Cover Story:
-Now more than ever, the global economy runs through Texas. The state’s low taxes, light regulation, abundant energy and growing population have attracted Oracle, Tesla, Caterpillar and dozens of other major companies, helping Texas overtake California with 57 Fortune 500 headquarters. AI could accelerate the boom because Texas is rapidly adding both gas-fired and renewable power for data centers. But its hypercapitalist experiment is encountering limits: worsening water shortages threaten growth, while looser corporate-governance rules designed to challenge Delaware risk triggering a nationwide “race to the bottom” in shareholder protections.
CEO Interview:
-No update
Tech Trader:
-It was another busy week of earnings for companies caught up in the artificial-intelligence trade. Barron’s argues that tech narratives are flipping rapidly: Palantir surged 29% after accelerating revenue growth established it as an AI winner, while Atlassian jumped 35%. Sandisk, Western Digital, AMD and Datadog were punished despite respectable results as expectations outran guidance. The standout opportunity may be AppLovin, whose shares have halved this year as growth decelerated. Yet Wall Street still expects roughly 30% annual sales growth in 2027-28, while its valuation has fallen below the S&P 500 multiple
The Trader:
-Snap stock popped after it reported earnings, but soon crackled as the gains disappeared. Snap reported 495M daily users, up 5%, but users fell 7% in North America and 2% in Europe, while growth came from markets generating just $1 in revenue per user versus $10.26 in North America. Barron’s is also skeptical of its $2,195 Specs augmented-reality glasses, questioning whether Snap can compete successfully in hardware against Apple and Meta. The conclusion is emphatic: stay away from the stock.
-If you’re worried about inflation, well-worn investing wisdom suggests buying gold. New research argues that conventional wisdom is wrong: gold’s correlation with inflation is just 0.07, and adding it to a traditional stock-and-bond portfolio does little to mitigate inflation risk. The persistence of gold’s reputation may instead reflect investor psychology, including herding, anchoring and confirmation bias. Barron’s concedes the metal retains an extraordinary hold over investors, but the evidence for owning it specifically as an inflation hedge is surprisingly weak
Features:
-Dave lost 97% of its value before a 1-for-32 reverse split. The fintech has since staged a spectacular recovery, making it a timely cautionary tale as SPACs roar back into fashion. Barron’s argues that the renewed enthusiasm risks reviving the excesses of the previous SPAC boom, when easy money and optimistic projections produced huge losses. Dave ultimately built a viable business, but its brutal journey shows why investors should distinguish genuine operating improvement from the speculative machinery surrounding SPAC deals.
-Positive readouts in cancer and cardiac drug trials could keep the biotech rally going. Barron’s sees potentially important catalysts ahead for Merck, Moderna, Summit Therapeutics and other drugmakers as investors await clinical results capable of reshaping multibillion-dollar markets. After a long period of weak sentiment, biotech and pharma stocks have been recovering, and successful late-stage trials could extend the advance. The opportunity comes with the sector’s familiar binary risk: disappointing trial data can erase billions in market value almost instantly.
European Trader:
-Even as the European Union has enough problems with the White House, it just waved a red flag in front of U.S. President Donald Trump on a hot-button trade issue. Brussels fined Alphabet’s Google €890M under the Digital Markets Act, following an earlier €4.1B judgment, while Meta and Apple have also faced EU action. Europe sees digital regulation as a sovereignty issue, but the confrontation could threaten transatlantic trade. Trump has promised retaliation, and Washington could use Section 301 tariffs against what it considers discriminatory European regulation, potentially jeopardizing the EU’s roughly €200B goods surplus with the U.S.
Emerging Markets:
-Barron’s warns that a powerful El Niño could provide the next inflationary shock, disrupting harvests across Asia, Latin America and Africa and pushing up prices for food and other commodities. Emerging markets are particularly vulnerable because food carries greater weight in consumer-price indexes, potentially forcing central banks to delay rate cuts or even tighten policy. The effects could also spill into developed economies through higher import costs. The column additionally examines Washington’s extraordinary intervention to support the yen, mounting AI cybersecurity risks, and how Kyivstar has managed to keep Ukraine’s communications infrastructure operating through more than four years of war.
Commodities:
-MP Materials had a busy quarter as it continues to morph itself from a mining company into a supplier of products for critical U.S. manufacturing operations. Sales nearly doubled to $108.5M, while Nd-Pr production rose 41% and sales volumes 127%. MP is shifting downstream from concentrates into oxides, metals and magnets, with shipments to General Motors expected late this year and Apple in 2027. A new aerospace-defense contract for gadolinium broadens the strategy further. Crucially, Nd-Pr prices have moved toward the Pentagon-backed price floor, suggesting China’s ability to dictate global rare-earth pricing is weakening.
Streetwise:
-Jack Hough observes that Coca-Cola is clobbering PepsiCo, helped by Coke Zero’s rapid growth, market-share gains across several soda categories and a decade-long transformation into an asset-light marketing company. Coca-Cola trades at 26 times projected earnings versus 16 for PepsiCo, whose Frito-Lay and Quaker businesses leave it exposed to weakening snack demand, potentially aggravated by GLP-1 drugs. Hough prefers Coke if forced to choose, but thinks its valuation is rich and Pepsi’s food exposure problematic. For now, he quips, the best Big Soda stake might be “zero.”