wells Fargo holds roughly $2.2 trillion in assets across Consumer Banking and Lending, Commercial Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, and Wealth and Investment Management. It operates roughly 4,093 retail branches and serves over 33.5 million mobile active customers.

The firm manages roughly $2.5 trillion in company-wide client assets and holds 4.3% investment banking market share.

Wells Fargo stock is the only name in this trio trading lower in 2026 so far, and its business mix leans more heavily on lending than either peer. That leaves Wells Fargo shares more sensitive to net interest margin dynamics. The 30-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since 2007 earlier this week before easing after the Treasury Department said it would increase buybacks of long-dated government debt “by at least double” for securities from the 10-year to 30-year sector, broader context for why 2026 has been difficult for rate-sensitive lenders.

The Sector Fund Barely Moved

The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund’s 5% YTD gain sits well below both BNY Mellon and Bank of America. XLF covers banks, insurers, and capital markets firms rather than large banks alone, so its return blends many business models. The blended read tempers what any single leader delivered.

That modest return highlights the concentration risk in diversified sector exposure. Owning BNY Mellon directly would have vastly outperformed buying the group through XLF this year. The sharpest read from 2026 is that the bank trade rewarded a specific business model, not the sector as a whole.

What to Watch

The winner in 2026 has been the platform earning fees on global capital markets plumbing, while traditional lenders struggled to keep pace. For those weighing exposure here, position sizing and business-model awareness may matter more than the sector label, and cautious sizing looks prudent when a single name has moved this far ahead.

Investors may want to keep an eye on whether BNY Mellon’s fee-driven momentum holds as capital markets activity normalizes into the fall. The next earnings cycle could sharpen the divide between fee-heavy platforms like BNY Mellon and lending-heavy franchises like Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

The post Which Big Bank Stock Has Dominated in 2026: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or Bank of New York Mellon Corp.? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Even with the NASDAQ 100 up slightly on the day, chip stocks remain under pressure Wednesday morning and afternoon. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) stock is down 4% to $93.12 in midday trading, and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) stock is falling 4% to $465. Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) stock is dropping 5% to $361.73, while NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock is unchanged at $219.54.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) is slipping 1.22% to $562.59 as sector-specific selling overwhelms a broader tape that turned green. So, what’s going on here?

Why the Sector Is Selling Into Bond Yield Relief

The Treasury Department said it would increase buybacks of long-dated government debt “by at least double” for securities from the 10-year to 30-year sector. The 10-year Treasury yield fell 5 basis points to 4.65%, and the 30-year yield declined 8 basis points to 5.2% after hitting its highest level since 2007 earlier this week.

Falling long-end yields typically relieve pressure on high-multiple growth stocks. Chip stocks weakening into that relief points to AI-hardware-specific positioning across portfolios. President Trump also paused 50% tariffs on Canadian goods for three days, moving the start date to August 22, citing a deal subject to finalization of documents.

NVIDIA’s Two Supports

NVIDIA has two catalysts working in its favor that the rest of the sector lacks. The Financial Times reported that China allowed small shipments of NVIDIA’s H200 chips into the country, with ByteDance and Tencent each receiving about 10,000 H200 processors in recent weeks. China had curbed H200 imports to promote its domestic chipmakers, and regulators have started easing some restrictions.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analyst Vivek Arya wrote that NVIDIA stock trades at a 40% to 50% discount to AI compute peers on an enterprise value-to-free-cash-flow basis, and at a 31% to 36% discount to the S&P 500. Arya called that a “compelling opportunity” and said the discount is “overstating the risks” tied to investments in companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

NVIDIA will report earnings on August 26 after the close. That combination of a China thaw, an analyst valuation call, and a near-term earnings catalyst helps explain why NVIDIA stock is holding flat while peer chip stocks slide.

Peer Chip Names in the Selloff

Intel stock has climbed 162% year to date (YTD) through Tuesday’s close, so today’s pullback still leaves a large annual gain. Advanced Micro Devices stock is up 126% YTD through Tuesday’s close, and Broadcom stock is up 10% YTD through Tuesday’s close.

The parallel move across Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom looks like portfolio-level trimming of AI hardware exposure without any single-name event to explain it. Elevated year-to-date gains in Intel stock and Advanced Micro Devices stock give tactical traders a natural profit-taking window into the NVIDIA earnings report.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF as Sector Proxy

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is down 1% to $563.98 Wednesday, a mild headline move that masks sharper declines inside its top holdings. The fund has gained 58% YTD through Tuesday’s close and covers the full semiconductor value chain, from fabless designers to foundries and equipment names.

Concentration matters here. The ETF’s largest weights include Advanced Micro Devices at 10.3%, Broadcom at 9.6%, NVIDIA at 8.4%, and Intel at 8.1%, so parallel weakness in those four names drives most of the fund move. Sector-only vehicles amplify factor risk when one theme, like AI hardware, drives correlated selling across positions.

What to Watch

NVIDIA’s August 26 report is the next real catalyst for the group and can reset sector tone in either direction. Traders can watch for stabilization in Intel stock and Advanced Micro Devices stock into the Wednesday afternoon close.

The prediction markets currently give NVIDIA a 94.5% probability of beating quarterly earnings, which helps explain the flat tape today. Shareholders may want to check for a broadening of the selling into semiconductor equipment names, which would signal something bigger than AI-hardware profit-taking.

Position sizing matters into that earnings report. Investors should consider keeping their exposure across the semiconductor complex modest ahead of a catalyst this large, given the elevated year-to-date gains already in the tape.

The post Intel and AMD Fall 4%, NVIDIA Unchanged as Chip Selloff Defies Bond Yield Relief appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Greg Abel, Warren Buffett’s designated successor as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, poured roughly $17 billion into Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) during the second quarter, according to Berkshire’s Q2 2026 13F filing released last week. The disclosure, showing 24,541,369 new GOOGL shares and 23,603,218 new GOOG shares, is the clearest window yet into how Abel is deploying capital. When read alongside a Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) trim, a Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) build, and a new D.R. Horton (NYSE:DHI) starter, five themes emerge.

1. Alphabet Is Now a Core Berkshire Holding

The combined Alphabet stake elevated the stock into Berkshire’s top holdings. The timing fits the fundamentals. Alphabet reported Q2 2026 revenue growth of 24.2% year over year and trades at a trailing P/E of 17 with a PEG ratio of 0.937. Shares are up 68.7% over the past year and closed at $344.00 on August 17.

2. The AI Thesis Has a Cloud Backbone

Abel is underwriting Google Cloud alongside search. Google Cloud revenue grew 82% year over year to $24.77 billion in Q2, and management disclosed a cloud backlog of $514 billion. Prediction markets assign a 71.5% probability that the next Gemini Pro ships by October 31, with a 91.4% probability it debuts at an Arena score of 1480 or higher. That is the near-term catalyst set Abel is underwriting, and the same buildout story runs through the power, cooling, and networking suppliers we profiled in a free report on the AI infrastructure names that are not chipmakers.

3. Bank of America Trim Signals Selective Financials Caution

Berkshire sold 30,230,150 shares of Bank of America, yet the stake remained the fifth largest at $27.54 billion, or 9.20% of the portfolio. Bank of America stock has advanced 16.2% year to date and 36.1% over the past year. Abel is booking gains while retaining the stock as a top-five holding.

4. Airline Re-Entry via Delta

Berkshire added 17,510,544 shares of Delta Air Lines, building the position to $5.37 billion. This reverses Buffett’s 2020 exit from airlines. Delta guided FY2026 adjusted EPS to $6.50 to $7.50 with premium revenue up 17% and loyalty up 19%. Shares are up 26.2% year to date, and the stock trades at a forward P/E of 14.

5. Housing Optimism Through Homebuilders

A new starter position of 3,564 shares of D.R. Horton accompanied a 3,012,099-share increase in Lennar (NYSE: LEN), lifting that stake to $1.16 billion. Lennar is down 34.4% over the past year, and D.R. Horton trades at a forward P/E of 13 against an analyst target of $162.92. Abel is buying weakness where balance sheets are strong.

The Takeaway

For a retirement-focused investor, the Alphabet purchase is the signal worth studying. Berkshire rarely stakes $17 billion on a single quarter’s move. The entry point, roughly 17x forward earnings for a business compounding revenue in the mid-20s, resembles the Apple thesis in its early innings: dominant cash generation acquired at a market multiple. The homebuilder and airline moves are secondary bets on U.S. economic resilience. Following his lead requires accepting Abel’s holding period, which is measured in years.

Data Sources

• Berkshire Hathaway Q2 2026 13F Filing provided verified share counts, position values, and portfolio weights.
• The filing confirmed the combined Alphabet purchase as Q2’s largest active dollar move.
• The filing documented the Bank of America trim and the new D.R. Horton starter position.

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Two of the most closely tracked investors in America moved in opposite directions on the same consumer lender last quarter. According to Q2 2026 13F filings, positions as of June 30, 2026, filed August 14, 2026, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) sold 4,150,000 shares of Capital One, leaving 3,000,000 shares valued at $601,860,000, a share delta of about negative 58%.

In the same quarter, Dan Loeb’s Third Point bought 685,000 shares to reach 825,000 shares, valued at $165,511,500, with a share delta of roughly 4.89. George Soros’ Soros Fund Management also trimmed, selling 33,043 shares to 147,062 shares, valued at $29,503,578.

One note before we move further: Buffett retired as Berkshire’s CEO at the end of 2025, but remains active as Chairman of the company. Greg Abel now makes day to day decisions for the conglomerate.

What Capital One Actually Is

Capital One (NYSE:COF) is a consumer credit machine. Credit cards and auto lending drive the business, which means earnings are levered to the health of the American household. Q2 2026 revenue reached $15.85B, with Domestic Card revenue of $11.10B, up 30% year over year after the May 18, 2025 Discover acquisition and the April 7, 2026 Brex deal. Diluted EPS came in at $4.73.

The Berkshire Side

Capital One was not an isolated trim. In the same filing, Berkshire also cut Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) by 30,230,150 shares to 483,394,015 shares and cut Ally Financial (NYSE:ALLY) by 2,000,000 shares to 27,000,000 shares. The filings show a broader lightening of consumer-credit exposure. The disclosures reveal positioning changes only. Funds sell for rebalancing, risk limits, and dozens of other reasons.

The Loeb Side

Third Point moved the other way, multiplying its position from a small base. Loeb is buying a franchise trading at a trailing PE of 13, a price-to-book of 1.226, and a forward PE of 11, with an analyst target price of $256.5 against a current price of $227.34. Return on tangible common equity ran 18.04% last quarter.

What Would Make Each Side Right

Berkshire’s trim looks vindicated if consumer credit quality cracks. Today it is not cracking. The domestic card charge-off rate fell 39 basis points sequentially to 4.71%, and the FRED credit card delinquency series sits at 2.92%, inside the normalizing band.

Loeb wins if the Discover integration compounds as management projects. CEO Richard Fairbank said Capital One is “14 months into our planned 24-month integration of Discover, and integration is going well.” The Global Payment Network volume of $189.6B, up 156% year over year, hints at the optionality.

The Takeaway

Two elite investors read the same filings and reached opposite conclusions. In the most recent quarter Berkshire’s largest additions were Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) and Delta Airlines. Its largest sells included Kroger, Bank of America, and Capital One. The company’s largest positions are Apple, American Express, and Coca-Cola.

The largest buys for Loeb in the quarter were Warner Bros, Alphabet, and Keysight Technologies. Loeb’s biggest sells were Amazon, Telephone and Data Systems, and Carpenter Technology. It’s worth noting where the two agree: both funds have beeen loading up on Alphabet.

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Broadcom‘s (NASDAQ:AVGO) stock is sinking 6% to $390.69 in early Friday afternoon trading, while Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) stock is climbing 4% to $502.95. The split reaction within a single AI theme reveals opposing verdicts on how AI infrastructure gets financed.

A Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) note flagged a $370 billion estimate tied to Broadcom’s off-balance-sheet financing vehicle, while Baird issued a Street-high price target on AMD’s accelerator roadmap. Year-to-date through Thursday’s close, Broadcom stock was up 21% and Advanced Micro Devices stock was up 126%.

Broadcom Slides on AI Debt Vehicle Estimate

Bank of America analyst Tom Curcuruto flagged that Broadcom’s chip-financing vehicle could reach $370 billion of senior debt by mid-2029 at 20-gigawatt scale, including roughly $150 billion of new issuance in 2027 alone. Per Broadcom’s latest 10-Q, an investor partner assumed the purchase and lease agreements, and Broadcom agreed to backstop lease payments for five years, with maximum exposure of up to $29 billion on the initial transaction.

The $370 billion isn’t Broadcom’s debt; the vehicle raises capital and leases custom AI accelerators to customers. Broadcom’s fiscal Q2 2026 revenue was $22.19 billion, up 47.9% year over year, with AI chip revenue up 143%, and management has guided to $16 billion of AI semiconductor revenue for the current quarter. Polymarket traders give Broadcom a 94% chance of topping $15 billion in AI revenue this quarter and a 78% chance of exceeding $16 billion, and today’s selloff targets the financing structure rather than underlying demand.

AMD Rallies on Baird’s Street-High $1,250 Call

Baird analyst Tristan Gerra doubled his AMD price target to a Street-high $1,250 from $625 while maintaining Outperform. His model implies AMD AI GPU platform revenue reaching $147 billion by 2030 on 15% share of the data center AI accelerator TAM. Bank of America raised its 2030 server CPU market forecast to more than $210 billion, up from $170 billion this week and kept Advanced Micro Devices as its top pick.

Advanced Micro Devices stock initially fell after the Aug. 4 Q2 2026 report despite revenue of $11.54 billion, up 50.1% year over year, with Data Center revenue more than doubling to $6.72 billion. The culprit was flat gross margin guidance of 56% for Q3 2026. Per prior 24/7 Wall St. coverage, the post-earnings drop was 9%.

AMD’s put-to-call open interest ratio has climbed to 1.15, and its 20-day Chaikin Money Flow reads -0.142, the weakest of 10 major chip names, while NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) show accumulation. Options positioning hedges AMD even as sell-side targets rise.

Sector Move Confirms a Single-Name Story

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) stock is down 2%, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) is down 0.7%. A broad semiconductor fund barely moving while Broadcom stock falls 6% and AMD stock rises 4% confirms that today is a repricing of individual balance sheets and analyst calls rather than the broader AI trade.

NVIDIA went public this week with a plan to collectively finance AI computing deals totaling roughly $500 billion, alongside Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Blackstone (NYSE:BX) and Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO), with KKR (NYSE:KKR), BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) and Brookfield (NYSE:BN) added days before. Jensen Huang clarified that NVIDIA’s support would cover as much as 25% of an opportunity, and no deals were signed at the time of the announcement. Broadcom’s structurally similar arrangement, anchored by Apollo and Blackstone, got a number attached Friday and the stock fell.

Broadcom’s vehicle launched in June when Apollo and Blackstone led a $35 billion financing for Broadcom’s AI XPV Platform. That deal funds more than 1 gigawatt of compute for Anthropic, with the platform sized to support more than 20 gigawatts for frontier AI labs through 2028. Blackstone has already sounded out investors for another transaction exceeding $30 billion.

What Investors Can Watch Next

Investors can watch for whether Broadcom’s backstop exposure grows beyond the disclosed $29 billion as the AI XPV Platform scales toward 20 gigawatts. They can also check to see if NVIDIA’s $500 billion framework converts into signed contracts, since none were in place at announcement.

Additionally, traders may want to look for signs of AMD’s elevated put open interest unwinding without a price breakdown, suggesting hedgers were protecting gains rather than exiting. The key question is whether the market treats vendor-backstopped AI financing as reassurance for one company and risk for another. Investors should size their positions carefully given how quickly narratives around AI leverage are shifting.

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The smart money is decisively bullish on Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), even as the stock trades at or near record highs. Of 24 analysts covering the shares, five rate it Strong Buy, 15 rate it Buy, four rate it Hold, and zero rate it Sell or Strong Sell, a lopsided consensus that stands in sharp contrast to a muted, skeptical retail crowd.

Shares closed at $63.86 on August 10, 2026, riding a 16.1% year-to-date advance and a 38.8% one-year gain. The stock hit a $64.00 52-week high on Monday, and the 10-year return runs to 328.3%. In plain terms, shares are pressing the top of their long-term range even as institutional coverage points higher.

What Wall Street Thinks

The sell-side consensus price target is $68.77, implying additional upside from the current quote. The 24/7 Wall St. quantitative model goes further: a predicted price of $72.19 with a 0.9 confidence reading, translating to a Buy signal and 13.04% projected upside. The model’s bull case reaches $83.90 by August 2027; the bear case is $62.78.

Q2 2026 EPS of $1.21 beat the $1.12 consensus by 8.0%, extending a long streak of quarterly earnings beats. Quarterly earnings growth ran 34.1% year-over-year, and CEO Brian Moynihan told investors, “pipelines remain strong, and commercial borrowing has picked up.” Global Markets revenue jumped 34% to $8.02 billion, investment banking fees rose 50%, and the company returned $8.0 billion to shareholders in Q2 alone. Valuation remains undemanding at a trailing P/E of 15 and forward P/E of 14.

What Retail Thinks

Retail has largely stayed on the sidelines. Reddit activity around Bank of America has been thin and speculative, concentrated in r/wallstreetbets during a late-July engagement spike, with peak activity scores in the 20 to 32 range and single-mention samples. The 24/7 model’s own sentiment component flagged bearish social sentiment as a −0.036 drag on the composite factor. Options positioning is mixed: the full-chain put/call ratio is 0.80, with front-week August 14 expiry running 1.04. That combination, quiet forums plus balanced options flow, describes a retail base that has largely missed or dismissed the run.

Insider Activity: Routine Compensation Mechanics

CEO Brian Moynihan’s recent transactions are monthly RSU vesting events on the 15th of each month with consistent 18,083-share counts. These are automatic compensation-plan settlements executed on a preset schedule. The 10% owner activity attributed to Bank of America itself shows balanced buy/sell patterns consistent with 10b5-1 plan execution and portfolio rebalancing. Named-executive activity remains balanced and routine at these prices.

The Verdict

The gap here favors the analysts. Both Wall Street’s target and the model’s sit above spot, backed by 83% bullish analyst sentiment, many straight earnings beats, and 34% earnings growth. Retail skepticism at record highs is common; it is rarely a reliable contrary signal in a large-cap money-center bank compounding at this rate. The key risk that retirement-oriented holders should weigh is rate sensitivity: management disclosed that a −100 bps parallel shift would reduce NII by roughly $2.2 billion over the next 12 months, while a +100 bps move adds about $1.0 billion. On the current data, the smart money read remains the more defensible one; retail hesitation is a check on position sizing, not a reason to fade the underlying trend.

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Agentic AI software names are moving together this Friday afternoon, and the leaderboard looks like a mirror image of Monday’s session. Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) stock is surging 10% to $170.76 midday, while UiPath (NYSE:PATH) shares are climbing 7% to $14.93 and C3.ai (NYSE:AI) shares are rallying 5% to $10.43.

The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (CBOE:IGV) is up 3% to $102.24, confirming that the bid extends well beyond the three headline names. The rotation caps a notable week for the group, given that C3.ai and UiPath sat out Monday’s initial move higher on Palantir’s Q2 blowout. Could this be the start of a bigger rally for agentic AI stocks?

Bank of America Fuels the Palantir Leg

The proximate catalyst for Palantir today is a Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) note reiterating a Buy rating and raising its price target to $255, implying 50% upside. Analysts pointed to Palantir’s AI strategy, expanding U.S. commercial book, deep customer partnerships, outcome-based pricing, and growing role in sovereign AI.

Some of the intraday velocity in Palantir stock also appears to reflect short covering after this week’s strong Q2 2026 report and raised full-year guide. The company has continued to expand its federal and defense footprint, reinforcing the sovereign-AI thesis that Bank of America leaned on.

Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp framed the quarter in language that has clearly landed with sell-side desks, stating, “Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed.” That’s the phrase Wall Street is now using to justify higher multiples on the name.

Sympathy Bid for UiPath and C3.ai

There’s no materially impactful company-specific news out of UiPath or C3.ai today. Both are rising in sympathy as the agentic-AI cohort re-rates, after being conspicuously absent from Monday’s move.

UiPath has its own credible agentic AI narrative underneath the tape, with CEO Daniel Dines recently asserting that “agentic products are moving from pilot to production, with customers standardizing on UiPath as the orchestration and automation execution layer for their enterprise AI transformation.” C3.ai is a different animal, still deep in a turnaround under returning founder-CEO Thomas Siebel and not yet profitable.

The IGV move suggests the buying is not isolated to these three tickers. The ETF’s 8% one-week gain hints at broad software-sector participation, though its concentrated top-heavy structure means a handful of mega-cap software names typically do most of the work.

The Valuation Dispersion Is Real

Investors piling in today may want to note how wide the quality and valuation spread runs across this trio. Palantir trades at a trailing 12-month P/E ratio of 146.08x, which is priced for near-perfection execution on the sovereign AI thesis.

UiPath, by contrast, carries a far more digestible trailing 12-month P/E ratio of 24.79x, offering exposure to the same secular theme at a fraction of the multiple. C3.ai has no trailing 12-month P/E because it is unprofitable on that time frame, so today’s move is essentially a sentiment trade rather than an earnings-based rerating.

The bull case on Palantir stock is that operational AI, outcome-based pricing, and government mindshare compound faster than the multiple compresses. The bear case is straightforward: at 146.08x trailing earnings, any misstep can trigger sharp drawdowns, and insider selling has been active into strength.

What to Watch Now

Traders can watch for whether Palantir stock holds the round-number zone above $170 into Friday’s close, since a soft finish would undercut the Bank of America-driven momentum narrative. Follow-through in UiPath and C3.ai on Monday could help clarify whether today’s move is a genuine group rotation or a one-day sympathy pop.

The IGV tape is the tell. If the software ETF keeps advancing next week, this rally has legs beyond Palantir’s headline.

Given the valuation dispersion, position sizing matters here. Investors sizing new exposure to Palantir stock at these multiples should treat it accordingly. Meanwhile, investors looking for cheaper agentic AI exposure could seek out assets trading at a lower multiple.

The post Palantir Surges 10%, UiPath Rises 7%, C3.ai Gains 5% as Agentic AI Stocks Rally Together appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Li Lu’s Himalaya Capital cut its Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) position by roughly 71% and redeployed the proceeds into the three companies that grade, index, and monitor the credit system itself. Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) was sized at approximately $51.4 million and S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) at $51.7 million, a gap of about $300,000 that looks like a deliberate paired bet on the ratings duopoly. MSCI rounded out the rotation.

Li Lu is the only outside manager Charlie Munger ever trusted with his family’s money, and Berkshire has owned Moody’s for roughly 25 years. When a Munger disciple sells a big commercial bank to buy the toll operators sitting above it, that signals where durable pricing power lives in financial services.

What Got Sold

Bank of America is having a fine year on paper. Q2 2026 EPS of $1.21 beat consensus of $1.12, the fifth straight beat, and the stock is up 13% year to date and 39% over the past year. However, the earnings engine tilts increasingly toward markets and trading, and the balance sheet carries the classic problem.

A 100 basis point drop in rates would cut net interest income by roughly $2.2 billion over the next twelve months. Own a bank, and you own the yield curve and the credit cycle along with it.

What Got Bought

Moody’s put up 15.1% revenue growth in Q2 2026 with an adjusted operating margin of 55.3%, and its ratings unit generated a 68.3% operating margin on 25% revenue growth. Moreover, S&P Global posted 17% growth in its Ratings segment with a pro forma 68% operating margin.

MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) delivered Index segment growth of 17.5% with ETF assets linked to its indexes at a record $2.82 trillion. None hold credit risk on a balance sheet. None get told by the Federal Reserve how much capital to reserve against a bad quarter.

The Thesis

Rating agencies and index providers do not lend money and do not need regulatory capital buffers. Instead, they charge fees every time debt gets issued or an ETF gets funded, and the AI infrastructure buildout is one of the largest issuance events in a generation. Moody’s Public, Project and Infrastructure Finance revenue rose 38% in Q2 2026, most of it data-center paper. That is the same wave lifting commercial banks, monetized at a fraction of the capital intensity and at margins banks cannot approach. Rob Fauber put it plainly on the July call, saying “Moody’s is well positioned at the intersection of risk, data, analytics and technology.”

S&P Global is down 15.4% year to date, and Moody’s is off 3%, while BAC ran hard. Selling strength to buy weakness in higher-quality businesses is the standard Munger move, and Li Lu is executing it in size.

Should Retail Investors Follow

The takeaway is to understand what Li Lu is signaling rather than mirror position sizes at home. Rating agencies and index compounders survive credit cycles while banks participate in them. In addition, buybacks reinforce that discipline. Moody’s raised its 2026 authorization to up to $3 billion, S&P Global lifted its 2026 target above $7 billion, and MSCI has roughly $1.6 billion remaining on its authorization.

Moody’s trades at 29x forward earnings and S&P Global at 22x. Not cheap. But a value investor with a 25-year holding pattern is paying for durability. Worth following the thesis. Copying the trade is optional.

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Warren Buffett’s latest 13F filing, disclosing holdings as of March 31, and filed May 15, still concentrates Berkshire Hathaway’s public-equity firepower in just five names. Every one of them has moved this year, and the gap between what Buffett paid and where these tickers trade in July 2026 is the entire question. Skip this read and you are guessing at what the world’s most famous allocator is quietly compounding into. Here is the buy/hold/sell tape on all five, ranked for pacing, not size.

1. Chevron (The Surprise at the Top of the Line of Fire)

Start with the name most retail investors forget is even in the portfolio. Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is Buffett’s energy anchor, and it just delivered the kind of quarter that vindicates a contrarian oil bet: an adjusted EPS blowout against a headline revenue miss, masking the fact that production is ripping higher post-Hess.

In Q1 2026, Chevron posted adjusted EPS of $1.41 versus the expected 97 cents, a 45.56% beat, on worldwide production of 3,858 MBOED, up 15%, with U.S. output above 2 million barrels per day for the third straight quarter. Analysts have not chased the move: consensus target sits at $213.91 against a share price of $195.19 on Aug. 3, and the stock is already up more than 25% year to date.

Read: Buy. A 3.65% dividend yield, a 13 forward P/E and 18 Buy or Strong Buy ratings versus one Sell rating makes this the cheapest conviction pick on Buffett’s sheet. The obvious heavyweight is next.

2. Apple (The Position That Bankrolled the Berkshire Decade)

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) remains the largest common-stock holding on the 13F, and the tape has finally caught up to the thesis Buffett locked in years ago. The iPhone 17 supercycle plus Services at record levels has re-rated the multiple hard.

Q2 2026 landed at revenue of $111.18 billion, up 16.6% year over year, with EPS of $2.01 beating the $1.94 estimate by 3.61%, powered by iPhone revenue of $56.99 billion and Services at a record $30.98 billion. The board reloaded with a fresh $100 billion buyback authorization and a 4% dividend hike to 27 cents per share. Shares have surged more than 50% over the past year to $305.24 on Aug. 3.

Read: Hold. The fundamentals are pristine, but with the analyst consensus target at $315.79, the stock is trading above the Street. Buffett has been trimming for a reason. Fresh money buyers should wait for a pullback toward the 50-day moving average of $301.66. Next up: the bank that just posted one of its cleanest quarters in years.

3. Bank of America (The Rate-Cycle Beneficiary Buffett Won’t Fully Let Go)

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has been the subject of endless “is Buffett selling?” chatter, yet it remains a top-five 13F position, and Q2 2026 explained why he is holding the core.

The bank delivered Q2 2026 revenue of $31.56 billion beating by 2.55% and EPS of $1.21 versus $1.12 estimated, a 7.74% beat, with EPS up 34% year over year. Global Markets revenue jumped 34% to $8.02 billion, equities sales and trading rocketed 70% to $3.62 billion, and investment banking fees rose 50% to $2.14 billion. Credit stayed pristine: net charge-off ratio improved to 0.47% from 0.55%, and the bank returned $8 billion to shareholders in the quarter. CEO Brian Moynihan called it “one of our strongest quarters to date”.

Read: Buy. At a 14 trailing P/E and 1.565 price-to-book, with the Street target at $67.26 against an Aug. 3 share price around $62.07 and zero Sell ratings on 24 analysts, BAC is the cleanest risk/reward in the megabank complex. The next name is quieter, more defensive, and just went ex-CEO.

4. Coca-Cola (The Dividend Fortress in a Leadership Transition)

Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) is the position Buffett has famously never sold a share of, and Q1 2026 explained the loyalty: pricing power intact, volumes accelerating in emerging markets, and margins expanding under new CEO Henrique Braun.

Q1 2026 delivered revenue of $12.47 billion, up 12.1% year over year, beating by 1.97%, with EPS of 86 cents versus the expected 81 cents, a 5.87% beat. Underneath: organic revenue growth of 10%, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar volume up 13% across all segments and operating margin expanded to 35% from 32.9%. Full-year guidance calls for organic revenue growth of 4% to 5% and comparable EPS growth of 8% to 9% off the 2025 base of $3, with roughly $12.2 billion in free cash flow.

Read: Hold, buying dips. At a 27 trailing P/E with a 2.44% dividend yield, KO is not cheap after ripping nearly 26% year to date, but the analyst target of $87.10 leaves upside from the $86.84 share price on Aug. 3. But the stock has pulled back around 3% since July 29, providing the exact window income buyers wait for. Now comes the payoff.

5. American Express (The Longest Conviction Trade in the Book)

American Express (NYSE:AXP) is the punchline. Buffett has owned it since the 1963 Salad Oil Scandal, and it is the only top-five holding sitting in the red year to date, which is precisely why it belongs at the top of the shopping list right now.

Q1 2026 delivered revenue of $18.91 billion beating by 1.61%, EPS of $4.28 versus $3.99 expected, a 7.24% beat, and net income of $2.97 billion, up 15%. Billed business hit $428 billion, up 10% from $387.4 billion, with Card Member spending growing 9% FX-adjusted, the highest quarterly growth in three years. Management reaffirmed FY 2026 guidance of 9% to 10% revenue growth and EPS of $17.30–$17.90, and CEO Stephen Squeri called it a “very strong start to the year…10 percent FX-adjusted revenue growth and 18 percent EPS growth.”

Read: Buy. AXP trades at a 22 trailing P/E and just 20 forward earnings, is down 8.09% year to date to $342.57 on Aug.3, and the stock carries an analyst target of $374.94. Every prior time Buffett’s oldest conviction pick has stalled while its fundamentals accelerated, the reversion has been sharp. This is the setup.

The Threads Pulled Together

Two clear buys (CVX and BAC), one high-conviction laggard payoff (AXP) and two holds where fundamentals are pristine but valuations are ahead of themselves (AAPL and KO). The pattern in Buffett’s own trading, trimming Apple, holding banks, adding energy, points to the same conclusion: The money in the 13F is rotating toward the names that have not run yet. The window on AXP and CVX narrows every session the rest of the market keeps grinding higher.

The post Are Billionaire Investor Warren Buffett’s Top 5 Stock Picks a Buy in August? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Goldman Sachs is the acknowledged leader in the investment landscape on Wall Street and worldwide. The firm’s top-notch research department continues to provide institutional and high-net-worth clients with the best ideas across the investment spectrum and is likely to do so for years to come. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is the world’s second-largest investment bank by revenue and is ranked 36th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue.

The Wall Street white-glove giant offers financing, advisory services, risk distribution, and hedging for the firm’s institutional and corporate clients. In addition, it provides advice, investing, and execution for institutions and individuals across public and private markets. At 24/7 Wall St., we have followed the company’s research for 15 years to bring our readers top stock ideas. One of our favorite avenues is the firm’s Conviction List of top picks, which is reviewed and updated monthly. The August addition may be a perfectly timed idea, given that interest rates are heading higher. Plus, Goldman Sachs has two additional financial services names on the Conviction List that look like outstanding ideas for the rest of the year and beyond.

Why We Recommend Goldman Sachs Stocks

Goldman Sachs Research is widely regarded as among the best in the industry for its exceptional breadth and depth, covering over 3,000 securities, more than 45 economies, and every major market, with cutting-edge, data-driven insights. The firm’s team produces thousands of proprietary forecasts, models, and unique indicators that help clients anticipate market shifts. At the same time, its original thought leadership on macroeconomics, industries, and global trends draws from a global network of top-tier analysts and economists. This combination of rigorous fundamental analysis, innovative proprietary tools, and a long-standing reputation for high-quality output—often recognized in industry awards and surveys—consistently positions Goldman Sachs as a trusted resource for institutional investors and sophisticated market participants.

AON

This is the newest addition to the Goldman Sachs Conviction List for August, and it pays a 0.83% dividend. AON (NYSE:AON) is an Ireland-based professional services company providing a range of risk capital and human capital solutions. Goldman Sachs analyst Rob Cox has this to say about the stock.

AON is poised to deliver stronger-than-consensus 2026 organic growth and free cash flow (9% above Visible Alpha consensus for 2026 and 2027), supported by talent investments (more brokers), NFP acquisition synergies (acquired in 2024), and an eventual capital markets recovery, combined with an attractive valuation.

The company operates through two segments. The Risk Capital segment supports clients through its commercial risk and reinsurance solution lines. Its commercial risk includes insurance and specialty brokerage, global risk consulting, captives management, and affinity programs. Its reinsurance includes treaty reinsurance, facultative reinsurance, strategy and technology group, and capital markets.

The Human Capital segment supports clients through its health and wealth solution lines. Health includes consulting and brokerage, consumer benefits solutions, and talent advisory services. Wealth includes retirement consulting, pension administration, and investment consulting. Its commercial risk solutions include insurance and specialty brokerage, global risk consulting, captives management, and others.

The Goldman Sachs target price is $430, representing a 21% gain for the shares.

Bank of America

This quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 1.81% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is a bank holding company that reported impressive Q2 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 513,624,165 shares, which is 7.9% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float. Berkshire did lower its Bank of America position in Q1 2026, but only modestly. According to the Q1 2026 13F filing, it was reduced by just 0.71%, a tiny cut compared to other positions.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management comprises two businesses:
  • Merrill Wealth Management, which offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products
  • Bank of America Private Bank, which provides comprehensive wealth management solutions
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating, and its $56 target price would be an 18% gain.

Capital One Financial

The well-known banking giant has significant upside potential to the Goldman Sachs target and pays a 1.43% dividend. Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF) is a diversified financial services holding company with banking and non-banking subsidiaries. The company offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients through various channels. It operates through three segments.

The Credit Card segment comprises domestic consumer and small business card lending, as well as international card businesses in the United Kingdom and Canada.

The Consumer Banking segment includes deposit gathering and lending activities for consumers and small businesses, as well as national auto lending.

The Commercial Banking segment provides treasury management services to commercial real estate and commercial and industrial customers. Its principal operating subsidiary is Capital One, National Association, which offers banking products and financial services.

The Goldman Sachs target price is $276, representing a 28% increase from current levels.

The post Goldman Sachs Adds Financial Giant to the August Conviction List of Top Stock Picks appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and American Express (NYSE:AXP) just posted Q2 2026 results that showcase two very different financial machines.

Bank of America rode a trading and investment banking surge to its strongest quarter in years. American Express leaned on premium cardholders spending at the fastest clip in three years. Both beat on earnings. Only one has been rewarded by the market.

Trading Desks Lift BAC. Platinum Cards Carry AXP.

Bank of America’s quarter was a Wall Street story. Global Markets revenue jumped 34% to $8.02 billion, with equities sales and trading exploding 70% to $3.622 billion and investment banking fees climbing 50% to $2.138 billion.

Net interest income rose 9% to $16 billion, and combined credit and debit card spend reached $266 billion. CEO Brian Moynihan called it “one of our strongest quarters to date” with every segment posting double-digit net income growth.

American Express told a narrower, cleaner story. Billed business hit $455.80 billion, up 9%, the fastest FX-adjusted rate in three years. The refreshed Platinum Card became the fastest-growing portfolio in U.S. Consumer.

Net write-offs held at 2%, best-in-class for the industry. Revenue of $19.637 billion narrowly missed the $19.703 billion consensus, a small blemish on an otherwise clean scorecard.

Diversified Universal Bank vs. Premium Closed Loop

Moynihan runs a scale game across 70 million clients, using digital tools like Erica and 114 live generative AI use cases to lift efficiency. The efficiency ratio improved 359 basis points to 59%.

Stephen Squeri, meanwhile, is layering on new spend catalysts, including the proposed TheFork acquisition covering 50,000 restaurants across 11 countries and an ALL Accor loyalty tie-up. His investment thesis leans on Millennial and Gen-Z acquisition, which he describes as “greater lifetime value.”

The Next Test Is Rates and Reinvestment

I will be watching whether BAC can protect NII if the Fed cuts. Trading revenue is cyclical, and a $70.3 billion commercial real estate book still deserves scrutiny.

For AXP, Squeri is reinvesting outperformance rather than dropping it to the bottom line. That kept full-year EPS guidance at $17.30 to $17.90 even after raising revenue growth to 10%. Investors clearly want more flow-through.

AXP fell 8.21% in the week around the earnings report and sits down 11.12% year to date, while BAC is up 14.88%.

Why I Lean Toward Bank of America Right Now

If you want the stock to confirm the thesis, BAC is winning that argument today. I like the breadth: consumer, wealth, banking, and markets all posted double-digit gains, and management is returning $8 billion quarterly to shareholders at a P/E of 14.

Amex is the higher-quality franchise in my view, with a P/E of 20 and durable premium economics, but rising expenses and a slight revenue miss give me pause. For investors focused on Squeri’s reinvestment cycle, AXP’s current discount is worth monitoring. For me, the diversified compounder trading at a mid-teens multiple is the cleaner setup this quarter.

The post Bank of America vs American Express: Only One Financial Stock Deserves Your Money appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

All the firms we have covered on Wall Street for the past 15 years have lists of top stock ideas from their analyst pools. Some are just domestic stocks, some are European and Asian. Jefferies has a combined list that is called the Global Best Ideas list, described like this:

Jefferies’ Global Best Ideas list represents our highest-conviction, Buy-rated stocks across our Global Research Platform. These 24 top ideas are supported by differentiated analysis, bolstered by catalysts, and sit at valuation levels that suggest upside. Themes include: Secular Innovation & Capex, Structural Change, and Product Cycles & Pricing Power.

Five top Jefferies global picks are U.S. stocks that check a lot of boxes for what we believe is important now. The stock market is very overbought and expensive. Both the trailing and forward price-to-earnings readings for the S&P 500 are well above historical averages, and we are lined up for what could be a meaningful correction or even a bear market. All five make sense for growth and income investors looking for dependable passive income, and for some positive total return potential to keep pace with the current annual inflation rate of 3.5% for the 12 months ending in June, which was down from 4.2% in May. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, stands at 2.6% over the same period.

American Healthcare REIT

With an aging U.S. population, this may be one of the best sectors to look at now, and the stock pays a 1.75% dividend. American Healthcare REIT (NYSE: AHR) is a self-managed real estate investment trust that acquires, owns, and operates a diversified portfolio of healthcare real estate properties, primarily senior housing, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient medical buildings, and other healthcare-related facilities.

The analysts at Jefferies said this:

American Healthcare REIT primarily owns private-pay senior housing, which it leases through a RIDEA structure that exposes it to the communities’ P&L. The current supply backdrop remains very positive for landlords, with active construction at multi-year lows and no signs of inflection. The demand backdrop is also very compelling for the senior housing sector. Based on OECD projections, the 80+ population is expected to grow at an average of +5.0% annually through 2030, well above the +1.8% CAGR from 2010 through 2025.

Its properties are in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Isle of Man.

Its segments include:

• Integrated senior health campuses
• OM, SHOP, and triple-net leased properties

The OM buildings are leased to multiple tenants under separate leases. Its integrated senior health campuses each provide a range of independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing services, and ancillary businesses.

Its triple-net leased properties segment includes:

• Senior housing
• Skilled nursing facilities
• Hospital investments

The SHOP segment includes senior housing, which may provide:

• Assisted living care
• Independent living
• Memory care
• Skilled nursing services

Jefferies has a $65 price target for the shares.

Bank of America

While Warren Buffett has trimmed his position over the past two years and sold a whopping 50 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2025, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding, with a solid 1.83% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding company that reported impressive Q2 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 513,624,165 shares, which is 7.9% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float. Berkshire did lower its Bank of America position in Q1 2026, but only modestly. According to the Q1 2026 13F filing, it was reduced by just 0.71%, a tiny cut compared to other positions.

Jefferies said this about the bank:

We view Bank of America as one of the most attractive opportunities among the large-cap banks, given its combination of durable earnings growth, improving capital markets activity, positive operating leverage, and significant capital return capacity. While investors often view BAC primarily through the lens of interest rates, we believe the company’s earnings outlook is supported by multiple drivers, including balance sheet growth, improving fee income, funding optimization, and fixed asset repricing. NT, we expect BAC to outperform its capital markets guidance, with investment banking and trading revenues tracking well above year-ago levels, while NII is trending toward the high end of management’s 6%-8% FY26 outlook.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM) comprises two businesses: Merrill Wealth Management, which offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

The Jefferies target price for the shares is $75.

Caterpillar

This is one of the best infrastructure ideas and will be a big winner in the massive construction and deployment of data centers, and it pays a reliable but modest 0.68% dividend. Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives.

Jefferies said this about the company:

Caterpillar is highly levered to infrastructure build and commodity capacity expansion. Both are areas of the global economy that have been severely underinvested in over the last decade+. While most investors have been solely focused on CAT’s powergen business, which is benefiting from AI-driven data center infrastructure, reshoring, and megaprojects. We continue to believe that a large capital investment is needed globally to mine commodities to fuel the energy transition.

Its segments include:

• Construction Industries
• Resource Industries
• Power & Energy
• Financial Products

The Construction Industries segment is responsible for supporting customers using machinery in infrastructure and building construction applications. The Resource Industries segment develops and manufactures high-productivity equipment for both surface and underground mining operations worldwide. It also provides select work tools, machinery components, wear-and-maintenance components, and related parts.

The Power & Energy segment supports customers in oil and gas, power generation, marine, rail, and industrial applications, including Caterpillar machines. It also develops mining software solutions for the industry.

The company also provides financing and related services through its Financial Products segment.

Jefferies has a $1,045 price target for the blue chip giant.

Martin Marietta Materials

With a positive backdrop for infrastructure growth across multiple levels, this stock is an outstanding idea with a small 0.60% dividend yield. Martin Marietta Materials (NYSE: MLM) is a supplier of aggregates and other building materials. The company operates through two segments: the East Group comprises the East and Southwest divisions. The West Group comprises the Central and West divisions.

Jefferies noted this:

The company has been dislocated from the broader heavy materials and building products peer group due to negative mix, which has impacted pricing. MLM announced a large deal to acquire Lhoist’s North American lime assets as a complement to its existing specialties portfolio, a market investors aren’t familiar with. Although 2026 will be noisy, we think this sets MLM up for a strong ’27+ on pricing as it will have carry-over from its mid-year increases, opportunity to raise prices at its recently acquired assets more than its heritage assets, and an easy comp due to unfavorable product mix.

The company provides magnesia and dolomitic lime products used globally in environmental, industrial, agricultural, and other specialty applications. It supplies aggregates (crushed stone, sand, and gravel) through its network of approximately 400 quarries, mines, and distribution yards in 28 states, Canada, and the Bahamas.

Martin Marietta Materials provides other building materials, namely, cement, ready-mixed concrete, asphalt, and paving services. The heavy-side building materials are used in infrastructure, nonresidential, and residential construction projects. Its aggregates are also used in agricultural, utility, and environmental applications, as well as railroad ballast.

Jefferies has a target price of $725 for the stock.

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Perhaps off the radar for some, this stock only pays a small 0.15% dividend, but the upside potential is hard to ignore. Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) is engaged in accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, increasing laboratory productivity, and improving patient health through diagnostics and the development and manufacture of life-changing therapies.

Jefferies said this about the stock:

Our conviction in Thermo Fisher Scientific stems from a clear earnings inflection story, with organic growth stepping higher into 2H26 on the back of biopharma (60% of mix), where fundamentals remain strong across CRO, CDMO, and bioproduction. Notably, earnings continue to move higher despite muted near-term growth optics, reinforcing that the recent ~10% drawdown post 1Q results is multiple-driven rather than a deterioration in underlying earnings power.

Through its Life Sciences Solutions segment, it provides a portfolio of reagents, instruments, and consumables used in biological and medical research, the discovery and development of new drugs and vaccines, and the diagnosis of infections and diseases. Its Analytical Instruments segment provides instruments and supporting consumables, software, and services for a range of applications.

The Specialty Diagnostics segment offers a range of diagnostic test kits, reagents, culture media, instruments, and associated products. The Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment offers virtually everything needed for the laboratory. It also provides purification and filtration technologies.

Jefferies has a $585 price objective.

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The VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) markets a headline distribution that few equity strategies can match: a 14.9% trailing yield delivered in monthly payments against a share price of $19. OMAH does this by holding the same public companies that anchor Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio, then layering a covered-call overlay on top. Whether that distribution reflects genuine cash flow from those holdings or something more fragile is the relevant question.

How OMAH Generates Its 15% Yield

The underlying dividend yields on those names average well below the fund’s headline number. Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) yields 2.5%, Chevron (NYSE:CVX) yields 3.8%, and American Express (NYSE:AXP) yields roughly 1%. The gap between those cash dividends and OMAH’s 15% target is bridged by selling short-dated call options against the portfolio. The April filing shows short call positions against Apple, Alphabet, Berkshire, Coca-Cola, and Amazon, with premiums collected up front and recycled into the monthly distribution.

Are the Underlying Dividends Actually Safe?

The equity floor under OMAH is genuinely durable. Coca-Cola posted Q1 2026 free cash flow of $1.76 billion, raised the quarterly payout to $0.53, and carries a Dividend King track record. American Express earns $15.87 in trailing EPS against a $3.80 annualized dividend, leaving payout coverage of roughly 4x. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) grew Q2 net income 27% and just lifted its quarterly dividend to $0.40. Chevron continued its streak of increases, moving the quarterly payout to $1.78, though Q1 free cash flow turned negative on Hess-related working-capital drag.

The one exception is Occidental Petroleum, which cut its dividend 87% in 2020 and pays $0.26 quarterly, still far below the $0.79 pre-COVID level. That risk is small at OMAH’s 6% weighting in the name.

The Options Overlay and the Payout Ratio

The uncomfortable number is the fund’s 305% payout ratio. That reflects a distribution funded largely by option premium and, at times, return of capital rather than accounting earnings. Premium generation depends on volatility. The VIX sits at roughly 19, in the normal 15 to 20 band, and has averaged about 18 over the past year. That environment supports the current call-writing income, but a sustained drop below 15 would compress premiums, and a sharp rally would cap upside on the underlying stocks that OMAH has written calls against.

Total Return and the Verdict

The share price is up 14% over one year and 9% year to date, and layered on top of the roughly 15% distribution, total return has run ahead of Berkshire’s own B shares, which are up 3% over one year. The forward annualized distribution estimate of $2.77 is slightly below the trailing $2.83, hinting that management is calibrating payouts to option income rather than forcing a fixed number.

This portfolio’s distribution is best understood as a synthetic yield, safe as long as volatility stays in a normal band and the Berkshire-style equity book holds its value. The 1% expense ratio is high for a passive-looking product, and investors focused on capital growth over income have historically been better served by owning Berkshire Hathaway directly, while JEPI and SPYI offer similar options-income mechanics on broader indexes with longer track records. OMAH’s performance relative to its underlying inspiration highlights the trade-off between income generation and pure equity appreciation.

The post Why a 15% Yield on Blue Chip Stocks Worries Even Income Investors appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Shares of ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW) are up 6% in Friday midday trading, changing hands at $97.36. Meanwhile, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) stock is climbing 4% to $162.56 as a wave of federal AI deal flow lifts enterprise software after months of pain.

The bounce comes off a brutal run. ServiceNow stock is down 40% year to date (YTD), and Salesforce shares have shed 40.5% over the same span. Today’s session reads as an oversold rebound with two fresh, name-specific catalysts underneath it.

Both companies sit at the center of a rotation from AI infrastructure names back into application-layer software, where AI is finally translating into recurring revenue rather than raw capex.

ServiceNow’s Q2 Beat and Raise Lights the Fuse

ServiceNow reported Q2 FY2026 results Wednesday after the close. The company’s subscription revenue climbed 24.5% to $3.88 billion year over year (YoY), and current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) rose 21% to $13.2 billion. AI annual contract value crossed $1 billion ahead of schedule, with agentic-AI production customers up ninefold in nine months.

CEO Bill McDermott stated in the release, “ServiceNow’s exceptional Q2 results solidify our position as the fastest-growing major enterprise software and cybersecurity company.” ServiceNow’s management raised its FY26 subscription revenue guide to at least $15.755 billion, and security products landed in 16 of the 20 largest deals thanks to Armis, Veza, and the AI Control Tower stack.

Analysts’ reactions have been aggressive overall. Research reports from Bernstein (Outperform, $248), Evercore ISI ($160), JPMorgan (Overweight, $150), Cantor ($141), and Jefferies ($140) all lifted their ServiceNow stock price targets. Moreover, a fresh Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) research note flagged an “overlooked AI advantage” at a $130 Buy rating.

The bear case has weight, too. UBS cut ServiceNow stock to $110 and Neutral, noting that “demand remains mixed.” Notably, ServiceNow’s Q2 also benefited from federal on-premise revenue pulled forward from Q3, and the Q3 subscription guide of $3.975 to $3.98 billion sits below the $4 billion Street view. Additionally, ServiceNow’s gross margin slipped to 77.9% from 81%.

Salesforce Lands $1.6 Billion Veterans Affairs Deal

Salesforce won a $1.6 billion, three-year Department of Veterans Affairs Agentic Enterprise License Agreement, deploying Missionforce, Agentforce Public Sector, and Agentforce Health across the agency. The stated goal is cutting veteran appointment scheduling from 28 days to minutes.

The award builds on Q1 FY2027 momentum for Salesforce. Agentforce ARR reached $1.2 billion, up 205% YoY, combined Agentforce and Data 360 ARR hit $3.4 billion, and Public Sector Industry Cloud ARR surpassed $2 billion, up 23% YoY. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emphasized, “Agentic AI is the biggest growth opportunity for our customers, and for Salesforce.”

The bears may counter that Salesforce stock still trades at a trailing 12-month P/E ratio of 18.85x with decelerating headline growth, and that the Informatica integration adds execution risk. Salesforce’s $25 billion accelerated share repurchase program has cushioned EPS, but organic acceleration in H2 FY27 is now the show-me story.

Software Sector Rides the Government Spending Wave

The rally lifts the broader group. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (NYSEARCA:IGV) holds both ServiceNow and Salesforce among its top positions, giving the fund concentrated exposure to today’s tape. Concentration cuts both ways, amplifying gains on days like this and losses on drawdowns.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) recently secured an up-to-$6.99 billion Pentagon software deal, reinforcing the government-AI-spend theme running through the sector. Federal budget priorities are flowing directly into enterprise software order books, and today’s action suggests that investors are willing to pay for exposure again.

What to Watch Now

Investors can watch for whether today’s midday gains hold into the Friday close and whether follow-through research notes extend the target-hike wave into next week. Volume and breadth across software names will signal whether this is a durable rotation or a one-day squeeze.

Salesforce’s Q2 FY2027 earnings report is expected in late August, and ServiceNow’s Q3 setup carries a pull-forward overhang that management will need to address. For beaten-down holders, today offers relief, but position sizing should reflect that both names are still deep in the red for the year.

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Donald Trump gave himself the nickname a decade ago, in a CNBC interview in May 2016: “I love debt. I love playing with it.” Weeks later, on CBS, he expanded on the theme with Norah O’Donnell: “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me… I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt.” A new Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Global Research chart, built on Congressional Budget Office data, now sets that self-branding against the actual arithmetic of governing. In fiscal 2026, Washington is on track to spend roughly $1.9 trillion more than it takes in, a figure widely rounded to $2 trillion, while paying $1 trillion a year just to service existing debt.

The Origin of the Nickname

Trump used the “King of Debt” label repeatedly during his 2016 campaign, framing his personal use of leverage as a qualification for handling the national debt and at times suggesting he could eliminate it within eight years. The pitch was that a real estate financier who had renegotiated his way through corporate bankruptcies could apply the same instincts to Treasury issuance. Nearly ten years later, he is back in the White House and the numbers on the government’s income statement look nothing like a workout deal.

What the Government Takes In

Total federal revenues for fiscal 2026 come to $5.6 trillion, per the BofA/CBO breakdown. Individual income tax delivers $2.8 trillion, payroll tax adds $1.8 trillion, tariffs contribute $0.4 trillion, corporate tax another $0.4 trillion, and other receipts round out $0.2 trillion. Tariff revenue has grown into a meaningful line item, but it is still dwarfed by the wage-based taxes that fund most of the federal machine.

What the Government Spends

On the outlay side, mandatory programs run $4.5 trillion, led by Medicare and health at $1.9 trillion and Social Security at $1.6 trillion, with veterans and federal retirement at $0.4 trillion, income security at $0.4 trillion, and other mandatory items at $0.2 trillion. Discretionary spending totals $1.9 trillion, split between nondefense at $1.0 trillion (Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Education, among others) and defense at $0.9 trillion. Add interest, and total spending lands around $7.4 to $7.5 trillion against $5.6 trillion in revenue, producing the $1.9 trillion gap.

The $1 Trillion Interest Line

The single most striking figure on the chart is interest. At $1 trillion a year, debt service now roughly matches either the entire nondefense discretionary budget or the entire defense budget. Every dollar that goes to bondholders is a dollar not spent on aircraft carriers, air traffic controllers, or student loans. And the price of that debt keeps drifting up: the 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.67% on July 22, 2026, sitting at the 99.2nd percentile of the past year, even as the Fed holds its target rate steady at 3.75%.

A More Recent Wrinkle

The branding has softened. Trump has more recently said he does not personally “like debt for the country,” even as the “King of Debt” label still trails him. Whatever the rhetorical positioning, the fiscal 2026 picture from BofA Global Investment Strategy and the CBO is straightforward: $5.6 trillion in, roughly $7.4 to $7.5 trillion out, a $1.9 trillion shortfall, and a $1 trillion interest tab that now competes head-to-head with the Pentagon for space on the ledger.

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The pitch for the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) is almost too clever to ignore. You get a portfolio built around Warren Buffett’s publicly disclosed equity book, layered with a monthly cash distribution aiming for a 15% annualized yield. Berkshire Hathaway itself famously pays no dividend, so OMAH is essentially promising to bolt an income stream onto Buffett’s stock picks and hand you a check every month. For retirees who love the holdings but hate the zero yield, it sounds like a workaround Buffett himself refused to build.

Look under the hood, and OMAH does mirror the greatest hits. As of the April 2026 filing, the fund held Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at 9.97% of net assets, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) itself at 8.99%, and American Express (NYSE:AXP) at 8.35%, with meaningful slugs of Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), Chevron (NYSE:CVX), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Moody’s (NYSE:MCO), and Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC). That is a recognizable Berkshire silhouette. Total net assets sat near $748.6 million, so this is a real fund with real scale.

Where the 15% Actually Comes From

Here is the part the marketing skims over. Those underlying holdings throw off maybe 1% to 2% in cash dividends. The rest of the 15% target has to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is a short-dated call-writing overlay plus, when the math is short, return of capital. The N-PORT snapshot shows 74 derivative positions, structured as call spreads and outright short calls against the biggest names in the book. Selling calls generates premium. It also caps how much you can participate when a stock rips higher.

The VistaShares prospectus is refreshingly blunt about the rest. Distributions “may include amounts classified as return of capital,” which the document defines as “a return of a shareholder’s invested capital rather than income or profits.” It goes further: “To the extent that distributions exceed the Fund’s total returns, such payments will reduce the Fund’s net asset value.” If the strategy does not earn the 15%, the fund fills the gap by handing you back your own money and calling it a distribution. Do that long enough and NAV grinds lower, which means each future 15% target is being calculated off a smaller base.

What OMAH’s Returns Actually Show

OMAH launched in March 2025. Since inception, the ETF has paid monthly, most recently $0.23138 per share on June 30, 2026, with trailing 12-month distributions totaling $2.83514. On a total-return basis (dividends reinvested), OMAH is up about 16% since its March 5, 2025 launch, and shares closed recently at roughly $19. Over that same stretch, Berkshire’s own B shares are down roughly 4%, so the income overlay has actually rescued a stretch where owning Buffett directly hurt.

Fine. But zoom out and the mechanics still bite. The 0.98% expense ratio is steep for what is, at its core, a Berkshire clone plus a call-writing program. And the capped upside is not theoretical. When AAPL or GOOGL (NASDAQ:GOOGL) runs past the short strike, OMAH surrenders the difference. Over a normal Buffett-holdings decade, that giveback compounds.

Who This Fits, and Who It Fools

OMAH earns a spot in a portfolio only if you truly want monthly cash from a Berkshire-flavored basket and you accept two things. The 15% is a target rather than a guarantee, and part of it is often your own principal being recycled with a nicer label. For a retiree carving out a 5% to 10% income sleeve, that trade can be worth it, particularly in flat years for Berkshire.

For anyone treating the 15% as safe yield or expecting the total return of holding BRK.B outright over a long horizon, look elsewhere. A cheaper large-cap dividend ETF, or simply owning BRK.B and selling shares as needed, will usually get you closer to Buffett’s actual compounding, minus the return-of-capital sleight of hand.

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Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, used his Tuesday morning appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 21, 2026 to fire a warning shot at investors who have ridden the AI trade to fresh highs and never taken a chip off the table. His message was blunt: “Because if you own too much tech, you’re going to be slaughtered. And you won’t even know what hit you. For the moment, it’s time to go to other sectors that can make you money without the volatility.”

With futures pointing higher on renewed semiconductor strength, Cramer wants investors to lean against the crowd and rotate proceeds into groups that have lagged the AI melt-up. The playbook: financials and healthcare, where valuations are cleaner and earnings power is showing up in results from banks that just reported.

The Discipline: Take Off Half When a Group Goes Red Hot

Cramer’s rotation call is rooted in position sizing, not a top call on tech. “When you have a group that is red hot, you take off half. You have to be disciplined, and the reason why you have to be disciplined is because a lot of this last run, the parabolic move, is not cured by a 20% to 30% decline because the stock went up more than that.”

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is Exhibit A. Cramer suggested a few weeks ago that investors sell half of Micron, and the numbers explain why. Shares are up 240.36% year to date and 758.78% over the past year. Fiscal Q3 2026 revenue landed at $41.456 billion, a 17.60% beat, with non-GAAP EPS of $25.11 versus $20.28 expected and GAAP gross margin expanding to 84.6% from 37.7% a year earlier. The fundamentals are real; the move is parabolic. Polymarket contracts currently price a 0.74 probability that Micron closes lower on July 22.

Where Cramer Sees Value: Banks at 12 to 15 Times Earnings

The sector composition is already tilting. Among the top ten DOW names year to date, eight are either healthcare or financials. The July 14 bank earnings gave the rotation fresh fuel.

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) posted Q2 EPS of $7.70 versus $5.80 expected on $57.35 billion in revenue, and authorized a fresh $50 billion buyback. Cramer’s take on Jamie Dimon: “You can buy his stock for 15 times earnings. It’s one of the brightest guys in the world. Jamie and his team is filled with brilliant people. 15 times. I’ll take it.” Shares are up 8.65% YTD.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) trades at 14 times earnings, delivered a fifth consecutive EPS beat at $1.21, and is up 13.34% YTD. Wells Fargo trades at 12 times earnings and remains -4.84% YTD, the kind of laggard Cramer is willing to buy while others chase memory chips.

Healthcare: Lilly the GLP-1 Winner

Cramer’s second lane is pharma, and he wants the winner of the GLP-1 war. “I will say, you know what? Let me go and buy some Lilly into the Novo Nordisk weakness.”

Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) reported Q1 EPS of $8.55 versus $6.79 expected and revenue of $19.80 billion, up 55.5% YoY, then raised 2026 guidance to $82.0-$85.0 billion. Mounjaro alone did $8.66 billion, up 125%. Novo Nordisk, by contrast, is down 20.46% over the past year and guided full-year adjusted sales to a decline of 4% to 12% at constant currency.

The Takeaway

Cramer’s message is about discipline. He wants investors to recognize when a move has run past what any normal pullback could fix, trim into strength, and redeploy where earnings are compounding at reasonable multiples. Banks reporting record quarters at 12 to 15 times earnings and a pharma leader raising guidance mid-year give him a place to put the profits. The discipline is the point.

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The Cleanup CEO Who Inherited a Mess

When Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) named Brian Moynihan CEO on January 1, 2010, he took over a bank still reeling from the Countrywide and Merrill Lynch acquisitions, tens of billions in looming legal settlements, and a shredded balance sheet. His first years were a grind: settle the litigation, sell non-core assets, cut costs (Project New BAC), and rebuild capital. The dividend told the story. From 2011 through 2013, BofA paid just $0.01 per quarter.

What followed was a slow-compounding turnaround built on “responsible growth,” digital investment (50 million active digital banking users and the Erica assistant), and disciplined capital returns. In Q2 2026, the bank returned $8.0 billion to shareholders, EPS came in at $1.21 versus $1.12 consensus, and Moynihan said, “The team delivered one of our strongest quarters to date, with earnings per share up 34% year-over-year.”

What a $10,000 Stake in the Stock Has Done

Here is how a $10,000 investment in Bank of America has fared versus the S&P 500 (via SPY) across the standard horizons, plus the full Moynihan tenure.

The full-tenure number is the true scorecard: the stock lagged the index because the first half of Moynihan’s run was a repair job. Holders had to endure the 2011 European debt scare, mortgage litigation, and years of near-zero dividends. Zoom in, and the picture flips. Over the past decade, shares have crushed the market, helped by rate normalization, a record trading franchise, and aggressive buybacks.

Grading Moynihan: B+

Given the crater he inherited, a B+ feels fair. He rebuilt capital (Q2 2026 shareholders’ equity of $301 billion), turned Merrill into a wealth juggernaut (GWIM revenue up 16% year on year in Q2 2026), and delivered five consecutive EPS beats. The grade isn’t higher because he took a long time to get here, and long-term holders still trail the index since day one.

Whether to Invest Today

The bull case for the stock today rests on a resilient U.S. economy and rates that hold up. NII guidance was raised to 6% to 8% growth for 2026, the forward P/E of 14 is reasonable, and the $68.02 consensus target price is higher than the 52-week high. Analysts remain bullish.

The bear case builds if investors expect a sharp rate-cut cycle or a credit crack. A 100 bps drop in rates costs roughly $2.2 billion in NII, and the $70.3 billion CRE book still deserves watching. On balance, at $61.27, the stock appears attractive now. Valuation is stretched relative to recent history, yet the earnings momentum is legitimate.

The post A $10,000 Investment in Bank of America When Brian Moynihan Became CEO Is Worth This Much Today appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ:SOFI) has quietly built the profile of an ideal fintech takeover target: 14.7 million members, a national bank charter, over $40 billion in member deposits funding over 90% of liabilities, and the Galileo technology platform servicing approximately 133 million global accounts. At a share price around $18 and a market cap below $23 billion, it is digestible for any mega-cap acquirer.

Here’s the catch: this is a deal to buy a regulated bank. SoFi Bank’s charter reshapes both the strategic fit and the approval path for every candidate.

4. PayPal: Strategic Logic, Weakest Case

PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) needs a growth story. Q1 2026 revenue of $8.353 billion grew just 7.21%, and CEO Enrique Lores has guided FY2026 non-GAAP EPS flat to slightly lower vs. FY 2025’s $5.31. A SoFi bolt-on would hand Venmo a bank charter and a lending engine. But with a market cap of $41.8 billion and just $13.5 billion in cash, the math forces heavy leverage or dilution. Becoming a bank holding company under the Fed would compound the challenge.

3. JPMorgan: Capacity Without Room

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) has the checkbook. Q2 2026 revenue reached a better-than-expected $57.35 billion, and the board authorized a new $50 billion share repurchase program. SoFi would supercharge its digital-native reach. Yet JPMorgan already brushes against the 10% nationwide deposit cap. Adding SoFi’s deposits would trigger intense Fed and OCC scrutiny that likely blocks the deal outright.

2. Bank of America: Cleaner Fit, Same Cap Problem

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) posted Q2 2026 EPS of $1.21 and services 60 million active digital banking users. Brian Moynihan’s Erica-plus-Zelle strategy would mesh cleanly with SoFi’s app-first millennial base and Galileo’s B2B rails. Still, Bank of America is also close to the deposit-cap ceiling, and absorbing another chartered bank invites the same regulatory hurdles as JPMorgan.

1. Mastercard: The Payoff Fit

Mastercard (NYSE:MA) is the cleanest strategic buyer. It is already SoFi’s partner: CEO Anthony Noto has described an important partnership with Mastercard to enable SoFiUSD settlement across their global payments network. Michael Miebach has signaled the direction, telling investors Mastercard is “expanding our stablecoin solutions through the planned acquisition of BVNK.” With $7.91 billion in cash, 60.8% operating margins, and $11.7 billion in buyback authorization, capacity is ample. The real hurdle is owning a chartered bank, though the Galileo platform and SoFiUSD infrastructure make the strategic prize unusually rich.

The Private Equity Question

Private equity would rank between PayPal and JPMorgan in terms of strategic fit. Sponsors have the cash, but Bank Holding Company Act rules cap non-controlling stakes and effectively bar a full buyout. Noto’s aggressive May and June share purchases at up to $18.0578 suggest that management is not shopping the company. Investors should watch SoFi’s FY2026 guidance of ~$4.655 billion revenue and ~$0.60 adjusted EPS as the real driver of the takeout math.

The post Here’s Why SoFi Is a Prime Takeover Target for These Major Financial Players appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Warren Buffett is back on TV, and on CNBC, to be specific. As he left, he would be “going quiet.” As chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B), he added, “I enjoy the chance to keep in touch with you.” The person to “keep in touch” with is supposed to be the new CEO, Greg Abel.

Abel has run Berkshire this year, and it has gone through an ugly sell-off. It is down 3% this year while the S&P 500 is up 10%. Over the last five years, both have increased by about 75%. That advance worked even though Berkshire’s investments have not been heavily weighted toward mega-cap tech stocks. Buffett made the point that he had pushed into the sector; however, Yesterday, he made the point very clearly that he decided to buy shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG).

The Alphabet investment began late last year, and Berkshire then invested $10 billion in a private placement to fund the expansion of the search company’s AI infrastructure. Buffett did tip his cap to Abel by less than a modest amount. “I am not doing anything that he doesn’t approve of. He’s not doing anything I don’t approve of. We talk all the time, but he is the decider,” he told the TV network.

Behind the scenes, Buffett can’t be happy. Berkshire has been the tool of his decades-long success. Besides private holdings, it has been built on holdings in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Chevron, and American Express. He has had particular success with Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY), which he began buying in 2019. He had a “walk-off” home run with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). On CNBC, he discussed the strength of Apple’s leadership. He also expressed worry about the amount of money tech companies are spending on AI.

It is in the early days for Abel. He cannot like, however, Buffett showing up on CNBC dressed like Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers often reminded people that his show was his “neighborhood.” Mr. Rogers’ favorite song ended: “Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?”

The post Why Is Buffett Back On TV As Berkshire Shares Fall? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

As always, the quarterly earnings were kicked off by the major large-cap money center banks, and as expected they all delivered solid earnings reports. The team at Jefferies remains very positive on the four top companies that beat earnings expectations and, most importantly, provided reassuring forward guidance. Net interest income, or NII, across all banks was impressive, and with the debate over where interest rates will be as we move through the rest of 2026 remaining a wild card for all the financial giants, the second half of the year could prove interesting.

The Jefferies team had this to say when discussing the results:

We’re out with our thoughts following large-cap bank earnings. We highlight that results were largely positive, with all four banks beating Earnings Per Share and Pre-Provision Net Revenue expectations. Loan growth came in modestly above expectations, while deposit trends were generally stable. NII growth remained healthy, supported by strong balance sheet momentum, deposit growth, and fixed-rate asset repricing. Fee income remained constructive, benefiting from strength in payments, treasury services, securities services, wealth management, and transaction banking. Meanwhile, capital markets were a standout performer, driven by robust trading activity, improving investment banking fees, and healthy client engagement.

Here are the four dividend-paying financial giants that Jefferies rates as Buy.

Bank of America

Warren Buffett has trimmed his position over the past two years and sold a 50 million shares in the fourth quarter. This quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 1.89% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is a bank holding company that reported impressive Q2 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 513,624,165 shares, which is 7.9% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float. Berkshire did lower its Bank of America position in Q1 2026, but only modestly. According to the Q1 2026 13F filing, it was reduced by just 0.71%, a very small cut compared to other positions.

The Jefferies analyst noted this:

Bank of America delivered a strong quarter, with core EPS and Pre-Provision Net Revenue ahead of expectations, driven primarily by strength in investment banking and sales & trading. While NII was largely in line, management reiterated growth at the upper end of 6-8% and raised FY26 operating leverage guide to 300-400 bp from >200 bp previously following 2Q’s POL of 640 bp. The return on tangible common equity of 17.0% vs our 16.1% reinforces the earnings power of the franchise.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking, which offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM) comprises two businesses: Merrill Wealth Management, which offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

The Jefferies price target is $75.

Citigroup

This money-center giant pays a solid 1.64% and could be poised to deliver continued upside. Citigroup (NYSE:C) is a global diversified financial services holding company. The Jefferies team had this to say when discussing the second-quarter results:

Citi delivered a strong quarter, with core earnings per share and pre-provision net revenue ahead of expectations, driven by stronger-than-expected NII, Markets, and Investment Bank results. Still, the expense outlook was worse than expected, as the return on tangible common equity guide for FY26 was reiterated at 10-11% despite 1H’26 ROTCE trending at 13%. Revenue outperformance could be offset by $5 billion of spending pulled forward that was originally planned for ’27/’28 related to US Card, growth, and productivity initiatives.

The company’s segments include:

• Services
• Markets
• Banking
• Wealth
• U.S. Personal Banking (USPB)

The Services segment includes Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) and securities services. TTS provides an integrated suite of tailored cash management, trade, and working capital solutions to multinational corporations, financial institutions, and public sector organizations.

The Markets segment provides corporate, institutional, and public-sector clients worldwide with a full range of sales and trading services across equities, foreign exchange, rates, spread products, and commodities.

The Banking segment includes investment banking, which supports client capital-raising needs to help strengthen and grow their businesses.

The Wealth segment includes Private Bank, Wealth at Work, and Citigold, and provides financial services to a range of client segments.

The USPB segment includes branded cards and retail services.

Jefferies has a $165 target price for the shares.

Goldman Sachs

The white-glove banking giant delivered exceptional results and pays a 1.47% dividend. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is a global financial institution that delivers a range of financial services to a large and diversified client base, including corporations, financial institutions, governments, and individuals.

The Jefferies team said this:

Following 2Q26 results, our EPS estimates for the second half of 2026 and FY2027 increase by 9% and 8%, respectively, following a record 1H26 in both markets and advisory. Record equities revenues, all-time-high prime balances, accelerating large-cap M&A, and a five-year-high backlog provide strong support for continued earnings momentum.

Its segments include:

• Global Banking & Markets
• Asset & Wealth Management
• Platform Solutions

The Global Banking & Markets segment offers a range of services, including financing, advisory services, risk distribution, and hedging for its institutional and corporate clients. It facilitates client transactions and makes markets in fixed income, equity, currency, and commodity products.

The Asset & Wealth Management segment manages assets and offers investment products across all asset classes to a diverse client base. It also provides investment and wealth advisory solutions.

The Platform Solutions segment includes consumer platforms, such as partnerships offering credit cards and point-of-sale financing, as well as transaction banking and other platform businesses.

Jefferies has set a price target of $1,299 for the shares.

Wells Fargo

With some difficult years in the rearview mirror, this bank could be one of the best values in the financial sector, and pays a 2.11% dividend. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) is a financial services company. The company provides a diversified set of banking, investment, and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, to individuals, businesses, and institutions.

Jefferies analysts noted this:

WFC posted a headline beat on strong fee income and continued expense discipline, and reiterated its FY26 NII and expense guidance. Despite a solid quarter, shares traded lower amid a net interest margin outlook that fell short of expectations and rising deposit costs. NIM compressed as expected, down 4 bp, in line with the guide, but better-than-expected AEA growth drove a modest NII beat. IB deposit costs rose 9 bps Q/Q, with continued pressure expected in 2H’26 as IB outpaces NIB growth.

Wells Fargo operates through four segments:

• Consumer Banking and Lending
• Commercial Banking
• Corporate and Investment Banking
• Wealth & Investment Management

The company provides consumer financial products and services, including checking and savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and auto, residential mortgage, and small business lending.

In addition, the company offers financial planning, private banking, investment management, and fiduciary services. It also provides financial solutions to businesses through products and services, including traditional commercial loans and lines of credit, letters of credit, asset-based lending and leasing, trade financing, treasury management, and investment banking services.

The Jefferies target price is $100.

The post Jefferies Bullish on 4 Dividend-Paying Money Center Bank Giants After Huge Q2 Earnings Results appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Citigroup (NYSE:C) stock is down 4.7% to $134 Tuesday afternoon, a sharp sell-the-news reversal after the bank beat every analyst estimate for the second quarter. Citigroup shares had traded higher earlier in the session before turning red.

Zoom out, though, and Citigroup stock is still the clear year-to-date leader of the big three. Citigroup stock is up 13.75% in 2026, ahead of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) stock at up 9.34% and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) stock at down 8.82%.

All three banks reported strong Q2 2026 results powered by an AI-driven trading and dealmaking boom. Yet, the reaction across the group is mixed to negative, with Wells Fargo stock down 3.32% to $84.76 and Bank of America shares up only 1.29% to $60.27 after touching a record high earlier.

Citigroup Delivers a Blowout, Stock Reverses Anyway

Citigroup posted Q2 2026 earnings of $3.15 per share on $24.8 billion in revenue, marking the company’s highest revenue in a decade. The Street had expected about $2.74 in earnings per share, and record equity-trading revenue drove the upside.

Citigroup’s management paired the report with capital-return firepower, announcing a $30 billion buyback and a 12% dividend increase. That builds on the earlier hike from $0.56 to $0.60 per quarter that Citigroup pushed through last year.

The bear case that took over on Tuesday afternoon is straightforward. Citigroup’s CFO acknowledged that its equities franchise still trails larger rivals, and Citigroup stock now trades at a 16x P/E ratio. That’s the richest multiple of the three, which sets a higher bar even after a genuine beat.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo Also Beat, With Different Reactions

Bank of America reported EPS of $1.21 on revenue of $31.6 billion, its fifth consecutive quarterly EPS beat. The company’s Global Markets revenue jumped 34% to $8.02 billion, with equities sales and trading up 70% and investment banking fees up 50%.

CEO Brian Moynihan called it “one of our strongest quarters to date” and struck an upbeat tone on financing the AI buildout. Bank of America stock trades at a 15x P/E ratio, cheaper than Citigroup but richer than Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo, meanwhile, posted EPS of $2, with investment banking fees up 35% and return on tangible common equity of 17.7%. The bank also announced a buyback and a planned dividend raise, but CEO Charlie Scharf’s “carefully deploying capital” tone weighed on Wells Fargo shares. Wells Fargo stock trades at a 13x P/E ratio, the cheapest of the group.

So Is Citigroup Actually Outperforming?

The short answer is yes, at least on the year-to-date scoreboard. Citigroup’s 13.75% run tops Bank of America and doubles down on the turnaround story CEO Jane Fraser has been selling, with 65.9% gains over the past year backing it up.

The nuance is that Citigroup carries the richest valuation and the smallest markets franchise of the three, so any wobble in trading or dealmaking hits harder. Tuesday’s reversal is a reminder that leadership at the top of a rally leaves less margin for error, and investors should consider sizing their positions accordingly.

For readers who prefer a broader lens, the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLF) offers diversified exposure to the big banks and the wider financials complex in one fund. That can smooth out days like this one, when three earnings beats produced three different market reactions.

What to Watch Next

The immediate cue is whether Citigroup stock can stabilize into Tuesday’s close after giving back ground from an earlier intraday high. Follow-through from the $8 billion in Bank of America capital returns and Wells Fargo’s guidance on its dividend plan could set the tone for the rest of bank earnings week.

Keep an eye on how the group trades over the next few sessions. If Citigroup holds most of its year-to-date lead through the JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and regional bank earnings reports later this week, the outperformance thesis could remain intact even after a rough Tuesday.

The post Citigroup Is Up 14% This Year: Is It Outperforming Other Bank Stocks Like Wells Fargo and Bank of America? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Devin Ryan, Senior Research Analyst at Citizens, laid out a bullish setup for big banks on Monday’s CNBC segment ahead of Q2 earnings. He said: “Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a really good day to kick things off for the top six banks. We’re looking for about 25% year-over-year earnings growth.”

With Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo all reporting before the open on Tuesday, July 14, and Morgan Stanley following on Wednesday, July 15, the setup is concentrated and driven by the revival of capital markets along with commercial lending.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley Could Lead the Bank Earnings Boom

Ryan’s core call is that the biggest upside among the big banks could sit with the most capital-markets-levered franchises. “The companies that are going to do the best are probably the ones more exposed to capital markets. So SpaceX IPO, M&A announcements are up 50% year-to-date through the first half. And so Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley probably going to be standouts. We’re looking for almost 40% earnings growth out of both of those.”

Goldman Sachs Is Built for the Capital Markets Revival

Q1 2026 validated the direction. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) posted EPS of $17.55 on $17.23 billion in revenue, with investment banking fees of $2.84 billion up 48% and advisory revenues nearly doubling at $1.49 billion, up 89%. CEO David Solomon said, “Goldman Sachs delivered very strong performance for our shareholders this quarter, even as market conditions became more volatile” in the firm’s Q1 release.

Morgan Stanley Enters Earnings With Record Momentum

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) delivered its own record. Ted Pick’s team reported $20.58 billion in revenue, EPS of $3.43, ROTCE of 27.1%, and advisory revenue up 74% to $978 million. Ryan’s near 40% earnings growth expectation follows Q1 net income growth of 29%.

Wall Street’s Rebound Is Lifting America’s Biggest Banks

Ryan sees the capital markets tailwind lifting the rest of the group. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) opened 2026 with EPS of $5.94, up 17%, record Markets revenue of $11.6 billion, and advisory fees up 82% to $1.27 billion. Jamie Dimon flagged “increased fiscal stimulus, the benefits of deregulation, AI-driven capital investment and the Fed’s asset purchases” as tailwinds.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) grew EPS 25% year-over-year to $1.11, with equities trading up 30% and investment banking fees up 21%. Citigroup (NYSE:C) delivered net income up 42% and Markets revenue crossing $7 billion for the first time, with equity markets up 39%. Wells Fargo grew EPS 15%, with CIB Markets up 19% and equity capital markets share expanding.

The Next Banking Opportunity May Be Hiding Outside the Mega Banks

Capital markets stocks were up nearly 50% last year and up 20% in 2026 to date, with the S&P 500 up 15% in the second quarter. Goldman shares are up 21.19% year-to-date, and Morgan Stanley is up 26.55%. Ryan’s cautious because: “We think a lot is actually baked in. And so we’re looking for areas where there’s probably more upside. We still think there’s areas of capital markets like middle market sponsors. Private equity still have quite a way to recover.”

On commercial lending re-acceleration, he pointed to two forces. “So data centers is a big piece of the reacceleration, but then also just capital markets turning back on. So as you think about [the] M&A market that’s been dormant, starting to get back to something more normal that leads to lending opportunities into those deals.”

Key Takeaways

The major banks enter Q2 earnings with strong momentum across investment banking, trading, and commercial lending. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may deliver the strongest results because of their greater exposure to the capital markets recovery, with Ryan expecting earnings growth of nearly 40% from both firms.

Expectations are already high, however, and much of the rebound may be reflected in mega-bank share prices. The next opportunities could emerge among middle-market firms and other lenders that stand to benefit as private equity activity, M&A, and data center investment recover. A broader market pullback or slowdown in AI-related spending remains the clearest risk to that outlook.

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At current prices: JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) at $336.47 looks fully valued, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) at $222.28 appears stretched, and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) at $59.67 screens as the most attractive on valuation. Big-bank earnings power has expanded meaningfully into 2026, but the three sit at very different points on the risk-reward curve.

All three posted strong Q1 2026 results. JPMorgan grew EPS 17% year over year to $5.94, Morgan Stanley delivered record revenue of $20.58B with 27.1% ROTCE, and Bank of America grew EPS 25% to $1.11.

What separates them is valuation, analyst positioning, and how much good news is already priced in.

JPMorgan: Priced For Its Own Perfection

The bull case is clean. JPMorgan compounds book value while returning $12.2 billion in quarterly capital, Markets revenue hit a record $11.60B, and IB fees rose 28% as advisory activity re-accelerated. At a trailing P/E of 16 and forward P/E of 15, the multiple is reasonable for a bank earning 16.5% ROE.

The bear case: the stock has done the work already. Shares are up 18.97% over one year and sit near the 52-week high of $341.91. Consensus analyst target is $352.76, implying modest upside, and ratings skew cautious: 4 Strong Buy, 8 Buy, and 12 Hold.

At $336.47, JPMorgan screens as fully valued in our research view. The franchise is best-in-class, but with YTD gains of 5.89% and the target barely above spot, risk-reward looks symmetric. Existing holders may collect the 1.76% yield while monitoring for a pullback.

Morgan Stanley: Great Business, Stretched Stock

Morgan Stanley is executing beautifully. Wealth Management client assets reached $7.34T, equity trading grew 25%, and advisory revenue jumped 74%. EPS has beaten estimates in all five most recent quarters.

The problem: the market has priced all of it. Shares are up 26.55% YTD and 59.08% over one year, outrunning the broader market. Consensus analyst target of $216.48 now sits below current price, and ratings carry 1 Sell and 1 Strong Sell, unusual for a mega-cap bank. At a P/E of 20 and price-to-book of 3.4, Morgan Stanley is the most expensive of the three.

At $222.28, Morgan Stanley looks stretched in our research view. When analyst consensus prints a lower target than spot, when P/B pushes above 3x for a bank, and when a single soft Wealth quarter could reset the multiple, the setup argues for caution. A re-entry point closer to $190 looks more compelling on the numbers.

Bank of America: The Cheapest Compounding Story

Bank of America is the mirror image of Morgan Stanley. NII grew 9% to $15.74B, deposits notched an 11th straight quarter of growth, card charge-offs improved to 3.64%, and management guided FY2026 NII growth of 5% to 7%. The stock trades at a forward P/E of 13 and price-to-book of just 1.536.

Shares are up 10.47% YTD and 30.76% over one year, yet still leave room to run. Consensus target of $65.79 implies further upside, and ratings are the most bullish of the group: 6 Strong Buy, 15 Buy, 3 Hold, zero Sells. Goldman’s outlook backs the setup, noting “the US banking sector remains sound” with benign asset quality trends heading into 2026.

At $59.67, Bank of America screens as the most attractive of the three on valuation. It offers double-digit implied upside, the widest analyst support, an improving efficiency ratio of 61%, and a 1.86% dividend while investors wait. The main risk is a sharp rate cut, where 100bps would reduce NII by $2.0B, and it is a well-telegraphed sensitivity. Cheapest bank, best setup on the numbers.

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CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business 2026, the 20th edition of the annual study by Scott Cohn published July 9, 2026, scored all 50 states across 138 metrics in 10 weighted categories. For the first time in the study’s history, Ohio claimed the overall top spot. North Carolina finished second overall but ranked first in the all-important Economy category. Texas ranked second in Economy and fourth overall, held back by a 49th-place Quality of Life score. The sections below focus on the Economy sub-ranking, where the contest was effectively a two-state race.

Ohio Takes the Overall Crown

Ohio is a state, not a publicly traded company, but its ascent in the rankings is worth framing before diving into the economy leaders. Ohio climbed from fifth in 2025 to first in 2026, capping five straight years of improvement and a rise of 33 spots since 2010, when the Buckeye State ranked 34th. The win rested on two pillars: the best infrastructure score in the nation and the lowest cost of doing business among all 50 states. More than 143 million people live within a day’s drive of Ohio, a logistics advantage no other state can match. Ohio also holds a Triple-A bond rating from all three major credit agencies, a status it first achieved in 2023, reflecting a decade-plus of fiscal discipline.

Infrastructure displaced Economy as the top-weighted category in 2026, accounting for 17.6% of each state’s total score. CNBC also added ease of permitting as a brand-new metric this year, a direct response to corporate frustration with regulatory delays on data center and advanced manufacturing projects.

North Carolina: Best Economy in the Nation

North Carolina ranked first in the Economy category despite its legislature failing to pass a budget for more than a year. The state ran on its prior spending plan until Governor Josh Stein signed the new budget in early July 2026. The economic numbers underneath that political dysfunction are hard to argue with: 2025 GDP of $682.4 billion, up 2.7% from the prior year, a Moody’s Aaa credit rating, $5.26 billion in foreign direct investment in 2024, and a net gain of 84,100 residents in 2025, the most of any state in the country. The Tar Heel State has now finished first or second in CNBC’s overall rankings for six consecutive years, missing a repeat overall win in 2026 by just nine points out of a possible 2,500.

The corporate anchors are defensive and cash-generative. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Duke Energy, and Labcorp are all headquartered in Charlotte or the Research Triangle. The one visible soft spot is federal dependency: nearly 40% of state spending comes from federal funding, the 12th-highest exposure in the country. That reliance takes on added weight as Washington trims its budget footprint. North Carolina ranked 34th for Quality of Life and 35th for Cost of Living, a sign that the state’s economic success has pushed costs higher for everyday residents even as it continues drawing business investment.

Texas: The Economic Juggernaut With a Housing Problem

CNBC called Texas “an economic juggernaut year after year.” The state posted 2025 real GDP of $2.28 trillion, up 2.5% from 2024, and pulled in $22.1 billion in foreign direct investment during the same period, the largest haul of any top-10 state and roughly four times North Carolina’s total. Texas leads the nation in workforce quality, ranking first in that category, and second in both Economy and Access to Capital. The headquarters roster keeps growing: Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) in Austin, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) at Gigafactory Texas, and AT&T (NYSE:T) in Dallas. On June 16, 2026, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attended the groundbreaking of Coherent’s expanded semiconductor manufacturing campus in Sherman, Texas, as part of NVIDIA’s $2 billion investment partnership with the optical networking company, adding another marquee connection to the state’s growing industrial corridor.

The housing market tells a different story. Texas prices posted year-over-year declines for 12 consecutive months through mid-2026, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center, as inventory climbed well above balanced-market norms and homes sat on the market for an average of 82 days. Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth have seen the sharpest corrections, though the Texas Real Estate Research Center characterizes the overall dynamic as normalization rather than distress. Tariff exposure adds another layer of risk: international goods trade equals 29.3% of Texas’s nominal GDP, the highest share among top-10 economy states, at roughly $850 billion still subject to contested duties. Quality of Life ranked 49th out of 50, which is the primary reason Texas finished fourth overall despite holding the second-ranked economy.

The Actual Top 10 Overall

The full CNBC overall rankings tell a story quite different from the economy sub-ranking. Virginia finished third overall, though federal budget and personnel cuts pushed its Economy score down to 23rd from 14th the year before. Minnesota rounded out the top five, earning fourth place in Quality of Life thanks to strong healthcare, worker protections, and inclusive state laws, even as its high taxes weighed on business-cost scores. Michigan came in sixth, Georgia seventh, Florida eighth, Tennessee ninth, and Indiana tenth. California, New York, and Washington all fell outside the top 10 in the overall study, even though California holds the nation’s largest GDP. The most improved state award went to Arkansas, which rose 13 spots to 28th overall.

What to Do With It

The macro backdrop is more supportive than a year ago. BofA Global Research’s December 2025 outlook projected US real GDP growth of 2.4% on a fourth-quarter-over-fourth-quarter basis for 2026, above consensus at the time of publication. A year earlier, more than half of the economists surveyed in the CNBC Fed Survey had predicted a recession that never materialized. The shift of Infrastructure to the top-weighted category in 2026 reflects corporate demand for power, water, and shovel-ready sites to support data centers and advanced manufacturing plants.

For businesses weighing a state, Texas remains the strongest pure economic case: a $2.28 trillion GDP, Aaa credit, no state income tax, and the most foreign investment of any state in the study. For real estate owners in Texas, the current buyer’s market and persistent price softness mark a meaningful shift from the prior decade’s pattern. For anyone considering relocation, North Carolina offers the top-ranked economy in the country, an Aaa credit rating, and the largest net in-migration of any state. Ohio’s first-ever overall win signals that infrastructure capacity and business-cost discipline, not just GDP size, are now the decisive variables in where companies choose to put down roots.

Editor’s note: This pass corrects the description of the NVIDIA-related Sherman, Texas groundbreaking: the facility belongs to Coherent, an optical semiconductor manufacturer, with Jensen Huang attending the June 16, 2026 ceremony as part of NVIDIA’s $2 billion investment partnership. Texas’s 2025 real GDP figure has been updated to $2.28 trillion per Bureau of Economic Analysis data, and Ohio’s Triple-A bond rating is noted as first achieved in 2023.

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Shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) are down 5% to $138.58 in early Monday trading, a fresh record low that sits below the $150 debut price and well off the $225 peak on June 16. The slide extends a bruising stretch for the stock, which had already dropped 10% over the prior week.

Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) is off 4% to $78.10, and AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) is down 5% to $69.82. The Procure Space ETF (NYSEARCA:UFO), the sector’s cleanest proxy, is down 2% to $46.

The backdrop is risk-off market sentiment. The Strait of Hormuz conflict has lifted the WTI crude oil price and pushed the NASDAQ 100 down 1.09%, pressuring high-beta, pre-profit names first. WTI crude oil spiked 4.41% over the past 24 hours to $74.56 per barrel.

China Rocket Milestone Rattles the SpaceX Trade

Bernstein named China SpaceX’s “leading competitor” after China’s Long March 10B landed a reusable first-stage booster on July 10, the country’s first orbital-class booster recovery using a sea-based net-and-hook platform. That milestone punctures the narrative that reusability is a uniquely American moat.

Bernstein maintained an Outperform rating and a $239 price target, arguing SpaceX still leads by a wide margin with about 165 launches last year and nearly a decade of Falcon 9 reuse, while China has one landing and has not demonstrated booster reuse. The Street average SPCX stock price target sits near $242, and Raymond James carries a high $800 target.

The bear case is the valuation debate. SpaceX shares now trade below their IPO price, and critics call the multiple speculative given a a large market cap against a private operating business investors cannot model directly. The bull case leans on launch cadence dominance, Starlink cash flow, and scarcity value in a listed vehicle.

Rocket Lab Slides Despite a Space Force Win

Rocket Lab stock is falling despite positive news for the company, which underscores the macro nature of today’s move. The company announced full mission success on the U.S. Space Force VICTUS HAZE responsive-space demo, launching within 16 hours 42 minutes of notice, a record. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) carries a Buy rating and a $115 target following its latest acquisition plan.

The fundamentals remain firm. Rocket Lab’s recent quarterly revenue showed strong year-over-year growth, and backlog remains substantial. Yet, Rocket Lab shares have still shed 24% over the past month as the sector de-rated.

AST SpaceMobile Pulled Along on Sector Rotation

AST SpaceMobile stock is also lower despite the company’s own good news. The company received a New Zealand gateway license effective today and has BlueBird 11 at Cape Canaveral ahead of an August launch. It is targeting 45 satellites by year-end with agreements covering roughly 60 mobile operators.

The stock’s beta cuts both ways. ASTS shares are still up 55% over the past year, but they have given back 13% in the past week as oil-driven risk aversion hits speculative growth names.

What to Watch

The read-through is that SpaceX stock is leading the drop on the China competition scare and valuation fatigue, while Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile stocks are dropping in sympathy despite constructive company-specific news. That reflects sector rotation rather than a fundamentals downgrade.

For SpaceX, the cautious approach is to limit one’s position sizing. The stock is a fresh IPO trading below issue, and the analyst target dispersion between $242 and $800 reflects genuine uncertainty about how to price a launch monopoly against an awakening Chinese rival.

Investors can watch for whether crude retreats further, whether SPCX stock defends its debut price, and whether Bernstein or peers revisit their view on SpaceX after the Long March data. For now, the UFO ETF is a simple gauge of whether today’s selloff broadens or fades into the close.

The post SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile Fall 5%, Rocket Lab Sheds 4% as China Rocket Milestone and Oil Spike Hit Space Stocks appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Picture a 73-year-old retiree who watched his IRA swell through 2025 and into this year. The S&P 500 is up about 9% year to date through July 6, and it has gained approximately 20.5% over the past year. He’s comfortable. Then, in early July, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) warned the market could suffer a “snapback” and give back much of this year’s gains, citing “speculation hitting extreme levels”. A separate economist added a caution about a possible “painful repricing” if AI productivity disappoints.

These are warnings, not forecasts. But for our retiree, they also collide with a rule he cannot negotiate with: his required minimum distribution (RMD).

Why the RMD Rule Is the Trap

His 2026 RMD is calculated from his IRA balance on December 31, 2025, divided by an IRS life-expectancy factor from the Uniform Lifetime Table. That number is locked in. If stocks correct sharply this summer or fall, the IRS does not adjust the withdrawal downward to reflect the smaller balance he actually has. He still owes the full distribution, based on the higher balance from a market that no longer exists.

Consider a rounded example. Say our retiree ended 2025 with $800,000 in his IRA. His RMD for the year lands somewhere near $30,000. If the market drops 20% before he takes it, the account is closer to $640,000, but the $30,000 he must withdraw does not shrink. If he raises that cash by selling equities, he’s selling into the drop, converting a paper loss into a permanent one. That is sequence-of-returns risk meeting a non-negotiable IRS deadline.

The market’s recent calm makes the setup more dangerous. The VIX is sitting near 16, in the 22nd percentile of its past year, meaning the market has priced in unusually little near-term risk, the kind of complacency that historically leaves less cushion when a shock actually arrives. Meanwhile, University of Michigan consumer sentiment fell to 44.8 in May, well below the 60-point line that typically signals recession. Calm markets, uneasy consumers. That’s the environment a snapback tends to arrive in.

The Social Security Piece Most People Miss

The forced RMD shrinks the portfolio and shows up on his tax return as ordinary income, which pushes up his provisional income. The IRS uses this figure to decide how much of his Social Security check gets taxed. Once provisional income clears the upper thresholds ($34,000 single, $44,000 joint), up to 85% of Social Security benefits become taxable. That’s the tax torpedo retirees lose sleep about.

It gets worse two years later. A larger modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) this year can trigger higher Medicare Part B and Part D premiums in 2028 through the income-related monthly adjustment amount (IRMAA). A forced sale at the bottom bleeds into Medicare bills a couple of years down the road.

The 2026 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) came in at 2.8%, which helps on the income side but doesn’t move the tax thresholds, which aren’t indexed to inflation. Each year of raises quietly drags more retirees into the taxable zone.

How to Avoid Selling at the Low

The mechanic is fixed. The liquidity plan is not. A few adjustments blunt most of the damage:

1. Keep one to two years of RMD-sized cash or short bonds inside the IRA. With the 10-year Treasury yielding about 4.5% and Treasury bills paying similar levels, a stable bucket lets him satisfy the RMD without touching equities in a drawdown.
2. Use a qualified charitable distribution. Anyone 70½ or older can send up to $111,000 directly from an IRA to charity and count it toward the RMD. The distribution never hits adjusted gross income, protecting Social Security taxation and IRMAA in one move.
3. Rebalance inside the IRA before selling. Shifting from stocks to bonds inside a traditional IRA has no immediate tax cost. Rebalance first, then draw the RMD from the bond side.
4. Take the RMD earlier in the year, or in monthly slices. Waiting until December concentrates the risk into one price. Spreading withdrawals smooths it out.

What Actually Matters Here

The mistake that’s hardest to undo is selling equities at a low to satisfy a distribution sized to a peak. Everything else (tax bracket, IRMAA, Social Security taxation) flows from that first decision. The fix is making sure the money you have to withdraw is already sitting in something you’d be willing to sell at any price, rather than trying to time the market.

Warnings from Wall Street come and go. The RMD arrives on schedule regardless. Our retiree’s job, and yours if you’re in a similar spot, is to make sure the two never meet on the market’s worst day. A conversation with a tax advisor before year-end is usually worth more than it costs.

The post Wall Street Is Warning of a Market Snapback. For a 73-Year-Old, an RMD Locked to Last Year’s Balance Could Force a Sale at the Bottom. appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Before the tournament kicked off, the consensus take on the 2026 FIFA World Cup was mostly logistical dread. Sixteen host cities across three countries, visa backlogs, transit strain, security theater at a scale the U.S. had never attempted. Instead, the money is showing up.

Jorge Mas, the managing owner and CEO of Inter Miami CF, went on Fox Business’s The Bottom Line this week to lay out what the ledger actually looks like now that group play is well underway. His read, backed by Bank of America card data cited in the segment, is that the pre-tournament worry priced in a disaster that never arrived.

The spending surge nobody predicted

Start with the core number from the segment. Consumer spending across the 16 U.S. host cities is up 6.3% versus a year ago, with out-of-town visitor spending surging nearly 17%. That gap between local and visitor spending is where the story lives. The surge belongs to visitors. Foreign fans are landing, eating, drinking, and sleeping in hotels at rates the host cities have not seen since pre-pandemic peaks.

Put that against the macro backdrop and it looks stranger still. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index printed 44.8 in May 2026, deep in pessimistic territory and a fresh 12-month low from the 61.7 reading in July 2025. Domestic consumers are gloomy. Yet recreation services spending climbed from 813.9 billion in May 2025 to 862.3 billion in May 2026, and food services spending followed a similar path. A tournament full of paying foreigners is a very effective workaround for a bad sentiment print.

The broader growth picture supports the read. Real GDP grew 2.1% in the first quarter of 2026, with personal consumption at just 0.5%. The activity is coming from abroad. Tourists with dollars converted from euros, pesos, and reais are driving it.

A sea of yellow and 8 million visas

Mas described attending the Colombia versus Portugal match at Hard Rock Stadium, where he estimated roughly 80% of the crowd were Colombia fans, a sea of yellow filling the stands. That detail matters because it explains the spending surge in one image. Those fans flew in from abroad. They booked rooms and stayed for the run of matches their team plays.

“I know there was over 8 million visas given for people to come to the tournament, to visit our country,” Mas said on the Fox Business segment. “I think it has blown every single expectation that we had out of the water.”

Eight million visas is not a rounding error. It is closer to the population of a mid-sized European country arriving in staggered waves across the calendar, each visitor spending on flights, lodging, food, merchandise, and match tickets. The tournament also happens to overlap with the United States 250th anniversary, which adds a second layer of tourism marketing that host cities are happily stacking on top.

What it means for U.S. soccer’s future

Mas framed his broader thesis simply. “Football is a religion around the world. We are the centerpiece of that now during this tournament and during this world cup,” he said. He expects a pre-World Cup and post-World Cup era for the sport in America, with domestic fans following the stars they discover on television back into MLS stadiums after the final whistle.

There is already a proof of concept. Inter Miami games ranked fifth among the most-attended U.S. stadium events, ahead of the Super Bowl, a data point that would have sounded absurd five years ago. Mas expects an influx of superstar players into MLS after the tournament as they draft off the exposure.

For investors watching the consumer economy, the takeaway is narrower and more useful. A single event can override a weak sentiment reading if the spending is imported rather than domestic. Watch the Bank of America host-city data through July for whether the 17% visitor spending pace holds into the knockout rounds. That is where the disaster-turned-boom narrative either compounds or fades.

The post The World Cup Was Supposed to Be a Disaster. It’s Printing Money Instead appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Memory and storage stocks are sliding again Thursday morning, extending a rare pullback for a group that has posted extraordinary gains through 2026. SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) stock is leading the declines, down 11% to $1,802 in midday trading. Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) shares are off 7% to $852, Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) shares are down 7% to $556 and Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) stock is lower by 4% to $992.

The sector proxy is moving in lockstep. The Roundhill Memory ETF (CBOE:DRAM) is down 5% to $62, reflecting broad weakness across NAND, DRAM, and hard-disk-drive names as traders trim exposure to some of 2026’s biggest winners.

Thursday marks the second straight session of declines, with Micron and SanDisk stock also falling sharply on Wednesday. The setup looks like profit-taking and institutional rebalancing at the start of the second half, without a clear fundamental trigger, catalyzed by a fresh warning from a well-known research shop.

Morningstar Warning Fuels the Reset

The immediate catalyst is commentary from Morningstar’s director of research, Lorraine Tan, who told Bloomberg TV that a large slice of AI names could give back 20% to 30% before becoming buyable again. As we detailed recently, Tan flagged the biggest-gaining memory names as the most exposed to a valuation reset.

Her concern centers on capacity. Announced supply additions from Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to soften memory pricing as supply catches up with demand, while AI capital expenditure is expected to peak in 2026 and taper thereafter. That combination targets exactly the pricing power that drove the group’s dramatic margin expansion this cycle, and it lands on stocks that have posted enormous multi-hundred-percent gains in 2026.

The Roundhill Memory ETF illustrates the concentration risk. Its top holdings include Samsung Electronics at 25%, SK hynix at 24%, and Micron at 24%, followed by SanDisk, Western Digital, and Seagate. When capacity fears hit, the whole basket moves.

Bull Case Isn’t Going Quietly

The sell-side counterpoint remains firm. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) on Wednesday raised its SanDisk stock price target to $2,500 from $2,100 with a Buy rating, arguing the NAND supply-and-demand imbalance and firm pricing should persist through 2027. That target sits well above where SanDisk stock is trading after today’s slide.

Micron’s fundamentals also cut against the glut narrative. The company reported fiscal Q3 revenue of $41.46 billion, up 346% year over year and guided fiscal Q4 revenue to $50 billion, citing multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements as cycle insulation. Micron stock trades at a forward P/E ratio of 7x, with a consensus analyst target of $1,410 and overwhelmingly bullish coverage.

Seagate and Western Digital carry similar tailwinds. Both are seeing accelerating hard-disk demand tied to AI training and inference storage, and both delivered solid earnings beats in their most recent quarters. Retail sentiment, notably on Reddit, has stayed largely bullish through the pullback, though sentiment is not a fundamental.

What to Watch Now

The Roundhill Memory ETF offers a clean read on how the group trades from here, though the ETF and its underlying chip stocks have been highly volatile. A one- or two-day pullback after such a run doesn’t by itself invalidate the long-term thesis, but it does test conviction at a very different price than a month ago.

The tension is easy to identify here. The bull case rests on AI-driven memory demand outpacing supply into 2027. The bear case, articulated by Morningstar, is that new capacity plus a plateau in AI capex could compress pricing sooner than expected. Both can be right on different timelines, which is why position sizing matters.

Investors may want to size their positions in these names carefully after an extraordinary run. Market watchers can watch for whether the group finds a bid into the close, and whether any Wall Street desk pushes back publicly on the Morningstar call in coming sessions.

The post SanDisk Sinks 11%, Seagate Falls 7%, Micron Slides 4% on Memory Supply-Glut Fears appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

For the retirement-focused investor who wants both a discount and a paycheck, the megabank aisle offers two obvious names: Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Both posted strong Q1 2026 results, both are returning heavy capital to shareholders, and both trade at similar forward multiples. So which one actually delivers more value and income per dollar right now? Here is the head-to-head, judged on three dimensions that matter to a retiree: valuation, income, and safety.

Dimension 1: Valuation. Winner: Wells Fargo.

On the multiples that matter to a value investor, Wells Fargo trades more cheaply across the board. Bank of America has a trailing P/E of 14 and a forward P/E of 12, with a price-to-book ratio of 1.4. Wells Fargo trades at a trailing P/E of 13 and a forward P/E of 11, on TTM EPS of $6.47 versus Bank of America’s $4.03. Wells Fargo does trade at a slightly higher 1.6 price-to-book ratio, but on the forward earnings that a retirement investor actually cares about, Wells Fargo is meaningfully less expensive. Analysts appear to agree on upside asymmetry: the average target on Wells Fargo is $96.52 against a current price of $85.94 (12.3% implied upside), while Bank of America has already run to $58.36 versus a $64.12 target (9.9%).

Momentum backs the valuation case. Bank of America is up 21.2% over the past year and 6.1% year to date, while Wells Fargo is down 7.8% year to date but 5.5% higher year over year. The valuation gap exists because one has already been bid up and the other has not.

Dimension 2: Income. Winner: Wells Fargo.

This is the cleanest win on the scorecard. Wells Fargo pays $1.80 per share for a 2.1% yield, backed by a Q3 2025 raise from $0.40 to $0.45 quarterly, a 12.5% bump that has held steady into 2026. Bank of America’s dividend runs at $1.10 for a 1.9% yield. At today’s prices, Wells Fargo delivers more income per dollar invested.

The capital-return story is also lopsided. Wells Fargo returned $23 billion to shareholders in 2025, versus $16 billion at Bank of America. In Q1 2026 alone, Wells Fargo repurchased $4.0 billion in stock. Against a market cap of $263.0 billion, that represents aggressive reduction of the share count, and it directly boosts per-share dividends and earnings going forward.

Dimension 3: Safety and Balance Sheet. Winner: Bank of America.

Bank of America wins on the balance sheet. It runs a stronger capital position, with a Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio of 11.2% versus Wells Fargo’s 10.3%, which slipped from 11.1% a year ago as risk-weighted assets grew,. Bank of America’s franchise is bigger and more diversified: $2.02 trillion in average deposits, an 11th consecutive quarter of sequential deposit growth, and four straight EPS beats. Wells Fargo carries $2.5 billion in nonaccrual CRE office loans and a credit card net charge-off rate of 0.8%. For a retiree who cannot stomach a headline surprise, that combination matters.

The Verdict

Wells Fargo wins the value-and-income showdown, and it is not even close. It trades at a lower forward multiple, pays a higher yield, just raised its dividend by 12.5%, and has an unambiguous catalyst in the asset cap removal that CEO Charlie Scharf called a milestone that lets the bank grow in ways it could not while the asset cap was in place. Management raised its medium-term return on tangible common equity (ROTCE) target to 17% to 18%, and the stock has lagged the peer even as fundamentals improved. That is precisely the setup a value-and-income buyer wants.

Bank of America is the better pick for one specific retiree: the capital-preservation-first investor who prioritizes balance sheet strength, dividend reliability, and a diversified franchise over yield or upside. For everyone else seeking more bang per buck on both value and income, Wells Fargo is the stronger candidate.

The post More Bang for Your Buck: Is Bank of America or Wells Fargo the Better Value-and-Income Buy? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

For most of the post-2008 era, Oppenheimer’s Chris Kotowski was the guy telling you to keep buying the big banks. He waved off the 2011 eurozone panic, the 2016 energy blowup, COVID, and the 2022 rate hikes. On June 30, 2026, he flipped.

Kotowski cut Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Bank of America, and Citigroup (NYSE:C) in a single note, with Goldman moving to Underperform from Perform. Oppenheimer simultaneously nudged investors toward Ares, Blackstone, and KKR, plus commercial names US Bancorp and PNC.

The math is what changed his mind. “I thought they were systematically undervalued. Now I think the opposite is the case, quite honestly,” Kotowski told CNBC. “The banks historically would trade around 70 to 75% relative P/E… the investment banks are 107%. So like a 50% premium to their historic valuations.” Commercial banks sit at 78%, which is closer to normal but still not cheap.

The price action confirms it. Goldman is up 16.16% year to date and 45.75% over the past year. Morgan Stanley is up 51.97% over twelve months. Citigroup has ripped 68.13%. The fundamentals justified some of that. Goldman posted Q1 2026 EPS of $17.55 with investment banking fees up 48% year over year to $2.84 billion, per its first-quarter release. Citi crossed $7 billion in Markets revenue for the first time. Great numbers. Priced in.

Why the yield curve argument is a red herring

Bulls have leaned on a steepening curve as the next leg for bank NII. Kotowski is not buying it. His point: banks like Bank of America are still enjoying tailwinds from ultra-low-coupon securities they bought five or six years ago rolling off and getting reinvested at higher yields. That mechanical benefit runs regardless of what the two-year does next.

The risk cuts the other way. BofA CEO Brian Moynihan warned that a 100 basis point decline in rates could shave $2 billion off net interest income. Meanwhile, Goldman’s CET1 ratio slipped to 12.5% from 14.3% as capital got returned and put to work. That is a lot of operating leverage right when the cycle looks late.

The Blackstone and KKR pitch on sale

Blackstone (NYSE:BX) is down 22.07% year to date. KKR (NYSE:KKR) is down 27.52%. Kotowski’s phrasing: “In the banks, you can, for the most part, take your money and run with impunity. And the alts are on sale.”

The drawdowns look painful until you look under the hood. Blackstone reported Q1 2026 AUM of $1.3 trillion, up 12% year over year, with $68.5 billion in quarterly inflows and fee related earnings up 23% to $1.55 billion. Perpetual capital, the long-duration base that pays fees regardless of exit windows, is now $539.7 billion, or 48% of Fee-Earning AUM.

KKR looks similar. Q1 adjusted EPS of $1.39 beat by 10.28%, management fees rose 30% to $1.19 billion, and LTM capital deployed hit a record $97.4 billion. The K-Series wealth vehicles nearly doubled AUM to $38 billion, which is the retail-access flywheel every alt manager is chasing.

Valuation reflects the beating. KKR now trades at a forward P/E of 15x versus a trailing 31x. Blackstone’s forward multiple sits at 19x. Both remain expensive in absolute terms, but if you believe fee-based, perpetual-capital compounders should trade at a premium to cyclical intermediaries, the spread just narrowed dramatically.

What Kotowski is really saying

The bear case on alts, private credit redemption caps at Apollo and Ares, the Bank of England’s stress test of 46 firms, Elizabeth Warren’s data-center inquiries, is real. But Kotowski is arguing that the market has already discounted those risks in the alt names while pricing the banks for perfection. He was right for 15 years about undervaluation, and now he sees it inverted.

The post The Analyst Who Loved Bank Stocks for 15 Years Just Flipped. Here’s What He’s Buying Instead appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) on December 31, 2025, after six decades leading the conglomerate he transformed from a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion empire. The “Oracle of Omaha” left his successor, Greg Abel, with a very concentrated portfolio. Abel, who has served as vice chair overseeing non-insurance operations, officially took over as chief executive on January 1, 2026. At 95 years old, Buffett isn’t fully retiring; he will remain board chair and plans to continue coming to the Omaha headquarters as much as before. However, he has stated he will be “going quiet” and leaving all decision-making to Abel.

Long-time investors and Buffett mavens are familiar with this quote: “His favorite holding for an S&P 500 stock is forever.” So it’s not surprising to report that for all the success and stature Berkshire Hathaway has in the investment world, five top companies still make up 65% of the portfolio’s total holdings. While much more concentrated than most portfolio managers would ever consider, the strategy has worked for Berkshire Hathaway investors for years. It will likely continue to do so, though it’s a solid bet that Abel and his team will expand the portfolio when opportunities arise, especially given that the portfolio holds almost $400 billion in short-term Treasury bills.

Given that Berkshire Hathaway stock has moved higher from levels printed earlier this year, we decided to scan the portfolio for the five cheapest stocks on a price-to-earnings basis. Interestingly, all five are also dividend-paying companies that reward shareholders with reliable payouts year in and year out. Plus, three are financials, which tend to do well in a rising-rate environment, which may occur if inflation remains sticky throughout the rest of the year.

Why do we cover Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

Few investors have the results and reputation that Buffett has garnered over the past 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO chair, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, and now that Abel is in charge, vowing to stay the course, buying good companies with globally recognized products and services that pay dividends will always remain a timeless approach.

Here are the five Berkshire Hathaway companies with the lowest price-to-earnings metrics.

Ally Financial

Formerly known as GMAC, this bank with no buildings posted solid first-quarter earnings, offers a solid 2.65% dividend, and trades at a tiny 8.34 times forward earnings. Ally Financial (NYSE: ALLY), a pioneer in the digital financial services industry, offers a diverse range of innovative digital financial products and services to consumer, commercial, and corporate customers, primarily in the United States and Canada.

It operates through four segments:

• Automotive Finance Operations
• Insurance Operations
• Mortgage Finance Operations
• Corporate Finance Operations

The Automotive Finance Operations segment offers:

• Automotive financing services, including retail installment sales contracts
• Loans and operating leases
• Term loans to dealers
• Financing dealer floor plans and other lines of credit to dealers
• Warehouse lines to automotive retailers
• Fleet financing

It also funds companies and municipalities to purchase or lease vehicles and to use vehicle remarketing services.

The Insurance Operations segment offers consumer finance protection and insurance products through the automotive dealer channel, and sells commercial insurance products directly to dealers. This segment provides vehicle service and maintenance contracts and guaranteed asset protection products, and underwrites commercial insurance coverages that primarily insure dealers’ vehicle inventory.

The Mortgage Finance Operations segment manages a consumer mortgage loan portfolio that includes bulk purchases of jumbo and low-to-moderate-income mortgage loans from third parties, as well as direct-to-consumer mortgage offerings.

The Corporate Finance Operations segment provides senior secured, leveraged cash flow, and asset-based loans to middle-market companies, as well as leveraged loans and commercial real estate products to companies in the healthcare industry.

The company also offers commercial banking products and services, securities brokerage, and investment advisory services.

Bank of America

Though Buffett trimmed his position over the past two years, and sold a whopping 50 million Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) shares in the fourth quarter, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding. Berkshire Hathaway still owns 517,295,934 shares, which is 8.1% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float.

The bank holding company and financial holding company reported impressive Q4 results. It offers a solid 1.89% dividend yield, and shares trade at 12.7 times forward earnings.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking, which offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM), which includes two businesses: Merrill Wealth Management offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Capital One Financial

Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF), the “what’s in your wallet” bank, pays a solid 1.37% dividend, and its shares trade at just 9.69 times forward earnings projections. This diversified financial services holding company with banking and non-banking subsidiaries offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients through various channels. It operates through three segments.

The Credit Card segment consists of domestic consumer and small-business card lending, as well as international card businesses in the United Kingdom and Canada.

The Consumer Banking segment consists of deposit gathering, consumer and small-business lending, and national auto lending, while the Commercial Banking segment consists of its lending, deposit gathering, capital markets, and treasury management services to commercial real estate and commercial and industrial customers.

Its principal operating subsidiary is Capital One, National Association, which offers banking products and financial services.

Delta Air Lines

This is a new addition to the portfolio that Abel and his team acquired. Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) trades at 13.5 times trailing earnings and offers a 0.81% dividend yield, providing value. The carrier provides scheduled air transportation for passengers and cargo throughout the United States and around the world, with hubs and markets in:

• Amsterdam
• Atlanta
• Bogota
• Boston
• Detroit
• Lima
• London-Heathrow
• Los Angeles
• Mexico City
• Minneapolis-St. Paul
• New York-JFK and LaGuardia
• Paris-Charles de Gaulle
• Salt Lake City
• Santiago (Chile)
• Sao Paulo
• Seattle
• Seoul-Incheon
• Tokyo

Its segments include Airline and Refinery. The Airline segment is managed as a single business unit that provides scheduled air transportation for passengers and cargo globally, including its loyalty program and other ancillary businesses. The Refinery segment operates for the benefit of the Airline segment by providing jet fuel to it from its own production and through third-party agreements. The refinery’s production consists of jet fuel and non-jet fuel products.

Sirius XM

The satellite radio stock was first added to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio in 2016, and Buffett has continued to increase his stake over the past few years, which has proven to be genius. Sirius XM (NASDAQ: SIRI) is an audio entertainment company in North America that pays shareholders a dividend yield of 3.89% and trades at just nine times forward earnings.

The company has a portfolio of audio businesses, including its flagship subscription entertainment service Sirius XM, the ad-supported and premium music streaming services of Pandora, an expansive podcast network, and a suite of business and advertising solutions.

The Sirius XM segment offers a variety of content, including music, sports, entertainment, comedy, talk, news, traffic, and other channels, as well as podcasts and infotainment services, in the United States for a subscription-based fee. Sirius XM’s packages include live, curated, and specific exclusive and on-demand programming.

The Pandora and Off-platform segment operates a music, comedy, and podcast streaming discovery platform, offering a personalized experience for each listener, whenever and wherever they want to listen, across mobile devices, vehicle speakers, and connected devices.

The post The 5 Cheapest Stocks in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway All Pay Big Reliable Dividends appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Retirement investors weighing Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) against Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) face a deceptively similar scorecard at the top of the analyst page: both megabanks carry a Buy consensus, and both project meaningful upside from current levels. So which belongs in a retirement portfolio right now? The headline numbers look close, but the conviction behind them, and the income, valuation, and risk profiles underneath, point to a clear winner for different investor types.

Start with the price-target scorecard. BofA trades at $57.88 against an analyst target of $63.70. Wells Fargo trades at $83.86 against a target of $96.30. Analysts on average recommend buying shares of each, but they diverge on conviction. While BofA has near-unanimous bullish coverage, Wells Fargo has notably more analysts sitting on the fence.

Dimension 1: Yield and Capital Return

Wells Fargo pays a $0.45 quarterly dividend, yielding 2.2%, versus Bank of America’s $0.28 quarterly payout at a 1.9% yield. Yet the buyback gap reverses the picture. Wells Fargo returned $23 billion to shareholders in 2025, including $18 billion in buybacks, and raised its dividend 13%. BofA returned about $30 billion in 2025 and had an 8% mid-year dividend hike. BofA is returning significantly more cash to shareholders, making it the decisive winner for income-focused retirees seeking total capital return.

Dimension 2: Valuation

Wells Fargo trades at a trailing P/E of 13 on TTM EPS of $6.47, versus BofA at 14 on TTM EPS of $4.03. Forward multiples are nearly identical at about 12, but the underlying catalyst supports a more attractive valuation for Wells Fargo. The Federal Reserve asset cap was removed in Q2 2025, allowing unrestricted balance sheet growth for the first time in years. Management raised its medium-term ROTCE target to 17% to 18%, up from 15%. Investors are thus paying a lower multiple for a structurally improving franchise. Wells Fargo is the winner.

Dimension 3: Balance Sheet Quality and Earnings Momentum

Bank of America’s balance sheet is the stronger of the two. CET1 stands at 11.4% versus Wells Fargo’s 10.3%, which declined from 11.1% a year ago. Q1 2026 EPS at BofA rose 25% year-over-year to $1.11, beating consensus for the fourth consecutive quarter. Wells Fargo grew EPS 15% to $1.60 but saw net interest margin compress to 2.47% from 2.67%. BofA’s revenue mix is also more diversified, with Q1 sales and trading up 13% and investment banking fees up 21%. Prediction markets reinforce this safety assessment: BofA’s implied failure probability of 2.4% is comfortably below that of the European megabank cohort.

The Verdict

Bank of America takes the head-to-head for the income-focused retiree. By leading on capital return, it offers a superior combination of current yield and dividend growth momentum. Combined with its stronger balance sheet and earnings momentum, CEO Brian Moynihan’s firm gives investors a robustly covered payout backed by fundamental tailwinds. For a retirement strategy that prioritizes total shareholder return alongside a strengthening operational profile, BofA provides the more compelling vehicle.

Wells Fargo wins for the value-conscious retiree whose primary focus is entry price and margin of safety. Winning strictly on valuation, the stock trades at a cheaper P/E multiple, offering a lower-volatility entry point for investors wary of paying a premium. The trade-off for this cheaper multiple is a thinner relative yield and less near-term capital return intensity compared to its peer.

For a retirement-focused investor today, Bank of America offers the more dynamic risk-reward profile. While Wells Fargo provides a cheaper valuation, BofA’s superior yield, aggressive buyback potential, and fundamental earnings momentum combine into a total-return setup that its rival’s cheaper multiple alone cannot match.

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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) just posted a blowout quarter Q1 2026 EPS of $2.78 beat consensus by 60.69%, AWS reaccelerated to 28% growth, the fastest in 15 quarters, and chips business crossed a $20 billion annual run rate growing triple digits. Yet shares trade at $244.39, flat for the year. Can this stock reach $400 by 2028, and what would have to be true?

Why Amazon Shares Are Stuck Despite Strong Results

The issue is the bill. Andy Jassy told investors Amazon plans to spend about $200 billion in 2026 capex on AI, chips, robotics, and satellites. That obliterated near-term free cash flow. Q1 capex hit $44.2 billion alone, and trailing free cash flow collapsed 95% to roughly $1.2 billion. Long-term debt nearly doubled to $119.1 billion, and AWS operating margin slipped to 37.7% from 39.5%.

Shares are down 5.76% over the past month and up only 5.88% YTD. With a beta of 1.44, every macro wobble gets amplified. Investors want proof the spend pays off before paying up.

Wall Street Sees 28% Upside. Our Model Says 33%

The Street is overwhelmingly positive. Of 66 covering analysts, 15 rate it Strong Buy, 47 Buy, 4 Hold, with zero sells. The consensus target of $312.99 implies roughly 28% upside. Our internal model lands at a $324.02 base case with 32.58% upside and a 90% confidence score. The optimistic case is $371.42, the bear case $279.73.

The consensus target effectively bakes in a deceleration analysts haven’t penciled into estimates. That tension creates room for a larger move.

The Path to $400 Per Share

Reaching $400 from $244.39 would require a 63.7% gain. Spread over two years, that’s roughly 28% annualized, which sits between our base case (32.58%) and bull case (51.98%) one-year scenarios.

With forward EPS of $9.78, a price of $400 implies a forward P/E of 41x. Our base case of $324.02 already implies 29x means $400 requires roughly 12x additional multiple expansion.

That sounds heroic until you look at the earnings curve. If forward EPS climbs into the low teens by 2028 on AWS reacceleration and ad scaling, $400 prints at a far more reasonable multiple.

The catalysts are real: Amazon is exploring third-party sales of Trainium chips to compete with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) projects nearly $22 billion in Prime Day GMV, and a fresh $10 billion Missouri data center adds AWS capacity.

Jassy says it plainly: “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead.” The primary risk is straightforward. If AI capex returns disappoint, the multiple compresses instead of expanding.

Where Amazon Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power

At $244.39 against forward EPS of $9.78, shares trade at a forward P/E of 25x. For a company growing earnings 74.8% YoY with three secular growth engines, that’s not expensive.

The stock sits 12% below its 52-week high of $278.56 and well above the $196 low. Shares are up 584.56% over the past decade. The valuation case is straightforward: cheap multiple, accelerating earnings, leadership in AI infrastructure buildout.

$400 Is a Stretch, But Possible

Reaching $400 by 2028 requires a 63.7% gain.

Three things need to go right: AWS growth must hold above 25% as Trainium ramps, advertising must clear $90 billion in TTM revenue, and 2026 capex must show early ROI proof points. A recession that compresses ad spend and slows cloud migrations would derail it. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Amazon could reach $400 in 2028.

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JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) reported Q1 2026 net income of $16.5 billion, with EPS of $5.94, up 17% from a year earlier. Revenue hit $49.836 billion. Markets revenue set a record at $11.6 billion, up 20% year over year. Investment banking fees jumped 28%, with advisory fees up 82%. The stock has climbed 26% over the past year.

The Cockroach Quote

CEO Jamie Dimon delivered the defining line: “When there’s a credit cycle, losses will be worse than people expect. I shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there’s probably more.”

He elaborated on the mechanics. “A credit cycle will occur eventually, and I believe when it does, the losses will be worse than anticipated,” Dimon said, while declining to call a recession. “However, I don’t see it as systemic given the scale relative to other things.”

The historical pattern worries him. “Typically, there’s always an industry that surprises observers. For instance, in 2000, utilities and telecoms caught people off guard, while in 2008, it was media firms and newspapers. This time, there’s speculation surrounding software, but we’ll have to wait and see,” Dimon told analysts.

What He’s Watching

Dimon flagged stagflation and refinancing risk as pressure points. “If stagflation occurs, along with prolonged higher interest rates and widening credit spreads, it will create significant stress for companies with leverage as they refinance,” he said. He sized the leveraged finance ecosystem at roughly $1.7 trillion in private credit, $1.7 trillion in high-yield bonds, and $1.7 trillion in bank syndicated leveraged loans.

JPMorgan is leaning into discipline rather than growth. “If our loan book were to decrease by 10% next year, we would be perfectly fine with that if it meant avoiding irresponsible loans,” Dimon said. The bank is sitting on $291 billion in CET1 capital, $572 billion in total loss-absorbing capacity, and $1.5 trillion in cash and marketable securities.

The Tension

The consumer still looks fine on the surface. CFO Jeremy Barnum said “consumers and small businesses remain resilient with consumer spending growth continuing above last year’s pace.” Card net charge-offs ran at 3%, and the provision for credit losses fell to $2.51 billion, down 24% year over year.

Yet nonperforming exposure climbed 11% YoY to $11.0 billion, and nonaccrual loans in Asset & Wealth Management rose 53%. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan called it “a resilient American economy” with stable asset quality.

Dimon’s framing was unambiguous. “If a credit cycle occurs, it may be more severe than anticipated given the circumstances,” he said. “Asset prices will decline, and credit spreads will narrow.” Record quarter, record warning. Investors decide which signal to weigh more.

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Jim Cramer used his Mad Money platform this week to make the case that the Magnificent 7’s appetite for capital is sending an unmistakable signal to investors who actually pay attention to corporate plumbing: the big banks are about to print money.

On the June 18, 2026 episode, Cramer argued that Nvidia alone raised $25 billion in the debt market despite one of the best balance sheets in the country, Google is raising nearly $85 billion in capital, and rumors suggest Meta will soon raise billions as well. Every one of those deals routes fees through Wall Street’s underwriting desks.

The Four Drivers Behind Cramer’s Bank Thesis

Cramer laid out four structural tailwinds. First, a moderately higher short-term rate environment lifts bank earnings because what banks charge borrowers reprices faster than what they pay depositors. With the 10-year Treasury at 4.43% and the 2s/10s spread at 0.29%, the curve is flatter, but short rates remain high enough to keep net interest margins working.

Second, the consumer is holding. Cramer cited retail sales rising 0.9% month-over-month and 6.9% year-over-year, with credit card delinquencies remaining tame. FRED data confirms the spending side: retail sales hit $763.7B in May 2026, a +0.9% monthly gain, while credit card delinquencies sit at 2.92% as of January 2026, down from 3.04% in April 2025.

Third is the deal machine. Cramer flagged $1.2 trillion in public and private M&A activity in the first five months of the year, plus the Mag7 capital raises. Fourth is deregulation, what Cramer called “Prometheus unbound”, pointing to Banco Santander’s acquisition of Webster Financial as the kind of consolidation he expects to spread.

JPMorgan Chase: The Fee Pipeline Is Already Visible

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is the cleanest read. Q1 2026 EPS came in at $5.94, with Investment Banking fees up 28% to $2.88 billion and advisory fees surging 82% to $1.27 billion. CEO Jamie Dimon described “AI-driven capital investment” as a key tailwind in JPM’s Q1 2026 release.

Other Big Bank Beneficiaries

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) posted Investment Banking fees of $1.84 billion, up 21% year-over-year, with Equities Sales & Trading jumping 30% to $2.84 billion. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) reported Investment Banking revenue of $602 million, up 13%, with Markets revenue up 19%. CEO Charlie Scharf told investors the bank ended the quarter with “a strong investment banking pipeline”.

Why the Mag7 Is Borrowing With Cash Mountains on the Books

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) generated $253.5B in trailing revenue with a 63% profit margin, yet still tapped debt markets. The reason: $119B in supply-related commitments tied to AI capacity. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) issued $31.1 billion in senior unsecured notes in Q1 2026 per its Q1 8-K filing, with capex more than doubling. Meta Platforms raised 2026 capex guidance to $125-145 billion, an enormous funding gap that explains the rumored bond deal Cramer referenced.

The Valuation Setup

Bank stocks have already started moving. JPM is up 26.11% over the past year, BAC 31.55%, WFC 18.13%. Yet JPM still trades at a trailing P/E of 16 and forward P/E of 15, hardly stretched. Cramer’s point on Mad Money: “with a relatively cheap bank like JP Morgan or Bank of America or even a Wells Fargo, they can very well go up much more before they’re even considered reasonably priced, let alone fully valued.”

The Mag7 capex cycle is now a multi-year funding event. If Cramer is right that deal flow, NIM tailwinds, a resilient consumer, and looser regulation are stacking simultaneously, the underwriters of the AI buildout deserve a closer look than their multiples currently imply.

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Shares of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) are down 7% at midday on Tuesday, while Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) stock is sliding 6%. The pullback comes after a torrid multi-session rally in both names.

Intel stock closed yesterday at $127.86, having climbed 18% over the past month. AMD stock ended Monday at $547.26, an all-time high.

No fresh negative catalyst is driving the slide. Today looks like a routine consolidation after a vertical move.

Profit-Taking, Not Fundamentals

The irony is hard to miss for Intel. The chipmaker received a Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) double upgrade to Buy from Underperform last week, with the price target lifted to $135 from $96, citing CPU and foundry growth plus an agentic-AI opportunity. Yet, Intel stock is among the worst performers in the group today.

The fundamentals supporting the rally remain intact. Intel’s Q1 FY2026 results showed non-GAAP EPS of $0.29 versus the $0.0127 estimate and revenue of $13.58 billion, with the Data Center and AI segment up 22% year over year to $5.05 billion. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan framed the agentic-AI shift as “significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings.”

For AMD, today’s headline catalyst was actually positive. The company secured a new AI infrastructure agreement with Rackspace, building on a Q1 FY2026 print that delivered revenue of $10.25 billion, up 38% year over year, and Data Center sales of $5.78 billion, up 57%. Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su recently described AI infrastructure demand as “accelerating,” with MI450 Series customer forecasts exceeding initial expectations.

Reddit sentiment is reinforcing the breather thesis. Intel sentiment on r/WallStreetBets has cooled from a very bullish 82 on June 12 to a neutral 48 by June 15, with the narrative shifting toward a r/investing thread titled “redistribute Intel stock or hold?” That tonal shift aligns with the price action seen midday.

Possible Rotation Into Storage and Space

Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ:RXT) stock is benefitting directly from the AMD partnership and trades at $6.49, up 10% today. The non-binding MOU with AMD positions Rackspace as an enterprise AI infrastructure beneficiary.

Some capital may also be rotating into adjacent AI infrastructure names. Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) stock is up 3% today and now sits near $670, extending a 39% one-month gain. The storage maker’s fiscal Q3 2026 results showed non-GAAP EPS of $2.72 versus $2.39 estimates and a 20% dividend hike to $0.15 per share, with CEO Irving Tan noting that “virtually every AI workload creates data that is stored persistently and cost-efficiently on HDDs.”

Freshly listed SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) stock is also drawing attention, trading up 9% to $210. SPCX shares have climbed since their debut, and options trading on the name is launching today. Whether capital is flowing directly from Intel and AMD into Western Digital or SpaceX is not confirmed, so investors can treat the rotation angle as a possible contributing factor rather than a proven cause.

What to Watch Into the Close

The key question is whether the buyers will step back in. Both Intel and AMD remain dramatically higher than where they started the year, with Intel stock up 226% year to date and AMD stock up 144%.

Investors can watch for whether INTC stock holds $115 and whether AMD reclaims $520. A clean close above yesterday’s levels would suggest that the dip was simply digestion.

Position sizing matters more than ever after a run like this, and traders should manage their risk throughout the week. The next directional cue may arrive with tomorrow’s macro data and any follow-on commentary from sell-side desks on the Rackspace deal.

The post Intel Tumbles 7% Despite BoA Double Upgrade, AMD Slides 6% as AI Infrastructure Deal Can’t Stop Profit-Taking appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Buffett famously refuses to pay a dividend on Berkshire Hathaway because he believes he can compound your cash better than you can. The VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) disagrees, politely. OMAH holds a Berkshire-style basket of value names and overlays an options strategy designed to push out a 15% annual distribution, paid monthly. The result: you get Warren’s shopping list, plus an income stream he would personally never authorize.

The fund and the trade it makes

The underlying portfolio leans on the cash-flow machines Berkshire actually owns. Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO | KO Price Prediction), American Express (NYSE:AXP), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) anchor the lineup. Defensive consumer, premium credit, money-center banking, integrated energy. Boring on purpose. The options overlay sells calls against the basket and uses synthetic positions to manufacture the rest of the yield when option premium runs thin. The fund carries an expense ratio of 0.95%, which is typical for actively managed options-income ETFs but worth factoring into any yield comparison.

Whether the 15% target actually pays

Over the past year OMAH returned roughly 13% in price terms, before distributions. Berkshire shares, by contrast, were roughly flat over the same window. That gap matters because the standard knock on income-overlay funds is they bleed net asset value to fund the payout. OMAH’s price held up while Berkshire drifted, largely because the underlying basket delivered. The boring names, CVX, BAC, and KO, did the actual work.

The 15% figure on the label is a stated target with no guarantee attached. VistaShares constructs the distribution from option premium, dividends out of the holdings (KO yields about 2.6%, AXP about 1.1%), and, when the math falls short, return of capital. Return of capital is the fund handing you back a slice of your own principal and calling it income. If markets drift sideways for a year and call premium dries up, the monthly check still arrives, and NAV pays the bill. OMAH’s year-to-date price gain suggests the construction has held together through 2026, though a sustained bear market remains the real stress test. The fund’s rapid growth to nearly $1 billion in assets under management since its March 2025 launch signals that income-focused investors have accepted the trade-off.

The tradeoffs you accept

Three constraints define the product. The first is capped upside: short calls cut off the right tail. Berkshire has compounded roughly 70% over five years and about 240% over ten, but an options-overlay version of that basket would have surrendered most of the late-stage gains. The fund is built for a flat-to-rising market and gives up the melt-ups. In a year where the S&P 500 rips 25% on a tech-led rally, OMAH structurally cannot keep pace because call writing caps participation above the strike. That is the deal: trade upside for cash flow today.

The second constraint is tax friction. Monthly distributions in a taxable account get complicated fast, especially when part of the payout is option premium taxed at ordinary income rates and another slice is return of capital that reduces your cost basis rather than counting as qualified dividend income. Hold OMAH in an IRA or accept the drag. The third is the Berkshire impersonation problem. The basket borrows Buffett’s holdings but cannot borrow his process. The real conglomerate runs on insurance float, has the ability to acquire a railroad or a chemicals business on its own terms, and currently sits on nearly $400 billion in cash and short-term Treasury bills waiting for the right pitch. Now led by CEO Greg Abel following Buffett’s transition, Berkshire has maintained that discipline even as it posted record operating earnings. OMAH owns the names, not the operator or the balance sheet behind them.

Who should own OMAH

OMAH fits a retiree or pure income investor who has already accepted the terms. You want a monthly check denominated in dollars from companies that sell soda, swipe credit cards, and pump oil. You plan to spend the income, so surrendering Berkshire’s long-run compounding upside is a fair trade. A 5% to 10% sleeve alongside a broad index fund and a core bond allocation is the sensible dose, and the monthly cadence pairs cleanly with monthly bills in retirement. The right mental model is to treat OMAH as a fixed-income substitute rather than an equity growth vehicle, because the distribution profile behaves more like a high-yield bond than a conventional stock fund.

Anyone still in accumulation mode owns the wrong fund here. Berkshire’s ten-year total return of roughly 240% with zero distribution-tax drag is the actual Buffett playbook, and reinvesting forced distributions from OMAH inside a taxable account creates friction that compounds against you over a multi-decade horizon. For income seekers who want value-style holdings without the options engineering, a low-cost dividend ETF yields less but compounds without the synthetic plumbing or the return-of-capital footnotes that appear every January on the 1099. The right answer depends entirely on whether you need the cash now or later.

OMAH is unambiguously a now-cash product.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Berkshire Hathaway’s record Q1 2026 cash and Treasury bill position of $397.4 billion, Greg Abel’s tenure as CEO, OMAH’s expense ratio of 0.95%, the fund’s growth to nearly $1 billion in assets under management, and a refreshed Berkshire ten-year total return of approximately 240%.

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Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) on December 31, 2025, after six decades leading the conglomerate he transformed from a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion empire. The “Oracle of Omaha” left his successor, Greg Abel, with a very concentrated portfolio: 70% of Berkshire’s $381 billion portfolio is invested in just seven stocks. Abel, who has served as vice chair overseeing non-insurance operations, officially took over as CEO on January 1, 2026. At 95 years old, Buffett isn’t fully retiring—he will remain chair of the board and plans to continue coming to the Omaha headquarters as much as before. However, he has stated he will be “going quiet” and leaving all decision-making to Abel.

One thing is for sure: the new CEO got to work in the first quarter, and 16 companies were eliminated, leaving just 26 stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. In addition, Abel stunned the world as the company made its first major acquisition of a publicly traded company in years, buying homebuilder Taylor Morrison (NYSE: TMHC). The deal was priced at $72.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, implying an equity value of $6.8 billion and an enterprise value of $8.5 billion, including the homebuilder’s net debt. The agreement, one of the first major acquisitions under Abel, delivers a 24% premium to the target’s prior stock price. It is expected to close in the second half of the year, with Taylor Morrison continuing to operate under its existing management team. Before Taylor Morrison, the company’s last major buyout of an entire publicly traded company was Alleghany, which was acquired for $11.6 billion in 2022.

After the portfolio purge and the first acquisition since the purchase of OxyChem from Occidental Petroleum, just four stocks now make up 53.8% of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Of the four stocks, only one saw any selling in the first quarter. However, the sale was quite minor, reducing their massive investment by less than 1%.

Why do we cover Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

Few investors have the results and reputation that Buffett has garnered over the past 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO chair, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buying good companies with products and services recognized worldwide and paying dividends will always remain a timeless approach.

Here are the four companies that now make up 53.8% of Berkshire Hathaway. All are rated Buy at top Wall Street firms we cover.

American Express

American Express (NYSE: AXP) is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation specializing in payment cards. The stock pays a dividend yield of 1.07%. American Express is a globally integrated payments company operating card-issuing, merchant-acquiring, and card network businesses.

The company offers products and services to customers worldwide, including consumers, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large corporations. Its segments include:

• U.S. Consumer Services, which offers travel and lifestyle services, as well as banking and non-card financing products.
• Commercial Services offers payment, expense management, banking, and non-card financing products.
• International Card Services provides services to international customers, including travel and lifestyle services, and manages certain international joint ventures and its loyalty coalition business.
• Global Merchant and Network Services operates a payments network that processes and settles card transactions, acquires merchants, and provides multichannel marketing programs, capabilities, services, and data analytics.

Berkshire Hathaway owns 151,610,700 shares, 22% of American Express’s float and 14.2% of the portfolio.

Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating with a $400 target price.

Apple

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services, offering a small dividend of 0.35%. It is almost incomprehensible that the legacy technology giant, even after a recent fourth-quarter sale of 10 million shares and a surge in sales over the past two years, still holds a 227,917,808-share position that accounts for 21.8% of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, which holds 1.6% of Apple’s stock.

The company offers:

• The iPhone, a line of smartphones
• Mac, a line of personal computers
• iPad, a line of multi-purpose tablets
• Wearables, home, and accessories comprising AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, and HomePod

Apple also offers AppleCare support and cloud services, and operates various platforms, including the App Store, which enables customers to discover and download applications and digital content, such as books, music, videos, games, and podcasts.

In addition, the company offers various services, such as:

• Apple Arcade, a game subscription service
• Apple Fitness+, a personalized fitness service
• Apple Music, which gives users a curated listening experience with on-demand radio stations
• Apple News+, a subscription news and magazine service
• Apple TV+, which offers exclusive original content
• Apple Card, a co-branded credit card
• Apple Pay, a cashless payment service

Wedbush has an Outperform rating with a $400 target price.

Bank of America

While Buffett trimmed his position in a big way over the past two years, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 2% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding company that reported impressive Q4 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 513,624,165 shares, which is 8.3% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float. Berkshire did lower its Bank of America position in Q1 2026, but only modestly. According to the Q1 2026 13F filing, it was reduced by just 0.71%, a tiny cut compared to other positions.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM) comprises two businesses: Merrill Wealth Management, which offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

UBS has a Buy rating with a $63 target price.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. This company remains a top long-time holding of Buffett. Berkshire owns 400 million shares, representing 9.3% of the float and 9.7% of the portfolio. The stock pays a dependable 2.46% dividend.

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, offering consumers more than 500 sparkling and still brands. Led by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable brands, the portfolio features 20 billion-dollar brands, including:

• Diet Coke
• Coca-Cola Light
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
• Caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Cherry Coke
• Fanta Orange
• Fanta Zero Orange
• Fanta Zero Sugar
• Fanta Apple
• Sprite
• Sprite Zero Sugar
• Simply Orange
• Simply Apple
• Simply Grapefruit
• Fresca
• Schweppes
• Dasani
• Fuze Tea
• Glacéau Smartwater
• Glacéau Vitaminwater
• Gold Peak
• Ice Dew
• Powerade
• Topo Chico
• Minute Maid

Globally, it is the top provider of sparkling beverages, ready-to-drink coffees, juices, and juice drinks. Through the world’s most extensive beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the company’s beverages at a rate of over 1.9 billion servings per day. And remember that the company owns 19.5% of Monster Beverage (NASDAQ: MNST), which continues to deliver strong financial results.

Citigroup has a Buy rating with a $91 target price.

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Both Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Ford (NYSE: F) flashed bullish technical signals over the past few months, but which one is better in a retirement portfolio right now? A quick reality check on the technicals matters first. Ford’s 50-day moving average of $13.13 sits above its 200-day at $12.89, so its golden cross remains intact. Bank of America’s chart is more ambiguous: the 50-day at $51.82 is currently a hair below the 200-day at $52.00, meaning that bullish crossover has faded into a near-tie. Treat the technicals as a tailwind, not a green light. Fundamentals decide this one.

Dimension 1: Income Reliability

Ford carries the higher headline yield at roughly 4.2% on a $0.60 annualized dividend, versus Bank of America’s 2.1% on a $1.12 per-share payout. But yield is only useful if the check keeps clearing. Bank of America has raised its quarterly dividend 8% to $0.28 and authorized a $40 billion buyback, returning $9.30 billion to shareholders in Q1 2026 alone. Ford’s Q1 buybacks totaled just $311 million, and the automaker famously cut its dividend during the last downturn and again in 2020. Ford’s higher yield is mostly a reflection of its depressed share price.

Dimension 2: Volatility and Risk

Bank of America’s beta of 1.196 compares favorably to Ford’s beta of 1.798, meaning Ford swings roughly half again as hard as the bank in either direction. The underlying businesses tell the same story. Bank of America posted net income of $30.51 billion in FY2025, up 12.45%, with a CET1 ratio of 11.4% and credit card charge-offs improving to 3.64% from 4.05%. Ford reported a FY2025 GAAP net loss of $8.16 billion after $15.50 billion in special charges, including $10.70 billion in Model e impairments. Adding roughly $2.0 billion in 2026 commodity headwinds and ongoing Model e losses guided at $4.0 billion to $4.5 billion, Ford remains a cyclical turnaround story.

Dimension 3: Valuation and Upside

Ford trades at a forward P/E of roughly 9, well below Bank of America’s forward P/E of roughly 12. But the analyst consensus tells a different story about implied returns. Wall Street’s average price target on Bank of America is $63.16 against a current price of $54.54, with analysts overwhelmingly recommending the stock. Ford’s $14.55 target barely tops its $14.30 price, and the rating mix is dominated by Holds. Ford has been the better one-year trade, up 34.9% versus Bank of America’s 21.0%, but analysts view most of that re-rating as already priced in.

The Verdict

Bank of America is the clear core holding for a retirement-focused investor. Brian Moynihan’s team delivered four consecutive EPS beats, $15.9 billion in Q1 net interest income, and guidance for 6% to 8% NII growth in 2026. That is the profile a retiree wants: a rising dividend, a substantial buyback program, improving credit quality, and a CEO who is “bullish on the U.S. economy in 2026.”

Ford has a role, but it’s a narrow one. It fits as a higher-risk, higher-yield satellite for investors who want exposure to a possible margin recovery toward Farley’s 8% adjusted EBIT margin target by 2029 and can stomach a negative-free-cash-flow quarter and a payout history that has not survived prior recessions. For a retirement core holding, it’s Bank of America. Ford stays on the bench.

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The Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) checklist of pre-peak warning signs is flashing at 70%, matching the rough average reading seen at the last seven major stock market tops over the past 35 years. That figure, attributed to Bank of America Global Research in a checklist recreated by SSR and circulated on X by @ThierryBorgeat, lands one week before Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh takes the helm of his first Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on June 16-17.

For market participants, the 70% figure from Bank of America is loaded and shouldn’t be misread. The post is explicit that the checklist tells you where you are in the cycle, not when a top hits, and the markets can sit near a peak for months and keep climbing.

Still, the data points deserve your attention. The S&P 500, tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), sits at a level the post pegs around 7,580, up from 6,144 when the same checklist last read 70% in February 2025.

The Scary-Sounding Number

Let’s start with the headline figure: 70%. That’s the share of Bank of America’s pre-peak warning indicators currently firing, per the May reading from Bank of America Global Research.

For historical context, the same Bank of America checklist printed 88% in July 1990, 90% in March 2000, 80% in October 2007, 60% in September 2018, 50% in February 2020, and 50% in January 2022. The average across those prior peaks comes to 70%, which is the exact level today (or more precisely, in May of 2026).

What It Means

The signals Bank of America has currently flagged span sentiment, valuation, credit, and macro factors. The list includes elevated consumer confidence and bullish expectations, stretched long-term growth expectations, record merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, and extreme valuations on a combined price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio-plus-inflation basis.

Three more are firing on the credit and breadth side, per Bank of America: low-P/E-ratio stocks badly lagging high-P/E stocks, credit stress collapsed to complacent lows, and tightening lending conditions from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS). The graphic also highlights the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence indicator, S&P 500 long-term growth expectations, and an inverted yield curve over the prior six months as items to watch.

The macro backdrop behind SPY’s run echoes the late-cycle framing. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index sank to 49.8 in April, well below the 60 recessionary threshold, while Core PCE rose to 129.63 in April, sitting at the 90.9 percentile of the past 12 months.

The Market Reaction

The SPY ETF closed at $737.05 on June 9, down from $759.57 on June 2 over the one-week window. Year to date, SPY moved from $681.92 on December 31, 2025 to $737.05 on June 9.

Today, the S&P 500 and the SPY ETF are down slightly after annualized Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose to 4.2% in May, marking the CPI’s highest level since 2023. The S&P 500 was down by less than half a percent on Wednesday morning, so perhaps the market was ready for a not-so-ideal CPI print.

In any case, volatility around the SPY trade is rising into the meeting. The CBOE Volatility Index or VIX settled at 18.92 on June 8, still in the normal 15-20 range but at the 72nd percentile of the past 12 months.

The Bear Case

The setup is what worries Bank of America. Headline CPI accelerated to 4% year over year in May and core CPI rose to 3%, even as consumer sentiment collapsed into recessionary territory.

The Fed has already executed three cuts to 4%, but per the source, futures markets have shifted toward pricing possible rate hikes later in 2026 rather than cuts. That’s the opposite of what investors holding SPY at record levels want to hear.

Polymarket assigns a 99% probability of no rate change at the June 16-17 meeting. The market’s attention sits on Warsh’s first press conference as Fed Chair, where any hawkish phrasing can hit SPY valuations directly.

The 10-year/2-year Treasury spread, a classic late-cycle tell, sits at 0.4% as of June 9, down from 0.74% in early February. The curve hasn’t inverted, yet the compression aligns with the cycle phase Bank of America’s 70% reading describes.

The Bottom Line

The 70% checklist reading from Bank of America isn’t a sell signal, and the source itself rules out market timing. The same checklist read 70% in February 2025 when the S&P 500 was at 6,144, and SPY climbed substantially from there. “Late” can last a long time.

What changes the picture this month is Warsh. The Federal Reserve’s June 16-17 FOMC meeting marks his first as Fed chair, and SPY holders should expect every sentence of his press conference to be parsed for the Fed’s direction on inflation, employment, and the path of interest rates.

For investors holding broad index exposure through SPY or similar vehicles, the message is calibration, not capitulation. Late-cycle conditions can argue for tighter risk discipline, attention to position sizing, and patience on adding fresh exposure until Warsh’s first meeting reframes the path forward.

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Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) on December 31, 2025, after six decades leading the conglomerate he transformed from a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion empire. The “Oracle of Omaha” left his successor, Greg Abel, with a very concentrated portfolio: more than 65% of Berkshire’s $381 billion portfolio is invested in just six stocks. Abel, who has served as vice chair overseeing non-insurance operations, officially took over as chief executive on January 1, 2026. At 95 years old, Buffett isn’t fully retiring—he will remain chair of the board and plans to continue coming to the Omaha headquarters as much as before. However, he has stated he will be “going quiet” and leaving all decision-making to Abel.

It became quite obvious when the first-quarter numbers for Berkshire Hathaway were presented that it was more of the same for the investment giant. The huge chest of T-bills rose to $397 billion as more stock was sold. Specifically, the company sold $24.1 billion in equities in the first quarter of 2026, a huge jump from $4.7 billion in the first quarter of 2025, marking 14 straight quarters of net stock sales and pushing cash reserves to a staggering level. Once again, more Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and over 50 million shares of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) hit the tape. What wasn’t being sold, at least so far, were some of the portfolio’s highest-yielding dividend stocks. Five of the highest-yielding could make up a very handsome passive-income portfolio while offering outstanding diversity, and being members of Berkshire Hathaway.

Why do we cover Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

Few investors have the results and reputation that Buffett has garnered over the past 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO chair, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buying good companies with products and services recognized worldwide, and paying dividends, will always remain a timeless approach.

Here are the five highest-yielding Berkshire Hathaway stocks.

Kraft Heinz

Kraft Heinz (NYSE: KHC) is North America’s third-largest food and beverage company and fifth-largest globally. Even in difficult times, everybody needs to eat, and this company consistently benefits while paying a substantial 7.12% dividend. The company was formed via the merger of H.J. Heinz and Kraft Foods, and it manufactures and markets food and beverage products worldwide through its eight consumer-driven product platforms:

• Taste Elevation
• Easy Ready Meals
• Hydration
• Meats
• Cheeses
• Substantial Snacking
• Desserts
• Coffee and other grocery products

The company has two reportable segments defined by geographic region: North America and International Developed Markets. Its other segments, West and East Emerging Markets (WEEM) and Asia Emerging Markets (AEM), are combined and reported as Emerging Markets.

Kraft Heinz brands include:

• Kraft
• Oscar Mayer
• Heinz
• Philadelphia
• Lunchables
• Velveeta
• Ore-Ida
• Capri Sun
• Maxwell House
• Kool-Aid
• Jell-O
• Golden Circle
• Wattie’s
• Plasmon
• ABC
• Master
• Quero
• Pudliszki

The company manufactures its products from a wide variety of raw materials and sells them through its sales organizations and independent brokers, agents, and distributors.

In February 2026, Kraft Heinz scrapped its planned corporate split. New CEO Steve Cahillane cited worsening conditions in the food industry, while emphasizing that the company’s challenges are “fixable and within our control.” Rather than breaking up, the company is intensifying its turnaround efforts. It is committing $600 million to marketing, sales, and research and development to drive the strategy. The decision follows a 3.5% decline in net sales in 2025, with further declines expected in 2026. By canceling the split, Kraft Heinz is now fully focused on stabilizing and rebuilding the business. Abel indicated Berkshire Hathaway is no longer planning to sell its stake in Kraft Heinz.

The swift reversal is being viewed as a reflection of Abel’s more hands-on management approach, as he reportedly expressed dissatisfaction, prompting the company to change direction quickly. For now, Berkshire appears committed to holding its position, although the shares could still be sold if conditions change. If they don’t, and the transition is successful, this could be a contrarian home run.

Sirius XM

The satellite radio operator was first added to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio in 2016, and Buffett has continued to increase his stake over the past few years, a move that has proven to be shrewd. Sirius XM (NASDAQ: SIRI) is an audio entertainment company in North America that pays shareholders a dividend yield of 3.89%.

The company has a portfolio of audio businesses, including its flagship subscription entertainment service SiriusXM; the ad-supported and premium music streaming services of Pandora; an expansive podcast network; and a suite of business and advertising solutions.

The Sirius XM segment offers a variety of content, including music, sports, entertainment, comedy, talk, news, traffic, and other channels, as well as podcasts and infotainment services, in the United States for a subscription-based fee. Sirius XM’s packages include live, curated, and specific exclusive and on-demand programming.

The Pandora and Off-platform segment operates a music, comedy, and podcast streaming discovery platform that offers a personalized experience for each listener, wherever and whenever they want to listen, across mobile devices, vehicle speakers, and connected devices.

Chevron

Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is an American multinational energy company primarily focused on oil and gas, and it has been on fire as oil prices have skyrocketed. This integrated giant is a safer option for investors seeking exposure to the energy sector, and it pays a substantial 3.67% dividend, which was raised by 5% earlier this year. Chevron operates integrated energy and chemicals businesses worldwide. Berkshire Hathaway bought a well-timed 8 million additional shares in the fourth quarter, but sold a giant chunk of shares during the first quarter. It is one of the highest-quality companies in the energy sector, with a pristine balance sheet, and accounts for a sizable portion of Berkshire’s equity holdings. Chevron has a 38-year streak of dividend growth.

The company operates in two segments. The Upstream segment is involved in the following:

• Exploration, development, production, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas
• Processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas
• Transportation of crude oil through pipelines, and transportation, storage
• Marketing of natural gas, as well as operating a gas-to-liquids plant

The Downstream segment engages in:

• Refining crude oil into petroleum products
• Marketing crude oil, refined products, and lubricants
• Manufacturing and marketing renewable fuels
• Transporting crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car
• Manufacturing and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives

It also involves cash management, debt financing, insurance operations, real estate, and technology businesses.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. This company remains a top long-time holding of Warren Buffett, whose 400 million shares are 9.3% of the float and 9.9% of the portfolio. The stock pays a dependable 2.63% dividend.

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, offering consumers more than 500 sparkling and still brands. Led by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable brands, the company’s portfolio features 20 billion-dollar brands, including:

• Diet Coke
• Coca-Cola Light
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
• Caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Cherry Coke
• Fanta Orange
• Fanta Zero Orange
• Fanta Zero Sugar
• Fanta Apple
• Sprite
• Sprite Zero Sugar
• Simply Orange
• Simply Apple
• Simply Grapefruit
• Fresca
• Schweppes
• Dasani
• Fuze Tea
• Glacéau Smartwater
• Glacéau Vitaminwater
• Gold Peak
• Ice Dew
• Powerade
• Topo Chico
• Minute Maid

Globally, it is the top provider of sparkling beverages, ready-to-drink coffees, juices, and juice drinks. Through the world’s most extensive beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the company’s beverages at a rate of over 1.9 billion servings per day. And remember that the company owns 19.5% of Monster Beverage (NASDAQ: MNST), which continues to deliver strong financial results.

Constellation Brands

Constellation is the largest beer importer in the US by sales and has the third-largest market share among major beer suppliers. If there is any company whose products remain in style, it’s this one, which achieves only 7% of its sales abroad. Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), together with its subsidiaries, produces, imports, markets, and sells beer, wine, and spirits in the United States, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and Italy.

The company provides beer primarily under these popular brands:

• Corona Extra
• Corona Premier
• Corona Familiar
• Corona Light
• Corona Refresca
• Corona Hard Seltzer
• Modelo Especial
• Modelo Negra
• Modelo Chelada
• Victoria
• Vicky Chamoy
• Pacifico

It also offers wine under:

• Cook’s California Champagne
• Kim Crawford
• Meiomi
• Mount Veeder
• Ruffino
• SIMI
• My Favorite Neighbor
• Robert Mondavi Winery
• Schrader
• The Prisoner Wine Company

Spirits are sold under the Casa Noble, Copper & Kings, High West, Mi CAMPO, and Nelson’s Green Brier brands.

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The Federal Reserve’s asset cap on Wells Fargo came off in 2025. JPMorgan’s board waved through a $50 billion repurchase authorization. Bank of America returned $9.30 billion to shareholders in a single quarter. The post-stress-test capital return cycle is already running, and the cash is being shoveled out the door faster than most retail investors have noticed. Here are the five names where that shovel is biggest.

1. KeyCorp (KEY): The Regional That’s Buying Back More Stock Than You Think

Start here, because nobody else is. KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) is a $23.5 billion regional, dwarfed by every other name on this list. But the buyback-to-market-cap math is the most aggressive in the group, and CEO Chris Gorman is leaning on a Basel III tailwind nobody’s pricing in.

Q1 2026 EPS came in at $0.44, an 8% beat. The company plans to repurchase at least $1.3 billion in common shares in 2026, with $389 million already done in Q1 at an average price of $21.47. Gorman flagged that the updated Basel III proposal, if adopted, would imply “more than 100 basis point benefit to our marked CET1 ratio.”

The stock is up 42% over the past year. The Reg-bank rerating is happening in real time, and management is using the rip to retire shares. The bigger banks are doing the same thing, just with more zeros.

2. JPMorgan Chase (JPM): The $50 Billion Authorization Nobody Can Match

This is the heavyweight. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is sitting on $291 billion in CET1 capital and $1.5 trillion in cash and marketable securities. When Jamie Dimon talks about “fortress balance sheet,” this is what he means, and the fortress is now writing checks.

Q1 2026 EPS landed at $5.94, up 17% YoY, on revenue of $49.84 billion. The bank repurchased 27.5 million shares for $8.328 billion in the quarter at an average price of $302.75, on top of $4.10 billion in dividend payments. The quarterly dividend sits at $1.50 per share, with analyst consensus pegging a forward P/E of 14.

Dimon’s framing on the call was characteristically blunt: “We have ample amounts of capital and liquidity, with $291 billion in CET1 capital, $572 billion in total loss-absorbing capacity and $1.5 trillion in cash and marketable securities.” Translation: the buybacks aren’t slowing down. And one peer is actually returning a higher percentage of its market cap.

3. Bank of America (BAC): Capital Returns Up 41% Year-Over-Year

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has now seen 11 consecutive quarters of sequential deposit growth, with average deposits topping $2.02 trillion. The deposit franchise funds the lending book, the lending book funds the NII, the NII funds the buybacks. That flywheel is spinning faster.

Q1 2026 EPS hit $1.11, up 25% YoY, on revenue of $30.27 billion. Net interest income climbed 9% YoY to $15.74 billion, and the bank returned $9.30 billion to shareholders in the quarter, of which $7.2 billion went to buybacks. Brian Moynihan said: “Earnings per share rose 25% year-over-year, starting 2026 with strong momentum.”

Capital return in 2025 was 41% higher than the prior year, and the bank now sports a forward P/E of 12. Cheap, paying, buying. The next name on the list isn’t cheap, but it’s running the most profitable capital-markets engine on Wall Street.

4. Morgan Stanley (MS): The Record ROTCE Machine

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) just printed the most profitable quarter in its history. ROTCE hit 27.1%, up from 23.0% a year earlier. For context, big banks generally chase 15% ROTCE as a stretch target. Morgan Stanley is lapping the field, and the dividend is the highest quarterly payout among this group.

Q1 2026 net revenues hit $20.58 billion, up 16% YoY, with net income up 29% YoY to $5.57 billion. The quarterly dividend sits at $1.00 per share, and the firm repurchased $1.75 billion of stock at an average price of $169.15. Wealth Management client assets now stand at $7.34 trillion, with $118.40 billion in net new assets in Q1 alone.

Ted Pick said: “Morgan Stanley reported a record quarter.” The stock has run 74% over the past year, so a chunk of the rerating is in the tape. The unleashed name on this list, however, hasn’t rerated at all.

5. Wells Fargo (WFC): The Asset Cap Came Off, and the Stock Is Down YTD

Here’s the punchline. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) had its Federal Reserve asset cap lifted in 2025, multiple consent orders terminated, and the medium-term ROTCE target raised to 17-18% from the prior 15%. The handcuffs are off after nearly seven years. And the stock is down 11% year-to-date.

I’ve been watching this name for years, waiting for the regulatory unlock. It happened, and Mr. Market shrugged. Q1 2026 EPS came in at $1.60 on revenue of $21.45 billion, with $4.0 billion in buybacks (46.3 million shares) and $5.4 billion total returned to shareholders in the quarter. Full-year 2025 buybacks totaled $18 billion. The dividend has marched from $0.35 in early 2024 to $0.40 mid-2024 to $0.45 in mid-2025, and it’s held there ever since.

Charlie Scharf framed the capital position directly: “We returned $4 billion to shareholders through common stock repurchases while continuing to operate with significant excess capital.” Buy Wells Fargo IF you believe the regulatory unlock translates to ROTCE expansion the market hasn’t yet priced. The inverse: stay away if you think NIM compression at a 2.47% margin (down from 2.67% a year ago) caps the upside.

The Setup

The 10-year sits at 4.49%, in the 95.6th percentile of the past twelve months. The Fed funds upper bound is 3.75%, stable for over six months. That’s the setup banks have been waiting for: a yield curve that pays them to do their job, plus regulatory clarity that lets them return what they earn. KEY is the small-cap leverage play, JPM is the fortress, BAC is the value compounder, MS is the profitability king, and WFC is the unleashed giant the market has yet to re-rate. The capital is moving. Decide who gets yours.

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Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett adopted a cautious yet opportunistic stance in his latest Flow Show, warning that investors are approaching a pivotal juncture. He highlighted rising bond yields, elevated technology valuations, and evolving global capital flows as forces likely to trigger a rotation in market leadership. Despite the AI-fueled surge that has lifted major U.S. indexes to record highs, Hartnett sees attractive opportunities shifting toward previously neglected segments—including international equities, bonds, financials, and other value-oriented areas. At the core of his outlook: the trajectory of long-term Treasury yields will be the decisive variable. Their direction, he argues, will ultimately determine whether the current bull market broadens sustainably or risks a sharp correction. The bottom line: if yields on the 30-year bond move and stay above 5%, the economy could be in trouble.

We have covered Hartnett’s work for years here at 24/7 Wall St., and while he is by no means a perma-bear, his recent Flow-Show commentary for investors warned that many of the current valuations and metrics increasingly resemble the dot-com bubble era of 2000 to 2001. Hartnett continues to caution that many AI, semiconductor, and large-cap technology stocks are significantly overbought after their explosive rally. Instead, he sees more compelling opportunities in lagging sectors, particularly healthcare, defense, Treasury bonds, and select international markets.

Hartnett’s signature theme of being “long Detroit, short Davos” remains firmly in place. This means he continues to favor U.S. small- and mid-cap stocks, banks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), industrials, and other beneficiaries of the domestic economy, while steering clear of the Magnificent Seven and other richly valued global growth names. He expects rising political pressure ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to increasingly support policies focused on affordability, domestic investment, and lower interest rates.

One very disturbing statistic Hartnett pointed to was that recently, 21 stocks, which are roughly 4% of the S&P 500, accounted for all the new all-time highs while the headline index rose. This is an almost identical concentration pattern to the peak of the dot-com bubble in March 2000. He also noted that 331 S&P 500 stocks are trading at least 20% below their all-time highs, indicating that market breadth remains severely distorted.

We decided to screen our 24/7 Wall St. research database for dividend-paying companies in sectors Hartnett is positive on and that are rated Buy at Bank of America. We found five ideas that may interest investors concerned about the current state of the stock market and the economy.

Acadia Realty Trust

This is a perfect idea for conservative growth and income investors, paying a dependable 3.63% dividend. Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE: AKR) is an equity REIT. The company is focused on the ownership, acquisition, development, and management of retail properties located primarily in high-barrier-to-entry, supply-constrained, densely populated metropolitan areas in the United States.

The company operates through three segments:

• Core Portfolio, which consists primarily of retail properties located primarily in high-barrier-to-entry, densely populated metropolitan areas with a long-term investment horizon.
• Investment Management holds primarily retail real estate in which the Company co-invests with high-net-worth institutional investors.
• Structured Financing consists of earnings and expenses related to notes and mortgages receivable.

The company has ownership interests in approximately 210 properties within its core portfolio and investment management.

Bank of America has a $24 target price.

American Healthcare REIT

American Healthcare REIT (NYSE: AHR) is a self-managed REIT and is one of the bank’s top picks, as it resides on the US 1 list. With an aging global population, this company is in the right real estate silo and pays a 2.05% dividend to shareholders. It acquires, owns, and operates a diversified portfolio of clinical healthcare real estate properties, focusing primarily on senior housing, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient medical buildings, and other healthcare-related facilities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Isle of Man.

Its segments include:

• Integrated senior health campuses
• OM, SHOP, and triple-net leased properties

Its OM buildings are leased to multiple tenants under separate leases. Its integrated senior health campuses each provide a range of independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing services, and ancillary businesses.

Its triple-net leased properties include:

• Senior housing
• Skilled nursing facilities
• Hospital investments

SHOP includes senior housing, which may provide:

• Assisted living care
• Independent living
• Memory care
• Skilled nursing services

The BofA Securities target price for the shares is $36.

Edison International

Trading in the middle of its 52-week range with one of the highest dividends in the utility sector at 4.88%, this is a strong idea for the rest of 2026. Edison International (NYSE: EIX) is an electric utility holding company focused on providing clean and reliable energy and energy services through its independent companies.

Edison is the parent holding company of Southern California Edison Company (SCE) and Trio. SCE is a public utility primarily engaged in the business of supplying and delivering electricity to an approximately 50,000 square mile area across Southern, Central, and Coastal California. Meanwhile, Trio is a global energy advisory firm providing integrated sustainability and energy advisory services to large commercial, industrial, and institutional organizations in North America and Europe. It provides integrated strategy and implementation solutions in:

• Sustainability
• Renewables
• Energy procurement
• Conventional supply
• Energy optimization
• Transportation electrification

Bank of America has a $78 target price.

Getty Realty

With a whopping 5.87% dividend, this is one of the top small-cap picks at Bank of America. Getty Realty (NYSE: GTY) is a net lease REIT specializing in the acquisition, financing, and development of convenience, automotive, and other single-tenant retail real estate.

The company’s portfolio includes approximately 1,137 freestanding properties located in 44 states across the United States and the District of Columbia. The portfolio is comprised of:

• Convenience stores
• Express tunnel car washes
• Automotive service centers (gasoline and repair, oil and maintenance, tire and battery, and collision)
• Freestanding retail properties, including drive-thru quick service restaurants and automotive parts retailers.

The company’s tenants operate under a variety of national and regional brands. They either operate their businesses at its properties directly or, in the case of certain convenience stores and gasoline and repair stations, sublet its properties and supply fuel to third parties who operate the businesses.

Bank of America has a $37 price objective.

KeyCorp

This regional bank offers a sizable 3.84% dividend and outstanding growth prospects. KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) is a bank-based financial services company that operates through its subsidiary, KeyBank National Association (KeyBank).

Through KeyBank and certain other subsidiaries, it provides a range of:

• Retail and commercial banking
• Commercial leasing
• Investment management
• Consumer finance
• Student loan refinancing
• Commercial mortgage servicing and special servicing
• Investment banking products and services to individual, corporate, and institutional clients

Its Consumer Bank segment serves individuals and small businesses by offering a variety of deposit and investment products, personal finance and financial wellness services, lending, student loan refinancing, mortgage and home equity services, credit card services, treasury services, and more.

The Commercial Bank segment consists of the Commercial and Institutional operating businesses. The former focuses on serving clients’ borrowing, cash management, and capital markets needs.

Bank of America’s price target is $25.

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The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (NYSEARCA:KRE) has quietly become one of 2026’s better-performing financial trades, rising roughly 9% year to date and 28% over the past year to around $70 a share. The rally reflects what Q1 earnings just confirmed: regional bank net interest margins are finally widening as deposit costs roll over. For KRE holders, the next 12 months hinge on whether that NIM tailwind survives the Fed’s next move.

The Fund and Where It Sits Today

KRE tracks the S&P Regional Banks Select Industry Index on an equal-weighted basis, which means a roughly 2% to 3% slot for each name regardless of market cap. That construction is what differentiates it from cap-weighted bank funds, and it is also why the fund moves on the health of mid-tier banks like Citizens Financial Group (NYSE:CFG), Truist Financial (NYSE:TFC), and KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) rather than the money-center giants.

Q1 results were unambiguously good. Citizens posted EPS of $1.13 with NIM expanding 24 basis points year over year to 3.14%. KeyCorp beat by 8% and raised full-year NII guidance to 9% to 10% growth. Truist lifted its 2026 buyback authorization to $5 billion from $4 billion. Capital return is aggressive across the group, which usually signals management confidence in the earnings trajectory.

The Macro Factor That Matters Most: The Fed’s Next Move

The single variable most likely to dictate KRE’s next 12 months is the trajectory of the federal funds rate, currently held at 3.75% since December 10, 2025 after 75 basis points of cuts. The 2s/10s spread sits at 49 basis points, the tightest level in a year, with the 10-year at 4.56%.

The transmission to KRE is direct. Regional banks borrow short and lend long. Further cuts compress deposit-cost relief faster than asset yields can adjust. Bank of America quantified this clearly: a 100 basis point parallel decline below the forward curve would reduce NII by $2 billion over 12 months. Equal-weighted regionals are even more rate-sensitive than the money-center banks, with peers such as Wells Fargo seeing NIM compress from 2.67% to 2.47% while regional peers expanded.

What to monitor: the CME FedWatch tool for cut probabilities, the FOMC dot plot at each meeting, and the monthly CPI release from the BLS. If markets begin pricing more than two cuts in 2026, KRE’s NIM-expansion thesis weakens. If the Fed holds through year-end, the regional bank reset is intact.

The Fund-Specific Factor: Equal-Weighting Plus CRE Concentration

Because KRE equal-weights its holdings, smaller community and regional banks get the same vote as the larger names. That structure amplifies one specific risk: commercial real estate, particularly General Office. Citizens flagged on its Q1 call that its General Office portfolio carries roughly a 20% potential loss rate, and that the bank’s allowance assumes a mild recession. Smaller KRE constituents typically have heavier CRE concentration than CFG does.

The offset is Basel III. KeyCorp CEO Chris Gorman noted the re-proposal “would imply more than 100 basis point benefit to our marked CET1 ratio”. A favorable final rule frees buyback capacity across the index. Track FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile data for CRE delinquency trends, and watch Federal Reserve comment letters on Basel III for the regulatory catalyst.

What Flips the Thesis

Investors who want regional bank exposure without CRE concentration risk can pair KRE with cap-weighted alternatives that tilt more toward larger banks via related sector funds. For KRE specifically: if the Fed holds at 3.75% through Q3 and Basel III is finalized as proposed, the fund’s NIM and capital-return story extends. The signal that flips the thesis is two or more cuts priced into the December 2026 SOFR strip combined with a tick higher in FDIC office-CRE delinquencies. That is the watchlist.

The post If Rates Fall Further, Here’s What Happens to the KRE Regional Banking ETF appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has spent 2026 grinding sideways despite a Q1 print that ranked among the strongest in the bank’s recent history. With the stock down on the year and analysts staying overwhelmingly bullish, I think the setup is now interesting enough to call.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Bank of America is $60.48, implying roughly 19.13% upside from $50.77. The recommendation is buy, and our model confidence is high.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary

A Strong Quarter the Market Has Yet to Reward

BAC has slipped 7.16% year to date and 3.59% over the past month, even as the one-year return sits at 17.83%. Shares trade roughly 10% below the 52-week high of $57.23 and well above the $42.41 low.

The disconnect is the Q1 2026 report. Bank of America posted EPS of $1.11 on revenue of $30.27 billion, a fourth straight beat. Net interest income climbed 9% to $15.74 billion, equities trading surged 30%, and investment banking fees jumped 21%. CEO Brian Moynihan reiterated he is “bullish on the U.S. economy in 2026.”

Why Bulls See a Path Above $63

The bull thesis rests on four pillars: continued fixed-rate asset repricing, durable deposit franchise growth (11 consecutive quarters of sequential growth to $2.02 trillion), wealth management momentum (consumer investment assets up 15% to $573 billion), and a steepening yield curve, with the 10-year Treasury at 4.45% versus a 3-month bill at 3.69%.

Analyst sentiment supports the upside. 22 buy ratings, 3 holds, and zero sells point to a consensus target of $63.16. Our model’s bull case scenario takes BAC to $63.02 within 12 months, a 24.13% return.

What Could Go Wrong

The headline risk is rates. Bank of America has disclosed that a 100 basis point parallel decline would reduce NII by $2 billion over 12 months. Nonperforming loans also rose by $457 million from Q3 2025, with commercial real estate office exposure, Zelle fraud litigation, and California wildfire mortgage stress on the watchlist. Insider activity skews to net selling across 89 recent transactions.

The credit card charge-off rate actually improved to 3.64% from 4.05%, and the CET1 ratio of 11.4% leaves ample buffer. Our model’s bear case still delivers $53.79, a 5.94% return, suggesting downside is contained.

Bank of America Price Prediction 2026 to 2030

The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $60.48 reflects a buy with 90% confidence. A forward P/E of 12 against 24.4% earnings growth and a PEG of 0.913 is the tipping factor.

I’d be a buyer here if the yield curve holds its current shape and NII guidance of 5% to 7% growth stays intact. I’d stay on the sidelines if the Fed signals aggressive cuts that compress the asset repricing tailwind.

These projections assume Bank of America continues compounding tangible book value and capital returns at the current pace. Significant upside or downside could result from a sharper rate cycle, an acceleration in capital markets activity, or a credit cycle turn in commercial real estate.

The post Bank of America Could Be a Bargain After Strong Q1 Earnings appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Kevin Warsh takes the oath as Federal Reserve chair on Friday in a White House ceremony, only the second Fed swearing-in held at the executive mansion in nearly 40 years. The last was Ronald Reagan hosting Alan Greenspan in 1987, a tableau the Trump White House is happy to revive.

The optics matter because Warsh was confirmed with the lowest number of Senate votes in Fed history, a margin built almost entirely on doubts about whether he would operate as a presidential loyalist willing to deliver the rate cuts the administration wants.

And yet the more interesting read came from CNBC’s Mike Santoli on Squawk on the Street, who flipped the conventional worry on its head. “I think the data and the composition of the committee are basically gifts to him because they give cover to why we can’t cut rates today,” Santoli said, adding that “his sort of the influence of the president on Warsh peaks the moment he’s confirmed.”

Why the macro backdrop protects him

Start with the inflation picture. Headline PCE ran at 3.5% year over year in March 2026, up from 2.83% in February, and core PCE accelerated to 3.2%. Energy was the kicker, with a 14.43% year-over-year reading and an 11.56% month-over-month spike, much of it tied to the Iran conflict that S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) says is doing “increasingly evident” damage to growth and prices. CPI tells the same story. The index climbed from 325.252 in January 2026 to 333.020 in April, a steady monthly grind higher.

None of that builds a case for easing. Recent FOMC minutes show a committee entrenched in a hawkish direction, and markets are not pricing meaningful near-term cuts. So when the new chair sits down at his first meeting and explains why policy stays put, he has the staff projections, the dot plot, his colleagues, and the tape all backing him up.

The bond market is doing the talking

Then there is the yield curve, which is the loudest voice in the room. Warsh inherits the highest ten-year Treasury yield of any incoming Fed chair since Greenspan in 1987, when the ten-year sat above 8%.

As of May 21, 2026, the 10-year sits at 4.56%, with the 30-year at 5.06% and the 2-year at 4.08%. The 10-year has climbed from 4.39% on May 1 to 4.57% on May 21, touching 4.67% on May 19 before fading.

A long end behaving like this is the bond market’s way of saying that cuts at the front would be answered with selling at the back. That steepens the curve and tightens financial conditions through mortgage rates and corporate spreads. That is the opposite of what a White House angling for cheaper money would want from its handpicked chair.

What this means for investor positioning

The setup carries practical implications. Duration risk remains the cleanest expression of conviction either way. Holders of long Treasuries are betting that the front end will eventually capitulate before the back end gives more ground, which a credibly independent Warsh actually supports.

The rate-sensitive equity complex, regional banks, REITs, small caps loaded with floating-rate debt, has spent months waiting for relief that the data are not delivering. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) earnings remain highly sensitive to Fed policy and loan demand, and the broader banking tape is reacting to every twitch in the rate-cut debate.

The Greenspan-at-the-White-House staging is the flavor of the day. The substance is that Warsh’s political leash is tightest now and slackens with every meeting he holds the line. For investors, the operating assumption should be that the policy floor under rates is firmer than the confirmation drama implied, and that the curve is setting the terms, while the chair is not. Watch the next FOMC statement for the first real test of how that floor holds.

The post Kevin Warsh Sworn In as Fed Chair With Lowest Senate Votes Ever Amid Independence Concerns appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Retirees who admire Warren Buffett face a recurring frustration: Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B) pays no dividend, so owning the stock means watching the compounding happen on paper while no cash hits the brokerage account. The VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) was built to plug that gap. OMAH holds a basket modeled after Berkshire’s publicly disclosed equity portfolio and writes covered calls on top of it, aiming to convert Buffett-style exposure into monthly distribution checks. The fund is small and only about two years old, which is why most retirees still scroll past OMAH when screening for income.

What the fund is actually doing

At its core, OMAH is an actively managed ETF holding roughly 21 positions drawn from Berkshire Hathaway itself and the largest stakes in its 13F filings, including Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), as well as other Buffett staples. The expense ratio is 0.95%, well above a plain index fund but in line with other covered call products.

This specialized investment engine relies on two distinct components. The core equity sleeve captures direct upside from Warren Buffett’s signature stock picks, while a programmatic covered-call overlay systematically sells short-term options against those core holdings to extract cash premium. Those recurring options gains directly bankroll the fund’s monthly shareholder distributions. Its stated mandate targets a 15% annualized yield, which converts a $50,000 principal position into roughly $7,500 in annual liquidity, distributed as 12 scheduled payments.

Does the income show up?

This steady monthly distribution cadence remains entirely unbroken. OMAH successfully distributed $0.23225 per share in April 2026, $0.22688 during March, and $0.23088 for February, sustaining a highly consistent payout sequence that fluctuated tightly between $0.22 and $0.25 throughout the prior year. Annualized against a prevailing $19 market price, this operational clip perfectly meets the fund’s advertised double-digit yield target, though savvy allocators should anticipate that a meaningful portion of these distributions will be classified as a return of capital rather than ordinary dividend income.

The comparison Buffett fans actually care about

Looking at the trailing twelve months, OMAH generated a solid 13% gain on underlying price appreciation alone, while stacking heavy monthly options distributions right on top. Underlying Berkshire Hathaway shares simultaneously decoupled and traveled backward: BRK.B equity dropped 5% over that exact one-year stretch and remains down roughly 3% year-to-date. This brief performance window hands an obvious victory to the specialized income vehicle.

The multi-year timeline predictably restores the advantage to the corporate parent. BRK.B stock has surged 70% over five years and 245% throughout the past decade, market regimes that OMAH simply did not exist to participate in. Because systematic covered-call overlays cap capital upside, whenever Berkshire enters its next major macro rally, OMAH investors will merely harvest the fixed premium while entirely sacrificing the profitable tail of that expansion. This trade represents the permanent operational cost of squeezing a monthly salary out of a historically zero-dividend compounder.

Tradeoffs to weigh

1. NAV decay risk: In strongly trending markets, covered call funds often see their share price drift lower as called-away gains are surrendered. A 15% yield on a slowly eroding NAV is a different product than a 15% yield on a stable one.
2. Tax complexity: Option premiums and return-of-capital distributions are taxed differently from qualified dividends. Holding OMAH in a taxable account requires careful review of the 1099 each year.
3. Concentration and size: The fund mirrors a portfolio dominated by a few names. Apple alone is a meaningful position, and AAPL is up 52% over the past year, which lifted OMAH but also concentrates single-stock risk.

Who it fits

OMAH perfectly targets a retired individual who desires Buffett-inspired equity exposure, values an automated monthly deposit over maximized long-term wealth compounding, and remains completely comfortable sizing the position at 5% to 10% of a tactical income sleeve rather than anchoring it as a foundational holding. Investors carrying a 10-plus-year timeline who simply want the unadulterated capital production of Berkshire are typically far better served by holding BRK.B directly and systematically liquidating shares for cash flow as personal needs dictate. For a more highly diversified covered-call alternative tracking the S&P 500 universe, the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (NYSE:JEPI) delivers identical distribution mechanics without the concentrated Berkshire bias, while operating at a substantially lower annual expense ratio.

The post OMAH Delivers 15% Returns While Berkshire Stock Drops 5%: The Buffett ETF Retirees Overlook appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Retirement bucket strategies have a way of getting complicated fast. Don McDonald, co-host of Talking Real Money, prefers a far simpler framework: keep exactly one year of spending in safe money, rebalance once a year, and let the rest of the portfolio do its job.

The question came from a listener named Albert, who runs a 70/30 stock-to-bond IRA and wanted to know how many years of required minimum distributions belonged in his cash bucket. “A year,” McDonald said. “I like a year. I think a year makes everything really easy. It makes your annual rebalancing easier. It sets you up. If you do this at a set time every year, like the end of the year, and you put it away for the next year, it gives you a budget from which to work.”

For most retirees, that translates to a surprisingly small slice of the overall portfolio. “If you have a year’s worth of spending, that may amount to 5% of your portfolio,” McDonald said. The remaining 95% stays invested and continues compounding, which matters more than ever given the current inflation environment.

Why One Year, Not Three or Five

The traditional bucket strategy often calls for two to five years of cash to ride out bear markets. McDonald’s argument cuts against that orthodoxy because excess cash drags on long-term returns. Co-host Tom Seacock agreed, even while conceding that today’s yields are unusually generous. “The reason I don’t like cash is over the long haul, not currently. Currently it’s still, yeah, okay, as Don just pointed out, you’re still making 4%. Wonderful. How long that lasts? I don’t know,” Seacock said. His blunter version: “Cash, well, in the long haul is trash.”

The yield picture supports his caution. The 3-month Treasury bill yields 3.81% as of July 9, 2026, while the 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.54% as of July 10, 2026. The federal funds rate has been held steady at 3.50% to 3.75% for four consecutive meetings through the June 17, 2026 FOMC decision. That stability may not last: the Fed’s June projections revised the 2026 PCE inflation forecast sharply higher, to 3.6%, and a meaningful number of policymakers have begun discussing potential rate hikes before year-end. For cash parked in a savings account, that policy uncertainty cuts both ways.

Meanwhile, consumer inflation expectations remain elevated. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index stood at 49.5 in June 2026, recovering from a record low of 44.8 in May but still sitting 13% below its February reading before Middle East conflict disrupted energy markets. Year-ahead inflation expectations held at a still-elevated 4.6% in June. Cash earning roughly 4% is effectively treading water against those expectations, which is precisely the long-term drag Seacock referenced.

The Hidden Cost of Lazy Cash

McDonald reserved his sharpest criticism for the big banks. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM | JPM Price Prediction) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) pay 0.01% APY on basic savings accounts, while online banks like CIT Bank offer up to 4.10% APY through a promotional rate on balances of $5,000 or more. Seacock framed the opportunity cost in national terms: “Many of you are inefficient. You have money sitting around there. I bet there’s trillions of dollars sitting in those type of accounts making nothing.”

The macro data backs him up. M2 money supply reached $23.05 trillion on a seasonally adjusted basis as of May 2026, up from $22.69 trillion in March, with a meaningful share still parked in checking and savings accounts paying close to zero. The national average savings rate tracked by the FDIC sits at just 0.38% as of June 2026, meaning the typical depositor at a large bank is falling far behind even the most modest short-term Treasury yields.

What to Watch Next

The behavioral case for McDonald’s one-year rule actually strengthens when sentiment sours. With consumer confidence still near historic lows and year-ahead inflation expectations running well above the Fed’s 2% target, retirees who carry only twelve months of spending in cash have less to second-guess when markets wobble. The bucket itself becomes the spending plan, removing the temptation to tinker.

One year of expenses is enough liquidity to weather the next twelve months without selling stocks under duress, and small enough that the other 95% of the portfolio still compounds. For a retiree watching a 3.81% T-bill yield and a 4.54% 10-year Treasury, that arithmetic still points in one direction: keep cash lean, stay invested, and rebalance on schedule.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to reflect July 2026 Treasury yield data (3-month T-bill at 3.81%, 10-year at 4.54%), the Fed’s June 17, 2026 decision to hold the funds rate at 3.50%–3.75% with updated PCE inflation projections of 3.6% for 2026, M2 money supply revised to $23.05 trillion as of May 2026, the FDIC national average savings rate of 0.38% as of June 2026, and University of Michigan consumer sentiment updated to a final June 2026 reading of 49.5, recovering from the record low of 44.8 in May.

The post “Cash in the Long Haul Is Trash”: Why This Money Expert Rejects Traditional Retirement Buckets appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway on December 31, 2025, after six decades leading the conglomerate he transformed from a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion empire. The “Oracle of Omaha” left his successor, Greg Abel, with a very concentrated portfolio: 70% of Berkshire’s $381 billion portfolio is invested in just seven stocks. Abel, who has served as vice chair overseeing non-insurance operations, officially took over as CEO on January 1, 2026. At 95 years old, Buffett isn’t fully retiring—he will remain chair of the board and plans to continue coming to the Omaha headquarters as much as before. However, he has stated he will be “going quiet” and leaving all decision-making to Abel.

An astonishing 16 positions were entirely exited during the first quarter, in one of the most aggressive selling sprees the investment giant has done in years. Many of the top names were sold, and some large chunks of big names were also pared down but remain in the portfolio. A key factor behind the selling was the departure of portfolio manager Todd Combs. After he left Berkshire for an investment role at JPMorgan Chase, the firm sold the stocks in his portfolio, valued at roughly $15 billion. Still, total sales reached $24 billion, meaning Berkshire offloaded substantially more than just Combs’ holdings.

Despite the massive selling, which brought the portfolio’s total holdings from 40 positions down to just 26, making it one of Berkshire’s most aggressive single quarters in years, seven companies still account for just under 70% of the holdings.

Why do we cover Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

Few investors have the results and reputation that Buffett has garnered over the past 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO chair, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buying good companies with products and services recognized worldwide and paying dividends will always remain a timeless approach.

Here are the seven stocks that account for almost 70% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio.

Alphabet

The mega-cap tech giant was a major addition in the first quarter, strengthening Berkshire’s growth potential. Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is a holding company and pays a small 0.22% dividend. Berkshire Hathaway came in big in the first quarter, adding a massive 36.4 million Class A shares and 3.5 million Class C shares, which tripled the existing stake. Berkshire now owns 57,835,013 shares, which is 0.9% of the float and 6.8% of the portfolio.

The company’s segments include:

• Google Services, which includes products and services such as ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Google Maps, Google Play, Search, and YouTube.
• Google Cloud provides infrastructure and platform services, collaboration tools, and other services for enterprise customers.
• Other Bets sells healthcare-related services and internet services.

Google Cloud provides enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. Google Cloud Platform provides access to solutions such as:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, including its AI infrastructure
• Vertex AI platform
• Gemini for Google Cloud
• Xybersecurity, data, and analytics

Google Workspace includes cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for enterprises, such as Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Meet.

American Express

American Express (NYSE: AXP) is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation specializing in payment cards. The stock performed strongly in 2025 and comes with a dividend yield of 1.09%. American Express is a globally integrated payments company that deals with card-issuing, merchant-acquiring, and card network businesses.

The company offers products and services to customers worldwide, including consumers, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large corporations. Its segments include:

• U.S. Consumer Services, which offers travel and lifestyle services, as well as banking and non-card financing products.
• Commercial Services offers payment, expense management, banking, and non-card financing products.
• International Card Services provides services to international customers, including travel and lifestyle services, and manages certain international joint ventures and its loyalty coalition business.
• Global Merchant and Network Services operates a payments network that processes and settles card transactions, acquires merchants, and provides multichannel marketing programs, capabilities, services, and data analytics.

Berkshire Hathaway owns 151,610,700 shares, 22% of American Express’s float and 14.2% of the portfolio.

Truist Financial has a Buy rating with a $400 target price.

Apple

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services, offering a small dividend of 0.35%. It is almost incomprehensible that the legacy technology giant, even after a recent fourth-quarter sale of 10 million shares and a surge in sales over the past two years, still holds a 227,917,808-share position that accounts for a stunning 20.7% of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, which holds 1.6% of Apple’s stock.

The company offers:

• The iPhone, a line of smartphones
• Mac, a line of personal computers
• iPad, a line of multi-purpose tablets
• Wearables, home, and accessories comprising AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, and HomePod

Apple also offers AppleCare support and cloud services, and operates various platforms, including the App Store, which enables customers to discover and download applications and digital content, such as books, music, videos, games, and podcasts.

In addition, the company offers various services, such as:

• Apple Arcade, a game subscription service
• Apple Fitness+, a personalized fitness service
• Apple Music, which gives users a curated listening experience with on-demand radio stations
• Apple News+, a subscription news and magazine service
• Apple TV+, which offers exclusive original content
• Apple Card, a co-branded credit card
• Apple Pay, a cashless payment service

Wedbush has an Outperform rating with a $325 target price.

Bank of America

While Buffett has trimmed his position over the past two years and sold a whopping 50 million shares in the fourth quarter, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 2.17% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding and financial holding company that reported impressive Q4 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 513,624,165 shares, which is 7.9% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float. Berkshire did lower its Bank of America position in Q1 2026, but only modestly. According to the Q1 2026 13F filing, it was reduced by just 0.71%, a very small cut compared to other positions.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM) comprises two businesses: Merrill Wealth Management, which offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating with a $67 target price.

Chevron

This American multinational energy company primarily focuses on oil and gas. Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is a safer option for investors looking to position themselves in the energy sector, and it pays a substantial 3.61% dividend, which was raised by 5% earlier this year. The company operates integrated energy and chemicals businesses worldwide. Berkshire Hathaway bought a very well-timed 8 million additional shares in the fourth quarter, but sold a massive 46 million shares in Q1. Despite the sale, Berkshire still holds 84,375,856 shares, representing 4.2% of the float and 5.1% of the portfolio.

The company operates in two segments. The Upstream segment is involved in:

• Exploration, development, production, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas
• Processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas
• Transportation of crude oil through pipelines, and transportation, storage
• Marketing of natural gas, as well as operating a gas-to-liquids plant

The Downstream segment engages in:

• Refining crude oil into petroleum products
• Marketing crude oil, refined products, and lubricants
• Manufacturing and marketing renewable fuels
• Transporting crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car
• Manufacturing and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives

It also involves cash management, debt financing, insurance operations, real estate, and technology businesses.

Bank of America has a Buy rating with a $206 target price.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. This company remains a top long-time holding of Buffett. Berkshire owns a massive 400 million shares, which is 9.3% of the float and 9.9% of the portfolio. The stock pays a dependable 2.54% dividend.

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, offering consumers more than 500 sparkling and still brands. Led by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable brands, the portfolio features 20 billion-dollar brands, including:

• Diet Coke
• Coca-Cola Light
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
• Caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Cherry Coke
• Fanta Orange
• Fanta Zero Orange
• Fanta Zero Sugar
• Fanta Apple
• Sprite
• Sprite Zero Sugar
• Simply Orange
• Simply Apple
• Simply Grapefruit
• Fresca
• Schweppes
• Dasani
• Fuze Tea
• Glacéau Smartwater
• Glacéau Vitaminwater
• Gold Peak
• Ice Dew
• Powerade
• Topo Chico
• Minute Maid

Globally, it is the top provider of sparkling beverages, ready-to-drink coffees, juices, and juice drinks. Through the world’s most extensive beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the company’s beverages at a rate of over 1.9 billion servings per day. And remember that the company owns 19.5% of Monster Beverage (NASDAQ: MNST), which continues to deliver strong financial results.

Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating and a target price of $87.

Occidental Petroleum

After years of building this position, Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway are finally in the money on this company, which pays a 1.64% dividend. Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) is an international energy company with assets primarily in the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa. The company is an oil and gas producer in the United States, including the Permian and D.J. basins and offshore Gulf of America.

Berkshire Hathaway has a large position in the company, owning 264,941,431 shares, representing 26.7% of the float and 4.9% of the portfolio.

Occidental’s oil and gas segment explores for, develops, and produces oil (including condensate), natural gas liquids (NGLs), and natural gas. The midstream and marketing segment purchases, markets, gathers, processes, transports, and stores oil (including condensate), NGLs, natural gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), and power. This segment provides flow assurance, maximizes the value of its oil and gas, and optimizes the company’s transportation and storage capacity. It also invests in entities that conduct similar activities, including low-carbon venture businesses.

A notable recent development was Occidental’s decision to sell its OxyChem subsidiary to Berkshire Hathaway, with the bulk of the proceeds expected to strengthen the company’s balance sheet and further concentrate its business on oil and gas. The move was especially interesting because Buffett had reportedly long been interested in OxyChem, and Berkshire now owns the business outright. Berkshire Hathaway completed its purchase of OxyChem from Occidental on January 2, 2026, giving Buffett full ownership of the chemicals business while providing Occidental with $9.7 billion in cash to reduce debt and sharpen its focus on energy.

Mizuho has an Overweight rating and a $72 price objective.

The post Berkshire Hathaway Sold 16 Stocks in Q1, But Warren Buffett and Greg Abel Still Have 70% in Just 7 Stocks appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Income investors who bought the iShares Preferred and Income Securities ETF (NASDAQ:PFF) for its distribution yield near 6.5% are sitting on a structural feature most never modeled: roughly 60% to 70% of PFF’s portfolio comes from U.S. banks and insurers, and almost all carry call provisions. PFF works fine when rates rise. The problem surfaces when rates fall, banks refinance, and your high coupon paper gets redeemed at par before you capture any price appreciation.

What PFF Is Built To Do

PFF runs about $14 billion in assets against an expense ratio of 0.46%. The fund holds hundreds of preferred securities, which are hybrids: fixed coupon like a bond, perpetual or very long dated like equity, and junior to senior debt in the capital stack. Retirees and income allocators use PFF because the yield is roughly double a 10 year Treasury, which currently sits near 4.5%.

That yield is the entire reason to own this fund. PFF shares trade near $31, down 18% over five years and 20% over ten. Owners are paid to wait, not paid to grow.

The Asymmetry Hiding In The Call Schedule

Almost every preferred in PFF can be called at par, typically $25, beginning five years after issuance. When a bank like JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) or Bank of America issues new preferreds at a lower coupon, it pulls the old paper. Holders get $25 back regardless of where the security was trading.

That cap matters because strong banks are the most likely callers. JPMorgan ended Q1 2026 with strong capital levels and produced robust quarterly earnings, with ample capacity to refinance expensive legacy preferreds. Bank of America similarly posted strong earnings and capital ratios. Goldman Sachs Bank USA announced it will redeem $2.65 billion of 5.414% fixed/floating notes plus $850 million of floaters at par on May 21, 2026. That is exactly the mechanic that caps PFF holders.

Consider a retiree with $200,000 in PFF earning 6.5%. If the 10 year drifts back toward 3.5% and issuers call their 7% paper, PFF must reinvest proceeds into newer securities yielding closer to 5%. The headline yield drops, the NAV does not rally to compensate, and the realized five year return ends up well below what the prospectus yield implied at purchase.

Concentration In One Sector

With 60% to 70% of the fund tied to financials, a regional banking event similar to March 2023 hits PFF disproportionately. The Invesco KBW Bank ETF is up 15% over the last year, but down 3.7% in the past week alone. Preferreds sit junior to senior debt, so credit stress flows through faster than most holders expect.

The Indicators That Matter

Three things are worth tracking monthly:

1. The 10 year Treasury yield, the closest proxy for preferred refinancing economics. The 10 year is currently 4.5%, near the 96th percentile of its trailing 12 months. Any sustained move below 4% raises call probability sharply.
2. The 10Y minus 2Y spread, currently 0.50% and below its 12 month average of 0.6%. A flattening curve pressures bank funding economics.
3. The share of PFF holdings trading above $25 par on the iShares fund page. The bigger that bucket, the more upside is already capped.

Lower Call Sensitivity Alternatives

If call risk is the binding concern, the Invesco Variable Rate Preferred ETF is the closest swap. Floating coupons reset higher when rates rise and reduce the issuer’s incentive to call. The Invesco Preferred ETF is a similar fixed coupon product to PFF, while the Invesco Financial Preferred ETF takes the bank concentration even further. The variable rate option gives up some yield in low rate environments; the standard Invesco preferred product carries comparable call exposure.

Where That Leaves PFF Holders

PFF still delivers what it promises: a high distribution yield from a diversified slate of preferreds. The honest framing is that the headline yield overstates the long term realized yield in a falling rate world, because calls quietly skim the best paper out of the portfolio. Holders comfortable with that tradeoff have no reason to act. Holders who assumed the 6.5% would compound for a decade should revisit the model.

The post PFF’s $14 Billion Preferred Stock Strategy Holds 60 Percent Bank Issued Preferreds With Call Provisions That Cap Your Upside appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) just earned a fresh endorsement from Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), which reiterated its Buy rating and $430 price target following Google I/O 2026. The firm characterized the event as evidence of Alphabet’s “accelerating velocity of AI innovation.”

A reiteration after a high-stakes product showcase carries weight. The call could have gone either way, and Bank of America chose to double down rather than step back.

GOOGL stock recently traded near $385, modestly lower on the session. Shares have climbed 23% year to date (YTD).

The Analyst’s Case

Bank of America’s note highlighted the breadth of new AI products introduced at I/O 2026 and what the firm called increasing leadership in shaping consumer AI experiences. The pitch centers on Gemini, AI Overviews in Search, agentic capabilities, and Workspace integrations.

The firm added that the event, combined with strong search traffic data, reinforced its view that Alphabet is positioned to lead the next phase of consumer AI adoption. The reiterated target signals the bull thesis is intact rather than upgraded.

Company Snapshot

Alphabet’s Q1 2026 results, reported April 29, delivered EPS of $5.11 on revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22% year over year (YoY). Google Cloud revenue rose 63% with backlog nearly doubling to over $460 billion.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai declared, “Our AI investments and full stack approach are lighting up every part of the business.” Gemini models are now processing more than 16 billion tokens per minute via direct API use.

Why the Move Matters Now

The bull case rests on AI velocity, Gemini mind share, cloud acceleration, a durable ad franchise, and Waymo optionality, with the unit surpassing 500,000 fully autonomous rides per week. Alphabet stock trades at a P/E ratio of 17x, reasonable for a business posting 32% operating margins.

The bear case is real, however. AI assistants pose disintermediation risk to search, regulatory and antitrust pressure persists, and competition from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is intensifying. The prediction market is skeptical near term, pricing only a 7% probability that GOOGL hits $430 by month end.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The strategic question is whether AI Overviews strengthen or cannibalize Alphabet’s ad business. Bank of America’s reiteration suggests the firm sees AI as reinforcing the franchise, with Q1 Search revenue growing 19% as supporting evidence.

For prudent investors, Alphabet stock offers a rare combination of mega-cap stability, AI optionality, and reasonable valuation. The analyst consensus target sits at $427.89, with 59 Buy ratings against just 5 Holds and no Sells.

That said, position sizing matters. Alphabet shares have run hard, insider activity skews toward selling, and competitive risks deserve respect. Treat Bank of America’s reiterated price target as research, not a trade signal.

The post BofA Doubles Down on Alphabet at $430 Price Target After I/O 2026 AI Showcase appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Although Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B) has compiled the single best long-run track record in modern markets, the man who built it spent most of his shareholder letters telling you not to try this at home. On Wall Street, that contradiction has hardened into one of investing’s most durable patterns. From 1965 to 2025, Berkshire posted a 19.7% compound annual growth rate for a 39,000x return. Over that same span, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY), the standard proxy for the benchmark index, compounded at 10.5% a year, translating to a 405x return with dividends reinvested. The man who beat the market by roughly 100 times still says most investors should buy the market.

The Acquired podcast’s Vanguard episode put it well: Berkshire is the extreme exception to a rule that has held for six decades. That rule is backed by hard data. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices’ SPIVA U.S. Year-End 2025 scorecard, 79% of active large-cap U.S. equity fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 in 2025 alone, marking the 16th consecutive year in which the majority of managers in that category lagged the index. Stretch the horizon to 20 years and the failure rate climbs to 93%. The pattern holds because fees compound the wrong way, because turnover taxes returns, and because the median portfolio manager is competing against a diversified, low-cost rival that never sleeps and never asks for a bonus.

Berkshire is the counterexample that proves the rule. The conglomerate wholly owns GEICO, Duracell, Dairy Queen, BNSF, Lubrizol, and Fruit of the Loom, alongside a concentrated equity portfolio whose top five positions as of the Q1 2026 13F filing are Apple (roughly 22% of the portfolio), American Express (roughly 17%), Coca-Cola (roughly 12%), Bank of America (roughly 10%), and Chevron (roughly 7%), per the company’s most recent 13F filings. The B-shares trade at roughly 15 times trailing earnings with a beta of 0.62, meaning the stock moves less than the index it has thrashed over six decades. Over the last ten years Berkshire returned 239% while SPY returned 257%. The recent decade is roughly a tie. The six-decade record is not.

Buffett wrote the line himself in his 1996 shareholder letter: “The best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results delivered by the great majority of investment professionals.” He repeated the point in 2007 with a $1 million bet against Protege Partners that a Vanguard S&P 500 fund would outpace a basket of hand-picked hedge funds over ten years. The index won. The proceeds went to Girls Inc. of Omaha. He repeated it again in his 2013 letter, instructing the trustee of his wife’s inheritance to put 90% into a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund, with the balance in short-term Treasuries.

Equity ownership in America crept from 4.2% in 1949 to 32% in 1989, to 54% by 2001, to roughly 60% today. The dot-com boom pulled millions of households into brokerage accounts. The 401(k) made participation a default rather than a decision. And the first wave of online brokerages did something subtler but more lasting: they made transparent exactly how much investors were losing to underperforming, high-fee active funds. Once fees were visible, the math did the rest. SPY now carries a net expense ratio of 0.09%, a fraction of what a typical active equity mutual fund charges every year, in good markets and bad.

The transition at Berkshire itself adds a new chapter to the story. Greg Abel became CEO on January 1, 2026, with Buffett remaining as chairman. Abel wasted little time: his first year has already included Berkshire’s $9.7 billion acquisition of OxyChem from Occidental Petroleum and a $6.8 billion purchase of homebuilder Taylor Morrison Home, the latter completed faster and with less involvement from Buffett than most observers expected. Meanwhile, Berkshire’s cash pile neared $400 billion in Q1 2026 as operating earnings rose 17.7% year over year. The patient capital is still working exactly as Buffett designed it to, even under new management.

For the long-term investor, the core verdict remains clear. Berkshire, trading near $488 per B-share, is the most fascinating special situation on Wall Street. The case for owning it rests on whether the operating businesses, the insurance float, and that record cash hoard will keep compounding faster than the index under Abel’s stewardship. The inverse case is equally honest: if you doubt anyone can repeat what Buffett did over 60 years, the index is precisely what Buffett himself recommends.

Honor the pattern, not the exception. The long-term direction of Wall Street still heads higher across the decades ahead, and the cheapest, simplest way to capture that drift is the one Buffett wrote down thirty years ago and never walked back. The man who beat the market by 100 times told you exactly where to put the money you cannot afford to lose chasing the next him.

Editor’s note: This update corrects Berkshire’s 1965-2025 compound annual growth rate from 19% to 19.7%, updates the S&P 500’s matching long-run CAGR to 10.5%, refreshes Berkshire’s top equity portfolio weights to reflect the Q1 2026 13F filing, replaces the “85% of active managers underperform” figure with SPIVA’s 2025 Year-End data (79% in 2025, 93% over 20 years), updates the BRK-B share price, and adds context on Greg Abel’s CEO tenure beginning January 1, 2026, including his first major acquisitions and Berkshire’s record Q1 2026 cash position.

The post Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Delivered a 39,000x Return Since 1965. He Still Tells Most Investors to Buy Index Funds Instead. appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

CFRA cut its rating on Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) stock to Hold on Tuesday, May 19, joining a parallel downgrade of Citigroup (NYSE:C) to Hold on the same day. The twin moves frame this as a sector posture shift rather than a Bank of America stock specific concern. For long-term investors, the analyst downgrade warrants a closer look, even as the bank’s underlying earnings power remains intact.

The call lands after a strong run in money-center banks and reflects a more cautious near-term stance on large diversified lenders. CFRA’s broader message: the easy money in the big bank trade may already be behind us.

The Analyst’s Case

CFRA’s caution lines up with the standard bear checklist for big banks late in a cycle: stretched valuations after a re-rating, questions around the net interest income trajectory, commercial real estate office exposure tail risk, and regulatory capital uncertainty. Bank of America itself has flagged that a 100 basis point rate decline could reduce NII by $2 billion over the next 12 months.

The parallel Citigroup downgrade reinforces that this is a top-down view. CFRA appears to be trimming exposure to the group rather than singling out one franchise.

Company Snapshot

Bank of America is the second largest U.S. banking institution, servicing 10% of all American bank deposits. Q1 2026 results were robust: EPS of $1.11, revenue of $30.27 billion, and net income up 17% year over year.

Capital return is accelerating, with $9.3 billion returned to shareholders in Q1 via buybacks and dividends. The bank trades at a trailing P/E ratio of 13x and a forward P/E ratio of 12x, with a 2% dividend yield.

Why the Move Matters Now

Bank of America stock is down 8% year to date, even as one-year returns sit at +13%. Citigroup stock, by contrast, has surged 58% over the past year, making the sector re-rating argument easier to defend.

The analyst price target cut narrative here is more about positioning than fundamentals. Wall Street consensus still skews bullish, with 22 buy-equivalent ratings against 3 holds and a consensus target of $62.98.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The bull case for Bank of America stock remains durable: consistent earnings power, 11 consecutive quarters of sequential deposit growth, strong trading and investment banking momentum, and meaningful capital return. Prudent investors holding BAC shares for income and long-term compounding may view this analyst downgrade as a yellow light.

However, the risks CFRA implies are real: rate sensitivity, CRE office exposure, and a valuation that no longer offers the cushion it did a year ago. Sizing positions modestly and watching for whether net interest income guidance holds through Q2 2026 are reasonable steps.

The takeaway on Bank of America stock: the big bank trade may simply be maturing, and the easy gains may be in the rearview. If so, then the wise move now is to research, not react.

The post Bank of America Cut to Hold by CFRA: Is the Big Bank Trade Running Out of Gas? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Pre-Market Stock Futures:

Futures are trading lower on Tuesday as the sell-off in technology stocks carried through to Monday and is headed down that road today. All of the major indices, except the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed 0.32% higher at 49,668, finished the day lower. The small-cap Russell 2000 was the big loser on Monday, closing down 0.63% at 2,775, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq closed lower by 0.51% at 26,090. The S&P 500, which made numerous new highs last week, was last seen at 7,403, down 0.07%. The same issues combined to create the weakness on Monday: worries about higher inflation, the ongoing war in Iran, where President Trump said he called off an imminent attack, and, of course, rising bond yields.

Treasury Bonds:

After a brutal beatdown last week, yields across the Treasury curve closed modestly lower as some buyers came in to examine the wreckage. With Wall Street legend Ed Yardeni boldly stating that the bond vigilantes will push yields higher if new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh doesn’t raise rates to combat mounting inflation at some point, the proverbial line in the sand has clearly been drawn. The 30-year bond closed the day at 5.13%, unchanged, and the benchmark 10-year note at 4.59%, also unchanged from Friday. 

Oil and Gas:

For the first time in over a week, pricing across the energy complex was flat to down, and one thing is for sure. The pressure is mounting on President Trump to wrap up the situation in Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz for energy transit. When the dust finally settled Monday, Brent Crude closed the day almot 1% at $108.20, while West Texas Intermediate was marginally higher at $101.30. Natural gas, which has been strong recently, closed the session at $3.02, up 2.13%, as the United States LNG production and sales are quickly becoming the backbone of the world’s gas supply. 

Gold:

After a rough end to last week, precious metals trended higher on Monday as investors bought into the recent weakness. While the same issues that have muddied the water for almost every asset class since the start of the war with Iran, gold and silver have started to put in a solid base at current trading levels, and could be poised for big moves higher when the Iran issues are resolved. The final trade for Gold was reported at $4,561, up 0.50%, while Silver was last seen at $77.40, up 2.06%. 

Crypto:

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports daily to identify new investment ideas for both investors and traders. Some of these daily analyst calls cover stocks to buy. Other calls cover stocks to sell or avoid. Remember that no single analyst call should ever be used as a basis to buy or sell a stock. 

Here are some of the top Wall Street analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen on Tuesday, May 19, 2026.  

Upgrades:

• American Tower (NYSE: AMT) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Bernstein, which has a $207 target price for the shares.
• Assured Guaranty (NYSE: AGO) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS, with a $94 target price.
• Credicorp (NYSE: BAP) was raised to Buy from Hold at HSBC, with the target price for the stock bumped to $350 from $320.
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: JAZZ) was raised to Buy from Neutral at UBS, which launched the target price for the stock to $307 from $188.
• Stubhub Holdings (NYSE: STUB) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Guggenheim, which lifted the target price for the share to $12.50 from $8.50.

Downgrades:

• Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at CFRA, without a target price.
• Citigroup (NYSE: C) was also cut to Hold from Buy at CFRA, without a target price.
• CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ: CRWD) was double downgraded to Sell from Buy at DZ Bank, with a $500 target price.
• Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) was also double downgraded to Sell from Buy at DZ Bank, with a $125 target price.
• Hanover Insurance Group (NYSE: THG) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital, which bumped the target price for the stock to $203 from $194.

Initiations:

• Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) was initiated with a Buy rating at Citigroup, which has set a $380 price target for the shares.
• BioMarin Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: BMRN) was initiated with a Buy rating at Citigroup with a $75 target price.
• Cemex SAB (NYSE: CX) was assumed with a Neutral rating at Grupo Santander with a $14 target price.
• X-Energy (NASDAQ: XE) was started with a Buy rating at UBS, with a $40 target. JPMorgan has an Overweight rating for the stock with a $38 target, while UBS has a Buy rating and a nd a $40 target price. The stock was a recent successful IPO, backed by Amazon and Ken Griffin from Citadel.
• Zeta Global Holdings (NYSE: ZETA) was initiated with a Buy rating at Bank of America, with a $24 target price objective.

The post Here Are Tuesday’s Top Wall Street Analyst Research Calls: American Tower, Citigroup, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Hanover Insurance, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Stubhub, X-Energy, and More appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The Virtus InfraCap U.S. Preferred Stock ETF (NYSEARCA:PFFA) sits at $21.62 heading into the back half of 2026, paying a 9.5% yield that has drawn income investors looking for something between bond coupons and common stock dividends. PFFA raised its monthly payout to $0.1725 per share for 2026, up from $0.17 in 2025, extending a string of uninterrupted monthly distributions that now spans seven years. That cash flow is what most PFFA holders own the fund for, and it is exactly what the next 12 months will pressure-test.

The fund is actively managed, holds 188 preferred securities, carries roughly $1.91 billion in assets, and applies modest leverage to juice its income. That structure has worked: in Q4 2025, PFFA returned roughly 1% on NAV against essentially flat (0.29%) for the S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index. Year to date in 2026, however, the price is down a fraction of a percent, and the one-year total return on price alone is about 3%. The distribution is doing the heavy lifting, which is why the macro setup matters more than usual.

The Macro Factor: The Fed’s 2026 Cutting Path

Preferred stocks behave like long-duration credit, and PFFA’s leverage roughly doubles its sensitivity to short-term funding rates. The single most important variable for the next 12 months is how aggressively the Federal Reserve actually cuts in 2026, beyond what the market is already pricing in. Virtus’s own portfolio manager flagged in October 2024 that “Fed rate cuts should favor preferred stocks, which offer a risk profile between bonds and common stocks”, and Seeking Alpha’s February 2026 PFFA review explicitly tied the bull case to anticipated rate cuts and declining inflation in 2026.

What to watch concretely: the CME FedWatch tool’s implied path for the December 2026 FOMC meeting, and the Fed’s quarterly dot plot. A faster cutting cycle compresses PFFA’s borrowing costs on its leverage line while lifting the market price of fixed-rate preferreds it already owns. A stall, like 2023’s higher-for-longer surprise, would do the opposite. Check FedWatch weekly and the BLS CPI release monthly. In 2022, when the Fed went the other direction, preferred stock indexes fell roughly 18% on price, and PFFA’s leverage amplified the drawdown.

The Fund-Specific Factor: Leverage Meets Financial-Sector Concentration

PFFA’s edge and its risk are the same thing. The fund layers leverage on top of a portfolio dominated by bank and insurance preferreds from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Apollo, and KKR, with growing real estate exposure. The roughly 3% expense ratio is steep, and it only pencils out if active sector rotation keeps outperforming passive preferred ETFs the way it did last quarter.

The signal to watch is credit stress at large U.S. banks: insider activity, dividend coverage, and any preferred deferral language in 10-Qs. The current news flow already shows PNC’s CEO and an EVP selling $14.8 million in shares over 90 days and Gabelli Funds trimming its Wells Fargo stake 13%. Check the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile and each major holding’s earnings release. If bank net interest margins compress faster than PFFA’s funding costs drop, the leverage that powered 2025 outperformance flips into a headwind, and the distribution math gets tighter.

What to Track Through Year-End

Watch the December 2026 FedWatch probability of a sub-3.75% policy rate as the single cleanest read on PFFA’s tailwind. On the fund itself, watch the next semiannual holdings disclosure for any shift away from money-center bank preferreds toward real estate names, which would tell you the manager sees the financial-sector trade as played out.

The post The Fed’s 2026 Cutting Path Will Make or Break PFFA’s 9.5% Yield appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) just made one of the more contrarian calls on Wall Street regarding the enterprise software giant. Analyst Tal Liani reinstated coverage of Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) with an Underperform rating and a $160 price target, a notable bear take on a stock that still carries a consensus average price target of $268.05. For long-term holders of Salesforce, the call sharpens a debate that’s been simmering all year: is Agentforce actually translating to durable revenue growth?

The downgrade lands with Salesforce stock already under pressure. CRM shares last traded near $178.50, down 33% year to date. Liani’s view suggests further downside even after that reset.

The Analyst’s Case

Liani acknowledges that Salesforce remains “a deeply entrenched platform,” yet argues the company faces a structural reset driven by the AI transition. The bear thesis rests on three concerns: muted net new customer additions, limited upsell potential, and an “underwhelming” AI monetization pathway.

The deeper concern is pricing architecture. Agentforce and rival agentic tools could compress the per-seat subscription model Salesforce was built on, as AI agents replace seats rather than expand them. In Bank of America’s framing, the moat is the past, not the future.

Company Snapshot

Salesforce closed fiscal 2026 with $41.5 billion in revenue, up 10% year over year, and posted FY26 EPS of $12.52. The company guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion.

Agentforce, the AI initiative under scrutiny, reached $800 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with 29,000 deals closed in its first 15 months. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has leaned in hard, with a planned $300 million spend on Anthropic tokens in 2026.

Why the Move Matters Now

CRM stock trades at a trailing P/E ratio of 22x and a forward P/E ratio of 14x, with shares sitting between a 52-week low of $163.52 and high of $286.30. The valuation already reflects skepticism, but Bank of America’s $160 target implies that the reset isn’t finished.

Sentiment is fracturing. Starboard Value exited its Salesforce position in Q1 2026, even as institutions like DNB Asset Management increased its stake by 25%. That split tells you the bull-bear debate is genuinely live.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

For prudent investors, the Salesforce stock thesis now hinges on one question: can Agentforce monetization outrun the seat-pricing compression that Bank of America fears? The bulls can point to the $72.4 billion in total remaining performance obligations (RPO) and a fortress balance sheet, while bears have a credible structural argument.

A moderate CRM stock position size looks appropriate here, with the next earnings report serving as a key checkpoint on Agentforce ARR trajectory. The analyst downgrade doesn’t end the story, yet it raises the bar that Salesforce must clear to win back the growth premium it once enjoyed.

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Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) reinstated its coverage of ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW) with a Buy rating and a $130 price target on May 18. The call frames the workflow software leader as a clear AI beneficiary, even as Bank of America reinstated Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) at Underperform on the same day. For prudent investors, the split call matters: Bank of America is betting that the system-of-action layer wins the agentic AI era.

ServiceNow stock has endured a brutal stretch, with NOW shares falling 36% year to date (YTD) through May 15, even as the broader software group stabilizes. That setup is exactly why this reinstatement matters now.

Analyst Ratings

The Analyst’s Case

Bank of America’s thesis is straightforward: while AI disrupts the software landscape, ServiceNow stands to benefit from, rather than be replaced by, new AI solutions. The firm argues that ServiceNow’s workflow entrenchment “uniquely position it to benefit” from autonomous agents deployed across IT, employee, and customer workflows.

Autonomous agents need somewhere to operate and a system of action to coordinate tasks, approvals, and data. ServiceNow’s Now Platform increasingly serves as that control tower for enterprise customers.

The contrast with Salesforce is telling. Both compete in agentic AI, yet Bank of America sees ServiceNow’s workflow moat as more durable than Salesforce’s CRM-centered Agentforce play.

Price Target

Company Snapshot

ServiceNow, led by CEO Bill McDermott, sells the Now Platform for enterprise workflow automation, with AI products including Now Assist, Workflow Data Fabric, and the recently acquired Moveworks. The company carries a market cap of about $98 billion, with trailing revenue near $14 billion.

ServiceNow’s Q4 FY2025 results, reported January 28, showed revenue of $3.57 billion, up 21% year over year (YoY), with current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) of $12.85 billion, up 25% YoY. Now Assist net new annual contract value (ACV) more than doubled YoY, signaling that AI monetization is taking hold inside ServiceNow’s installed base.

Why the Move Matters Now

ServiceNow stock trades at a forward P/E ratio of 22x, with shares at $94.97 after the YTD slide. The Street’s average analyst price target sits at $143.06, and consensus skews bullish, with 34 Buy and 9 Strong Buy ratings on NOW stock.

The bull case rests on workflow entrenchment, a broadening platform footprint via the pending Armis and Veza acquisitions, and deepening AI partnerships. The bear case centers on high absolute valuation, slowing macro IT spending, and execution risk on Now Assist monetization.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The upgrade signals that workflow-of-record platforms could be among the cleaner AI beneficiaries in enterprise software. ServiceNow’s 25% cRPO growth and expanding platform footprint offer a defensible growth path, though the YTD drawdown reminds investors that high-multiple SaaS names remain volatile.

A measured approach makes sense. Position sizing should reflect ServiceNow stock’s beta, the broader IT spending backdrop, and Bank of America’s $130 price target as one input among many for a thesis tied to agentic AI adoption pace.

The post BofA Reinstates ServiceNow at Buy: The Workflow Giant Built for the Agentic AI Era appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

A 58-year-old engineer in Palo Alto, married filing jointly, earns $750,000 a year, has already stuffed $4 million into 401(k)s and IRAs, and parks another $1.2 million in a brokerage account that holds a single S&P 500 fund. The 401(k) is maxed. The mega backdoor Roth is maxed. The next tax dollar saved has to come from somewhere else, and for households at this income level it almost always comes from the taxable account.

Direct indexing is how it gets done. Instead of owning the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY), the investor holds 150 to 250 of the underlying constituents in a separately managed account that mirrors the index within a tight tracking band. The fund wrapper disappears. Every individual lot becomes a tax asset. The strategy has moved well beyond the ultra-wealthy: a July 2026 Forbes report noted that more than 21,000 stock trades President Trump disclosed for 2025 were apparently the result of direct indexing, underscoring how broadly the approach has spread.

Why the index can rise while a third of the names bleed

The S&P 500 has extended its gains through mid-2026, but that headline conceals substantial dispersion underneath. At various points in the first half of the year, Microsoft was down sharply from its year-end price, JPMorgan Chase softened, and Bank of America gave back ground as the 10Y-2Y spread stayed compressed and the Fed funds upper bound held near 4%. These are losses that exist inside the index but are invisible to the ETF holder. The fund nets them against winners and reports one number. The direct-indexed portfolio reports 500. The losers can be sold to the IRS while the index exposure stays intact.

The $40,000 figure, worked from the bottom up

In a normal-volatility year, 30% to 50% of S&P 500 names show losses at some point even when the index finishes flat or higher. Early 2026 was anything but normal. The VIX crossed 30 in March on geopolitical tension, then surged toward 60 in April as escalating tariff announcements triggered some of the largest single-day S&P 500 moves since 2020. Those spikes created harvesting windows across rate-sensitive financials, mega-cap tech, and industrials, even as the index eventually recovered its footing.

On a $1.2 million direct-indexed sleeve, that environment translates to roughly $30,000 to $50,000 of harvested losses per year in a volatile stretch. Call it $40,000 as a working figure. Applied against long-term capital gains at the 23.8% federal rate including NIIT, with the surplus $3,000 offsetting ordinary income at the 32% bracket, a single year of harvesting is worth $9,520 to $12,800 in current-year tax. Carried out over 15 years before any step-up in basis at death, the cumulative savings compound to $140,000 to $190,000.

Where this connects to Medicare and Roth conversions

Harvested losses lower realized capital gains, which lowers modified adjusted gross income, which lowers IRMAA exposure once the household crosses 63. For a 50-year-old today, this is the mechanic that opens runway for Roth conversions in the 60-to-63 window without tripping the two-year Medicare lookback. The conversion creates ordinary income. The harvested losses cannot offset it directly, but the suppressed capital gains keep the surcharge brackets clear of the conversion stack.

What to actually do

1. Price the fee drag honestly. Direct-indexing SMAs vary considerably in cost. Schwab and Fidelity both charge around 0.40%, while newer platforms like Wealthfront’s S&P 500 Direct run as low as 0.09%, compared with SPY’s 0.09% expense ratio. On $1.2 million, the incremental annual fee at the higher end runs $3,700 or more. If the harvest yields $9,500 or more in tax savings, the math works at that level. Below roughly $400,000 in a taxable account, the cost-benefit math generally does not pencil out regardless of platform.
2. Ask whether your current brokerage account can be transitioned in kind. Several platforms will migrate appreciated ETF lots into the SMA without triggering a sale, gradually unwinding the fund and building the constituent positions around it. Liquidating SPY outright on a position with embedded gains can wipe out years of harvest value in a single tax bill.
3. Coordinate the harvest calendar with concentrated stock events. RSU vests, ISO exercises, and a planned sale of a private business all create the realized gains that harvested losses are most valuable against. Pair them in the same tax year. Track wash-sale windows around dividend ex-dates as well, since a sale and a repurchase within 30 days can disallow the loss entirely.

The 401(k) is the foundation. The taxable account is where affluent households quietly add another decade of after-tax compounding, and direct indexing is the lever most of them never pull.

Editor’s note: This update corrects SPY’s expense ratio to 0.09% (from the original “roughly 0.1%”), refines the direct-indexing fee comparison to reflect the wide range across platforms, expands the VIX narrative to include the more severe April 2026 spike to near 60, and adds context about President Trump’s disclosed 2025 stock trades as a widely reported example of direct indexing in practice.

The post The $40,000 Tax Move That Comes After Your 401(k) Hits Its Limit appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Treasury yields are climbing as traders position for the Kevin Warsh appointment to the Federal Reserve, with markets pricing in a more growth-friendly path that could steepen the yield curve and reprice fixed-rate bank assets at higher levels. The 10Y-2Y spread sat at 0.47% on May 14, 2026, with the 2-year yield rising 0.12% over two weeks versus just 0.01% on the 3-month, a textbook steepening that historically widens net interest margins for lenders. Bank stocks trading under $55 are a logical place to scan for upside before that re-rating plays out.

With that backdrop in mind, here are three bank stocks trading under $55 that analysts and recent earnings suggest are positioned to benefit if the Warsh trade keeps pressuring Treasury yields higher.

Truist Financial (NYSE: TFC)

Truist Financial (NYSE:TFC) is a Charlotte-based top-10 U.S. commercial bank covering consumer, commercial, wealth, and investment banking. Shares recently closed above $47, well under the $55 ceiling and giving retail investors a sub-$50 entry into a $549 billion-asset franchise.

Q1 2026 was a clean beat. Truist reported EPS of $1.09 versus a $1.0002 estimate, a 25% YoY EPS jump, and 250 basis points of positive operating leverage. Investment banking and trading revenue surged 36.3% YoY to $372 million, and management raised the buyback authorization to $5 billion from $4 billion. CEO Bill Rogers said the company is “establishing a long-term ROTCE target of 16% to 18%”.

The bull case rests on fixed-rate asset repricing into a steeper curve, plus accelerating capital return. The risk: nonperforming loans ticked up to 0.50% from 0.48% sequentially, and shares are down 2.24% YTD despite the earnings beat. For investors researching regional bank exposure, TFC offers a credible setup at a discount to recent levels.

Bank of Chile (NYSE: BCH)

Bank of Chile (NYSE:BCH) is the largest Chilean bank by most measures, running retail, wholesale, wealth, and payments operations including Banchile Pagos. The ADR traded at $36.40 on May 14, 2026, comfortably under the ceiling and offering geographic diversification away from the U.S. rate cycle.

Q1 2026 was mixed. EPS estimates sat at $0.6296, and reported results missed at $0.57 on inflation-linked income compression. But management raised FY2026 ROAC guidance to 21.5%-22.5% from 19-21%, with an industry-best cost-to-income ratio of 38.4% versus an industry average of 46.1%. Higher expected Chilean inflation (~4.3%) is becoming a tailwind for inflation-indexed assets.

The bull case combines the upgraded ROAC, an 84.7% dividend payout ratio, and a dominant local franchise. The risk: Chilean GDP forecasts were trimmed to 2.1%, and proposed corporate tax changes could pressure earnings. Shares are up 21.92% over the past year, suggesting the upgrade cycle is already drawing attention.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is the diversified mega-cap with consumer banking, Merrill wealth, global banking, and global markets under one roof. Even at scale, shares trade at $49.85 as of May 14, 2026, slipping under the $55 ceiling after an 8.84% YTD decline.

The Q1 2026 numbers were broad-based. Revenue rose 7% YoY to $30.272 billion, net income climbed 17% to $8.584 billion, and EPS hit $1.11. NII grew 9% to $15.74 billion, equities trading rose 30%, and investment banking fees climbed 21%. CEO Brian Moynihan noted “healthy client activity, including solid consumer spending and stable asset quality, indicating a resilient American economy.” The bank returned $9.30 billion to shareholders, including $7.2 billion in buybacks.

The bull case is a diversified franchise compounding on multiple fronts with the Warsh-driven curve steepening as kicker. The risk is symmetric: a 100 basis point parallel decline in rates would shave roughly $2.0 billion off NII over 12 months, so a dovish surprise cuts both ways.

The Warsh narrative and recent Treasury yield action are tailwinds for bank net interest margins, but they are not guarantees, and each of these names carries idiosyncratic credit, macro, and rate-sensitivity risk. Investors should pair this framework with their own research before acting.

The post Prediction. The Warsh Fed Trade Is Just Getting Started and These 3 Bank Stocks Under $55 Have the Most to Gain appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B) is a stock built to own for decades because its structural design, a diversified industrial conglomerate sitting atop the largest discretionary cash pile in corporate America, is purpose-built to compound through every cycle without your supervision.

That sentence is the whole thesis. The rest is mechanics.

Pillar 1: Durability of the Business

Berkshire is a federation of cash-generative operating businesses, GEICO, BNSF railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, plus manufacturing, service and retail subsidiaries, stacked beneath an insurance float and a public-equity portfolio that includes stakes in Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola and Bank of America. The balance sheet reflects this fortress posture. Total assets stood at $1.22 trillion at year-end 2025, with shareholder equity of $717.4 billion and retained earnings of $763.2 billion. Leverage is conservative: a debt-to-equity ratio near 19%, with interest coverage above 11x. Q1 2026 operating earnings rose 18% year over year to $11.35 billion, driven by insurance underwriting and BNSF. This is durable earnings power across macro regimes, not a thematic bet.

Pillar 2: Compounding Through Capital Allocation

Berkshire pays no dividend. Compounding happens internally, through retained earnings reinvested into wholly owned subsidiaries, opportunistic equity purchases, and buybacks when shares trade below intrinsic value. Operating cash flow reached $45.97 billion in FY 2025, with free cash flow of $25.04 billion. Trailing earnings yield runs near 10%, and the stock trades at roughly 14 times trailing earnings. Insider behavior reinforces the value signal: CEO Greg Abel purchased $15 million in Class A stock in March 2026 and pledged his entire 2026 salary to further stock purchases, while General Counsel Michael O’Sullivan added 536 Class B shares in May 2026.

Pillar 3: Cycle Survival and Optionality

This is the part retirement investors should sit with. Berkshire ended Q1 2026 with a record $397.4 billion in cash and Treasuries. That is firepower, not idle money. It is what allowed Buffett to write the Goldman Sachs preferred in 2008, the Bank of America warrants in 2011, and the Occidental Petroleum position from 2022 onward. In any genuine drawdown, Berkshire is the buyer of last resort with a balance sheet that can actually pull the trigger. Succession is already operational, with Greg Abel running operations and Ajit Jain running insurance, and the culture of underwriting discipline is institutionalized.

The Scenario Where It Lags

Berkshire underperforms in raging momentum and AI-CapEx bull markets. The data is current: BRK-B is down more than 4% over the past year, while SPY is up more than 27% over the same time. Conservative posture and cash drag are the price of admission for the optionality. That doesn’t change the forever thesis. The same discipline that lags chasing markets is exactly what shows up on the other side of a dislocation. Over 10 years, the stock is still up more than 240%.

For long-horizon investors, the structural design is what makes Berkshire a multi-decade compounder worth keeping an eye on.

The post Berkshire Hathaway’s Cash, Earnings and Optionality Make It the Ultimate Value Play appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The Wall Street debate over Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) crystallized on May 13, 2026, when two major firms reached opposite conclusions on the same stock. Bank of America‘s (NYSE:BAC) Vivek Arya raised his price target to $500 from $450 while reiterating a Buy rating, while Daiwa downgraded AMD stock to Outperform from Buy, even as it raised its price target to $500 from $250. The split captures the central tension in AMD stock right now: a powerful AI fundamental story colliding with a parabolic price move.

Notably, both firms arrived at the same destination. The disagreement centers on path and timing rather than the eventual destination for AMD shares.

The Analyst’s Case

Bank of America’s price target raise is anchored in a sector-wide $1.7 trillion AI data center total addressable market upgrade by 2030, which expands Advanced Micro Devices’ addressable opportunity in server CPUs and AI accelerators. Arya sees continued share gains for EPYC processors and the MI accelerator family fueling that thesis.

Daiwa’s downgrade is purely valuation-driven. The firm called Advanced Micro Devices’ Q1 FY2026 results and Q2 FY2026 outlook “very good” but flagged that AMD shares are up 150% over the past 60 days, with multiple recent target hikes from KeyBanc, Bernstein, and Mizuho already in the mix.

Company Snapshot

Advanced Micro Devices, led by CEO Lisa Su, carries a market capitalization of roughly $748.1 billion. The Q1 FY2026 report delivered revenue of $10.253 billion, up 38% year over year (YoY), with Data Center revenue of $5.775 billion, up 57% YoY.

Non-GAAP EPS of $1.37 beat the $1.29 consensus, and Q2 guidance points to revenue of about $11.2 billion. Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su stated, “Customer engagement around MI450 Series and Helios is strengthening, with leading customer forecasts exceeding our initial expectations.”

Why the Move Matters Now

AMD shares closed at $448.29 on May 12, putting the stock up roughly 109% year to date and within range of the 52-week high of $469.22. The trailing P/E ratio of 154x and forward P/E ratio of 65x illustrate exactly why Daiwa is preaching patience.

For comparison with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Bank of America raised its NVIDIA target as well, but no major firm has paired that with a downgrade. AMD’s faster, steeper rally is what invited the valuation pushback.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

For prudent investors, the AMD analyst upgrade from Bank of America and the simultaneous analyst downgrade from Daiwa are best read together. The fundamentals, including free cash flow of $2.566 billion, up 253% YoY, support the long-term AI infrastructure thesis.

Yet, stocks that rally this hard often consolidate before resuming higher. Position sizing and entry discipline with AMD stock may matter more here than the rating label on any single research note.

The post Wall Street Splits on AMD: BofA Hikes Price Target to $500, Daiwa Downgrades on Valuation appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analyst Matthew O’Neill raised his price target on Affirm to $88 from $82 on May 11, while reiterating a Buy rating. The analyst upgrade follows a “clean beat and raise” fiscal Q3 2026 report and frames the recent share dip as “a brief air pocket” ahead of the company’s investor forum.

Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM) stock closed at $64.01 on May 8, with shares trading near $62 intraday Monday. The new target sits above the Street consensus of $81.71.

The Analyst’s Case

O’Neill’s price target raise rests on Affirm’s $1.04 billion in fiscal Q3 2026 revenue, a 4% beat that grew 33% year over year (YoY). Management also lifted full-year FY2026 revenue guidance to $4,175 million to $4,205 million, the textbook beat-and-raise setup that Bank of America views as a clean read.

The Bank of America note treats Affirm stock’s post-earnings weakness as a tactical setup rather than a thesis crack, with the May 12 investor forum expected to refresh the medium-term financial framework. A credible target update could re-anchor the multiple after the recent pullback.

Company Snapshot

Affirm operates a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) lending platform that splits consumer purchases into installments and earns through merchant fees and interest on longer-duration loans. Q3 FY2026 GMV reached $11.6 billion, marking the 10th consecutive quarter of 30%+ GMV growth.

The Affirm Card remains the standout, with GMV up 146% YoY and 4.4 million active cardholders. CEO Max Levchin highlighted cash generation, stating that Affirm added “approximately $230 million to our net cash (now at $1.35 billion) since December.”

Why the Move Matters Now

Affirm stock trades at a forward P/E ratio of 37x, with a high beta of 3.72 reflecting sharp swings on credit and macro headlines. The valuation already prices in continued execution, so Bank of America’s price target raise to $88 leans on durable GMV growth and improving unit economics rather than multiple expansion alone.

The competitive backdrop keeps pressure on Affirm’s take rates. The May 12 investor forum is Affirm’s near-term catalyst that could either validate the medium-term targets or reset expectations.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

For prudent investors, Affirm stock offers torque to consumer BNPL adoption but carries real cyclical risk. Credit metrics have softened, with 30+ day delinquencies at 3% and the allowance for credit losses rising to 6% of loans held for investment.

Concentration is another watch item, with the top 5 partners accounting for 42% of GMV. Watch for whether the investor forum’s medium-term framework supports Bank of America’s bullish stance, and consider that moderate position sizing may be appropriate given AFRM stock’s historical volatility around earnings and credit cycle headlines.

The post BofA Hikes Affirm Price Target to $88: Clean Beat and Raise Sets Up the May 12 Investor Day appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Barclays cut its price target on Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) to $107 from $140, maintaining an Underweight rating after a brutal Q1 2026 report. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) trimmed its target to $218 from $234 while keeping a Buy rating, leaving a striking $111 spread between two firms reading identical results. For prudent investors, the split frames a real debate: can Coinbase’s diversification push offset cyclical trading weakness?

The two calls land on opposite sides of a sharp earnings miss, with Barclays focused on the cyclical revenue gap and Bank of America weighing the diversification offset. Below, we’ll break down each firm’s reasoning against the underlying numbers.

The Analyst’s Case

Barclays anchored its analyst downgrade on a meaningful Coinbase miss across revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Quarter-to-date transaction revenues, even with the prediction markets and retail derivatives running above expectations, came in well below Street estimates.

Bank of America’s lighter price target cut focused on cost pressure at Coinbase. The firm flagged higher tech and development spending and noted consumer volumes declined 36% quarter over quarter amid depressed asset prices.

However, Bank of America stayed constructive on Coinbase, citing the push into crypto-as-a-service and more durable revenue streams. That divergence in conclusions, drawn from the same numbers, is the story.

Company Snapshot

Coinbase remains the most prominent U.S. crypto exchange, with regulatory standing many smaller competitors lack. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $1.41 billion, missing the $1.48 billion consensus and falling 31% year over year.

The GAAP net loss of $394.1 million stemmed largely from $482.4 million in losses on crypto assets held for investment. Adjusted EBITDA of $303.3 million still marked Coinbase’s 13th consecutive positive quarter.

Coinbase’s subscription and services revenue contributed $583.5 million, including $305 million in stablecoin revenue tied to USDC. That mix shift highlights the diversification narrative Bank of America leaned on.

Why the Move Matters Now

Coinbase’s revenue has typically tracked crypto prices and risk appetite, both deeply cyclical. Bitcoin fell to roughly $60,000 in February before recovering above $80,000, a rebound that could lift Q2 2026 trading volumes if it holds. Readers can revisit the broader crypto treasury picture in our recent Strategy Bitcoin treasury update.

Coinbase stock fell 1% on May 8, with shares trading near $191. The 50-day moving average sits at $189.82 against a 200-day average of $259.82.

Coinbase’s management announced a 14% headcount reduction targeting roughly $500 million in annualized cost savings versus the 2025 exit rate. Coinbase’s buyback authorization still has $2.1 billion remaining.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The Barclays versus Bank of America spread on Coinbase stock captures the bull-bear debate cleanly. The bulls bet on diversification (USDC interest, custody, staking, prediction markets) holding up while spot volumes recover. The bears, led by Barclays, doubt those streams can offset the cyclical core.

The Wall Street consensus target still sits near $237.93 with 17 Buy and 10 Hold ratings, well above the Barclays outlier. Insider activity has recently skewed toward net buying, contrasting with the cautious analyst tone.

For prudent investors, COIN stock remains a high-beta proxy for crypto sentiment, with a beta of 3.381. Moderate position sizing and patience around volume trends could be wise until Q2 2026 results clarify whether Coinbase’s diversification thesis is delivering.

The post Coinbase Just Got Slammed: Barclays Slashes Price Target to $107 After Q1 Crypto Trading Miss appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

On a recent Street interview, George Kamel sat down with two financial professionals in Charlotte who discussed investing aggressively while paying off loans. Take, for example, a 26-year-old foreign exchange trader who carries $20,000 in student loans and a car loan, and invests 20% of his income.

The stakes are concrete. If a young earner directs a fifth of their paycheck into market accounts while servicing a car note and student debt, they are running two opposing cash flows simultaneously. One compounds. The other bleeds. Whether that math works depends entirely on the spread between investment returns and loan rates, and right now that spread is tighter than the caller seems to think.

The math says he is overweight in investing

The advice is incomplete and wrong in this rate environment. Every dollar applied to a loan earns a risk-free, tax-free return equal to that loan’s interest rate. Every dollar invested in equities earns an expected return that is neither guaranteed nor tax-free.

Federal student loans issued in recent years carry rates in the 6%-9% range. Used-car loans for borrowers in their twenties commonly land between 8% and 12%. A borrower paying 8% on a car loan effectively earns an 8% guaranteed return by paying it down. That beat Treasuries by about 360 basis points.

For context, the 10-year Treasury yield of 4.39% is the cleanest stand-in for a risk-free return, while the Fed funds upper bound sits at 3.75%, with short-term cash yields tracking close to that.

Assume our 26-year-old earns $75,000, takes home roughly $4,800 a month, and splits $1,000 a month between a 401(k) and Roth IRA. His $20,000 debt at a blended 7.5% costs about $1,500 a year in interest. If he kept only the 401(k) match, redirected the Roth contribution to debt, and threw an extra $400 a month at the loans, he would clear the balance in roughly 24 months and save thousands in interest. The Roth contributions can resume the day the loans are gone, with three more decades of compounding ahead.

Who this approach fits and who it burns

Investing 20% while carrying debt can work for a narrow profile. Someone with a fully funded emergency reserve, debt at sub-5% fixed rates, and an employer match they would otherwise leave on the table. For that person, the loan is cheaper than Treasuries, and capturing the match is free money.

It burns the more common profile, which is closer to the caller. Jake, a Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) employee with $14,000 in student loans, is closer to right. He pays well above the minimum and is building toward “6 to 9 months of expenses” from his current $4,000 liquid cushion. The thin emergency fund is the bigger risk than the debt itself, because a layoff during this stretch forces credit-card borrowing at 20%-plus.

What to do this week

1. Pull every loan rate. Write down the interest rate on each student loan, auto loan, and credit card. Anything above 6% is a debt-payoff priority over taxable investing.
2. Capture the match, then stop. Contribute exactly enough to your 401(k) to get the full employer match. Beyond that, route dollars to high-rate debt until balances are cleared.
3. Build the cushion in parallel. Keep one month of expenses in cash before going scorched-earth on debt. After the debt is gone, rebuild to the six to nine-month target.

Kamel’s instinct is right: investing 20% while paying 8% on loans creates two opposing forces canceling each other out. Paying off an 8% loan is the same as earning 8%, guaranteed, and almost no investment beats that on a risk-adjusted basis today.

The post 26-Year-Old Trader Investing 20% While Carrying $20K Debt: Here’s Why the Math Doesn’t Work appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

An analyst firm just put its stamp of approval on a battered consumer name. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analyst Lorraine Hutchinson upgraded Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ:ULTA) stock to Buy from Neutral with a $685 price target on May 5, arguing that conservative fiscal 2026 guidance has reset expectations and created a more attractive entry into a high-quality compounder. Ulta Beauty shares now trade roughly 26% off the 52-week high, and the firm sees that pullback as the opportunity.

For prudent investors, the Bank of America call reframes a guidance-driven selloff in ULTA stock as a chance to own a market-share gainer at a relative discount. The setup hands patient buyers a name with durable loyalty economics at a more reasonable multiple.

The Analyst’s Case

Hutchinson’s thesis hinges on a simple idea: Ulta Beauty is investing to compound earnings power over time. The pullback has “brought elevated investor expectations down to earth” and creates an “opportunity to invest in a high quality compounder at a discount to peers,” she wrote.

Her recent channel work, she added, gives more confidence that Ulta Beauty is using investments to “build a flywheel to drive growth instead of just running on a treadmill to keep up.” That distinction matters because Ulta Beauty’s selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses rose to 26% of sales from 23% last quarter, the line item that spooked the market.

Company Snapshot

Ulta Beauty is the largest U.S. specialty beauty retailer, blending mass and prestige under one roof with a deep loyalty program and the recently acquired U.K.-based Space NK. Ulta Beauty’s Q4 FY2026 results delivered earnings per share (EPS) of $8.01 versus $7.15 expected on $3.9 billion in revenue, up 12% year over year, with comparable sales up 6%.

CEO Kecia Steelman stated that Ulta Beauty is “well positioned for sustainable, profitable growth in 2026 and beyond.” That came alongside the company’s fourth straight quarterly beat.

Why the Move Matters Now

Ulta Beauty’s FY2026 guidance calls for net sales growth of 6% to 7% and diluted EPS of $28.05 to $28.55. Modest operating leverage from heavy reinvestment is what knocked ULTA stock lower, even as the four-quarter beat streak continued.

At a recent $534, ULTA stock trades at a forward P/E ratio of 19x, with return on equity of 44% and $1.8 billion remaining on the buyback. Bank of America joins Jefferies, which moved to Buy with a $700 target, and UBS, which reiterated a Buy rating at $810.

For broader context on today’s research moves involving Ulta Beauty and other names, see Tuesday’s top Wall Street analyst calls. The roundup frames where ULTA stock fits within the day’s notable upgrades and downgrades.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The bear case is real: the U.S. mass beauty cycle is maturing. Plus, margin deleverage could persist while the Space NK integration plays out.

The bull case rests on Ulta Beauty’s loyalty scale, prestige assortment, and reinvestment flywheel, plus a $3 billion buyback shrinking the float. Long-term ULTA stock investors weighing the analyst upgrade may find a moderate, scaled-in position more prudent than chasing a single-day move, given near-term consumer uncertainty.

The post BofA Just Deemed Ulta Beauty a High-Quality Compounder. Time to Buy the 26% Pullback? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) has built one of the most closely watched cash positions in financial history, and it keeps growing. The company closed 2025 with $373.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the largest corporate cash hoard ever recorded in American business. That figure itself was surpassed within months: the reserve swelled to a new record of $397.4 billion by the end of the first quarter of 2026, according to Berkshire’s own 10-Q filing with the SEC. The prior peak, set in the third quarter of 2025, had stood at $381.7 billion. The reserve is now so large that it surpasses the combined cash holdings of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft.

This accumulation was not accidental. Between 2022 and 2024, Berkshire sold a net $172.93 billion in equities while buying relatively little in return, a deliberate, sustained withdrawal from positions that Warren Buffett concluded had reached or exceeded fair value. That included trimming Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) from nearly half the equity portfolio down to roughly 22%, cutting Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) by more than half, and paring back Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), among others. The selling did not stop when leadership changed: in the first quarter of 2026, Berkshire was a net seller of another $8.1 billion in publicly traded stocks, marking the 14th consecutive quarter of net equity reductions. Most of the cash sits in short-term Treasury bills, which at current yields provide meaningful income while preserving optionality for a major deployment.

Greg Abel, who succeeded Buffett as CEO in January 2026, took the stage at the Berkshire annual shareholder meeting in Omaha for the first time, with Buffett watching from the audience as chairman. Abel moved to assure investors that the conservative posture would continue. In his first annual shareholder letter, he described the balance sheet as “a strategic asset to be deployed at the right time,” one that “allows us to act decisively, invest when others are tentative or fearful, and stand firm when financial storms roll through.” At the meeting itself, Buffett told CNBC that he did not see an ideal investing environment, a view consistent with Berkshire’s actions over the prior three years.

Not that Abel has been entirely idle on capital deployment. On January 2, 2026, Berkshire completed its $9.7 billion all-cash acquisition of OxyChem from Occidental Petroleum, adding a leading U.S. chemicals producer to its portfolio. That deal, struck the previous October, was Berkshire’s largest acquisition since it paid $11.6 billion for insurer Alleghany in 2022. Buybacks also quietly resumed in March 2026, though the first-quarter repurchase totaled just $234 million, a rounding error relative to a $397 billion cash position.

The context for all of this matters. The stock market has been trading at or near all-time highs, and many investors have grown accustomed to parabolic gains in chip stocks and anything carrying an artificial intelligence narrative. The pattern of strong earnings followed by sharp sell-offs has become a recurring feature of this market. Consider Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META): the company reported genuinely impressive first-quarter 2026 results, with ad impressions up 19% year over year and revenue beating estimates, only to see shares plunge nearly 10% after management raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion. That single-session decline erased roughly $175 billion in market value.

The harder reality is that markets priced for perfection are vulnerable. If a severe correction materializes, the kind of dislocations last seen in 2008 and 2009, cash-strapped companies could find themselves making the trip to Omaha. Buffett deployed capital on precisely those terms during the financial crisis, providing emergency financing to General Electric and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), among others, in exchange for preferred shares carrying substantial dividends. By the end of 2009, that crisis-era dealmaking had delivered Berkshire outsized returns while the broader market was still recovering. With nearly $400 billion available today, Abel’s Berkshire is positioned to play exactly the same role if a 20% to 30% correction opens the door. The old Wall Street adage attributed to Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild still applies: “Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.” Berkshire has never been better equipped to do so.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Berkshire Hathaway’s Q1 2026 cash position of $397.4 billion (up from the article’s earlier $397 billion reference), the corrected Meta Platforms single-session market cap loss of approximately $175 billion (revised from $160 billion to $170 billion), the addition of Berkshire’s $9.7 billion OxyChem acquisition completed January 2, 2026, context from Greg Abel’s first annual shareholder letter and his debut at the 2026 annual meeting, and the detail that Q1 2026 marked the 14th consecutive quarter of net equity sales.

The post We May Soon Find Out Why Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway Have Almost $400 Billion in Cash appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) added UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) stock to its U.S. Conviction List, reiterating a Buy rating with a $435 price target. The firm argues UnitedHealth is nearing the bottom of its underwriting cycle in Medicare Advantage (MA), which represents 40% of its business.

The Conviction List is reserved for Goldman’s highest-conviction Buy ideas. UnitedHealth stock’s addition follows a powerful rebound: shares climbed 37% in April alone, the standout move across the managed care group.

For prudent investors, the call validates a thesis building since Q1 2026 earnings: the worst of the medical cost ratio (MLR) shock from 2025 may be behind us. The Q1 print showed MCR back to 83.9%, a meaningful improvement from the 2025 peak.

The Analyst’s Case

Goldman’s thesis hinges on the Medicare Advantage underwriting cycle bottoming. With MA representing 40% of UnitedHealth’s business, any inflection in pricing discipline and cost trends flows disproportionately to earnings.

Q1 2026 supports that view. UnitedHealth’s medical care ratio improved 90 basis points year over year (YoY) to 84%, and adjusted EPS came in at $7.23 versus the $6.61 consensus. UnitedHealth CFO Wayne DeVeydt attributed the improvement to “pricing discipline, strong medical cost management, and favorable reserve development.”

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) also carries a Buy rating on UNH stock with a $435 target after its earlier price target raise tied to Medicare Advantage rate finalization, adding a second institutional voice to the bull case. Two top-tier firms now share the same target, reinforcing the institutional bid.

Company Snapshot

UnitedHealth operates through UnitedHealthcare and Optum, serving approximately 49.1 million medical members with Optum Rx processing roughly 383 million adjusted scripts per quarter. Q1 2026 revenue reached $111.72 billion, up 2% YoY.

Management raised UnitedHealth’s full-year 2026 guidance to greater than $18.25 in adjusted EPS, committed to at least $2 billion in share repurchases by the end of Q2 2026, and disclosed plans to invest nearly $1.5 billion in AI-related initiatives in 2026. The capital return commitment underscores management’s confidence in the recovery trajectory.

Why the Move Matters Now

UnitedHealth trades at a forward P/E ratio of 20x, with consensus analyst target at $387.27. Goldman’s $435 target sits above the consensus, signaling room for upward revisions if MA margins normalize.

The bear case remains real. Medicare Advantage membership declined 965,000 in Q1 2026, Medicaid membership contracted 220,000, and DOJ legal actions concerning Medicare participation remain unresolved. After a 37% April rally, the easy money has likely been made in UnitedHealth stock.

Yet, UNH stock is up 12% year to date (YTD) and remains 7.4% below its level a year ago, suggesting further upside if cost trends hold. That gap to prior highs frames the runway Goldman is targeting.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

Goldman’s Conviction List addition is a meaningful institutional signal, particularly paired with Bank of America’s matching $435 target and UnitedHealth’s 2.38% dividend yield backed by five consecutive years of double-digit dividend raises. The combination of analyst conviction and a growing dividend strengthens the total-return profile.

Prudent UNH stock investors shouldn’t chase the rally. Moderate position sizing makes sense given regulatory overhang, potential MA rate cuts in future cycles, and MLR pressure if utilization reaccelerates. UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley’s framing remains cautious, noting the company is still “continuing to help simplify and modernize health care” rather than declaring victory.

Watch for whether UnitedHealth’s Q2 2026 medical cost ratio holds near current levels, whether the Alegeus Technologies acquisition closes on schedule, and whether DOJ developments stabilize. Those data points could determine whether the managed care comeback is durable or a sharp mean-reversion bounce.

The post Goldman Sachs Adds UnitedHealth to Its Conviction List: Is the Managed Care Comeback Real? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) slashed its price target on Roblox (NYSE:RBLX) stock to $48 from $165 and downgraded the stock to Neutral from Buy, the most aggressive call on Wall Street following the company’s Q1 2026 earnings report. The dramatic revision reflects deepening concern that mandatory age verification and discovery algorithm changes are inflicting structural damage on engagement.

Roblox stock fell roughly 18% intraday on May 1, with RBLX stock changing hands near $45.50.

The Analyst’s Case

BofA noted thaat Roblox’s Q1 bookings were “okay” yet leading indicators deteriorated and Q2 guidance came in “well below expectations.” The firm called the bookings guidance cut from about 24% year over year (YoY) to 10% at the midpoint “unexpected,” and trimmed its multiple to reflect uncertainty around Roblox’s strategy.

Other firms diverged. Raymond James downgraded CMG stock to Market Perform from Outperform, citing safety and discovery changes pressuring engagement. TD Cowen upgraded the stock to Hold from Sell with a $49 target, calling valuation more reasonable.

JPMorgan cut its Roblox stock price target to $50 from $75, while Morgan Stanley reduced to $62 from $140 but kept Overweight, noting “strength beneath the surface could create greater room for revisions ahead.” Canaccord moved to $80 from $140 (Buy), and Needham cut to $60 from $105 (Buy), citing “peak uncertainty.”

Company Snapshot

Roblox operates a user-generated 3D gaming and social platform with a market capitalization of about $31.19 billion. Q1 2026 revenue reached $1.44 billion, missing the $1.75 billion consensus by 18% despite 39% YoY growth. Daily active users hit 132 million (up 35% YoY), and free cash flow rose to $596 million.

Roblox’s net loss widened to $248 million, including a $57 million legal settlement accrual. For prior context, see coverage of Roblox’s Q1 2026 earnings miss.

Why the Move Matters Now

Roblox lowered its FY2026 revenue growth to 20%-25% and bookings growth to 8%-12%, with sequential DAU declines expected in Q2. Management cited age-verification headwinds, the December 2025 Russia ban, and Q2 algorithm experiments. Roblox stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 7.47x with a forward P/E ratio of 192x, while RBLX stock is down roughly 44% year to date.

The consensus Roblox stock analyst price target sits near $97.16, leaving BofA’s $48 well below the Street average. Insider activity tilts cautious. CEO David Baszucki sold over 250,000 shares on February 10 at roughly $72.62, and multiple executives continued selling in April near $58, with no open-market insider purchases during the period.

What It Means for Your Portfolio

The bull case rests on Morgan Stanley’s view that fixes are coming and TD Cowen’s argument that Roblox’s valuation now reflects the facts on the ground. The bear case is structural: age verification may have permanently lowered the engagement ceiling for Roblox.

Prudent investors may want to wait for Roblox’s Q2 2026 results to confirm whether the sequential DAU pressure is temporary. Position sizing on Roblox stock should reflect peak uncertainty until management proves discovery and safety changes can coexist with reaccelerating bookings.

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OMAH paid out $0.23225 per share yesterday, the latest in a string of monthly distributions designed to hit a 15% annualized yield. With shares at $18, that headline number is roughly four times what an investor can earn on a 4% 10-year Treasury. Yields that wide demand scrutiny.

How OMAH Manufactures a 15% Yield

The VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) is a blended-income product. The equity sleeve mirrors a Berkshire Hathaway-style book of large-cap quality holdings, while an options overlay, primarily selling call options against the portfolio or related index exposures, generates the premium income that lifts distributions toward the 15% target.

This matters because the dividends thrown off by Berkshire-adjacent equities (think Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Bank of America) collectively yield closer to 1% to 2%. The remainder of OMAH’s payout has to come from option premiums. So when you ask whether OMAH’s yield is safe, you are really asking whether the options-writing engine can keep producing cash month after month.

The Distribution Pattern Tells a Story

OMAH’s monthly payouts have been steady. Over the last 14 months, distributions have ranged from $0.22688 to $0.25 per share, with the most recent four payments clustered between $0.22688 and $0.23225. The trend, if there is one, is a gentle drift lower from the $0.25 peak in March 2025 toward the low-$0.23 range now.

That softening is not alarming on its own, but it lines up with the volatility backdrop. Call-writing strategies live and die by implied volatility. Higher VIX means richer premiums; lower VIX means thinner premiums. The VIX is currently close to 19, down from a March peak of around 31 and squarely in the normal range. If volatility stays subdued, premium income compresses, and the 15% target gets harder to defend without dipping into return of capital.

The Sustainability Question

Three structural factors drive OMAH’s distribution durability:

1. Volatility regime. The 12-month VIX average of about 18.5 reflects a market where call premiums are adequate but not generous. A sustained drop below 15 would squeeze income; a spike above 25 would refill the tank.
2. Capped upside. Selling calls forfeits a portion of equity gains in strong rallies. OMAH’s 12% one-year price return shows the strategy participated in the upside, but in any breakout rally, the fund will lag a pure Berkshire-style portfolio.
3. Rate environment. The Fed funds rate sits at 3.75% after 75 basis points of cuts since September. Lower risk-free rates modestly reduce options premiums, a small but real headwind.

Total Return Reality Check

This is where OMAH looks better than the typical high-yield options ETF. Shares are up 12% over the past year and 3% year-to-date, on top of monthly distributions running near $0.23 per share. The fund is not eroding NAV to manufacture yield, which is the most common failure mode for 15%-target products. The Berkshire-style equity book is doing real work alongside the options overlay.

Verdict: Reasonably Safe, With Caveats

OMAH’s distribution looks sustainable at current levels but is unlikely to grow. Monthly payouts have drifted modestly lower as volatility has cooled, and that pattern will probably continue if the VIX stays in the high teens. The fund fits an income-focused mandate where investors are trading equity upside for cash flow and accept that the headline 15% target is a goal, not a guarantee. Investors expecting a fixed dividend or relying on this as a sole income source should think twice; the payout will float with market volatility, not march upward like a dividend grower.

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Berkshire has long been defined by patience and concentration, often holding positions for years or even decades. When it reduces exposure across multiple major holdings in a single quarter, it tends to reflect a deliberate reassessment of value, risk, or future return potential. For investors, understanding why these positions were cut can be more useful than simply tracking what was bought.

In the final quarter of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) trimmed its exposure to four of its most prominent equity positions: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Pool Corporation (NASDAQ:POOL), and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). The moves occurred under Warren Buffett’s watch before his retirement on December 31, 2025, and now fall to Greg Abel, Berkshire’s new CEO, to either continue or reverse. Understanding why these positions were cut provides the most actionable context for investors.

Apple: Trimming the Largest Position

Apple remains Berkshire’s largest holding by a wide margin, even after a reduction. The firm cut 10,294,956 shares last quarter (-4.32%), bringing the position to 20.67% of the portfolio. Q1 FY2026 revenue reached $143.756 billion, up 15.65% year over year, with EPS of $2.84 beating the consensus of $2.67 by 6.34%. iPhone revenue hit a record $85.269 billion, up 23.3%. Over the past year, shares have risen 37.78%, compressing future return potential. Berkshire began trimming Apple well before this quarter, and the continued reduction suggests the position size relative to intrinsic value no longer meets the firm’s threshold.

Bank of America: Reducing Financial Exposure

Berkshire made a more meaningful reduction in Bank of America, cutting 50,774,078 shares (-8.94%), bringing the position to 9.49% of the portfolio. Bank of America’s bear case centers on rate sensitivity. A 100-basis-point parallel decline in rates would reduce net interest income by approximately $2 billion over 12 months. The 10-year Treasury yield currently sits at 4.32%, up from a 12-month low of 3.97% in late February 2026, providing some near-term relief. But the rate environment remains uncertain, and BAC shares are down 1.42% year to date despite a strong Q1. Q1 2026 net interest income of $15.74 billion grew 9% year over year, but that growth is contingent on rates staying elevated.

Pool Corporation: Trimming a Cyclical Winner

Berkshire also reduced its position in Pool Corporation, cutting 390,000 shares (-11.28%), bringing the holding to 0.23% of the portfolio. Pool is a more cyclical business tied to housing and discretionary spending. After strong performance during the pandemic-driven home improvement boom, growth has normalized, and now the stock is down approximately 34% over the past year as of the Q4 report, and Q4 2025 adjusted EPS of $0.84 missed estimates of $0.98 by 13.85%. Full-year 2025 revenue of $5.29 billion declined 0.41% year over year. The company’s 2026 EPS guidance of $10.85 to $11.15 implies only modest recovery. A director did make an open-market purchase at $218, a signal of insider confidence, but that alone does not offset the macro drag on pool construction and renovation activity.

Amazon: A Significant Cut to a Smaller Position

Amazon saw the most aggressive reduction in percentage terms. Berkshire cut 1,724,000 shares (-77.24%), leaving the position at just 0.18% of the portfolio. The business is accelerating, with AWS growing 24% year over year in Q4 2025, and full-year 2025 net income reached $77.670 billion, up 31.09%. But the capital expenditure trajectory is the concern. Amazon plans approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, and free cash flow declined approximately 66% year over year to $11.194 billion in full-year 2025 as a direct result of the capex surge. Berkshire’s investment culture prizes free cash flow generation above businesses burning through cash.

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JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) closed out 2025 with results that tell two distinct stories. JPMorgan made a headline bet on the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Card while posting record wealth and payments revenue while Bank of America delivered its fifth consecutive quarter of rising net interest income, with a CEO who called himself “bullish on the U.S. economy in 2026.” Not both will win, one is a clear favorite right now.

Payments Records and Apple Card Ambition vs. a NII Streak

JPMorgan’s quarter was defined by two forces pulling in opposite directions. The reported EPS of $4.63 missed the $4.82 consensus estimate, but that headline number was dragged down by a $2.2 billion credit reserve established for the forward purchase commitment of the Apple Card portfolio.

Strip that out, and adjusted EPS of $5.23 beat consensus. Payments revenue hit a record $5.1 billion, Asset and Wealth Management revenue reached a record $6.52 billion, and Equity Markets rose 40% year over year.

Bank of America’s quarter was less dramatic but more consistent. Net interest income (NII) came in at $15.75 billion, up 10% year over year, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of sequential NII growth. Average deposits crossed $2 trillion for the first time, and average loans grew 8% year over year to $1.17 trillion.

Net charge-offs fell, with the NCO ratio dropping to 0.44% from 0.54% a year earlier. Moynihan summarized it plainly: “We delivered more than $30 billion in net income and EPS grew 19% over 2024.”

Scale vs. Compounding Momentum

JPMorgan’s strategy is built around dominance at scale. Its $50 billion buyback program, $337.75 analyst consensus price target, and Apple Card acquisition point toward a firm that treats size as a competitive moat.

With 74.6 million active digital customers and a branch network of 5,083 locations, JPMorgan is expanding on every front. Dimon’s caution about geopolitical risks and sticky inflation reads less like fear and more like confidence in the firm’s ability to absorb shocks.

On the other hand, Bank of America’s approach is more surgical. Its $40 billion buyback authorization is meaningful but smaller. The real story is operating leverage: the efficiency ratio improved 194 basis points year over year to 61%, and management guided for approximately 200 basis points of operating leverage for the full year 2026.

The digital push is working, with 69% of consumer sales now digitally enabled, up from 61% a year earlier.

The Next Test: NII and the Yield Curve

The 10-year minus 2-year Treasury spread currently sits at 0.50%, down from a peak of 0.74% in February 2026. That compression bites Bank of America harder given its NII-driven model. Management guided for NII growth of 5-7% for full-year 2026, but sustained yield curve flattening could test that forecast. Fixed-rate asset repricing will be the key variable to watch.

For JPMorgan, the next milestone is the Apple Card integration timeline, roughly 24 months to close. Prediction markets assign an 88.5% probability that JPMorgan beats its next quarterly earnings, expiring April 14, 2026.

Bank of America’s comparable market shows a 76.5% probability of an earnings beat when it reports April 15. Both are expected to deliver, but the market leans toward JPMorgan.

Bank of America: Valuation and Fundamentals in Focus

JPMorgan leads by nearly every absolute measure. Its $796 billion market cap, deeper capital markets franchise, and $4.80 trillion wealth AUM reflect a firm operating at a different level. At a forward P/E of 14x versus Bank of America’s 11x, investors pay a meaningful premium for that quality.

Bank of America’s 24 buy ratings and 3 hold ratings with a consensus target of $61.06 suggest analysts see more relative upside from current levels. Its NII momentum, improving credit quality, and operating leverage make it compelling for investors who prefer steady compounding over headline deals.

Bank of America’s valuation gap and improving fundamentals present a contrasting profile for investors focused on relative value and steady compounding.

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With the big banks about to kick off the new earnings-reporting season, this is a good moment to ask what three of the most influential financial institutions have delivered for long-term investors.

Three Banks, Three Very Different Journeys

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) spent the decade quietly compounding. CEO Brian Moynihan leaned into digital banking, and the bank now counts 59 million active digital banking users. Net interest income (NII) grew for five consecutive quarters through 2025, and full-year net income topped $30 billion. Warren Buffett’s long-standing position gave the stock a credibility floor through volatile stretches.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) is the turnaround story. CEO Jane Fraser launched a sweeping simplification effort, divesting non-core franchises and restructuring around five core businesses. Record revenues across all five business segments in 2025 validated the strategy. The stock spent years trading below book value, making the recent re-rating especially sharp.

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) carries the most dramatic arc. The 2016 fake-accounts scandal triggered a Federal Reserve asset cap that constrained growth for years. The asset cap was removed in Q2 2025, a landmark event. CEO Charlie Scharf called it a chance to “compete on a level playing field.” The market noticed.

What $1,000 Became Across Every Horizon

Citigroup’s one-year surge reflects a stock that spent years undervalued. Bank of America’s 10-year return of 290.4% is the quiet winner, well ahead of the S&P 500’s 223.2%. Wells Fargo’s returns suggest it has moved from being a scandal-ridden laggard to a growth-at-a-reasonable-price (GARP) stock, with investors reassessing after the asset cap removal.

The Verdict Heading Into Earnings Week

Bank of America is a steady compounder with visible earnings momentum. NII guidance calls for 5% to 7% growth in 2026, deposits topped $2 trillion, and the capital return program is accelerating. The bear case is rate sensitivity: a 100-basis-point downward shift in rates is estimated to reduce NII by $2.0 billion to $2.3 billion over 12 months.

Citigroup’s transformation is real, and management targets 10% to 11% return on tangible common equity (ROTCE) for 2026. But the stock has already doubled in a year, and the Q4 GAAP EPS miss of −26.54% is a reminder that headline numbers can still surprise badly.

Wells Fargo presents the most compelling structural case. The asset cap removal is a structural unlock. Management raised its medium-term ROTCE target to 17% to 18% and returned $23 billion to shareholders in 2025. The rerating from the asset cap removal may not yet be fully priced in.

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Pre-Market Stock Futures:

Futures are trading lower as we head into Thursday, and depending on today’s narrative about how the war in Iran is progressing, whatever is revealed could chart the stock market’s course once again. Stocks were up across the board on Wednesday after the United States announced a 15-point peace plan for Iran, which Iran, in turn, said it rejected. Once again, the small-cap Russell 2000 led the way, finishing the day up 1.03% at 2,531. The Nasdaq was strong as well, finishing the session up 0.77% at 21,921, while the Dow Jones Industrials closed up 0.66% at 46,429. The S&P 500 brought up the rear, but still finished the day up 0.54% at 6,591. Technicians will be watching closely if the venerable index can break back through the 6,600 level.

Treasury Bonds:

With the stock market rallying on Wednesday, it was no surprise that the buyers returned to Treasury bills and bonds as yields were down across the curve. The rally was driven primarily by the reports of the ceasefire plan between the U.S. and Iran. This development eased fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East, leading to a decline in oil prices and a reversal of the previous day’s sharp sell-off in the bond market. The 30 year long bond closed at 4.92%, while the benchmark 10 year note was last seen at 4.33%. 

Oil and Gas:

Once again, the song remains the same as oil prices fell on the news of peace talks with Iran, even though they claimed they still want control of the Strait of Hormuz. The big worry across the energy complex now is massive LNG shortages, which investors need to keep a very close eye on. Brent Crude finished the Wednesday session down 1.3% at $103.20, while West Texas Intermediate closed at $91.32, down 1.12%. Natural gas was up 2.3% at $2.98.

Gold:

For the second straight day, after nine consecutive days of selling gold, finished the session higher on Wednesday. All of the reasons for the gains in oil and the equity markets applied to the precious metals arena on Wednesday. Gold closed at $4,503, up 0.71%, while Silver closed flat at $70.98. 

Crypto:

Crypto markets bounced back on Wednesday, with major assets posting gains following a rocky start to the week. Investors weighed ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East against a wave of regulatory developments, as a newly released draft of the US Clarity Act, which proposes banning yield on stablecoins,  sparked sharp swings early in the week. Despite the uncertainty, analysts pointed to Bitcoin holding firm above $70,000 as a sign of resilience in the broader market. At 8 AM EDT, Bitcoin was trading at $71,299, while Ethereum was trading at $2,072. 

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports daily to identify new investment ideas for both investors and traders. Some of these daily analyst calls cover stocks to buy. Other calls cover stocks to sell or avoid. Remember that no single analyst call should ever be used as a basis to buy or sell a stock. 

Here are some of the top Wall Street analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen on Thursday, March 26, 2026.  

Upgrades:

• Airbnb Inc.  (NASDAQ: ABNB) was upgraded to Hold from Sell at Truist with a $129 target price.
• ARM Holdings Plc. (NYSE: ARM) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Needham, which has set a $200 price target for the stock.
• Nucor Corp. (NYSE: NUE) was raised to Buy from Neutral at UBS, which bumped the target price for the steel giant to $190 from $184.
• United Natural Foods Inc. (NYSE: UNFI) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo, which raised the target price for the shares to $56 from $40.
• Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp.  Inc. (NYSE: WAB) was raised to Buy from Neutral at Rothschild & Co Redburn, which raised the price target for the shares to $285 from $262.

Downgrades:

• Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) was assumed with a Market Perform rating, down from Outperform at William Blair, without a target price.
• AvalonBay Communities Inc. (NYSE: AVB) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight  at Morgan Stanley, which trimmed the target price for the stock to $203 from $208
• Hub Group Inc. (NASDAQ: HUBG) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo, which cut its target price to $35 from $55.
• Mosaic Co. (NYSE: MOS) was cut to Neutral from Buy at UBS, which trimmed the target price for the fertilizer giant to $27 from $33.
• Timken Co. (NYSE: TKR) was downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JPMorgan, which keeps a $100 target price for the shares.

Initiations:

• Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was initiated with a Buy rating at Jefferies, which has a $60 target price for the financial giant.
• CAVA Group Inc. (NYSE: CAVA) was initiated with a Buy rating at Guggenheim, which has a $100 target price for the shares.
• Exelon Corp. (NYSE: EXC) was initiated with a Buy rating at Citigroup, which has set a $58 target price for the utility.
• Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD) was started with a Buy rating at Jefferies, which has set an $88 target price objective.
• Spotify Technology SA (NYSE: SPOT) was initiated with an Outperform rating at Daiwa, with a massive $535 target price for the music streaming behemoth.

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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock is sliding approximately 2% to 3% in Tuesday trading, with shares hovering around $374. These are quiet-looking numbers on the surface, but for a company this closely watched, they carry weight.

The decline is unfolding even as Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) reinstated coverage of Microsoft shares with a Buy rating and a $500 price target this morning. That gap between a fresh institutional buy call and a stock that keeps drifting lower tells you something about where investor anxiety is right now.

The broader technology sector is adding pressure. The NASDAQ 100 is down roughly 0.6% today, and software names are getting hit harder than most. Microsoft is drawing the most scrutiny, given its size and its central role in the AI narrative.

OpenAI Dependency Moves to Center Stage

The investor debate circling Microsoft today centers on what comes next, not this quarter’s numbers. Microsoft reported $81.27 billion in revenue for Q2 FY2026, beating estimates by roughly 1.2%, with non-GAAP EPS of $4.14 against a consensus of $3.85. Those are solid results, but the concerns pertain to what comes next and whether the OpenAI relationship is an asset or a liability in disguise.

OpenAI has warned investors about the risks associated with its heavy reliance on Microsoft for financing and computing resources, flagging this as a key business risk in a document resembling an IPO prospectus. The company stated that any alteration or termination of this partnership could negatively impact its business and financial condition. We recently dove in for a deeper read on what that disclosure actually means for Microsoft’s position.

The irony is that the disclosure cuts both ways. OpenAI needs Microsoft, but Microsoft has also built its AI growth story around OpenAI. Microsoft holds approximately a 27% stake in OpenAI, valued at roughly $135 billion, and OpenAI has contracted to purchase an incremental $250 billion of Azure services. That’s a lot of eggs in one basket, and investors are starting to price in the risk that comes with it.

The Capex Question Is Not Going Away

Capital expenditures nearly doubled year-over-year to $29.9 billion in Q2 FY2026. That level of spending is what you do when you believe the AI infrastructure buildout will pay off at scale, but it also compresses near-term free cash flow and raises the stakes on execution. Investors across the sector are asking the same question right now, and Microsoft isn’t alone in fielding it.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella framed the opportunity confidently on the earnings call, declaring, “We are only at the beginning phases of AI diffusion and already Microsoft has built an AI business that is larger than some of our biggest franchises.” That’s a compelling vision, and the market is still weighing how long it will take to materialize while capex runs this hot.

Bulls and Bears Are Both Making a Case

The bulls have some stats on their side: Azure grew 39% year-over-year in Q2, and Microsoft guided for 37% to 38% growth next quarter. Furthermore, Microsoft’s commercial remaining performance obligation surged 110% to $625 billion, which is essentially a giant backlog of committed revenue.

The bear case, meanwhile, is about timing and dependency. Microsoft’s OpenAI investment losses hit $3.1 billion in Q1 FY2026, up from $523 million a year earlier. The company’s Q2 GAAP net income looked strong partly because of $7.6 billion in net gains from OpenAI investments, but that kind of accounting benefit does not repeat every quarter. Strip it out and the underlying picture is more complicated.

The Fundamentals Aren’t Broken

At the moment, MSFT stock is down by roughly 23% year-to-date. This means investors who bought at the highs are sitting on real losses and debating whether to hold or cut.

Prediction markets are pricing in near-certainty that Microsoft stock closes down today, with crowdsourced probability sitting at 99% for a down close. Analyst consensus tells a different story: 54 buy or strong buy ratings, zero sell ratings, and a consensus price target of around $595. That’s a wide gap between what the market is doing today and where analysts think this stock belongs.

All in all, Microsoft’s fundamentals haven’t broken. The AI infrastructure story is intact, Azure is growing fast, and the backlog is enormous.

What has changed is investor patience with the OpenAI dependency and the timeline for converting massive capital spending into earnings that do not rely on one-time investment gains. The key question is whether the OpenAI dependency and capex trajectory will weigh on Microsoft’s earnings quality in the coming quarters.

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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has had a rough stretch heading into spring. The stock is down 5.37% over the past week, off 3.65% over the past month and has fallen 20.75% year-to-date from a Jan. 1 starting price of $472.94. It sits well below its 52-week high of $552.24, and most analysts maintain a consensus target of $594.62 reflecting more moderate near-term expectations.

Against that backdrop, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) reinstated coverage with a Buy rating and a $500 price target, implying roughly 31% upside from the current price near $383. That target sits below the Street consensus but still represents a meaningful recovery call. Can MSFT realistically reach $500 by end of 2026?

BofA’s $500 MSFT Prediction

BofA’s reinstatement centers on the thesis that Microsoft holds a structurally unique position in the AI era. Azure cloud infrastructure provides the compute and data foundation for enterprise AI workloads, while Microsoft’s primary software products embed AI into everyday tasks that drive attach and consumption. Azure grew 39% year-over-year in the most recent quarter, and the Intelligent Cloud segment posted $32.91B in revenue, up 29% YoY, validating the infrastructure side of that dual-engine argument.

Key Drivers of MSFT Stock Performance

1. Azure as the AI infrastructure backbone. Azure’s 39% YoY growth is anchored by accelerating AI workload migration. OpenAI has committed $250B in incremental Azure services, and the commercial remaining performance obligation reached $625B, up 110% YoY, giving investors strong long-term revenue visibility.
2. AI embedding across the enterprise suite. Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Dynamics 365 are converting Microsoft’s installed base into recurring AI consumption. Customers who purchased Copilot during the first quarter of availability expanded their seats collectively by more than 10x over the past 18 months, according to CEO Satya Nadella, compounding revenue per user over time.
3. Profitability and shareholder returns. Net income surged 59.52% YoY in the most recent quarter, while the company returned $12.7B to shareholders, up 32% YoY through dividends and buybacks, a durable compounding mechanism for long-term investors.

What Will It Take for MSFT to Reach $500?

At 7,425,629,000 shares outstanding and a $500 target, Microsoft would carry an implied market cap of approximately $3.71 trillion. Getting there requires three conditions: Azure sustaining its guided 37-38% growth trajectory into coming quarters; Copilot seat expansion converting into measurable revenue uplift; and the broader market re-rating the stock closer to the forward P/E of 20x that current earnings estimates already support.

The primary risk is that CapEx nearly doubled year-over-year to $29.88B in a single quarter, and AI infrastructure spending must translate into returns before investors fully reward the multiple. With 54 Buy or Strong Buy ratings and zero Sells across 57 tracked analysts, BofA’s $500 target represents a credible, if conservative, call on one of the most durable AI compounding stories in public markets.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) shares are down roughly 21% year-to-date, trading between $134 and $135 intraday on Wednesday. The stock shed another 3.65% on March 10 after a wave of analyst actions, capped by a fresh Underperform call from Bank of America (NYSE:BAC).

The question now is whether the sell-side is finally catching up to a story the market already priced in, or whether there is more pain ahead. After reaching a 52-week high of around $206 in October, could Qualcomm stock’s technical breakdown persist through the remainder of 2026?

It’s a tough call. For what it’s worth, today’s share-price fluctuations in QCOM were comparatively modest. The real damage happened over the preceding weeks, and BofA’s initiation is the latest chapter in a deteriorating sentiment story.

BofA Pulls the Trigger on a Sell

Just to recap, Bank of America initiated coverage on Qualcomm with an Underperform rating and a $145 price target on March 10. That might sound generous given where the stock sits today, but the message is clear: BofA doesn’t see meaningful upside, and the risks are real.

The core of their bear case is Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). BofA analysts anticipate a substantial loss of Apple’s modem business by 2027 for Qualcomm as Apple shifts to internal chip development.

Apple is the kind of customer whose departure doesn’t just ding revenue; it reshapes the entire earnings narrative. Qualcomm has been living on borrowed time with Apple for years, and BofA is simply saying the clock is nearly up.

Separately, on March 10, Daiwa Securities, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), and Mizuho also adjusted their ratings and targets. When multiple desks move on the same day, it tends to reflect coordinated re-evaluation rather than noise.

Meanwhile, retail sentiment on Reddit for QCOM stock has been consistently bearish since mid-February. There, sentiment scores have ranged from 20 to 36 across most tracked periods, well below the neutral threshold.

The Bull Case Isn’t Dead

Here is what BofA’s narrative glosses over: Qualcomm just delivered a strong quarter. Q1 FY2026 revenue came in at $12.25 billion against a consensus of $12.18 billion, and non-GAAP EPS of $3.50 beat the $3.40 estimate.

Also, Qualcomm’s QCT semiconductor segment revenue hit a record $10.61 billion. Those aren’t the numbers of a company that’s falling apart.

Plus, the company’s automotive segment crossed the billion-dollar quarterly threshold for the second consecutive quarter, reaching $1.1 billion, up 15% year over year. Not only that, but Qualcomm’s IoT revenue added $1.69 billion, up 9%.

What the Street Actually Thinks

BofA’s Underperform rating is an outlier. The broader analyst consensus sits at Hold with an average price target of $168.48, implying meaningful upside from current levels.

Of 37 analysts tracked, 13 rate the stock a Buy and only 1 rates it a Sell. That lone sell is now BofA. You can check out Wall Street’s recent take on Qualcomm and its semiconductor peers for a broader read on how the sector is being positioned right now.

What’s Next for QCOM Stock?

If Qualcomm can execute on automotive, IoT, and AI edge computing while the handset business stabilizes, a QCOM stock turnaround may be in store. If Apple’s departure lands harder than expected, though, then BofA’s Underperform rating will look prescient. The stock is essentially pricing in the bear case already, which is exactly when these calls get most dangerous to follow blindly.

Qualcomm stock’s 2026 slide is real, painful, and rooted in legitimate structural concerns. Yet, a company delivering record semiconductor revenues and growing its automotive business above $1 billion per quarter isn’tt a broken story.

Whether BofA is right depends entirely on how fast Qualcomm can replace what Apple takes away, and that answer won’t be clear for a while. So, watch the Q2 FY2026 print closely when it arrives. That will be the first real test of whether the guidance step-down was a speed bump or a preview of the new normal for Qualcomm.

The post Qualcomm Drops 21% in 2026 — Is BofA Right to Call It a Sell? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) are two of Warren Buffett’s most enduring financial bets. Both have been cornerstones of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio for years, built on his conviction in durable business models, pricing power, and consistent capital returns. Holding either stock is really a story of trusting that thesis through cycles.

Two Very Different Financial Powerhouses

Bank of America spent much of the 2010s recovering from the financial crisis, rebuilding capital and cutting costs under CEO Brian Moynihan. That patience paid off as interest rates rose and the bank’s massive deposit base became a structural advantage. Average deposits topped $2 trillion for the first time in Q4 2025, and net income reached $30.5 billion for full-year 2025, up 12.45% year over year.

American Express leaned into its premium card model and younger cardholders. Gen Z and millennial cardholders now represent 60% of new card acquisitions, and net card fee revenues have grown by double digits for 30 consecutive quarters. The brand’s pricing power has proven remarkably resilient.

What $1,000 Would Be Worth Today

Bank of America

• 1-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $1,183
  • Total Return: +18.31%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $1,178 (+17.77%)
• 5-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $1,447
  • Total Return: +44.73%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $1,741 (+74.1%)
• 10-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $4,332
  • Total Return: +333.19%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $3,345 (+234.52%)

American Express

• 1-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $1,130
  • Total Return: +12.99%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $1,178 (+17.77%)
• 5-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $2,211
  • Total Return: +121.1%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $1,741 (+74.1%)
• 10-Year Return
  • Initial Investment: $1,000
  • Current Value: $5,915
  • Total Return: +491.5%
  • S&P 500 (same period): $3,345 (+234.52%)

Note: figures reflect price return only and exclude reinvested dividends, which would push both totals higher, given each company’s consistent dividend growth.

The 10-year story is where both stocks shine. BAC’s recovery turned a $1,000 bet into over $4,300. AXP’s compounding premium model turned it into nearly $6,000, nearly doubling the S&P 500’s return. Over five years, Amex outpaced the market handily while BofA lagged, weighed down by rate uncertainty early in that period.

The Case For and Against Buying Here

Bulls point to the supportive rate environment and climbing NII as reasons to favor BofA. Management guided for 5% to 7% NII growth in 2026, and the stock trades at roughly 12x trailing earnings with a $62.35 analyst consensus price target. Bears cite risks including potential rate declines and credit quality concerns following nonperforming loan increases flagged in Q4.

For Amex, the bull case rests on whether millennial and Gen Z acquisition momentum translates into long-term loyalty. The 2026 guidance calls for 9% to 10% revenue growth and EPS of $17.30 to $17.90. But at roughly 19x trailing earnings, the valuation leaves less margin for error, and a consumer spending slowdown would hit Amex harder than BofA. Both stocks have pulled back sharply year to date. Buffett’s thesis on both hasn’t changed. Analysts remain divided on whether current valuations reflect those long-term fundamentals.

The post Investing $1K in Warren Buffett’s Favorite Bank Stocks 10 Years Ago Would Have Netted This Much appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Warren Buffett has been a net seller of stocks for 13 consecutive quarters, which is equivalent to more than three straight years of selling more than he’s buying, the longest streak of its kind in his entire career. Over this stretch, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) has unloaded massive positions in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and several other long-held favorites, which has allowed its cash position to swell from roughly $100 billion to approximately $373 billion. For a man who has famously said that his favorite holding period is “forever,” the decision to methodically sell down core positions even as the market is hitting new highs day by day is a loud signal.

It should go without saying that Buffett has never been an investor who panics and has built and solidified his reputation by staying invested through every crisis the economy has seen over the past six decades. He bought during the financial crisis of 2008, held through COVID, and has always preached that trying to time the market is a fool’s errand. So, when Buffett starts raising cash at a pace that dwarfs anything in Berkshire’s history, the move deserves attention. To be clear, he’s not predicting a crash, but he is saying, through this cash-hoarding action, that he isn’t finding enough things worth buying at today’s prices.

For everyday investors, this is very interesting, but for retirees, it’s a different conversation entirely. Retirees don’t have decades to recover from a drawdown, and they don’t have future paychecks to dollar-cost average into recovery. When Buffett, arguably the most patient investor alive, decides the risk-reward in equities isn’t worth it right now, the people who can least afford to be wrong should be paying the closest attention.

What Buffett Actually Did, And Why It Matters

Berkshire’s cash and short-term treasury position now represents more than 30% of the company’s total assets, the highest allocation in at least three decades. The Apple stake, once valued at close to $200 billion, has been trimmed to roughly $50 billion. Bank of America, a position Buffett held for years, has been significantly reduced.

In the most recent quarter alone, Berkshire sold $12.5 billion in stocks while buying virtually nothing, and yet, new company CEO Greg Abel has resumed buying Berkshire shares in a move that signals that management finally looks at its own stock as cheap enough to deploy capital. This ends a long period of stagnation that previously had suggested a lack of attractive investment opportunities.

The historical pattern here is something that should catch a retiree’s eye, as in 2005, Berkshire let its company’s cash position climb to 25% of assets while the housing bubble inflated, years before the financial crisis took place. In 2021, cash allocations hit near-record levels just before the market peaked and slid 20% in 2022. To be fair, Buffett didn’t predict either crash, but both times, his refusal to deploy capital at elevated valuations meant Berkshire had the dry powder to buy at the bottom while everyone else was selling into the decline.

What This Means for Retirees Specifically

The distinction between Buffett’s situation and that of a retiree matters a great deal, as Berkshire has been operating businesses generating billions in cash every quarter. This is a company that can afford to sit on $373 billion, or more, and wait years for the right opportunity.

A retiree with $500,000 or $1 million in a portfolio doesn’t have this kind of waiting period, as they need income now, and they can’t afford to be fully in cash while earning 3.6% while inflation is running at 2.4% as of January 2026. Still, the underlying message is that if the most disciplined investor in history can’t find stocks worth buying at current prices, retirees might also want to think twice before chasing returns in the most expensive corners of the market.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean selling everything and going to cash, but it does mean that a retiree needs to take a good look at what is overvalued and trim any positions that have run far beyond their fundamentals, so that any portfolio can survive a downturn rather than hoping one won’t arrive. This is exactly the kind of danger the whole concept of “sequence-of-returns” warns about.

How to Apply the Buffett Signal Without Copying Buffett

It’s important to know that Buffett’s playbook at Berkshire’s scale doesn’t directly translate to any one retiree’s individual portfolio, but the principles do. First, retirees should assess how much of their portfolio is concentrated in expensive sectors. If you’re overweight in tech or AI-related stocks trading at 30-50 times earnings, Buffett is telling you, through his actions, that the risk-reward is unfavorable.

This doesn’t mean that those companies are bad businesses, but it does mean that the price you’re paying for future growth leaves very little margin of safety if anything goes wrong. Secondly, it also means that cash shouldn’t be a dirty word in 2026, as short-term treasuries and money market funds still pay between 3.5% and 4%, which is meaningful income with zero equity risk.

If you are a retiree who holds six to twelve months of living expenses in cash and near-cash, you are building the same kind of opportunity that Buffett had been building at Berkshire before stepping down as CEO. This ability to deploy capital when prices are not attractive rather than being forced to sell when they are not. Third, you also have an environment where dividend-paying stocks with reasonable valuations earn their keep and companies with low payout ratios, strong free cash flow, and decades of dividend growth are exactly the kind of businesses Buffett has always favored, and they tend to hold up far better than the broader market during corrections.

Most importantly, nobody knows what the market is going to do over the next year, but when the most successful investor of the last century decides the best use of his company’s $373 billion in cash is to park it and wait, retirees should ask themselves whether their portfolios are also built for what comes next.

The post Warren Buffett Just Did Something He Almost Never Does — and It’s a Signal Retirees Shouldn’t Ignore appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

If any investor has stood the test of time, it’s Warren Buffett, and with good reason. For 60 years, the “Oracle of Omaha” had a rock-star-like presence in the investing world, and his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting drew thousands of loyal investors. They were stunned at last year’s meeting when Buffett announced he would step down as CEO of the investment giant at year’s end. While he will remain the board chair and vows to come to the office every day, he will also continue to have a voice in the day-to-day operations. His pre-announced successor and long-time lieutenant, Greg Abel, has assumed the CEO position and will likely direct or have a say in most, if not all, new investments, public or private. Some big changes have come to the forefront as Abel announced that Berkshire Hathaway would resume purchasing its own shares and that he would use all of his $25 million per year salary to buy shares in the corporation.

Long-time investors and Buffett mavens are familiar with this quote, “His favorite holding for an S&P 500 stock is forever.” So it’s not surprising to report that for all of the success and stature Berkshire Hathaway has in the investment world, five top companies make up almost 60% of the fund’s total holdings. While much more concentrated than most portfolio managers would ever consider, the strategy has worked for Berkshire Hathaway investors for years and will likely continue to do so. In addition, Abel said in his first letter to shareholders that the course forward would remain the same, and he would directly oversee the equity portfolio, with Ted Weschler continuing to manage about 6% of it. He said the portfolio will remain concentrated in a small group of companies.

That small group of companies currently makes up just shy of 60% of the portfolio, and all are dividend-paying gems. In addition, all are Strong Buy-rated by some of the top firms we cover on Wall Street.

Why do we cover Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

There are few investors with the results and reputation that Mr. Buffett has garnered over the last 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO chair, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Warren Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buying good companies with products and services recognized worldwide and paying dividends will always remain a timeless approach and never go out of style.

American Express

American Express (NYSE: AXP) is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation specializing in payment cards. This stock has performed strongly in 2025, offering a dividend yield of 1.07%. American Express is a globally integrated payments company that deals with card-issuing, merchant-acquiring, and card network businesses.

The company offers products and services to customers worldwide, including consumers, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large corporations. Its segments include:

• U.S. Consumer Services (USCS), which offers travel and lifestyle services, as well as banking and non-card financing products.
• Commercial Services (CS) offers payment, expense management, banking, and non-card financing products.
• International Card Services (ICS) provides services to international customers, including travel and lifestyle services, and manages certain international joint ventures and its loyalty coalition business.
• Global Merchant and Network Services (GMNS) operates a payments network that processes and settles card transactions, acquires merchants, and provides multichannel marketing programs, capabilities, services, and data analytics.

Berkshire Hathaway owns 151,610,700 shares, 22.1 % of American Express’s float, and 14.7% of the portfolio.

Truist Financial has a Buy rating with a $400 target price.

Apple

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services, offering a small dividend of 0.39%. It’s almost hard to comprehend that the legacy technology giant, even after a recent fourth-quarter sale of 10 million shares and a surge in sales over the last two years, still accounts for a stunning 18.9% of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, which holds 1.6% of Apple’s stock.

The company designs, manufactures, and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories worldwide. It offers:

• The iPhone, a line of smartphones
• Mac, a line of personal computers
• iPad, a line of multi-purpose tablets
• Wearables, home, and accessories comprising AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, and HomePod

Apple also offers AppleCare support and cloud services, and operates various platforms, including the App Store, which enables customers to discover and download applications and digital content, such as books, music, videos, games, and podcasts.

In addition, the company offers various services, such as:

• Apple Arcade, a game subscription service
• Apple Fitness+, a personalized fitness service
• Apple Music, which gives users a curated listening experience with on-demand radio stations
• Apple News+, a subscription news and magazine service
• Apple TV+, which offers exclusive original content
• Apple Card, a co-branded credit card
• Apple Pay, a cashless payment service

Wedbush has an Outperform rating with a $325 target price.

Bank of America

While Buffett has trimmed his position over the past two years and sold a whopping 50 million shares in the fourth quarter, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 2.18% dividend yield. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding company and financial holding company that reported impressive Q4 results. Berkshire Hathaway owns 517,295,934 shares, which is 8.1% of the portfolio and 7.2% of the float.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking, which offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management (GWIM) comprises two businesses:
  • Merrill Wealth Management offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products.
  • Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating with a $67 target price.

Chevron

Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is an American multinational energy company primarily focused on oil and gas. This integrated giant is a safer option for investors looking to position themselves in the energy sector and pays a substantial 3.61% dividend, which was raised by 5% earlier this year. Berkshire Hathaway bought a very well-timed 8 million additional shares in the fourth quarter, and now owns 130,156,362 shares, which equals 6.5% of the float and 8% of the portfolio.

Chevron operates integrated energy and chemicals businesses worldwide through two segments. The Upstream segment is involved in:

• Exploration, development, production, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas
• Processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas
• Transportation of crude oil through pipelines, and transportation, storage
• Marketing of natural gas, as well as operating a gas-to-liquids plant

The Downstream segment engages in:

• Refining crude oil into petroleum products
• Marketing crude oil, refined products, and lubricants
• Manufacturing and marketing renewable fuels
• Transporting crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car
• Manufacturing and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives

It also involves cash management, debt financing, insurance operations, real estate, and technology businesses.

Bank of America has a Buy rating with a $206 target price.

Coca-Cola

This American multinational corporation was founded in 1892. Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) remains a top long-time Buffett holding. Berkshire Hathaway owns a massive 400 million shares, which is 9.3% of the float and 9.9% of the portfolio. The stock pays a dependable 2.50% dividend.

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, offering consumers more than 500 sparkling and still brands. Led by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable brands, its portfolio features 20 billion-dollar brands, including:

• Diet Coke
• Coca-Cola Light
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
• Caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Cherry Coke
• Fanta Orange
• Fanta Zero Orange
• Fanta Zero Sugar
• Fanta Apple
• Sprite
• Sprite Zero Sugar
• Simply Orange
• Simply Apple
• Simply Grapefruit
• Fresca
• Schweppes
• Dasani
• Fuze Tea
• Glacéau Smartwater
• Glacéau Vitaminwater
• Gold Peak
• Ice Dew
• Powerade
• Topo Chico
• Minute Maid

Globally, it is the provider of sparkling beverages, ready-to-drink coffees, juices, and juice drinks. Through the world’s most extensive beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the company’s beverages at a rate of over 1.9 billion servings per day.

Note that Coca-Cola owns 19.5% of Monster Beverage (NASDAQ: MNST), which continues to deliver strong financial results.

Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating and a target price of $87.

The post 5 Dividend Stocks Are 60% of Berkshire Hathaway After Buffett’s Q4 Selling Spree appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Bond yields are one option for passive income investors, but they’re definitely not the only possibility. Sure, you can get a yield of around 4% from 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds, but you can probably achieve better returns with dividend-paying stocks.

Bear in mind, you can get both share-price gains and dividend payments from some stocks. Consequently, if you put your money in dividend stocks, you have a chance at beating the predictable returns from government bonds.

Besides, it’s very likely that government bond yields will get slashed this year and/or next year. So, if you’re willing to sacrifice predictability in a quest for superior returns, check out these four outstanding dividend stock picks with decent yields and powerful growth potential.

Lockheed Martin (LMT)

Recent geopolitical events have put aerospace and defense contractors in the spotlight. A beneficiary of international conflicts is Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), a well-established defense contractor for public-sector and private clients.

Mind you, this list isn’t populated with stocks that pay yields exceeding 4% (which is what you might get from government bonds). Instead, we’re concentrating on stocks which could easily beat 4% yearly returns through dividend distributions and share-price appreciation.

Lockheed Martin stock is a perfect example of this. After holding LMT shares for a full year, you should expect to get a forward dividend yield of 2.06%.

Then, to outperform a 4% bond, Lockheed Martin stock would only need to rise more than 2%. That’s very likely since Lockheed Martin is a revenue-rich and profitable defense business.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. As the data will show, Lockheed Martin’s sales improved from $67.571 billion in 2023 to $71.043 billion in 2024, to $75.048 billion in 2025.

All told, Lockheed Martin reported $5.017 billion in net earnings for 2025. With cash and cash equivalents totaling $4.121 billion at the end of last year, it’s fair to say that Lockheed Martin should be able to pay out dividends for the foreseeable future.

Cisco Systems (CSCO)

Next, we’re going to diversify into the technology sector with Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) stock. To give you some background info, Cisco Systems is a communications/networking products provider with a market capitalization exceeding $300 billion.

The company’s most recently released quarterly financial report indicates that Cisco Systems booked $14.883 billion in revenue for the three months ended October 25, 2025. That’s a notable improvement over the $13.841 billion that Cisco Systems generated in the year-earlier period.

Furthermore, Cisco Systems grew its net income from $2.711 billion in the year-earlier quarter to $2.86 billion in the three months ended October 25, 2025. That’s not blockbuster growth, but it is a positive sign that Cisco Systems is in stable financial condition.

In all likelihood, CSCO stock will gain value in the coming quarters. Along with that, investors can expect Cisco Systems to deliver an annualized dividend yield of 2.1%; this ought to make it easy to outperform bonds when all is said and done.

Bank of America (BAC)

Switching over to the financial sector, another way to possibly beat government bonds is by investing in Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). Since BAC stock is already anticipated to provide a 2.25% annual dividend yield, you wouldn’t need much share-price growth to come out ahead.

Can investors feel secure with shares of a banking behemoth like Bank of America? The facts look favorable, as Bank of America’s revenue expanded its revenue from $26.5 billion in 2024’s fourth quarter to $28.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.

During the same time frame, Bank of America’s net income increased from $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion. Suffice it to say, then, that Bank of America is flush with capital and sensible investors can hold BAC stock with confidence.

Yum! Brands (YUM)

Even if you’re not familiar with Yum! Brands (NYSE:YUM), you will surely know its famous fast-food brand names. These include Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC.

These brands have survived the ups and downs of America’s economy throughout the years. YUM stock might not be 100% recession-proof, but it’s less volatile than many other large-cap stocks out there.

Yum! Brands’ 2025 results drive home the point that this is a successful consumer-goods business. During that year, the company recorded GAAP-measured earnings of $1.91 per share, versus $1.49 per share in 2024.

In other words, YUM stock isn’t just a safety play; it’s also a possible vehicle for growth. Plus, Yum! Brands currently offers a 1.89% forward annual dividend yield, indicating an excellent chance for investors to achieve superior overall returns to a basic bonds buy-and-hold strategy.

The post Bond Yields Are Getting Slashed — These Dividend Stocks Are the Smarter Play Right Now appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Greg Abel officially took the helm at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B) on January 1, 2026, inheriting a fortress balance sheet, a legendary reputation, and a cash pile that would make most sovereign wealth funds blush. The first two months of his tenure have been anything but quiet. Three moves are already shaping what the Abel era will look like, and they tell you a lot about the man running the show.

Move 1: Cutting Loose the Kraft Heinz Albatross

The first signal Abel sent was about intellectual honesty. Berkshire is reportedly exiting its 27.5% stake in Kraft Heinz stake in Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC), a position even Buffett publicly called a mistake. The exit isn’t painless. Berkshire is expected to absorb an estimated $2.5 billion loss on the sale.

But here’s the thing: holding a bad position out of pride is far more expensive than taking the loss. Abel is signaling he won’t be sentimental with capital. Morningstar noted the move “signifies a potential shift in the firm’s investment strategy” and maintained its fair value estimate, viewing Berkshire as slightly undervalued despite the hit.

That’s the right read. Freeing up roughly $7.7 billion from a stagnant holding and redeploying it into something with actual momentum is exactly what a new CEO should do.

Move 2: Reshaping the Equity Portfolio

Abel didn’t just trim one position. In Q4 2025, Berkshire reduced stakes in Apple, Bank of America, and Amazon, using those proceeds to build new positions. The firm added a significant holding in The New York Times, increased its positions in Chevron and Chubb, and initiated a stake in Domino’s Pizza (NYSE:DPZ). Berkshire ended the quarter with $274.2 billion in reportable U.S. equity holdings, a 2.6% increase from the prior quarter.

Morningstar analysts flagged Domino’s as the most compelling of the new buys, citing its wide economic moat and valuation. Think of Domino’s like a toll bridge for pizza delivery infrastructure. The brand, the logistics network, and the franchisee model create a business that is genuinely hard to displace.

Move 3: Resuming Buybacks and Putting Skin in the Game

This one matters most psychologically. After a nearly two-year pause on repurchases, Berkshire resumed stock buybacks on March 5, 2026. Abel also personally purchased $15 million worth of Class A shares, a direct signal that he believes the stock is trading below intrinsic value.

Context matters here. Abel’s first shareholder letter in late February had explicitly said there were “no immediate plans for stock buybacks,” which contributed to shares sliding nearly 5%. The reversal just days later, backed by his own dollars, was a confidence statement.

Berkshire ended 2025 with $373.3 billion in combined cash and short-term investments and generated $25 billion in free cash flow for the year. Abel has the resources. These three moves suggest he also has the conviction to use them.

Kraft Heinz remains one of the most scrutinized holdings in Berkshire’s history, and its exit marks a clean break from one of Buffett’s most acknowledged missteps.

The post Greg Abel Is Now Running Berkshire. Here Are the 3 Moves That Will Define His Era appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

In his last quarter as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B), Warren Buffett remixed his portfolio, as he always does. He cut his position in Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and increased his bet on Chevron. He also did something he has done for several quarters. He cut his position in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) sharply,

According to Bloomberg, “Also in the fourth quarter, Berkshire continued trimming its stakes in Bank of America Corp. and Apple Inc., bringing them to 7.1% and 1.5%, respectively.” He first bought Apple in 2016.

Like many of the world’s largest investors, Buffett does not always provide a rationale for buying or selling a stock.

One could make an educated guess about his move. Apple shares have increased by 8% over the past year. The S&P is 12% higher. By contrast, shares of Alphabet are up 62% over the same period

It is clear that the iPhone continues to carry Apple on its broad shoulders. In the most recent quarter, iPhone sales were 60% of Apple’s $144 billion in revenue. And, iPhone revenue was also up 23% year over year. The worry that it did not launch its new operating system late last year or early this year barely seemed to matter.

However, anyone who follows Apple can see it has been left out of the race to lead the AI industry. Massive investments are being made by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), OpenAI, and numerous large public and private companies. Many of Apple’s lead AI engineers were recruited by competitors.

Apple’s move into AI is to license Google Gemini and integrate it into Siri. Reuters made the point that, “The latest agreement builds on a years-long partnership that makes Google the default search engine on Apple devices – a lucrative arrangement that drives traffic for Google while generating tens of billions in annual revenue for Apple.”

The Apple decision is the clearest indication yet that it has given up on being a leader in AI. It also means Apple will not spend hundreds of billions of dollars to be in the sector.

Did Buffett see that Apple dropped out of the AI race, and worry about it? There is a chance no one will ever know.

The post Buffett Dumps More Apple appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Blue-chip dividend stocks delivered mixed returns last week as investors weighed earnings reports, dividend announcements, and shifting interest rate expectations. With 10-year Treasury yields declining to 4.09%, the relative appeal of dividend-paying equities improved, though performance varied significantly across sectors.

Let’s look at last week’s winners in the dividend space ahead of the market opening today. Dow Futures are currently off about .2% in premarket trading, but that’s a much stronger performance than the Nasdaq’s .8% decline. It looks like this week could be another rotation into safety, which would be good for dividend stocks.

Weekly Performance Snapshot

The S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) fell 1.28% for the week, making telecom and energy dividend stocks notable outperformers. Financials lagged sharply as Bank of America retreated from recent highs.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Johnson & Johnson raised its quarterly dividend to $1.30 per share, up from $1.24, marking a 4.8% increase. The new dividend goes ex-dividend on February 24, 2026 and pays March 10, 2026. This extends JNJ’s dividend growth streak to 63 consecutive years, reinforcing its Dividend Aristocrat status.

In total, Johnson & Johnson is up nearly 18% on the year. That makes J&J the 6th best performing stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. We’ll next feature two of the stocks in the DOW that have outperformed the company.

Verizon (VZ)

Verizon announced a $.7075 quarterly dividend and a $25 billion share buyback program. The raise brings Verizon’s annualized payout to $2.83, supporting the stock’s 5.8% yield, the highest among the names in this article. Strong free cash flow from the Frontier acquisition closure provided management confidence to boost shareholder returns.

Overall, after normalized earnings fell in 2024, they bounced back to growth in 2025. Wall Street expects Verizon to grow to adjusted earnings of $4.91 in 2026 (from $4.71 in 2025) up to $5.25 in 2027. That growth is helping fuel the company’s buyback program and is a key reason Verizon shares are up 22% so far this year, significantly outpacing the broader index.

Chevron (CVX)

Chevron also raised its quarterly dividend by 4% to $1.78 per share, payable March 10, 2026. The energy giant’s record production levels and $12.1 billion in buybacks during 2025 underscore its commitment to capital returns despite oil price volatility.

Integrated oil & gas companies have generally had a stellar start to 2026. Exxon Mobil is up 23.4%, slightly outpacing

Bank of America (BAC)

Bank of America fell 7.04% this week, giving back gains from its strong Q3 earnings report. The bank continues returning capital to shareholders, with $7.4 billion returned in Q3. I wrote about the broader financial space’s sell-off on Friday.

As we explored in today’s Daily Profit newsletter, investors are navigating sector rotation dynamics as AI disruption concerns impact different market segments—while tech faces headwinds, traditional dividend payers like these financials and telecoms are drawing renewed attention.

As of right now, industries like oil & gas and broad-based healthcare companies have benefited from investors rotating into safety, but we also saw the panic around AI disruption expand to industries like banking and commercial real estate. So, it’s also a very unpredictable market. As I noted at the top, premarket futures this morning indicate we’ll see even more rotation into blue-chip stocks once trading opens this week.

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Retirement shouldn’t be a time to worry. It should be a time to enjoy the wealth you’ve accumulated over decades. And that is possible if your investments have a solid safety profile.

Buying safety-first blue-chip stocks is a great way to shield your nest egg from an uncertain future. The economy and financial markets will have their ups and downs, but certain stocks tend to be less volatile so you can sleep soundly at night.

There is always a degree of risk with stocks, but today I’m featuring three tried-and-true stocks that have weathered economic storms in the past. After conducting your own due diligence, you can simply buy and hold these stocks as part of your bigger plan to retire in comfort.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Is it possible to combine safety with growth and dividends in a single stock? Any doubters should check out Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) stock, which is absolutely perfect for retirees and near-retirees.

Johnson & Johnson has been in the business of providing healthcare products for many years. You might assume that JNJ stock is a typicaly slow-moving “safety stock,” but it actually gained 50% over the past 12 months.

Granted, that’s an unusual price rally and Johnson & Johnson stock usually moves slower than that. In any case, Johnson & Johnson is in good financial condition so there’s no concern that the company will fail.

To support this point, we can observe that Johnson & Johnson grew its fourth-quarter 2025 sales by 9.1% year over year to $24.6 billion. Looking at the bigger picture, Johnson & Johnson improved its full-year 2025 sales by 6% year over year to $94.2 billion.

There’s also an opportunity to generate passive income if you buy and hold JNJ stock. That’s because Johnson & Johnson currently offers a forward annual dividend yield of 2.17%. You could even reinvest the dividend distributions to leverage the effect of wealth compounding over time.

Even though the share price rallied sharply in recent months, there’s really nothing objectionable about Johnson & Johnson stock for safety-minded retirees. However, you shouldn’t just load your portfolio with one stock (even if it’s a great one like JNJ), so now we’ll explore two more stocks I handpicked for extra safety.

Apple (AAPL)

Maybe you’re wary about technology stocks since not all of them are safe. It’s true that some tech stocks are volatile, but you can stay relatively safe with a global market leader like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

In the modern age of technology, it makes sense for retirees to own a few shares Apple. Although AAPL stock is subject to price fluctuations just like every other stock, it has a good track record of recovering from drawdowns.

For what it’s worth, Apple does pay a dividend but it’s only 0.37% per year. That’s a nice little bonus, but usually people buy AAPL stock because they expect the company and the stock to succeed.

It’s a positive sign that Apple recently reported strong results for the company’s fiscal 2026 first quarter, which ended on Dec. 27, 2025. CEO Tim Cook touted “unprecedented demand” for iPhones as well as Apple’s “remarkable, record-breaking quarter” with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16% year over year.

As a retiree, you don’t have to own a $1,000-or-more iPhone to enjoy the benefits of investing in Apple. It’s reasonably safe to hold a handful of AAPL stock shares, and doing this will give your portfolio some exposure to today’s modern technology.

Bank of America (BAC)

I’ve got one more stock pick to help you retire in comfort, and again, it’s a blue-chip market leader that’s been around for a long time. I’m referring to financial giant Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), which has an added safety factor because it’s well-capitalized and has wide brand-name recognition.

To help reassure any skeptics out there, we can observe that Bank of America increased its Q4 2025 revenue (net of interest expense) by 7% year over year to $28.4 billion. The company’s Global Wealth and Investment Management division performed especially well, having grown its fourth-quarter 2025 revenue by 10% year over year to $6.6 billion.

To sweeten the deal even further for the company’s loyal shareholders, Bank of America now provides a forward annual dividend yield of 1.95%. This can add up over the long run, and there will be dividend reinvestment opportunities every three months.  

Finally, it’s worth noting that Bank of America stock gained 18% during the past 12 months, and that doesn’t even include the quarterly dividend distributions. No matter how you slice it, BAC stock is a worthy asset to own along with JNJ and AAPL for a safer, more secure retirement plan.

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Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett, a huge name over at Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), recently warned of a “sell signal” for global stocks. And it couldn’t have come at a more uneasy time for stocks, especially with all the volatility that’s going on behind the scenes of the S&P of late. The software stock meltdown got way worse on Tuesday’s session in response to Anthropic’s move into legal with some new disruptive AI tools.

Global markets are getting overbought. It might be time to rotate

Notably, global markets seem to be entering a period of historically “overbought” levels. With stocks across the globe running hot, well above their moving averages, while market sentiment skews a bit too greedy, and it certainly feels like a market correction is not only a long time coming, but a nice thing to have with all the froth that’s built up after a sensational 2025.

Could it be that investors were getting a tad too greedy going into 2026?

Possibly. As for how to play a potential 2026 sell-off, Hartnett still likes gold (the “debasement” trade still seems very much in play) despite the latest single-day correction suffered last Friday, when Trump picked Walsh to succeed Powell as Fed chair. Additionally, bonds, commodities, and international securities were highlighted as a way to play defense.

While corrections, sell-offs, and crashes (especially bubble bursts) can be very hard to time, I do think that there’s no questioning the enthusiasm in the markets going into 2026. Stocks were overbought, arguably overvalued, and January may very well be the new normal for investors. Indeed, extra volatility, bad days, and the odd panic (whether it’s gold or tech) are to be expected.

Volatility could get fierce as tech, Bitcoin, and even precious metals wobble

Undoubtedly, it was a pretty bad day to be a software company, especially one in the business of selling legal software. After another wave of selling that ravaged through the tech markets, the fear brought forth by the latest wave of AI-driven disruption is almost palpable. There’s no question that the pace of AI innovation might be a bit destabilizing, especially if you were inclined to act as a contrarian in the software scene.

It’s hard to be a holder of any software stock, and while it feels like stocks have already plunged into a bear market, the reality of the situation is that the S&P is incredibly close to its all-time highs. In fact, it’s within a single percentage point of hitting new highs.

Given the horrid session of selling in software, the “tough crowd” for the latest big-tech earnings season, heightened valuations, and, perhaps most frustratingly, a lack of momentum in some of the AI winners (think Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)), and it feels like a great time to exit markets for a bit, at least until things feel a bit calmer or, at the very least, cheaper.

The market, as a whole, is still overbought and could be at risk of a sell-off similar to the one Hartnett cautions of. While prospective returns may be muted from here after an impressive 2025 of gains, I wouldn’t overreact at this juncture by selling out of stocks that have already taken a big hit. If you haven’t played defense, though, I’d argue buying gold on the pullback as well as bonds might not be a bad idea.

The bottom line

The worst that could happen is you’re caught holding safety assets in a continuation of the market rally. For now, it feels like sentiment is reversing course, with the Mag Seven managing to disappoint despite reporting decent results. In a market where clear AI winners, like Nvidia and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), can’t gain, while the AI losers (think some software firms) are nosediving, it feels like the path of least resistance is lower. For stock pickers, there might be more of a chance to pick up the winners and steer clear of the value traps.

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Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is the world’s second-largest investment bank by revenue and ranks 55th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. The Wall Street white-glove giant offers financing, advisory services, risk distribution, and hedging for the firm’s institutional and corporate clients. We review the firm’s Conviction List of top stock ideas monthly, seeking companies with the highest dividends, safe profiles, and the greatest upside relative to the firm’s target price objectives. With the year well underway, we decided to review the current list of high-yielding stocks that can provide secure, reliable passive income.

The Goldman Sachs Conviction List is a curated list of stocks that the firm’s research team believes are highly likely to outperform the market. It is a tool for investors to identify stocks with strong growth potential, frequently updated to reflect changes in market conditions and company performance. The list aims to identify stocks where Goldman Sachs analysts have the “highest level of conviction” in their outperformance. Five of the stocks we identified on this month’s list have significant upside relative to the assigned price target and come with reliable dividends.

Why we recommend Goldman Sachs stocks

Goldman Sachs is the acknowledged leader in the investment landscape on Wall Street and worldwide. The firm’s top-notch research department continues to provide institutional and high-net-worth clients with the best ideas across the investment spectrum. It is likely to continue doing so for years.

Abbott Laboratories

This healthcare giant offers an excellent investment opportunity with a 2.20% dividend. Abbott Laboratories Inc. (NYSE: ABT)  is engaged in the discovery, development, manufacture, and sale of a broad and diversified line of health care products.

The company operates through four segments:

• Established Pharmaceutical Products
• Diagnostic Products
• Nutritional Products
• Medical Devices

The Established Pharmaceutical Products segment is engaged in the international sales of a broad line of branded generic pharmaceutical products, while the Diagnostic Products segment engages in the worldwide sales of diagnostic systems and tests for blood banks, hospitals, commercial laboratories, and alternate-care testing sites. The Nutritional Products segment is involved in the worldwide sales of a broad line of adult and pediatric nutritional products. And the Medical Devices segment includes the worldwide sales of:

• Rhythm management
• Electrophysiology
• Heart failure
• Vascular
• Structural heart
• Neuromodulation
• Diabetes care products

Goldman Sachs has a $140 target price, representing a 28% gain.

Bank of America

While Berkshire Hathaway has trimmed this position over the past two years, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 12.03% dividend yield. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding company and financial holding company that reported impressive fourth-quarter results.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking, which offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management comprises two businesses. Merrill Wealth Management offers tailored solutions to meet client needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading, as well as research, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Hitting the Goldman Sachs $67 target would be a solid 26% gain.

Dick’s Sporting Goods

This is one of the leading retailers in the sporting goods industry, which pays a dependable 2.35% dividend. Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (NYSE: DKS) is an omnichannel sporting goods retailer.

The company owns and operates Golf Galaxy, Public Lands, and Going Going Gone! specialty concept stores, and also offers its products online and through its mobile applications. It also owns and operates Dick’s House of Sport and Golf Galaxy Performance Center, as well as GameChanger, a mobile youth sports platform for livestreaming, scheduling, communication, and scorekeeping.

The company operates more than 3,200 stores, e-commerce, and digital businesses across 20 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It maintains a licensed store presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

It carries a wide variety of national brands, including Adidas, Asics, Brooks, Callaway Golf, Carhartt, Columbia, Hoka, Jordan, New Balance, Nike, Peloton, The North Face, Under Armour, Wilson, Yeti, and others. And it owns and operates brands such as Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, Champs Sports, WSS, and atmos.

The Goldman Sachs target price of $285 would be a 41% gain.

Golar LNG

This is a new addition to the Goldman Sachs Conviction List, and it offers a 2.43% dividend and significant upside to the target price. Golar LNG Ltd. (NASDAQ: GLNG) designs, owns, and operates marine infrastructure for the liquefaction of natural gas and the regasification, storage, and offloading of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Its fleet comprises two floating liquefied natural gas vessels (FLNGs).

The company’s segments include:

• FLNG
• Shipping
• Corporate and Other

The FLNG segment covers operations of FLNG vessels and projects. It converts LNG carriers into FLNG vessels, builds new ones, and contracts them to customers. This segment includes vessels such as FLNG Hilli, FLNG Gimi, and MKII FLNG. The Shipping segment focuses on the transportation operations of LNG carriers.

The Corporate and Other segment includes administrative tasks, ship operations, and maintenance services. It also provides FLNG commercial, operational, and technical support; crew management services and supervision; and corporate secretarial, accounting, and treasury services.

Golar LNG operates in:

• Bermuda
• United Kingdom
• Norway
• Cameroon
• Croatia

Goldman Sachs has set a $54 target price, representing a 38% gain.

Kontoor Brands

While somewhat off the radar, this company has tremendous upside and well-known brands, and it pays a reasonable 3.48% dividend. Kontoor Brands Inc. (NYSE: KTB) is a global lifestyle apparel company that designs, manufactures, procures, sells, and licenses apparel, footwear, and accessories under brands Wrangler, Lee, and Helly Hansen.

The Wrangler brand offers multiple sub-brands, collections, and product lines within the Wrangler brand to target specific consumer demographics and consumer end-users, including:

• 20X
• Aura from the Women at Wrangler
• Cowboy Cut
• Premium Patch
• Riggs Workwear
• Rock 47
• Rustler
• Wrangler Retro
• Wrangler Rugged Wear
• Wrangler All Terrain Gear

The Lee segment offers denim, apparel, footwear, and accessories for adults and children. The brand offers multiple sub-brands, collections, and product lines, including:

• Lee101
• Riders
• Storm Rider
• Lee MVP
• Lee X

The Helly Hansen brand is an outdoor and workwear brand. It offers sub-brands, including Helly Hansen Sport and Helly Hansen Workwear.

The Goldman Sachs price target of $84 would be a 40% gain for shareholders.

Why the Five Highest-Yielding Nasdaq 100 Stocks Are 2026 Boomer Safety Nets

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Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) on December 31, 2025, after six decades leading the conglomerate he transformed from a struggling textile mill into a $1 trillion empire. The “Oracle of Omaha” left his successor, Greg Abel, with a very concentrated portfolio: 65% of Berkshire’s $381 billion in assets is invested in just six stocks. Abel, who has served as vice chair overseeing non-insurance operations, officially took over as CEO on January 1, 2026. At 95 years old, Buffett is not fully retiring. He will remain as board chair and plans to continue coming to the Omaha headquarters as much as before. However, he has stated he will be “going quiet” and leaving all decision-making to Abel.

Long-time investors and Buffett mavens are familiar with this quote: “His favorite holding for an S&P 500 stock is forever.” So, it is not surprising to report that for all the success and stature Berkshire Hathaway has in the investment world, six top companies make up 65% of the fund’s total holdings. While Buffett has departed, there is a good chance that the six stocks at the core of Berkshire Hathaway will remain in the portfolio indefinitely. At 24/7 Wall Street, we believe four of the stocks are good growth and income investments that can be safely acquired now and held in investment portfolios forever. They are ideal companies for passive-income investors seeking total return potential, and all are rated Buy by top Wall Street firms we cover.

Why do we cover Berkshire Hathaway stocks?

Few investors have the results and reputation that Buffett has garnered over the past 60 years. Though he has stepped away from the CEO role, his impact and investment guidelines are likely to remain in place long after he is gone. While investing has evolved since Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buying good companies with products and services recognized worldwide and paying dividends will always remain a timeless approach and never go out of style.

American Express

American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation specializing in payment cards. The stock performed strongly in 2025, and it comes with a dividend yield of 0.86%.

American Express is a globally integrated payments company that deals with card-issuing, merchant-acquiring, and card network businesses. It offers products and services to customers worldwide, including consumers, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large corporations.

Its segments include:

• U.S. Consumer Services, which offers travel and lifestyle services, as well as banking and non-card financing products.
• Commercial Services offers payment, expense management, banking, and non-card financing products.
• International Card Services provides services to international customers, including travel and lifestyle services, and manages certain international joint ventures and its loyalty coalition business.
• Global Merchant and Network Services operates a payments network that processes and settles card transactions, acquires merchants, and provides multichannel marketing programs, capabilities, services, and data analytics.

Berkshire Hathaway owns 151,610,700 shares, or 22% of American Express’s float. It is 18.2% of the portfolio.

Royal Bank of Canada has an Outperform rating and a $425 target price.

Bank of America

While Buffett has trimmed his position over the past two years, this quality financial giant remains an exceptional long-term holding with a solid 2.05% dividend yield. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) is a bank holding company and financial holding company that reported impressive fourth-quarter results.  Berkshire Hathaway owns 568,070,012 shares, which is 9.9% of the portfolio and 7.8% of the float.

Its segments include:

• Consumer Banking, which offers a range of credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses.
• Global Wealth & Investment Management comprises two businesses. Merrill Wealth Management offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs through a comprehensive suite of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. Bank of America Private Bank provides comprehensive wealth management solutions.
• Global Banking offers a range of lending-related products and services, including integrated working capital management and treasury solutions, as well as underwriting and advisory services.
• Global Markets offers sales and trading services, as well as research services, to institutional clients across fixed income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity markets.

Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating with a $65 target price.

Chevron

This American multinational energy company is primarily focused on oil and gas. Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) is a safer option for investors looking to position themselves in the energy sector. It pays a substantial 4.05% dividend, which was raised by 5% earlier this year. Berkshire Hathaway owns 122,064,792 shares, which equals 6.1% of the float and 5.8% of the portfolio.

Chevron operates integrated energy and chemicals businesses worldwide through two segments. The Upstream segment is involved in the following:

• Exploration, development, production, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas
• Processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas
• Transportation of crude oil through pipelines, and transportation, storage
• Marketing of natural gas, as well as operating a gas-to-liquids plant

The Downstream segment engages in:

• Refining crude oil into petroleum products
• Marketing crude oil, refined products, and lubricants
• Manufacturing and marketing renewable fuels
• Transporting crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car
• Manufacturing and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives

It also involves cash management, debt financing, insurance operations, real estate, and technology businesses.

Bank of America has a Buy rating with a $180 target price.

Coca-Cola

This American multinational corporation, founded in 1892, remains a top long-time holding of Buffett. He owns 400 million shares of Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), which is 9.3% of the float and 9% of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. The stock increased by a huge 17.1% in 2025 and comes with a dependable 2.80% dividend.

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company, offering consumers more than 500 sparkling and still brands. Led by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most valuable and recognizable brands, the company’s portfolio features 20 billion-dollar brands, including:

• Diet Coke
• Coca-Cola Light
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar
• Caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Cherry Coke
• Fanta Orange
• Fanta Zero Orange
• Fanta Zero Sugar
• Fanta Apple
• Sprite
• Sprite Zero Sugar
• Simply Orange
• Simply Apple
• Simply Grapefruit
• Fresca
• Schweppes
• Dasani
• Fuze Tea
• Glacéau Smartwater
• Glacéau Vitaminwater
• Gold Peak
• Ice Dew
• Powerade
• Topo Chico
• Minute Maid

Globally, it is the number one provider of sparkling beverages, ready-to-drink coffees, juices, and juice drinks. Through the world’s most extensive beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the company’s beverages at a rate of over 1.9 billion servings per day.

Note that the company also owns 16% of Monster Beverage Corp. (NASDAQ: MNST), which continues to deliver strong financial results.

Bank of America has a Buy rating and a target price of $80.

Consumer Staples Are Exploding Higher in 2026: Buy 5 High-Yielding Dividend Kings Now

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Shares of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) lost 7.39% over the past month after gaining 6.15% the month prior. That brings the stock’s one-year gain to 10.47%. Since hitting its 2025 low on April 4, BAC is up more than 51%. When the company reported Q3 earnings on Oct. 15, 2025, it beat on earnings and revenue expectations, with EPS of $1.06 topping forecasts of 95 cents, and revenue of $28.09 billion — an 11% year-over-year increase — higher than analysts’ expectations for $27.5 billion.

Since its Depression-era roots in San Francisco, Bank of America has weathered close to a century of wars and financial upheavals to rise as one of the top financial institutions in the US, ranking #2 behind JP Morgan Chase by asset size. Bank of America’s massive AUM heft made it a $45 billion “too big to fail” TARP bailout recipient during the 2008 subprime banking meltdown. It also acquired Wall Street investment banking stalwart Merrill-Lynch as a kicker. CEO Brian Moynihan has ruthlessly slashed operations to focus on growing assets under management with lower overhead.

24/7 Wall St. has analyzed the stock, industry, sector and the macro environment to forecast where shares of Bank of America could be heading over the next five years.

Bank of American (BAC) Recent Stock Success

After reaching its five-year high of $49.18 per share in January 2022, Bank of America has struggled to attain that level again. Efforts to climb higher had been thwarted, but after bottoming in late October 2023, the stock has rallied back gaining nearly 107% through the end of January 2026.

Regardless, investors are much more concerned with future stock’s performance over the next one, five and 10 years. While most Wall Street analysts will calculate 12-month forward projections, it’s clear that nobody has a consistent crystal ball, and plenty of unforeseen circumstances can render even near-term projections irrelevant. 24/7 Wall St. aims to present some farther-looking insights based on Bank of America’s own numbers, along with business and market development information that may be of help to our readers’ own research.

Key Drivers for Bank of America’s Stock in the Future

1. Interest Sensitive Balance Sheet: The Federal Reserve’s Fed Funds rate hikes have boosted BAC’s net interest income (NII), but negatively impacted the stock price. Rate cuts might temporarily help lending and mortgage finance, but any renewed inflation signs will be red flags and could trigger further problems.

2. Net Interest Income: The rise in NII due to higher interest rates and corresponding robust loan interest rate growth has been a critical factor for that segment, but at the cost of higher default rates and lower transaction volumes.

3. Branch Growth: Expanding financial centers and branches into currently untapped demographic markets is a part of Bank of America’s “local” growth strategy. Its Branch Expansion agenda aims to have a presence in every state. The physical presence results in a 100% increase in digital sales, and looks to expand its 3,800 branches.

4. Technology: Improved digital offerings and the use of AI and other customer service tools, can boost customer satisfaction and fees that could boost earnings.

5. Capital Deployment Strategies: Bank of America’s dividend increases and share repurchase plans reflect a strong capital position, attractive to dividend hawk-oriented investors. 

Bank of America (BAC) Stock Prediction for 2026

The current Wall Street consensus, median one-year price target for Bank of America is $61.56, which represents 18.33% potential upside from today’s share price. BAC receives a consensus “Strong Buy” rating from the 19 analysts covering the stock, with 15 assigning it as a “Buy,” four assigning it as a “Hold” and none assigning it as a “Sell.”

24/7 Wall St.‘s 2026 year-end price target for Bank of America is more conservative at $54.60, or 4.95% higher than today’s share price.

Bank of America (BAC) Stock Forecast 2026–2030 

By 2030, the Branch Expansion program should have met its targeted location goals, and all of them would be primed for using the latest and most sophisticated Bank of America digital financial tools. Bank of America Erica(c) digital assistant, Zelle, Venmo, proprietary digital payment systems, online brokerage and other virtual platforms would be fully implemented and income generating. 24/7 Wall St.’s price target for 2030 is $63.96 per share, representing a potential gain of 22.95% from the current share price.

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Bank stocks haven’t exactly been the darlings of income investors over the past few years, for understandable reasons. Between regional banking stress, interest rate uncertainty, and regular overhang, the sector has traded at a discount compared to the broader market while many investors were also looking elsewhere for better yields. However, it’s very possible that 2026 could be something of a turning point.

The setup going into this year favors banks in a way that wasn’t necessarily true even 12 months ago. Interest rates are now stabilizing, loan demand is recovering, and balance sheets across the sector have strengthened considerably. More importantly, especially for income-focused investors, many banks are now returning substantial capital to shareholders through both dividends and buybacks.

Consider that the combination of low payout ratios, growing dividends, and cheap valuations creates an interesting opportunity in the banking and financial sector that many investors might want to consider.

Why Banks Deserve Another Look

The financial sector tends to move in cycles, and right now, the stars seem to be aligned for banks to outperform in 2026. When rates were rising rapidly, banks faced margin compression as deposit costs caught up with loan yields, but this pressure is now easing. At the same time, net interest margins have stabilized at most major institutions, and the focus has shifted from survival mode back to growth and capital return.

What makes banks particularly interesting for dividend investors is their capital flexibility. Unlike REITs that must distribute most of their income, or utilities that carry heavy debt loads, well-capitalized banks can choose how much they wish to return to shareholders. This means that dividend growth tends to be more deliberate and sustainable rather than forced or fragile.

The regulatory environment has also settled into a more predictable rhythm. Banks that have passed multiple stress tests, all while maintaining strong capital ratios, now have a clear path to increase dividends and repurchase shares. This is good news for investors who want income that grows over time, and the combination of banks delivers between financial strength and capital return capacity is hard to ignore.

Bank of America

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) represents the large-cap anchor in any bank-focused dividend income strategy. Trading with a yield of 3.11%, the headline yield isn’t going to turn heads, but looking underneath the surface is something of a compelling story.

The annual dividend of $1.12 per share comes with a payout ratio of 28.35%, which is pretty conservative for a company of this size and profitability. The low payout ratio means Bank of America has significant room to raise its dividend without affecting earnings, and the company has already demonstrated this commitment with growth of 8% and a streak of 12 consecutive years of increases.

What really sets Bank of America apart is its shareholder yield of 5.33%, which combines with a 3.21% buyback yield. The bank is actively reducing its share count while raising its dividend, which means existing shareholders are capturing more of the company’s earnings over time. For an investor holding 1,000 shares, the current dividend produces $1,120 annually, but this number has been growing at a pace that meaningfully outpaces inflation.

Between growth potential, its buyback program, and scale and stability, Bank of America is a standout piece in any portfolio.

U.S. Bancorp

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) offers something of a different profile than Bank of America, trading a higher yield for more modest growth. At 3.82% dividend yield and a $2.08 annual dividend, US Bancorp offers more immediate income for investors who need cash flow today rather than tomorrow.

The payout ratio of 46.69% is higher than Bank of America’s but still sits comfortably within sustainable territory. US Bancorp has raised its dividend for the last 15 consecutive years, demonstrating the kind of consistency that income investors rely on. The dividend growth rate of 3.03% is slower than some peers, but it has been steady and dependable through all kinds of economic conditions.

US Bancorp’s shareholder yield of 3.87% is almost entirely driven by the dividend rather than buybacks, which reflects a different capital allocation philosophy. The bank prioritizes direct cash returns over share repurchases. For investors who prefer dividends in hand rather than hoping buybacks translate into share price appreciation, this approach has clear appeal. An investor with 1,000 shares of US Bancorp would collect roughly $2,080 annually in dividends, and if you can pick up even more shares, this number rises as well.

Webster Financial

Webster Financial (NYSE:WBS) represents something of a regional bank opportunity in this group with a 2.84% dividend yield and a $1.60 annual dividend. The good news is that Webster Financial offers something that larger banks do not in that it has exposure to a faster-growing segment of the banking industry with more room to expand.

Regional banks like Webster Financial often fly under the radar of institutional investors, which can create valuation opportunities. The payout ratio of 29.83% is among the lowest in the sector, signaling that management is retaining substantial earnings to fund growth while still returning meaningful capital to shareholders.

The shareholder yield of 4.08% combines the dividend with a 1.60% buyback yield, showing that Webster Financial is actively repurchasing shares alongside its dividend payments. This dual approach to capital return benefits shareholders in multiple ways, most importantly, providing income today while increasing ownership stake over time.

Webster Financial’s concentration in the Northeast also gives it commercial opportunities in plenty of commercial real estate, small business lending, and consumer banking in economically diverse markets.

The post Why Bank Stocks Could Surprise Investors in 2026—3 Dividend Plays to Consider appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Summary:

To ring in 2026, our 24/7 Wall St. Analysts Eric Bleeker and Austin Smith are counting down 12 trends for AI investors to watch in 2026.

The first trend the two will be discussing is the AI-driven “memory explosion” that has been emerging as a core investment theme as inference, larger context windows, and reasoning models dramatically increase demand for memory and storage.

“As inference rises, so will memory and storage demand,” Bleeker explains. “What you have to do is you have to hold the model weights in high bandwidth memory, which creates that incredible need for high bandwidth memory.”

High-bandwidth memory has become critical because AI model weights must reside close to compute, making memory a dominant cost and potential bottleneck in AI systems.

Bleeker explains that going forward, semiconductor equipment companies are expected to benefit as industry investment ramps up to alleviate these memory and manufacturing constraints.

As Smith notes, “One of the things that’s happening with AI is that commodities are suddenly becoming precious. Memory was always just a commodity in tech. Same with copper, energy – now they’re all becoming precious inputs.”

The AI Investor Podcast Is Your Number Source for AI News

This conversation was from our most recent episode of The AI Investor Podcast. It’s free to subscribe in your favorite podcast player and every episode we give updates and recommendations in a $500,000 portfolio filled with our top AI stock ideas.

We’ve recommended winning stock ideas like Lumentum (NASDAQ: LITE), which is up 286% since we first called it, and Credo (Nasdaq: CRDO), which is up 418%.

You can listen to our most recent episode in either Apple Podcasts or Spotify below:

Transcript:

Austin: I love this. So I love starting off with the 12 biggest trends, and this is a framework that has served the portfolio well. Right? Like one of your early trends was, was the AI infrastructure build out before a lot of people really appreciated the billions of dollars that were flowing into this, which then led you to many of your interconnect plays, right?

Which have been some of the best performers in the sector. So calling out these trends then allows us to tie different investments to them.

Theme one, memory explosion. So you’ve explained this to me a couple times and, and maybe you can give us just a quick primer for why the memory explosion is happening. And this is, this all comes down to inference, right? And context windows. Am I correct? Right. Like, as we leverage these LLMs more, we need greater memory to make greater use of them and they become more powerful as they’re their the as as they have to leverage more inference. Am I correct in that? Like, is that with the, the, the thesis here?

Eric Bleeker: Yeah, I mean, as there’s multiple dynamics to it. But you know, as inference rises, so will memory and storage demand. What you have to do is you have to hold the model weights in high bandwidth memory, which creates that incredible need for high bandwidth memory.

We saw that cross last year, and we looked at a lot of the growth in areas like reasoning and what that would do to memory demand. And that’s why we made that prediction about that being our top market for last year.

Now as we head into this next year, we have new dynamics as well. We’ve gone from AI being something that is at the frontier of early adopters to massive scale. We’ve got 800 million users a day of ChatGPT, Gemini is beyond 400 million, and we’re moving to new areas like image generation, still massive gains to come in video.

You could think about what happens to video as it becomes a larger and larger portion of social networks themselves. And then you think that all of this data needs to be stored somewhere, right?

So the way that Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) has framed it is that what we’ve seen so far in AI was the shovels – GPUs – and now we need to build the warehouses to store the gold. That’s the storage device and hardware side.

So Austin, if we go back and go through some of the basics – people buy a computer and they have memory in it, but they might not know what these acronyms are. What we have is DRAM, which is all about data execution.

The actual models – the weights – are stored in high-bandwidth memory, and about 40% of demand for DRAM now comes from AI. That’s been a severe ramp, which has led to escalating constraints.

I saw a headline the other day that the Stargate project alone is projected to consume 40% of all DRAM itself.

So Austin, if you’re a company like NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), number one, this memory cost explosion is a threat because the number one cost component of your systems is now memory itself. Also, it’s potentially a threat to the AI buildout because if memory gets too expensive or isn’t available, you won’t be able to build all of this.

What we saw—and as we go across each theme, you’re going to hear NVIDIA a lot because CES is happening right now – they unveiled BlueField-4, which is essentially a storage management system. It allows much more efficient offloading of memory tasks to NAND, which is a deeper, cheaper form of memory.

So what we’ve seen so far in 2026 is that eight out of the ten best-performing stocks in the entire market are memory-related.

Austin: This is the SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK)—up 30% in just a week, right?

Eric Bleeker: Correct.

Austin: Okay.

Eric Bleeker: And the reason is because SanDisk is the pure play for NAND – this type of memory that goes into solid-state drives. I think they were up 600% last year and now they’re already up 30%.

Last year, it was just seen as DRAM, and now we’re seeing an explosion across the entire memory stack.

Now Austin, here’s what I want to highlight. Memory itself is a giant risk to other stocks in your portfolio because if it gets too expensive, it puts pressure everywhere.

I saw some estimates that SanDisk could raise prices 50% quarter over quarter, maybe even 100%. That puts tremendous pressure on companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). I even saw that the next PlayStation – made by Sony Group (NYSE: SONY)—might be delayed because memory costs are so high.

What’s going to have to be the release valve is more semiconductor equipment to build more fabs, because memory companies held off investment after vicious cycles in the past.

Austin: Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) and SanDisk were basically a five-year dead zone for investor money.

Eric Bleeker: Yep.

Austin: One of the things that’s happening with AI is that commodities are suddenly becoming precious. Memory was always just a commodity in tech. Same with copper, energy – now they’re all becoming precious inputs.

AI has created such demand that these industries just aren’t built to scale this fast.

Eric Bleeker: Correct. Investing is about being ahead of the bottlenecks – and then understanding how a company like NVIDIA works around them.

That’s what we saw first with Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) and SK Hynix (OTC: HXSCF), and then it moved to companies like SanDisk.

This year, I’m focused on semiconductor equipment plays. We did Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) last year, which delivered phenomenal returns. We also did Camtek (NASDAQ: CAMT).

There are a lot of incentives to alleviate this bottleneck, and I think there’s still phenomenal growth ahead.

Austin: You bought Lam Research, Camtek, SK Hynix, and Micron in January of last year – two are up over 200%.

This memory explosion feels similar to optics. It’s not just exploding demand – it’s a transition to new technology, which creates real compounding if you’re in the right names.

The post 2026’s Biggest AI Trends: The Memory Explosion | MU Stock, SNDK Stock, SK Hynix, CAMT Stock appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates. 

Markets have no shortage of headlines or earnings to respond to this morning. Overall it appears stock sentiment is being dragged lower by financial stocks as big banks continue to unveil their Q4 results and Wall Street is not impressed. The resilient consumer didn’t disappoint over the early holiday shopping season, with November retail sales 0.6% vs. the prior month and surpassing economist estimates. Results were also buoyed by strong auto sales in the period. President Trump has set his sights on acquiring Greenland for what he described as the “purpose of national security.”

Netflix (Nasdaq; NFLX) stock is getting a bump today as the content streaming giant flexes by potentially overhauling its Warner Bros. offer to an all-cash deal. Separately, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) reportedly has been deepening its relationship with AI company Anthropic, doling out approximately $500 million per year on AI to support its solutions.

Here’s a look at where things stand as of morning trading:

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 49,121.06 Down 54.82 (-0.11%)
Nasdaq Composite: 23,553.45 Down 164.39 (-0.69%)
S&P 500: 6,933.49 Down 30.25 (-0.43%)

Market Movers

Wall Street banks are selling off after unveiling their Q4 performance. Despite beating analyst estimates on strong net interest income and stock market trading, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) stock is getting hammered, down 3.5% in early trading. Citi (NYSE: C) is managing a fractional gain despite profit pangs. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) also reported Q4 results, missing on revenue while sending the stock spiraling by a steep 4.1%.

Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang is not shying away from the Google/Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) effect, posting on social media that “Alphabet and NVIDIA are expanding their decade-long partnership to advance agentic AI, robotics, drug discovery, and more.”

The post Live Nasdaq Composite: Markets See Glass Half Empty amid Weakened Sentiment appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.

Following a slightly lower than predicted rise in the Consumer Price Index yesterday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that the Producer Price Index likewise rose less than expected in December.

By this measure, the annual inflation rate in December was 3%, and core inflation (which doesn’t count food and energy prices) rose at a 3.5%. Both these numbers were higher than the rises in the CPI, however. Month-on-month, the PPI rose 0.2%, less than the predicted 0.3%.

The U.S. Department of Commerce also reported on changes in retail sales in December this morning. Those rose 0.6% versus November, better than the 0.4% increase economists had predicted.

In general, the data seems mixed for investors. While less bad than expected, producer costs are rising more than the prices consumers, which could hurt corporate profits. On the other hand, sales are continuing to grow — perhaps because consumers aren’t yet feeling the full weight of the inflation that companies are feeling.

The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) opened 0.4% lower in response to the news.

Banking news

Not all the news today is bad. Megabanks and S&P 500 component companies Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) both reported earnings beats this morning.

Citigroup’s earnings of $1.81 were eleven cents better than expected, although revenue for the quarter was only $19.9 billion, missing analyst forecasts for $20.6 billion.

Bank of America beat on both top and bottom lines. Its earnings were two cents better than expected at $0.98 per share, and its Q4 revenue came in at $28.4 billion, $850 million more than the $27.55 billion predicted.

The post Stock Market Live January 14: S&P 500 (VOO) Falls After Inflation, Sales Reports appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

1. Fed Independence Under Fire

The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell escalated into an unprecedented institutional crisis, drawing condemnation from former Fed chairs Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan. Powell called the probe, ostensibly focused on comments about a building renovation project, a “pretext” to win presidential influence over interest rates. Gold surged to record highs above $420 and the dollar weakened as investors hedged against potential erosion of central bank independence. “Gold is no longer moving solely as a hedge against inflation or dollar weakness, but increasingly as protection against geopolitical instability,” one analyst noted. Precious metals jumped sharply for the week, with gold mining stocks rallying on safe-haven demand. One Reddit trader captured the sentiment: “We have a geopolitical shitstorm not seen since the Cold War. Unsustainable fiscal and monetary policy in most developed countries.”

2. JPMorgan Beats on Trading, Takes Apple Card Hit

JPMorgan (JPM) delivered adjusted earnings of $5.23 per share, beating the $5 estimate, as markets revenue climbed 17% on volatile trading conditions. Equity trading surged 40% driven by prime brokerage strength, while fixed income rose 7%. The bank took a $2.2 billion provision related to its agreement with Goldman Sachs to assume Apple’s credit card portfolio. Investment banking fees fell 5%, disappointing analysts expecting stronger dealmaking momentum. CEO Jamie Dimon noted “the U.S. economy has remained resilient” despite softening labor markets. JPM shares dipped 2.42% for the week despite the earnings beat, while other major banks showed mixed performance as the sector digested the Fed independence crisis and its implications for monetary policy.

3. CPI Data Lands Flat, Rate Cut Pause Expected

December CPI data showed prices edging up 0.3% for the month and 2.7% year-over-year, matching November’s reading and economist expectations. The report arrives as the Fed prepares for its January 27-28 meeting, where policymakers are widely expected to pause interest rate cuts after the labor market stabilized and inflation remained sticky. Fed officials have conveyed “little urgency” for further rate reductions. The data was complicated by October’s government shutdown, which artificially depressed rental cost measures in November. With inflation neither accelerating meaningfully nor cooling rapidly, the Fed faces a delicate balancing act—made more complex by the political pressure campaign targeting Powell.

4. Trump’s Iran Tariff Threat Rattles Trade

President Trump announced 25% tariffs “effective immediately” on any country doing business with Iran, potentially affecting major trading partners including China and India. The move injects fresh uncertainty into US-China trade negotiations and threatens to disrupt corporate supply chains. China remains one of Iran’s largest trading partners, making the tariff threat particularly significant for Chinese e-commerce giants. Despite the overhang, Alibaba (BABA) rallied 6.43% for the week to $166.31, up 102% over the past year, while other Chinese tech stocks showed resilience. The strength suggests investors view the tariff rhetoric as negotiating posture rather than immediate policy.

5. Venezuela’s Post-Maduro Market Explosion

Venezuelan stocks surged 130% to record highs following the ouster of President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, with the benchmark Indice Bursatil de Capitalizacion rallying on optimism about normalized international relations and reopened oil markets. The dramatic reversal could reshape global energy supply dynamics, particularly for US oil majors positioned to participate in Venezuela’s rehabilitation. Exxon Mobil (XOM) edged down 1.06% for the week to $124.03, while other major energy producers showed muted reactions as investors await concrete policy changes. One Reddit post titled “Trump hands Oil rebuild to US Giants” drew 1,276 upvotes and 423 comments, signaling retail enthusiasm for the sector’s long-term prospects despite near-term uncertainty.

6. Semiconductor Split: Memory Surges, AI Chips Pause

SK Hynix announced a $13 billion investment to build an advanced chip packaging plant in South Korea, underscoring structural demand for AI memory chips amid persistent supply constraints. The news helped propel memory chip stocks to strong weekly gains, with the sector benefiting from HBM (high bandwidth memory) shortages. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA) traded flat to slightly down at $184.94, off 0.84% year-to-date despite maintaining 32% gains over 12 months. The divergence reflects investor rotation toward memory chip makers after AI accelerator stocks consolidated following massive 2024-2025 rallies. “TSMC fourth-quarter revenue jumps 20% to $33.1B, beats forecasts on AI chip demand,” noted one widely-discussed Reddit post, confirming the sector’s underlying strength.

7. Retail’s Precious Metals Euphoria

Precious metals rallied sharply, with one trader posting: “5 days ago I decided to stop pretending I understood tech earnings and instead YOLO into silver. Not AI. Not EVs. Not some pre-revenue penny stock with vibes. Just shiny rock.” The post detailed precious metals ETF and mining stock call options “printing” as the trade became retail’s consensus macro play. Another analysis noted silver has returned 1,321% over 30 years versus the S&P 500’s 1,051% price-only return. Gold (GLD) climbed 8.53% for the month to $422.23, while sophisticated options traders noted elevated implied volatility and rich put premiums in precious metals options. The surge reflects not just inflation hedging but growing concerns about institutional stability and geopolitical fragmentation.

The post What You Need to Know for January 13, 2026 appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.

Federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice appear to be seeking a grand jury indictment of the Federal Reserve and its Chairman Jerome Powell. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) opened 0.5% lower on the news.

On Sunday, the DOJ announced an investigation into the Fed’s $2.5 billion project to renovate its office buildings in Washington, D.C., implying the funds may have been misused. CNN notes that the renovations include “removing asbestos and upgrading electrical and ventilation systems.”

Powell quickly responded with a press release asserting the investigation is less about financial misconduct and more about political influence of Fed policy-making: “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” accusing the Administration of attempting to influence Fed interest rate policy (i.e., demanding the Fed lower interest rates more, and more often).

Lending credence to his argument is the fact that President Trump has on more than one occasion threatened to fire Powell for… not lowering interest rates enough.

More interest rates news

And speaking of interest rates, President Trump is also calling for banks to cap interest rates on credit card debt at 10% for one year.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. But banks set interest rates to cover their risk of loss. If they cannot charge enough to cover their risk, they’re likely to risk less — which is to say, they’ll lend less. That could turn into a drag on the economy — yet another reason for investors to feel pessimistic today.

[select fisher pitch]

The post Stock Market Live January 12: Justice Investigates Fed Chair Jerome Powell, S&P 500 (VOO) Drops appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

The conventional wisdom says that lower interest rates will hurt banks and much of the financial sector as net interest margins compress, lending profits shrink, and dividend growth stalls. This narrative isn’t wrong for every bank, but it’s incomplete, as lower rates can create opportunities for financial companies that are not solely dependent on traditional lending spreads. 

Advisory firms might see M&A activity surge when financing gets cheaper, while regional banks can benefit from refinancing volume and loan growth as costs fall. Large money center banks can gain from improved bond portfolios and stronger consumer spending as mortgage and auto payments become more affordable. 

Suffice to say, the financial stocks positioned to benefit from falling rates aren’t the ones maximizing net interest incomes, they are the ones built around capital markets activity, fee-based revenue, and balance sheet optimization. Three names stand out as particularly well-positioned heading into 2026, each offering dividend income with meaningful growth potential as the rate environment shifts in their favor. 

Why Lower Rates Aren’t Bad News for Every Financial Stock

The blanket assumption that lower rates hurt all financial stocks ignores how diverse this sector has become. Traditional commercial banks that rely heavily on lending spreads absolutely face pressure when rates fall, but that’s only one part of the financial ecosystem. 

Investment banks and advisory firms benefit from cheaper financing costs that fuel M&A activity and capital raises. When companies can borrow at lower rates, they’re more likely to pursue acquisitions, restructure debt, and or go public. This activity bump generates more fees that have nothing to do with net interest margins. 

Regional banks with strong deposit franchises can actually improve profitability in a lower rate environment by reducing what they pay depositors while maintaining lending volumes. If deposit costs fall faster than loan yields, margins can stabilize or even improve, particularly for banks that weren’t aggressively competing for deposits during the high-rate period. Lower rates also tend to benefit bond portfolios that banks hold for liquidity and regulatory purposes. As rates fall, the market value of those bonds rises, which can offset some of the pressure on lending income. 

Bank of America: The Deposit Advantage

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) might not look like an obvious dividend growth play at first glance. The yield sits at just 1.99% with a $1.12 annual dividend paid quarterly, but it’s the 8% dividend growth rate over the past 12 years that tells a different story, and the 29.50% payout ratio that leaves plenty of room for continued increases. 

What sets Bank of America apart in a lower rate environment is its massive deposit base, as the bank holds over $1.9 trillion in deposits, which gives it a cheap, stable funding that doesn’t require paying competitive rates to attract. When rates fall, Bank of America can reduce deposit costs while maintaining its lending business, which supports margins better than competitors. 

Bank of America also benefits from increased consumer activity when rates fall. Lower mortgage rates drive refinancing and home purchase volume, which generates fee income, and credit card spending tends to accelerate when consumers feel less pressure from debt service costs. Bank of America’s card portfolio is one of the largest in the country. 

PJT Partners: M&A Activity Benefits Directly From Lower Rates

PJT Partners (NYSE:PJT) operates in a different part of the financial sector, providing advisory services and focusing on M&A advice, restructuring, and strategic consulting, which means its revenue is driven by deal activity rather than interest rate spreads. 

The current yield of 0.56% with $1.00 annual dividend isn’t going to attract traditional income investors, but the business model is what matters here. When interest rates fall, the cost of financing an acquisition drops, which makes M&A more attractive for corporate boards. Deal activity tends to surge in the 6-12 months following rate cuts as companies take advantage of cheaper debt to pursue strategic transactions. 

PJT Partners’ shareholder yield of 19.96% reveals another layer to the story. The firm returns capital aggressively through buybacks, which reduces share count and supports earnings per share growth even if revenue stays flat. The 15.30% payout ratio indicates that the dividend is easily covered, and with buybacks accounting for nearly 20% of market capitalization, total shareholder returns are significantly higher than the dividend yield alone suggests. 

First Horizon: Regional Banking With Rate Sensitivity

First Horizon Corporation (NYSE:FHN) is a regional bank with meaningful exposure to the Southeast, where economic growth has outpaced national averages for the past several years. The stock yields 2.44% with a $0.60 annual dividend paid quarterly, and the 36.26% payout ratio provides a substantial cushion for dividend growth. 

Regional banks like First Horizon face different dynamics than large money center banks when rates fall. Lower rates can stimulate lending volume in markets where growth is already strong, particularly for commercial real estate, small business lending, and consumer mortgages. First Horizon’s footprint in Tennessee, North Carolina, and surrounding states positions it to capture that activity. 

The bank also benefits from improved asset quality, as lower rates reduce debt service burdens for borrowers. Credit losses tend to decline when businesses and consumers can refinance expensive debt, which supports profitability even if net interest margins compress slightly. 

The post 3 Financial Sector Dividend Stocks Ready to Dominate in a Lower Rate Environment appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..