• Stocks: The Nasdaq’s win streak came to an end as the tech rally waned, while the Dow was buoyed to another new record high after Nvidia got a boost from SpaceX.
• Commodities: Oil prices jumped after Houthis launched an attack on a tanker in the Red Sea, but crude later fell after Iran and Oman said a peace deal is near, with President Trump touting that an agreement could arrive as soon as today.
• Economy: The ADP report revealed that private employers added the fewest jobs in six months. Meanwhile, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said the central bank should “start slowly moving up” interest rates.

Earnings

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Disney shareholders must have kissed the right amphibian, because the iconic entertainment company is having a Princess and the Frog-level glow-up.

Today, shares jumped 3.65% after Disney proved that its revival strategy seems to have paid off:

• Q3 profit handily beat forecasts: Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.06, up 28% year over year and beating projections of $1.86.
• Revenue rose 7% year over year to $25.25 billion, but slightly missed forecasts of $25.4 billion.
• Streaming operating income from Disney+ more than doubled year over year, showing that Disney’s once beleaguered streaming business has become a growth driver.
• Theme parks continued to be a boon for the company—revenue for the company’s experiences division, which encompasses cruises and parks, surged 10% year over year.
• Toy Story 5 was a huge hit, bringing in over $1 billion at the global box office.

“Overall, this was one of Disney’s strongest quarters in recent years because it showed multiple growth engines—parks, films, streaming, consumer products, and digital partnerships—all contributing simultaneously while free cash flow and shareholder returns continue to improve,” explained Eric Clark, portfolio manager of the LOGO ETF, in a note.

One more announcement: Disney is embracing short form video, announcing a content-sharing partnership with none other than TikTok. The deal will mean that creators on the platform can use clips tied to Disney franchises like Marvel and Star Wars. Those resulting shorts will also be available on Disney+, as well as TikTok itself.

From beast to beauty

Back in 2022, Disney was in a serious rut: Its streaming business was bleeding billions, the company’s cable networks were flailing, and costs kept mounting.

The board of directors called in a ringer: Former CEO Bob Iger, who reorganized the company to cut expenses, hiked the price of Disney+, and doubled down on the parts of the business with the most potential—theme parks and intellectual property. Just this past March, Iger passed the baton to current CEO Josh D’Amaro.

Today, it’s clear that Disney was right to trust Iger’s vision, and despite the recent spate of gains, some investors still think shares trade at an attractive price: “The stock is 13x and cheap, I still think the biggest unlock is Disney separating businesses and letting them operate as separate companies, but these big companies just struggle with simple concepts like this,” Clark wrote.

But with consumer stress, macroeconomic uncertainty, and fierce competition in streaming, it’s too soon to call this a fairytale ending.––LB

      

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Stocks

🟢 What’s up

• Dine Brands Global gained 2.58% as IHOP’s sales growth helped offset weakness at Applebee’s.
• Arista Networks climbed 3.57% on better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and revenue.
• Drone maker Kratos Defense & Security Solutions jumped 6.69% after beating quarterly expectations and raising its full-year sales outlook.
• Foodservice company Compass advanced 6.92% on an earnings beat and strong guidance, driven by gains from recent acquisitions and partnerships.
• Shopify surged 16.98% as strong results and upbeat guidance eased concerns over AI disruption.
• Booking Holdings rose 6.56% after topping quarterly earnings estimates, as travel demand remained resilient.

🔴 What’s down

• SpaceX declined 13.61% as a sixfold jump in capital spending unsettled investors.
• Alphabet sank 4.05% when Google’s chief scientist departed the company after nearly three decades there.
• Kraft Heinz slipped 3.42% despite raising its sales outlook, with investors focusing on weaker sales and continued cost pressures.
• The New York Times fell 13.4% on slower subscriber growth guidance, overshadowing stronger quarterly results.
• Flutter Entertainment dropped 11.39% following a lower profit outlook, a CEO departure, and continued weakness in its US business.
• Uber Technologies dipped 5.29% as in-line earnings and quarterly guidance failed to excite investors.
• AMD lost 7.04% despite an earnings beat, as investors weighed an unimpressive quarter and Elon Musk’s decision to use Nvidia chips exclusively.

Stat of the day

Bonuses are blowing up

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Bonus season is shaping up to be a bonanza for bankers: Year-end payout pools are projected to climb 5% to 20% this year compared to 2025, per compensation consultancy Johnson Associates—which has officially dubbed 2026 the “Year of the Bank.”

Johnson keeps tabs across 21 job categories on Wall Street, and not all are cashing in equally. The most enviable bonuses belong to Wall Street traders and investment bankers, who are on track to rake in an extra 30%, fueled by bumper profits in a volatile market and blockbuster stock debuts like SpaceX.

Meanwhile, the rest of the finance world isn’t doing too badly, either: Bonuses for M&A bankers and senior executives are up 17.5%, hedge funds 5% to 15%, asset managers 7% to 11%, wealth managers 5% to 10%, bond underwriters and fixed-income traders 7.5%, and commercial and retail bankers 5%.

Cue the tiny violins: But a few sectors won’t see any bonus bump this year, including real estate asset management, venture capital, and smaller private equity firms. Once-flush private credit will see bonuses drop as much as 10%. And for junior staff, bonuses aren’t all that’s on the line—their jobs are too, as firms keep trimming head count while AI swallows up entry-level tasks.

Still, it’s a long way until the end of the year and a lot can happen by then, so no one should be popping bottles of Dom or shopping for yachts quite yet.—JD

Healthcare

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

GLP-1s are all the rage right now: 1 in 8 US adults use them for weight loss, over a quarter of US adults with diabetes take them, and Bank of America just said it spends over $250 million per year covering the drugs for employees. Unsurprisingly, that demand is translating into blockbuster results for drugmakers, so let’s take a look at how the industry’s biggest players fared this quarter.

Eli Lilly comfortably beat Wall Street’s expectations, as massive demand for its GLP-1 portfolio continued to outweigh pricing pressure. Revenue from diabetes drug Mounjaro jumped 91% year over year while sales from its weight loss treatment Zepbound climbed 46%, and prescriptions for its newly launched obesity pill Foundayo doubled in just one month. The strong volume more than offset a 13% decline in realized prices. Shares popped 4.86% today.

Rival Novo Nordisk also beat forecasts and raised its forward guidance, but investors were less impressed. The drugmaker is still searching for the “sweet spot” between pricing and volume, while sales of its oral weight loss pill Wegovy, which competes with Lilly’s Foundayo, missed Wall Street’s forecasts. Shares fell yesterday, but rebounded 0.56% this afternoon.

CVS joins the race

CVS Health is also venturing into the obesity market. The healthcare company announced a partnership with Eli Lilly that will make Zepbound and Foundayo available to eligible patients through the CVS Health app beginning in the fourth quarter.

Beyond GLP-1s, CVS topped expectations across its insurance, pharmacy, and healthcare services businesses last quarter, led by a rebound at insurer Aetna, whose revenue rose 3.5% to $37.5 billion as medical costs eased.

Shares still fell 5.08%, however, as investors expect membership at pharmacy benefit manager Caremark to decline in the coming months.

Beyond the needle

All three companies raised their full-year guidance, an indication that the GLP-1 boom is still in its early innings.

GLP-1 drugs generated roughly $79 billion in sales last year alone, and Morgan Stanley expects that figure to reach $190 billion by 2035. Much of that growth is expected to flow to today’s market leaders: Lilly controls roughly 60% of the injectable market, while Novo holds an 85% share of the still-nascent oral GLP-1 market—a segment projected to make up a quarter of the overall market by 2030.

So far, investors have overwhelmingly favored Lilly, sending its shares up 342% over the past five years while Novo has lost 13.67% in the same period. But that optimism comes at a premium: Lilly trades at 34.8 times this year’s expected earnings, compared with 15.6 times for Novo.

Today, Lilly wears the crown, but the GLP-1 race is far from over. If the future is in pill form, Novo may still have the last laugh.—SY

      

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News

• Surprise, surprise…Ken Griffin’s Citadel saw its best month in years after it bailed out Situational Awareness.
• The Trump administration has refunded $100 billion of tariff revenue tied to “liberation day.”
• Uh-oh: Safety testers have found more cybersecurity breaches committed by OpenAI and Anthropic models.
• The US is banning exports of key metal waste in order to reduce its reliance on China for critical materials.
• The Paramount-Warner Bros. antitrust trial is set for March 2027.
• It turns out that the majority of Microsoft’s AI sales are actually from OpenAI.

Calendar

Economic reports: The labor market remains in focus with the weekly initial jobless claims reading.

Earnings announcements: The tsunami keeps coming with numbers from Siemens, SoftBank, ConocoPhillips, Constellation Energy, Cloudflare, Datadog, Airbnb, Warner Bros. Discovery, Nintendo, Cheniere Energy, Diageo, Celsius Holdings, Lyft, DraftKings, and D-Wave Quantum.

Everything else: Are you ready for some football? The Arizona Cardinals face the Carolina Panthers in the 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game.

recs

⛏️ Gold has had a rough few weeks, but the companies that mine the precious metal are looking like a cheap way to hedge against market volatility.

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🔮 Where’s the market heading next? Here’s what seven key indicators are saying.

🗺️ This chart reveals how global economic dominance has shifted over the last 200 years, and where power will reside next.

💵 Dividend stocks have remained steady even as growth names endured a choppy summer. Here are the 10 best-performing dividend stocks for the last month.

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