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An IPO rocket and a new Fed gave investors plenty to think about. Plus: Our latest Financial Flashback, to the options-dating scandal 20 years ago.

It was an eventful second quarter for stock-fund investors, including the SpaceX initial public offering, an oil shock, an Iran peace rally at one point, and the first Fed-policy meeting under the central bank’s new chairman.

But through it all, it was investors’ faith in tech stocks—those tied to artificial intelligence, in particular—that kept the market humming. In the end, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite posted their best quarters since 2020, hitting record highs, and the Dow closed the month at a record as well.

The average U.S.-stock mutual fund or exchange-traded fund posted a total return of 17.1% for the quarter, pulling the funds into the black for the year to date, at 13.4%. The funds posted a total return of 1.1% in June itself. (See Mutual-Fund Yardsticks table.)

International-stock funds—which were outpacing their U.S. counterparts earlier in the year—have dropped back in the fund Olympics. They were up an average 10.9% in the quarter, to leave them with a year-to-date gain of 10.6%.

Many analysts wonder whether the AI-tied stocks can continue to monopolize investors’ attentions.

Saira Malik, chief investment officer at Nuveen, compares the situation to what happens when a driver instinctively lowers the volume on the car speakers when trying to concentrate on street signs. Noise makes it harder to concentrate. “Today’s investment environment is noisy, too,” she says. “Geopolitical gyrations, volatile short-term economic data and the incessant thrum of prediction markets all contribute to the cacophony,” to the point that many investors feel compelled to stick to the AI trade, she says.

Malik, however, makes the case for not lumping all AI stocks in the same basket, and looking to a broader mix of asset classes such as alternative credit and municipal bonds.

Toward the end of the quarter, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at Kevin Warsh’s first policy meeting as the central bank’s chairman. But Fed officials signaled rates could rise by the end of the year to fight inflation.

Bond funds rose for the quarter. Funds focused on investment-grade debt (the most common type of fixed-income fund) posted an average total return of 0.8%, to put the year-to-date gain at 0.70%.

Investors voted with their wallets as the market rose in the second quarter.

Based on Investment Company Institute estimates, investors added a net $103.1 billion to U.S.-stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the second quarter. They weren’t quite as enthusiastic about non-U.S. funds, despite that category’s revival. Those funds attracted a net $26.5 billion.

Bond funds took in a net $231.5 billion, according to the ICI estimates.

It’s all a turnaround from last year and from the first quarter of 2026, when investors were pulling back from U.S.-stock funds. In the first quarter, they sent a net $105.1 billion to international-stock funds, more than double that to bond funds, but withdrew an estimated $23.7 billion from U.S.-stock funds.

Companies say electronics, sensors and engineering will allow the robots to work alongside people

Humanoid robots marched through Chicago’s convention center last week, delivering snacks, shaking hands and busting out dance moves.

But recent viral mishaps elsewhere—a humanoid dancing uncontrollably at a restaurant, another kicking a small child during a performance in China—underscore a big challenge for robot makers aiming to put them to work in factories and warehouses: How can they ensure a humanoid doesn’t hurt a human?

Makers of humanoids, which have humanlike attributes to perform jobs a person might do, say they’re unaware of anyone who has been seriously hurt or killed by one of the robots. But the machines are getting bigger and heavier, approaching 200 pounds in some cases. At that size, people in the industry worry about the damage that could ensue if a bipedal robot loses power.

“If you do that with a humanoid, it can fall over and crush you,” said Michele Silva of the functional safety engineering firm Reynolds & Moore.

De-risking humanoid workers may be key to the sector’s aggressive growth goals. Right now, humanoid makers are raising big money. Agility, an Oregon-based company whose robots are already laboring within a Plexiglas cage at an auto-parts factory, recently announced plans to go public at a valuation of $2.5 billion.

While the machines are just starting to enter workplaces such as factories and warehouses, some companies plan to eventually deploy them in people’s homes. Morgan Stanley researchers project that a billion humanoids will be in place around the world by 2050, with the total market worth $7.5 trillion.

Traditional industrial robots such as welders, palletizers or loaders are “deterministic,” meaning they adhere to a fixed set of rules and produce a constant result. Humanoids tasked with performing multiple jobs use artificial intelligence and are “probabilistic,” meaning they operate on statistical likelihoods, not certainty.

That will require the robots to have layers of safeguards before they can work shoulder to shoulder with human beings. Companies that gathered at the Automate conference in Chicago said many of those are already taking shape, beginning with emergency stop buttons and going all the way down to the microchip level.

Chip designer Nvidia announced a new safety system for humanoids underpinned by its cutting-edge Blackwell chips. Amit Goel, the company’s senior director of robotics and edge-AI ecosystem, said the system can interpret sensor data about potential hazards, stopping the robot when conditions aren’t safe and allowing it to keep working when they are.

“The safety brain and the functional brain need to talk to each other often and with much higher context,” he said. “We built that operating-system layer and the software stack so that you can run these two things together.”

Aside from their own sensors and cameras, humanoids can be governed by similar devices mounted in the workspace around them. Philadelphia-based Fort Robotics makes controllers and software that process information from multiple sources to let humanoids take nuanced actions, said Samuel Reeves, the company’s chief executive.

“It’s more complex data about, ‘I’ve recognized a person, they’re in this location, in this pose,’ and then making sure that the robot has that information and can trust it to a level where they can make safety decisions,” he said.

The possible consequences of a humanoid robot losing stability have led an expert panel at the International Organization for Standardization, which creates safety guidelines, to examine the subject. It expects to publish a standard by mid-2028.

Humanoid makers, meanwhile, are coming up with their own solutions.

Neura Robotics, a German company, makes a two-legged, 176-pound model it calls 4NE1. Founder David Reger said it has been engineered to minimize the risk to people nearby. If the robot detects a problem, such as a knee joint that stops responding, it will try to recover its balance; if it can’t, he said, it will collapse onto itself like an imploding building.

Some humanoid makers have nullified the issue by eschewing legs. Dexmate, based in the Bay Area, is developing robots that travel on wheeled bases and have long arms that can reach items on warehouse racks. Co-founder Yuzhe Qin said the battery and electronics go into the base, which gives it a low center of mass.

“This kind of ratio makes it super stable,” he said. “It will not fall.”

California-based Noble Machines contends that putting a robot instead of a person into a hazardous environment can be the greatest safety feature of all. It’s developing a two-legged humanoid—the model it brought to the conference wore sneakers—that is designed for construction sites, factories, mines and other rugged surroundings.

“Operating close to toxic chemicals, operating inches away from heavy machinery, is very dangerous for people,” said co-founder and chief executive Wei Ding.

Brad Porter, founder and chief executive of Cobot, said the risks from humanoids need to be kept in perspective. His company is developing wheeled robots with arms that can push carts in hospitals or sort parts in a factory. They move at walking speed and don’t possess shattering grip strength.

“We don’t need to impart a lot of energy into this space,” he said. “We’re not trying to crush watermelons or anything.”

The billionaire hedge fund manager has a history of making big bets. Not all of them have come off

Hedge fund manager Michael Platt is used to winning. His appetite for risk and ability to take outsized bets has helped make him one of the industry’s most successful traders and among the UK’s richest people.

But a high-stakes battle against the country’s tax authorities has ended in defeat after the UK Supreme Court this week dismissed an appeal by his family office BlueCrest Capital Management that could cost it £200mn.

BlueCrest has claimed the ruling shows “the UK is no longer a serious contender” as a place to do business because firms cannot rely on HMRC guidance to structure their tax affairs. Platt himself has lived in various tax-friendly jurisdictions, including Geneva, Jersey and the United Arab Emirates, and moved the group’s headquarters to Guernsey in 2010 days before the UK government’s new top rate of income tax took effect.

Hedge fund executives and lawyers acknowledge that firms will have to examine how their current arrangements measure up against the Supreme Court ruling. But they also agree on one other thing: BlueCrest used a particularly aggressive structure not widely replicated among its peers. 

“[BlueCrest’s] positioning is on the more aggressive side compared to what we see in the market,” said one lawyer who helps set up these partnerships. A hedge fund executive at a multibillion-pound firm called the BlueCrest set-up “crazy”. Another said it was “wacky so people never really followed suit”.

BlueCrest has a colourful history, even if the Preston-born trader Platt has spent years seeking to avoid the spotlight. BlueCrest did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Platt co-founded BlueCrest at the turn of the millennium after leaving JPMorgan Chase and over the next decade built it into one of Europe’s largest hedge funds.

In part, that was thanks to the firm’s superior returns during the financial crisis. But it also went to considerable efforts to ensure its traders were well rewarded.

One way it did that was through a so-called partner incentivisation plan, set up in 2008 to retain top traders. The scheme redirected part of BlueCrest partners’ profits to a corporate entity, which paid the corporation tax, before later returning the money as deferred “special capital”, reducing the traders’ tax bills.

That arrangement also attracted the attention of tax authorities, and in 2023, the firm lost a legal fight when a tax tribunal agreed with HMRC that the money paid back to the partners was taxable income. Platt and BlueCrest later sued their tax lawyer in that case for professional negligence.

A second way BlueCrest incentivised its traders in its earlier years was by setting up an internal fund for employees, called BSMA.

Like many hedge funds, BlueCrest pulled in money from large institutional investors who by 2013 had helped its assets grow to over $36bn.

But the firm faced increasingly dissatisfied clients after a run of poor performance, a feeling that was exacerbated when they discovered many of the top traders had been moved to BSMA while external money was managed by an underperforming algorithm.

BlueCrest was later ordered to pay $170mn to former investors by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and $101mn by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority for failing to disclose the conflict of interest, though it did not accept any wrongdoing.

By 2015 BlueCrest had haemorrhaged billions of dollars and Platt, frustrated by the restrictions imposed by external investors, announced he was returning outside money.

This marked a turning point for the firm both in terms of performance and his influence over the business with the fund now largely managing his own wealth. 

BlueCrest has posted average annualised returns of more than 50 per cent since. But Platt’s outsized role at the firm would later become a problem for BlueCrest’s traders in the dispute with HMRC that the firm lost this week.

There are usually tax advantages — both for individuals and firms — of being deemed a self-employed partner rather than an employee. To stop employers shirking on their taxes by pretending employees are partners, the UK government introduced rules in 2014 which set out the test for whether someone is really a “salaried member” instead of a true partner of a limited liability partnership.

BlueCrest had more than 80 members in its partnership, an unusually large number that included 48 portfolio managers. It tried to argue that they were partners, because they shared in the LLP’s profits — and losses — as true partners do, and because they had significant influence over the LLP’s affairs.

The first problem for BlueCrest’s traders was that, according to the court, most of their pay was based on the profit they made from their own trading books — “discretionary allocations” — not how the firm did overall.

“Trying to push discretionary payments through the partnership tax breaks was always going to fail,” said another senior hedge fund executive.

The second problem was Platt. “Essentially we have one client, which is Mike,” Nicholas Moore, a former portfolio manager at BlueCrest, said in evidence provided to the court during the latest HMRC dispute. “He’s able to move the goalposts . . . he’s the top of the organisation.”

That made it difficult to argue that dozens of people could have a significant influence over the firm.

“The nature of the business, particularly following the changes around Mike Platt’s influence, is not a factor that is going to be out there in a majority of situations,” said the lawyer.

The Supreme Court knocked BlueCrest back on both counts.

The judgment brought another round of unwanted publicity to a man who has spent the best part of two decades cultivating a reputation as one of the industry’s most private figures — with one notable exception.

Platt became the talk of Wall Street and a viral sensation in 2019 when he was filmed in a spoof video bragging about his wealth to a taxi driver in New York. “I’m the highest-earning person in the world of finance,” he told the driver.

Six years later, the billionaire has found there is one opponent his firm has struggled to beat: HMRC.

Wimbledon: the luxury marketing platform

Wimbledon bosses always talk about the tricky job of balancing tennis heritage with the demands of the modern age.

When it comes to sponsorship, the oldest Grand Slam has sought what might be called “useful” commercial partners. So Rolex keeps the time during matches, Slazenger provides the balls, Evian keeps everyone hydrated and Vodafone provides on-site WiFi. The idea is to keep things understated, not flashy and gratuitous.

Players are also using Wimbledon in a similar way as they look to show off their own endorsements. As soon as he’s won a match, Novak Djokovic nips over to his racket bag to fish out his Hublot watch before pulling on his Lacoste blazer.

In her brief reprise on Centre Court this week, Serena Williams donned an outfit made of Nike’s Radical AirFlow material — a netlike fabric that actively cools the body during movement.

One can only speculate what the commercial value of seeing the 44-year-old back on the biggest stage in tennis was to Zepbound, the Williams-backed weight-loss drug (which has a list price of over $1,000 a month).

However, Aryna Sabalenka has so far left her Gucci handbag — a big talking point at the French Open — in the locker room.

It’s a far cry from the viewing experience at the World Cup, where sponsorship is aggressive and relentless. But the World Cup is mass market, where big consumer brands are looking to reach hundreds of millions of eyeballs all around the world to shift high-volume, low-margin goods like beer, fizzy drinks, laptops and airline tickets.

Wimbledon — and tennis more broadly — is more like that part of an international airport terminal where all the luxury brands have their boutiques. The engaged audience is relatively mass, but the actual customer base is less so.

That helps explain why financial services companies are getting in on it too. Hedge fund Blue Owl’s logo is now visible on dozens of players’ shirts and coaches’ caps across the four Grand Slams. Private equity firm General Atlantic recently hired Djokovic as an adviser and rival PE house EQT is now a sponsor of the ATP.

And so Wimbledon — and other big tennis events — have carved out their own little niche in the world of sport where companies can pitch their services to asset allocators, both domestic and institutional

The former air base that typifies modern F1

During the second world war, Silverstone was a Royal Air Force bomber base. Eight decades later, it draws the largest crowd on the Formula 1 calendar.

Over the course of four days culminating with the British Grand Prix on Sunday, Silverstone expects 565,000 spectators to pass through its gates.

That’s an increase from last year’s record-breaking attendance of 500,000. It’s a cumulative figure, meaning that fans who attend several days are counted more than once — but impressive nonetheless. It around the same number of people that go to Wimbledon, which is two weeks long.

Attendance has boomed since F1 clocked 4mn spectators across 20 races in 2017, the first year of Liberty Media’s ownership of the sport.

The US group has expanded the calendar to 24 races, with cumulative attendance of 6.75mn in 2025. New races in Las Vegas and Miami have helped to drive the surge, but the old guard at Silverstone have played their part too.

It’s all part of the bigger picture. Liberty Media wants hosts to think about more than racing.

Celebrities turn out in style. There are fan zones and the Silverstone Museum. Hospitality. Music every day, from DJ David Guetta to English singer-songwriter James Arthur. Courtesy of F1 partner Lego, the drivers will “race” a lap of the circuit in minicars made from the toy bricks before the main event.

But the business model has become riskier. All of the above comes at a cost, so the pressure is on the British Grand Prix to deliver. Around half Silverstone’s yearly revenue comes from the event. It is owned by the British Racing Drivers’ Club, a non-profit.

In its own words, “Because of its high fixed cost base, it is important for the group to minimise the risk of revenue falling short of expectations.”

To that end, the demand for tickets is a huge help. But the British Grand Prix wasn’t always booming.

When Bernie Ecclestone ruled F1, Silverstone’s place in the sport was in doubt. F1’s former supremo wasn’t averse to threatening to move the race to a new circuit.

Even after Liberty bought control of the sport’s commercial rights in 2017, the relationship was rocky.

You can read more about the turnaround under Silverstone boss Stuart Pringle in this piece, which explains why the British Grand Prix will stay on a former airfield until at least 2034.

The world’s top sportswear brand reported fourth-quarter earnings this week, and the struggles continue. Full-year revenue was flat, while profits jumped — but only due to a near $1bn tariff refund.

While North America is growing, Nike’s business in China — its second biggest market — continues to shrink at a rapid clip. Sales there in Q4 dropped 17 per cent year-on-year.

The company, under CEO Elliott Hill, is seeking to revamp its strategy in China. It is trimming the range of products it offers to online retailers and where those products are sold after being caught in a discounting doom loop that hammered margins at bricks-and-mortar stores. It wants to make more products designed specifically for a Chinese consumer too.

But cheaper, more nimble Chinese brands are on the front foot — and not just in their home market. Last month Li-Ning announced a 10-year deal, reportedly worth $400mn, with four-time NBA champion Stephen Curry. Meanwhile Anta opened its first US flagship store in Beverly Hills earlier this year, one block over from Rodeo Drive.

The market reaction to the results was positive. Shares are up more than 7 per cent this week. But that will be little comfort to investors. The stock is still down by a third in the past 12 months.