July 29, 2026

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Hey there. LeBron James, who officially signed with the Philadelphia 76ers this week, is reportedly considering living in NYC and commuting to Philly via helicopter.

Don’t be surprised if he makes his son, Bronny James, play for the 76ers, too. After all, he is a helicopter parent.

—Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Adam Epstein, Holly Van Leuven

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Investors panicking over AI spending
Private Claude chats showing up in Google search results
Apple overtaking Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company

Markets

Nasdaq

24,876.91

-0.22%

S&P

7,428.78

+0.21%

Dow

52,747.32

+1.03%

10-Year

4.604%

-4.0 bps

Bitcoin

$63,883.02

-1.57%

Coca-Cola

$88.31

+5.04%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Yesterday, stocks were like your parents’ honest review of your seventh-grade band recital: decidedly mixed. The Nasdaq fell, but the Dow jumped, as investors pivoted away from AI-related stocks (more on that below). Elsewhere, Coca-Cola rose after it boosted projections and said Diet Coke was “having its moment.”

DELL NOT WELL

Investors have the AI jitters again

Stylized photo of a Nasdaq ad on a building in Times Square, NYC. The photo is black and white except for the Nasdaq building, which is in bright red.

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Investors are once again worried that AI is on the verge of falling apart. The Nasdaq 100 briefly fell into correction territory yesterday, after several hyperscalers, chipmakers, and storage providers’ stocks sank, dragging down the rest of the tech-heavy index. It ultimately finished the day down by less than 1%, underscoring the industry’s constant whiplash as investors jump at every sound.

What happened: The sell-off started Tuesday in Asian markets, specifically Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, major memory manufacturers, each dropped by over 15%, while storage provider Kioxia fell by 18%. Korea’s Kospi index, often seen as an early barometer for US AI stocks, sank by more than 10%, and trading was briefly halted.

Then, on Tuesday morning stateside, US companies started dropping:

Memory company Micron fell by almost 9%, while semiconductor manufacturer Sandisk closed more than 14% in the red.
Despite massive AI server sales and lucrative new government contracts, Dell’s stock finished yesterday down over 8% (it’s still almost 200% this year).
The Dow closed up more than 500 points as investors rotated into industries that did not give them as much heebie-jeebies as AI.

The AI industry feels like it’s atop a loose rock pile…

...an awesome discovery for anyone under the age of 12, but a nightmare for companies trying to inspire legitimacy. One of the industry’s biggest fears is China gaining steam: Chinese chipmaker CXMT had a stellar IPO earlier this week, and cheaper models are increasingly rivaling US ones.

In addition to wanting to start seeing some returns on investment, investors are also nervous about the industry’s pattern of circular financing: Nvidia could potentially give OpenAI $250 billion in financial backstop to help the ChatGPT maker lease a $500+ billion Ohio data center.

Time will tell. Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft—which are collectively expected to spend trillions on AI over the next few years—report earnings this week. Investors will be listening intently to whether or not they plan to continue to increase spending, or if they’re pumping the brakes.—MM

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World

Tour de headlines

Alex Pantling/Getty Images

⚽ FIFA could allow private stakes in the World Cup. According to reports, FIFA is planning to form a $20 billion commercial arm to run the World Cup with private investors, including Josh Kushner, the brother of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The proposal was quickly met with pushback from the Union of European Football Associations, soccer’s governing body in Europe and the organization that runs the Champions League. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade—especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially,” the UEFA said in a statement. FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, have also been criticized for increasing ties to the Trump administration. Infantino said the proposal is about “the democratization of football worldwide.”

🔎 Shein says it’s under investigation by the FTC. The Chinese fast-fashion giant disclosed in documents related to its upcoming Hong Kong IPO that the Federal Trade Commission has opened a probe into its US dealings. Shein did not reveal what the investigation is about, but it said it was “actively cooperating” with the US agency and could ultimately settle. As CNBC reported, the FTC has previously gone after companies that engage in “dark patterns,” aka design tricks that get consumers to part with their money and data, which Shein has been accused of. The FTC declined to comment on CNBC’s report.

✈️ Air Force One weighed down Boeing’s earnings. The plane manufacturer reported a larger-than-expected loss for the second quarter yesterday, due to a $280 million charge for its Air Force One program, which has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Boeing was expected to deliver two aircraft to the US government by 2024, but now plans to do so in 2028. Still, it was not all bad for Boeing: The company increased revenue by 8% in Q2 thanks to strong sales of commercial planes, as it continues to recover from a series of scandals in 2024.—AE

reader poll

Do you think private investors should be allowed to purchase stakes in the FIFA World Cup?

Yes.
No.
Depends who the investors are.

GOING PUBLIC

Claude chats were showing up in Google searches

Illustration of a person typing on a laptop, having a conversation with Claude, but some of their chat messages are blowing off the screen into cyberspace.

Niv Bavarsky

Conversations with Claude that were intended to be private—some involving medical data and children’s phone numbers—were discovered in search engine results by Reddit users over the weekend.

How it happened: Users can create a shareable public link for Claude chats (much like you can with Google Docs), so friends or coworkers can view them. While a public Google Doc with your 80-page screenplay no one wants to read isn’t indexed for search, the Claude creations were.

Claude creator Anthropic told TechCrunch that those links only become public if they are posted where web crawlers can find them, like on a social media platform. Search engine companies had other explanations:

A Google spokesperson told Wired that it gives Anthropic and any website owner “clear controls” over whether web pages are crawled or indexed.
Microsoft’s Bing (it still exists) says that developers can use tags to block indexing. But when Wired reviewed the exposed Claude chats, it did not find the recommended “noindex” tag on those pages.

Chat, are we cooked? The Claude links were still publicly available as of Monday, but appear to have been erased from search results as of yesterday. However, it’s possible that third parties have already gotten their hands on the data.—DL

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LE MONDE BLUES

LVMH CEO’s new PR strategy: sarcastic tweets

Bernard Arnault in front of a wall of color blocks

Luc Castel/Getty Images

After France’s biggest newspaper published a sweeping exposé of the country’s richest person, he told his PR team “hold my Hennessey” and fired off his first-ever X post.

The (typically offline) head of fashion juggernaut LVMH Bernard Arnault posted an open letter on X this week accusing Le Monde of distortions in its recent deep dive into the $260+ billion luxury empire run by what the newspaper called “France’s last royal family.” Among other things, Le Monde’s reporting claimed that the 77-year-old billionaire actively influences editorial choices at the publications he owns and that his five children are locked in an intrigue-fueled power struggle to replace him.

Posting through it

Arnault accused Le Monde of sensationalism to sell newspapers, rejected the claims about his family, and scoffed at its descriptions of the atmosphere at LVMH:

Arnault mocked the insinuation that LVMH doesn’t hire overweight employees, saying he’ll “raise the matter with the company canteen.”
He denied that visitors to the company’s HQ have their ties confiscated if they’re from rival Hermès, saying he owns multiple.

Adding to the intrigue, Le Monde’s main shareholder is Xavier Niel, a fellow billionaire—and Arnault’s daughter’s partner. Niel now follows Arnault on X.

Big picture: More CEOs are choosing to communicate with the public directly through social media or casual podcast interviews, instead of old-school media.—SK

Sam’s stock of the week

Apple lagging in AI turned out to be a good thing

Pedestrians walking past an Apple storefront in Hong Kong

Cheng Xin/Getty Images

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

Never hesitate to remind your boss that sometimes it’s more productive to do less—and Apple is living proof of that. The iPhone maker passed Nvidia to become the world’s largest company by market cap this week, as investors come to view its relatively modest spending on AI as an advantage.

The company has opted to rent data center capacity instead of going all in on building its own AI infrastructure, which many on Wall Street feared would leave it behind rivals. But now:

Apple shares have risen 25% since the start of the year, driven by strong iPhone sales.
At the same time, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index is up just 7% in 2026.

Investors still want Apple to hone in on AI. Tomorrow, they’ll hear about the company’s progress integrating AI features into its devices on what will be Tim Cook’s last earnings call as Apple CEO.—SK

Subway trivia

In today’s quiz, we’ll give you the names of three subway stations in a city, and you have to name the city.

State/Lake, Sox–35th, Merchandise Mart
Chungjeongno, Incheon, Guro Digital Complex
Saint-Laurent, McGill, Berri–UQAM
Shinjuku, Ginza, Ikebukuro
T-Centralen, Västra skogen, Kungsträdgården

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Answer

Chicago
Seoul
Montreal
Tokyo
Stockholm

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: jitters, meaning “extreme nervousness or restless anxiety.” Thanks to Arthur from Bozeman, MT, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✳︎ A Note From State Street Investment Management

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Investing involves risk. ALPS Distributors, Inc. (fund distributor); State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (marketing agent).

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Written by Adam Epstein, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, and Holly Van Leuven

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☕ Posting through it