• Commodities: Crude climbed after the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran expired today without signs of a continuation. Meanwhile, soaring beef prices have Americans switching from burgers to nuggets this summer.
• Markets: Stocks slipped lower as hopes for peace in the Middle East continued to dwindle. 30-year bond yields hit their highest level in 19 years, as investors look to the FOMC minutes on Wednesday for clues about the Fed’s next move.
• Vibes: The CBOE Volatility Index ended Friday’s trading session at 14.2, its lowest level so far in 2026. While the VIX crept higher today, anything under 20 is a sign that investors are feeling confident—though some on Wall Street say it won’t last.

AI

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

The relationship between Apple and the White House has soured since Tim Cook presented that extremely memeable gold statue to President Trump in the Oval Office.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the White House is “not in favor of” Apple buying memory chips from China. That’s a problem for Apple, because the tech giant has been looking toward China to meet some of its memory chip demand amid a worldwide shortage. Shares edged 0.11% lower this afternoon.

A walk down memory lane: Silicon Valley’s frantic rush to build data centers faster than you can spell the word Gemini has created a huge shortage of memory chips. That’s spiked the cost of the technology critical to building AI infrastructure and a slew of consumer products—which is partly why Apple just raised prices on its flagship devices last month. One solution for Apple and other tech companies is to source chips from elsewhere—aka China.

Apple has reportedly been experimenting with memory chips from Chinese companies CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies to potentially use them to manufacture Chinese products, according to the WSJ. As of now, the US government requires companies to get a license in order to share product details with these two Chinese companies, which the US seems set to deny.

The apple of a chipmaker’s eye

Bad news for Apple is good news for domestic memory chip makers, which popped today: Sandisk jumped 8.88%, Western Digital gained 5.35%, Seagate rallied 2.19%, and Micron rose 4.13%. Sandisk in particular is having a great run lately: Shares popped 35% last week after management outlined the company’s long-term vision and projected that revenue will grow by double digits between 2028 and 2030.

Another bullish piece of news for chipmakers today came from Bloomberg, which reported that Anthropic’s Q2 revenue climbed more than 14 times higher year over year. Investors are surmising that much of that money will be spent on AI hardware, including chips.

Even Apple can’t dip these chips.—LB

      

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Stocks

🟢 What’s up

• Vista Energy jumped 5.71% following news that Peter Thiel’s hedge fund took a stake in the company.
• Intuitive Machines surged 7.21% after getting the green light to begin work on a $600 million satellite communications program.
• Intel gained 0.97% after CEO Lip-Bu Tan bought roughly $10 million worth of the chipmaker’s shares.
• Onto Innovation climbed 5.86% on a new Buy rating from Goldman Sachs, which pointed to AI-driven demand for chip inspection equipment.
• Diana Shipping rose 7.26% after walking away from its nearly year-long pursuit of a deal with rival Genco Shipping & Trading.

🔴 What’s down

• Meta dropped 3.54% ahead of a major trial over allegations that its platforms harmed children and teens.
• EyePoint Pharmaceuticals plunged 66.98% after its wet age-related macular degeneration treatment failed to hit the primary goal of a Phase 3 trial.
• Workday fell 3.77% following downgrades from Deutsche Bank and BTIG, which argued that the recent takeover-fueled rally has left shares fairly valued.
• L3Harris Technologies tumbled 4.61% on the abrupt departure of CEO Christopher Kubasik over misconduct.
• Boeing declined 2.47% after the US Army temporarily grounded its fleet of Boeing-made Apache helicopters following a crash in Texas.
• Nike dropped 4.03% to a new 52-week low, dragging down fellow sneaker stocks: ON Holding lost 2.82%, Decker Outdoor sank 3.20%, and Capri Holdings fell 4.37%.

Stat of the day

Betting the farm on SpaceX

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock, Unplash

Apparently the folks managing Harvard’s massive endowment fund skipped the lecture about diversification.

In a 13F filing submitted to the SEC last Friday, the Ivy League heavyweight revealed that it holds 12,935,100 shares of SpaceX. That haul was worth $2.21 billion as of June 30—which means it accounted for over 51% of Harvard’s $4.3 billion in US equity holdings, and was worth more than all the other securities the college invests in combined.

Putting all your eggs in one rocket ship-sized basket may sound risky, but Harvard’s not the only one betting big on Elon Musk’s new favorite company. In its latest 13F filing, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund disclosed it holds about $26.3 billion worth of SpaceX stock—or about 69.5% of its disclosed US equity holdings. And D1 Capital Partners revealed itself to be SpaceX’s largest hedge fund investor, with its $21.54 billion stake in the company accounting for just under 62% of the fund’s stock portfolio.

The 13F season has exposed the biggest SpaceX investors on the market, many of whom are putting an extreme amount of faith (and money) in the new company. For now, that’s proven to be a good bet: Shares have risen back above their IPO price, soaring 35% in the last two weeks alone, and the vote of confidence from big funds like those above helped the stock pop another 4.45% today.—MR

Funds

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Surprise, surprise: Stock pickers are still struggling to pick stocks.

During the 12 months through June 30, just 27% of actively managed US large-cap funds performed better than their passive alternatives. That’s still better than their record over the past decade, when just 13% managed to outperform.

The rebound makes sense, given how favorable the current market backdrop is. Higher interest rates are separating companies with strong balance sheets from those that depended on cheap financing, while AI is separating the disruptors from the disrupted. That’s creating clearer winners and losers across the market, increasing stock market dispersion—the difference between how individual stocks within a given index perform—to its highest level in over 20 years.

In theory, more winners and losers means more chances for active managers to separate themselves from the pack. There’s just one problem: The winners are heavily concentrated at the top.

The S&P 500’s 10 largest companies now make up more than 40% of the index, the highest share since the 1960s. Active managers tend to diversify rather than match those giant weights, so if mega-cap tech keeps ripping, even a portfolio full of otherwise good picks can fall behind the benchmark index.

A different strategy

But one fund is bucking that trend using a somewhat unconventional approach.

The $2.5 billion Harbor International Core Fund held over 800 stocks as of the end of June—about eight times as many as the average fund. Its annual turnover rate is 123%, versus less than 40% for the majority of funds tracked by Morningstar, with fund sub-advisor Acadian Asset Management running more than 30,000 stocks through its quantitative models each day to decide which companies make the cut.

So far, it’s working. The fund returned 15.55% in the first half of 2026, versus 9.44% for the MSCI EAFE, its benchmark for developed-market stocks outside the US and Canada. The S&P 500 gained 9.6% over the same period.

Despite owning hundreds of companies, the fund isn’t completely indiscriminate: Its 10 largest holdings accounted for roughly 23% of assets as of June 30, with names including Novartis, Roche, ASML, ABB, and ING.

Active gets passive, passive gets active

“Stock picking” is starting to become a pretty generous description. When an active fund can own more names than the indexes themselves, what exactly are investors paying the extra fees for?

That helps explain why investors have increasingly shifted toward passive funds. In 2007, active equity funds held more than three times as much money as passive strategies—today, passive funds hold almost twice as much.

But at the same time, the line between active and passive is getting blurrier. There are now passive ETFs tracking everything from semiconductors and defense to small caps and individual countries, meaning investors can make very active portfolio decisions using supposedly passive products.

At this rate, with a Bloomberg login and a tasteful headshot, maybe you could be an active manager, too.—SY

      

News

• In the age of cybercrime, crypto scams, and AI hacking, it turns out that one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises is good old-fashioned train robbery.
• Big Tech is already spending billions on AI, but it turns out the real price could be trillions of dollars higher than anyone thinks.
• Here’s a roadmap for investing during the midterm elections.
• Nvidia and OpenAI sealed a $105 billion deal to build a new data center in Ohio.
• Enjoy your strawberries while you still can—they’re about to get far more expensive.
• These 20 stocks are poised to pop as AI productivity transforms the economy.
• Follow the smart money: Here’s what Berkshire Hathaway invested in last quarter.

Calendar

Economic reports: The housing market grabs the spotlight, with the July reports for both housing starts as well as pending home sales.

Earnings announcements: Speaking of housing, earnings from Home Depot and Toll Brothers will keep the focus on the state of real estate. We’ve also got reports from Baidu, Klarna, Pony AI, and La-Z-Boy.

Everything else: Meta’s federal court case kicks off in California tomorrow. If the social media giant loses, it could be ordered to pay as much as $1.4 trillion in damages—which could be a serious problem for a company with a market cap of $1.44 trillion.

recs

🏘️ The most-clicked story this time last week was about the 10 most in-demand zip codes for homebuyers—and no, 90210 didn’t make the list.

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