Delta Air Lines has arrived, and brought a new earnings season along with it.

The company kicked things off in a big way: Not only did the airline beat top- and bottom-line earnings expectations, but its Q3 profit rose 11% year over year. Delta also projects adjusted earnings per share will land between $1.60 and $1.90 per share in Q4, above the $1.65 analysts were expecting, while full-year EPS should hit $6, higher than Wall Street forecasts of $5.80.

Delta credited increased travel demand for the boost, especially from premium and corporate customers: Delta’s Q3 corporate sales jumped 8%, while premium revenue increased 9%. In fact, the company thinks premium revenue will outpace sales from coach cabin seats next year.

Shares of Delta rose 4.23% today.

Is aviation out of the woods?

Delta’s enjoying a nice tailwind during a year of serious turbulence.

The airline originally issued full-year guidance of $7.35 late last year, but withdrew that outlook after President Trump announced a slew of tariffs that rocked the economy. It was one of the first companies to pull guidance, setting the stage for a domino effect of withdrawn forecasts across the market as companies struggled to keep up with the moving tariff target.

Today, management seems confident that it can better anticipate what lies ahead, while investors could interpret Delta’s solid earnings as a bellwether of good things to come for the rest of the airlines sector.

But maybe investors are celebrating a little too soon, given a major headwind for the industry just arrived: The government shutdown is adding more pressure to the already-fragile air travel ecosystem. Air traffic controllers and TSA screeners still have to work during the shutdown, but they aren’t getting paid until it ends. That’s why air traffic controllers are beginning to call in sick to work, leading to staffing shortages and subsequent delays at airports nationwide.

Air travel is a tight-margin business, so airlines don’t leave much time between flights—meaning that one delay or cancellation can start a chain reaction that throws off an entire schedule.

Delta had a great third quarter, but the longer the shutdown lasts, the tougher it’ll be to make up for lost flights this quarter.—LB

🟢 What’s up

• Nvidia rallied 1.79% after the US government approved the export of billions of dollars worth of chips to the UAE.
• China gave rare mineral miners a boost after the country tightened export controls ahead of trade negotiations with the US. Ramaco Resources rose 11.67%, Energy Fuels added 9.44%, and USA Rare Earth gained 14.99%.
• Costco Wholesale gained 3.07% after it reported that sales rose a healthy 8% in the five weeks between September and October.
• Tilray Brands got high on its own supply, rising 22.09% after the marijuana grower delivered a surprise profit last quarter.
• Akero Therapeutics jumped 16.33% on the news that Novo Nordisk is buying the biotech for $4.7 billion.
• PepsiCo rallied 4.23% after the snack and beverage giant beat earnings estimates and declared that Lay’s chips will now be made with real potatoes (wait, what were they made with before??).

What’s down

• TSMC lost 1.52% despite reporting that its revenue rose 31% year over year in September.
• Ferrari just suffered its worst day of trading ever, tumbling 14.99% after disappointing earnings guidance overshadowed its new EV.
• Speaking of struggling EV makers, Tesla fell just 0.72% after regulators opened an investigation into its Full Self-Driving Technology.
• Alphabet sank 1.32% after the search giant launched Gemini subscription services for enterprises and small businesses.

Every year, households across the country sit down to go over their budgets—what they spent, what they saved, and where they can do better next year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office does the same thing for the US government, and it just unveiled the country’s latest financial report card.

The good news: The federal deficit actually shrank last year. The bad news: It fell from $1.817 trillion in fiscal 2024 to $1.809 trillion in 2025, a measly $8 billion difference that doesn’t do much to alleviate the country’s massive debt load. US revenues rose by an estimated $308 billion, or 6%, while spending climbed by about $301 billion, or 4%.

A few other line items that are sure to catch plenty of attention:

• Revenue from customs duties (aka, tariffs) soared to $195 billion this year, far above the $77 billion that the country collected in 2024. But since tariffs only account for 3.7% of federal revenue, according to the WSJ, they were still a drop in the bucket.
• Corporate tax income fell 15% year over year thanks to President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill.
• Net interest on the public debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time ever. As the WSJ noted, for every $5 the government collects in taxes, about $1 now goes toward paying off interest.

These figures are preliminary and the Treasury Department will release the final stats…whenever the government reopens. In the meantime, let’s hope the country sticks to its New Year's resolutions in 2026 and get its finances in order next year.—MR

If you’ve heard that the AI industry will be transformational, chances are you’ve also heard that the industry is in a bubble.

It’s not just bears warning of an impending market downturn—everyone from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to the IMF is shouting that equities are due for a serious pullback if the AI bubble bursts. And the fears make sense: Big tech companies are set to splash out roughly $400 billion this year on AI infrastructure in an enormous wager that machine learning will be transformational for the global economy.

The problem isn’t just that the technology’s use case is unproven, it’s that this new AI economy is suspiciously…circular. AI bigwigs have made a habit of handing each other huge sums of cash, making it look like their companies are enjoying massive growth when it’s more like they’re shifting money among themselves.

If the AI boom really does revolutionize the economy and this high stakes game of duck-duck-goose ends well, then so be it. But if the promise of the tech falls short, the house of cards could come crumbling down—hard. One group of analysts recently warned that the AI bubble is currently 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy, and four times the subprime mortgage bubble of 2008.

Don’t panic just yet

While nobody can say for sure whether or not we’re in a bubble until it actually bursts, some on Wall Street aren’t as pessimistic as others.

Goldman Sachs chief global equity strategist Peter Oppenheimer laid out three reasons he thinks we’re not in a bubble…yet. For one, the hype around AI has been driven by “fundamental growth” as opposed to speculation. He also noted that the companies profiting the most from the AI boom have strong balance sheets. Finally, he said that many of the biggest AI names are incumbents from the Silicon Valley ecosystem, while past bubbles have been marked by new entrants and new money.

But we’re not completely in the clear. “While it appears we are not in a bubble yet, high levels of market concentration and increased competition in the AI space suggest investors should continue to focus on diversification,” he wrote.

Goldman Sachs macro trader Bobby Molavi also argued that investors shouldn’t fight the AI trade, and that they should continue to ride the market momentum while it lasts.

Then again, he didn’t exactly reassure us about how this is all going to end. “Like a night out at 3 am, you never think it’s a good time to go home…But there is always a hangover,” he wrote. “It remains to be seen what AI will leave us—good and bad—but it’s going to leave a mark.”—LB

• Gold is getting expensive, rising well above $4,000 per ounce. Mining stocks are the best way to play it now.
• New federal income tax brackets just dropped. Plus, we’ve got new capital gains tax brackets—here’s how much you can make and still pay $0 next year.
• A review of Meta Platform’s new $799 Ray-Ban smart glasses.
• Forget the AI bubble—it’s quantum stocks you should be worried about.
• It’s turnaround time: Wendy’s is going all-in on “Project Fresh,” while Victoria’s Secret is trying to learn how to sell bras again.
• Amazon’s website traffic soared during its Prime Big Deal Days event. Here’s what people were buying.

Friday is the deep breath before the earnings season plunge, with no reports of note dropping tomorrow but a deluge dead ahead next week, beginning with the big banks on Tuesday.

As for economic data, we’ll get a look at how American shoppers are feeling heading into the holidays with a preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey. Sentiment sank from 58.2 in August to 55.1 in September, and economists anticipate a continued slide in October.