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Europe
BBC Business

Donald Trump's biggest economic problem looks strangely familiar

The White House is confronting a familiar dilemma. The economic numbers aren't necessarily bad - but the public mood is. It's a disconnect that haunted Joe Biden in 2024, when solid headline data failed to convince many voters that the economy was working for them. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised voters swift relief from rising prices. Economic growth is holding up, unemployment remains low and the stock market is near record highs. Yet the final inflation report ahead of the midterm elections confirms what voters already know: prices remain high. The causes are different. Biden was grappling with the aftermath of the Covid pandemic. Trump faces higher energy prices linked to the US-Israel conflict with Iran and the fallout from some of his own trade and immigration policies. The political reality, however, is much the same. Voters are not judging the economy by GDP figures or record highs on the stock market. They are judging it by what they pay at the supermarket, petrol prices and whether they can keep up with the bills. US economic growth of 2.2% would be respectable by the standards of many wealthy economies. Germany, for example, has struggled to generate comparable momentum. And a stable US unemployment rate of 4.2% hardly suggests an economy in freefall. Trump argues that he inherited an economic mess from Biden, and points to strong growth, investment and stock market performance as evidence that his policies are working. Following the most recent inflation report, White House spokesman Matthew Middleton said the administration's "aggressive, pro-growth economic agenda" had blunted "Biden's inflation crisis". Larry Kudlow, a Trump ally and economic commentator, has described the current expansion as "the greatest story never told", external, arguing that "nobody is getting fired". But voters appear to be reading a different story - one in which Trump won the presidency promising to tackle the cost of living, only for prices to keep rising.

Donald Trump's biggest economic problem looks strangely familiar
North America
CNBC Finance

Marc Lore’s Wonder bets on Texas, automation and user-built restaurants as it mulls IPO

Less than a decade after its founding, food startup Wonder has seen its footprint and valuation soar. Still, the company has even more ambitious plans ahead, like a subscription program to let diners run their own "restaurants," an aggressive expansion in Texas and a potential initial public offering. Created by serial entrepreneur Marc Lore in 2018, Wonder advertises itself as "the best restaurants from across the country, all in one place." Diners can place takeout or delivery orders from its food hall-style locations on the Wonder-branded app or third-party platforms, including Grubhub, which Wonder now owns. As Lore described it to CNBC, "Wonder is a vertically integrated food technology platform to make great food more accessible." To achieve its goal, Wonder plans to open locations in urban, suburban and rural areas nationwide and aims to keep prices lower than the cost of delivered groceries. Thanks to its ownership of Grubhub, Wonder customers who order through the startup's app don't have to pay delivery fees, and its menu prices aren't inflated to cover the cost of commission fees to the delivery platform. Plus, Wonder is automating some of its kitchen functions, like assembling salads and bowls and soon sauces and beverages. The company aims for food preparation and delivery to be fully autonomous by 2040, Lore said. Now, Wonder has to convince diners its platform built on cost savings and choice makes it worth their while in a competitive industry. Lore's lofty vision for Wonder has helped the company raise $3.3 billion to date, from investors like DoorDash, Alphabet's venture arm and Gwyneth Paltrow. Its Series D fundraising round earlier this year raised its pre-money valuation to $9 billion — just under sandwich chain Subway's sale price two years ago. Wonder's next pitch to investors could be on an IPO road show, assuming that the window for companies across industries to go public reopens in the coming months. "[The mission] is really why I want to go public and raise the capital that it'll take to build that kind of generational business, also to have a public currency to be able to do more M&A," Lore said. "But I can't talk about timing." He helped found the parent company of Diapers.com and sold it in 2010 to Amazon for $545 million. Just six years later, Walmart paid about $3 billion for his follow-up venture, Jet.com. Lore stayed at the retailer until 2021 to accelerate Walmart's e-commerce growth. Basketball fans might also recognize Lore as an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. In 2021, he and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez agreed to buy the team for $1.5 billion, although the deal was not finalized until 2025. Lore recently struck a deal to shrink his investment to a minority stake "to focus on his business," Rodriguez said in a statement in August, referring to Wonder.

Marc Lore’s Wonder bets on Texas, automation and user-built restaurants as it mulls IPO
Europe
BBC Business

Google value plunges by $500bn as AI fears rattle Wall Street

Google parent Alphabet lost just over $500bn (£374bn) in value on Thursday after it rattled Wall Street with its last update of the year on its business operations. Google spooked investors so badly that its stock hit a six-month low, after it revealed its artificial intelligence (AI) summaries on search were affecting ad revenue. Microsoft and Amazon also updated investors this week, and joined Google in plans to keep spending astronomical sums of cash in an ongoing AI race. But investors appeared dismayed at the impacts these plans are having on the ability of each to keep growing their core lines of business. At first glance, the quarterly results of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, were not at all bad. Total revenue grew 25% compared to last year, hitting $127.6bn. It was buoyed by the ongoing success of Google Cloud, where revenue grew by 103% to almost $31bn. However, profits at the company fell by a considerable 25% during the quarter. And for the second time in its history as a public company, it showed negative free cash flow, this time in excess of $9bn. That's almost twice the loss of cash Alphabet showed just three months ago. Cash flow represents the money a company retains after paying for operations and investments, meaning Alphabet is now spending more money than it is bringing in. That new level of spending is almost entirely dedicated to Google's AI investments. By the end of Thursday, the company's total stock market value had fallen to $3.46 trillion from $3.97 trillion the day before. Google's omnipresent search engine now defaults to AI summaries of a person's query, and that hit the number of advertisements it was able to sell during the quarter. The sale of ads that appear alongside Google Search results is the vast majority of Alphabet's business. Tracy Woo, a principal analyst at Forrester, said Alphabet's disappointing search business results "highlights the challenge of funding massive AI investments while maintaining the strength of established businesses."

Google value plunges by $500bn as AI fears rattle Wall Street
North America
Fortune

AI agents are shopping like never before—and tools like Mastercard’s ‘Pay for Machines’ could turbocharge the trend

It’s been a busy few weeks for AI agents. They’ve been rummaging around bank accounts, hacking crypto wallets and, according to MIT researchers, using their spare time to play. The agents have also been on an unprecedented shopping spree. We’ve known for some time that so-called agentic commerce would become a thing—but that moment is arriving far sooner, and on a scale that few anticipated. “What we’re witnessing is a bit of a turning point. We think it’s accelerating…We’re rapidly getting to something that will see real adoption,” Mastercard’s Head of Product, Jorn Lambert, told me last week. According to Lambert, this lift-off is due to the sudden popularity of mass-market personal agents. He explained that, a year ago, he and other industry leaders believed that MCP and ACP—agent-to-agent communication protocols that require a degree of technical skill—would be the pillars for agentic commerce, but that this assumption has already become outdated. Instead, the adoption curve has been flattened thanks to products like Muse from Meta and OpenAI’s Dots. The upshot is there is now a critical mass of consumers eager to send their agents to the digital mall. To ensure they have something to buy, Mastercard has rolled out a tool called “Agent Pay” that makes it easy for Muse and his friends to carry out transactions not just with retailers, but also government services, including parking tickets. In another intriguing move, Mastercard last week revealed a tool that lets small-business users spin up ad campaigns. I’m not in the habit of plugging credit card companies but, if you have a moment, check out this YouTube video that shows the maker of some sort of granola bar giving her agent a $400 budget to build and execute a social media campaign. This budget covers not just paying TikTok or Instagram, but also acquiring images, music, a script, and other creative elements—a process that would have once taken hours of the granola bar monger’s time, but can now be dispatched in minutes. A significant feature of Mastercard’s tool (Visa and AmEx are presumably building similar products) is it’s all built on x402, a payments protocol that was baked into the original specs for the internet, but never got built until Coinbase resurrected it a few years ago. As Mastercard’s Lambert explained to me, x402 is basically a messaging language that can speak credit card or debit card or stablecoin—or whatever form of payment both parties to the transaction agree upon. Best of all, x402 is open source, meaning anyone can use or build upon it. Another significant element of Agent Pay is that it opens the door to micropayments—a term that describes paying a trifling amount like 27¢ or $1.87 online. Until now, digital merchants and financial networks have shunned such payments as impractical, due in part to processing costs. But now, with stablecoins and agents who don’t mind haggling over whether a piece of data should cost 50¢ or 75¢, we’re likely to see more à la carte micro-offerings in place of every webpage making an irritating demand to buy a monthly subscription to access content. It’s always perilous trying to predict how new technology will be adopted, since our instinct is often to use the new tech—in this case AI agents—to do what we’ve always done before. A classic example is when newspaper publishers treated the internet as a place to post PDF copies of their paper. In the case of agents, what’s likely to happen is that a whole range of unforeseen use cases will emerge that change how we shop and design businesses in the first place. Indeed, Mastercard’s Lambert predicts that tools like Agent Pay will spur a wealth of new businesses founded by college kids tinkering in their dorm rooms. Bring it on.

AI agents are shopping like never before—and tools like Mastercard’s ‘Pay for Machines’ could turbocharge the trend
North America
Fortune

How they fumbled the cola wars: Pepsi generates twice the revenue of Coca-Cola, yet its market cap is only half as big

PepsiCo has suffered many setbacks in recent years, but perhaps few were as symbolic as being jilted by a long-time partner it used to own, KFC. The fried chicken chain said earlier this month that it would begin replacing PepsiCo’s soft drinks with Coca-Cola products at its 3,700 U.S. restaurants in January. The two companies’ partnership stretches back 40 years, to when PepsiCo bought the fast-food chain. (PepsiCo spun KFC off in 1997.) In the 1980s and ’90s, Pepsi waged the cola culture wars with the Pepsi Challenge and TV commercials featuring Michael Jackson and Cindy Crawford. But last year, Pepsi-Cola only had 8.1% of the U.S. carbonated soft drinks market by volume, far behind Coke’s 18.5%. Pepsi is now the third most popular drink behind Dr. Pepper. Coke reshaped its business around brand building and innovation. PepsiCo, meanwhile, remained a sprawling portfolio company where soda was merely one priority among many. The result is a PepsiCo that generates more than twice as much revenue as Coca-Cola, yet its market valuation is only about half as big. Biotech firm Rakuten Medical wants to bring its novel ‘lightsaber’ cancer cure to the U.S. - Angelica Ang While working on an internal statistics project, Anthropic’s Claude bypassed a paywall without authorization to access information on voting totals at a State of Georgia website, the company said. “We have since put in place mitigations to block these kinds of actions," the company said. The company urged the Georgia secretary of state's office to disclose the information weeks ago, but its pleas went unanswered, Axios reports. As Anthropic heads toward its $2 trillion IPO, it has a slight problem, according to attorney Josh Gerben. The USPTO has repeatedly denied Anthropic the right to use “Claude Mythos” as a trademark that it owns. Apparently, three other software companies got there first. “There is a likelihood of confusion” if Anthropic is allowed to trade with the name, the USPTO said. Anthropic can appeal. Or it can approach the other companies and buy the name from them. Suddenly, three previously obscure companies are potentially sitting on a goldmine. Traders are looking on the bright side today: Talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran are ongoing, and the credit ratings agency Moody’s left France’s credit rating unchanged from before the riots. The yield on France’s 10-year bonds eased back below the headline-inducing 5% level to 4.94%; similarly, the U.S. 10-year was at 4.99%. U.S. futures were up this morning prior to the bell in New York after stocks rose in Europe in early trading. Asia was flat to down today as the price of oil remained painfully high—above $114 per barrel. Incoming: Alphabet and Microsoft report Q3 earnings on Wednesday and Amazon reports on Thursday. The Fed decides on the base interest rate on Wednesday—futures markets are betting it will be held at 3.75%.

How they fumbled the cola wars: Pepsi generates twice the revenue of Coca-Cola, yet its market cap is only half as big
North America
Fortune

PepsiCo started losing the cola wars when its CEOs lost focus

Good morning. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta knows that he has a cola problem. He said “we’re not competing well in soft drinks” on his third-quarter earnings call. And last week KFC said it will switch to Coca-Cola products at its 3,700 U.S. restaurants, ending a 40-year partnership. As my colleague Phil Wahba writes, “Pepsi has suffered many setbacks in recent years, but perhaps few were as symbolic as being jilted by a long-time partner it used to own, KFC.” (Taco Bell and PepsiCo did renew their U.S. deal for 11 more years.) Why is PepsiCo’s beverage division struggling? I’d start with the decisions of Steve Reinemund, who ran PepsiCo from 2001 to 2006. Although he broadened the portfolio through the 2001 merger with Quaker Oats, which gave it Gatorade, he also created a less flexible distribution structure and added more complexity to the business. As PepsiCo leaders shifted to talking about crop yields and health trends, Coca-Cola moved in and struck a deal in 2003 to displace Pepsi at Subway, its largest fountain customer, business that Pepsi won back last year. His successor, Indra Nooyi, continued the trend, dividing the company’s portfolio into “Fun for You” (fatty, sugary foods), “Better for You” (lower-calorie or lower-fat versions), and “Good for You” (nutritious foods like oatmeal and hummus). In an era when cities were trying to ban big sugary drinks or impose a vice tax that put cola in the same camp as tobacco, attention to soda further waned. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola was shedding its low-margin bottling plants and focusing on building a “total beverage company” that resulted in 32 billion-dollar brands. PepsiCo has fewer billion-dollar brands but a lot more stuff, generating more than twice as much revenue as Coca-Cola with a market cap that’s about half as big. Are there advantages for PepsiCo in being a diversified conglomerate versus a pure-play beverage brand? No doubt, especially as trends like GLP-1 use increase demand for healthier foods. The brown fizzy drink that spawned these two competitors is a small part of the overall beverage market. And PepsiCo remains a powerhouse of innovation, marketing and talent. What’s slipped since the heyday of the cola wars is focus.Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com Scott Kirby caused a stir last week when he said the U.S. should have a national wealth tax, but the United Airlines CEO also offered another idea for national service. “I think if everyone had to spend a couple of years as a teacher, as a firefighter, serving in the military—I think that’d be good for our country.” Michael Buckley is courting Gen Z and millennials with more affordable clothing, music partnerships, and in-store experiences, while letting go of something the brand once prided itself on: setting trends. “We like to be first to be second,” he said. The idea is to catch a trend once it’s proven rather than start it, and give customers what they want “at the price they want.” Thomas Miller, a prominent data scientist who’s a professor at Northwestern University, accurately predicted the 2024 presidential race and is using his methodology on the 2026 midterms. Since Oct. 14, the Dems’ odds of taking the majority have jumped from 71.5% to 77.6%. If the current odds in all those contests hold, the Democrats would win 18 of 35 races and shift the majority from 53-47 for the Republicans to 52-48 for the Democrats. S&P 500 futures are up 0.30% this morning. The last session closed down 0.52%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.31% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.45% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.80%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 1.46%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.04%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.51%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.41%. Bitcoin is down at $80k. The U.S. military and NASA have power problems. Nuclear microreactors might solve both by Jordan Blum

PepsiCo started losing the cola wars when its CEOs lost focus
North America
Fortune

White House says Melania Trump brokered a localized Russia-Ukraine ceasefire

First lady Melania Trump has brokered an upcoming ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the war-ravaged city of Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians, the White House announced on Friday. The White House said that the first lady had initiated the discussions and that she and a representative worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leadership to define the terms of the ceasefire. There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian or the Russian governments. The first lady has made helping children in conflict one of her signature issues, hosting a U.N. Security Council meeting on the issue earlier this year. She also has personally written to Russian President Vladimir Putin to work to reunite children displaced by the war with their families. Food and medical supplies have been scarce for months in Oleshky, which sits on the Dnipro River, which separates Ukrainian forces from the city’s Russian occupiers. There’s no electricity, heat or running water. Roads leading from town are mined and dotted with burned-out cars. Menacing drones buzz overhead. Once a city of about 24,000 residents, Oleshky was captured by Moscow’s forces on the first day of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its buildings were shelled and burned, and its infrastructure damaged. Further calamity struck in June 2023, when floodwaters inundated the city after the Kakhovka Dam collapsed from an explosion that an Associated Press investigation found was likely caused by the Russian military, killing hundreds of residents. Those left in the battered city along Ukraine’s southeastern front face death from hunger or disease as another harsh winter looms. Ukraine has appealed repeatedly for a local ceasefire to organize evacuations. Russia, which as the occupying power is obligated by international law to ensure civilians under its control have what they need to survive, had made no commitment. Follow the AP’s coverage of Melania Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/melania-trump and the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

White House says Melania Trump brokered a localized Russia-Ukraine ceasefire
North America
Yahoo Finance

Here Are Tuesday’s Top Wall Street Analyst Research Calls: Broadcom, Conoco Phillips, HubSpot, MercadoLibre, Moderna, Occidental Petroleum, PNC Financial, Trimble, and More

Wall Street analysts are reshuffling their bets across chips, crypto, energy, and beyond as the Fed prepares to deliver its next rate verdict. Find out which stocks got surprise upgrades, which took hits despite soaring triple-digit gains, and why one… Futures are trading higher after a Monday bounce that saw all major indices finish higher; stocks closed well below their intraday highs, but it was a positive start after a horrible week. Excitement over the potential for an Anthropic Initial Public Offering helped to drive technology shares and, in turn, the rest of the market, as it was announced yesterday that the AI giant formally filed its Form S-1 with the SEC on Monday, officially kicking off what could be the largest public offering in stock market history. When the dust settled, the tech-heavy Nasdaq led the way, closing at 26,169, up 0.83%, while the S&P 500 finished at 7,676, up 0.70%. The Russell 2000 had a solid day, finishing at 2,786, up 0.38%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rounded out Monday’s trading by closing at 52,261, up 0.28%. Yields were mostly higher across the Treasury curve, as the week’s leading talking point is today’s Federal Reserve meeting, which will culminate tomorrow with an announcement on the direction of rates. While most of Wall Street agrees rates will rise, the consensus is the Fed will wait until the December meeting to raise the funds rate another 25 basis points. The 30-year bond closed Monday at 5.30%, while the benchmark 10-year note was last seen at 4.99%. Prices were lower across the energy complex on positive reports of negotiations not only to end the war with Iran, but also trilateral talks to potentially end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which will turn 5 years old in February. Brent Crude finished trading Monday at $115.30 down 1.21%, while West Texas Intermediate closed at $101.80 down 1.46%. Natural gas continued its losing streak, closing at $2.60, down 1.44%. Big news in the natural gas sector: EQT Corporation (NYSE: EQT | EQT Price Prediction) announced a $13 billion purchase of Range Resources (NYSE: RRC), creating a $50 billion Appalachian energy powerhouse. This new giant plans to profit from a massive spike in natural gas demand driven by international LNG exports and the electricity needed to run AI data centers. After a bruising week, gold bounced back on Monday as buyers returned, buoyed by falling oil prices and hopes the Fed won’t raise rates tomorrow. Standard bargain-hunting also supported the rebound after spot gold plunged to a three-month low of $3,975 per ounce last Friday. At the finl bell, gold was priced at $4,016, while Silver ended Monday at $54.10, up 0.09%. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports every day to identify fresh investment ideas for investors and traders alike. These daily analyst notes include recommendations on stocks to buy, sell, or avoid, as well as new coverage initiations. Important reminder: No single analyst report should ever be the sole basis for buying or selling a stock. Here are some of the top Wall Street analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations from Tuesday, October 27, 2026. Lee Jackson has covered Wall Street analysts' equity and debt research and equity strategy daily for 24/7 Wall St. since 2012. His broad, diverse career, including a stint as creative services director at an NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas, gives him unique insight into the financial industry. Lee Jackson's journey in the financial industry spans more than 30 years, including nearly two decades as an institutional equity salesperson at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley. His career spanned pivotal sell-side Wall Street events, from the dot-com rise and bubble to the Long-Term Capital Management debacle, 9/11, and the Great Recession of 2008. This reflects his resilience and adaptability amid market volatility. Lee Jackson’s practical financial industry experience, gained through a career at some of the biggest banks and brokerage firms, is complemented by a lifetime of writing across various platforms. This unique combination allows him to shed light on the intricacies of Wall Street in a way only someone with deep insider experience and knowledge can. Moreover, his extensive network across Wall Street continues to provide direct access for him and 24/7 Wall St., a privilege few firms enjoy. Since 2012, Jackson’s work for 24/7 Wall St. has been featured in Barron’s, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Business Insider, TradingView, Real Money, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Benzinga, and other media outlets. He attended the prestigious Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and has a degree in broadcasting from the Specs Howard School of Media Arts.

Here Are Tuesday’s Top Wall Street Analyst Research Calls: Broadcom, Conoco Phillips, HubSpot, MercadoLibre, Moderna, Occidental Petroleum, PNC Financial, Trimble, and More
Europe
BBC Business

Yorkshire Water boss resigns after firm downgraded

Nicola Shaw, who has led the firm since 2022, will leave the role on 1 January to be replaced by Nicola Medalova, a chartered environmental health officer who previously worked for the National Grid. In a statement on Friday, Shaw said it had been a "privilege" to lead the company but that it was "the right time" to leave her post. Shaw has faced criticism in recent years, including for taking £1.9m in undisclosed payments between 2023 and 2026, while the company has come under scrutiny for its performance. The payments were made by Yorkshire Water's parent company, Kelda Holdings, for what the firm said was for "investor engagement" and "financial oversight". On Thursday, the Environment Agency gave the firm one star out of four - its lowest possible rating - meaning Yorkshire Water was classed as a "poorly performing company". The EA said Yorkshire Water was responsible for 260 pollution incidents in 2025, which was its highest total since 2011. In 2024, Ofwat announced it was fining the company £47m for historic sewage leaks. In her statement, Shaw said: "It has been a privilege to lead Yorkshire Water and serve the people of Yorkshire. "Although there remains a huge amount of work to do, I am extremely proud of what our colleagues have achieved, putting the business on a stronger footing for delivery across all aspects of its work." Yorkshire Water said Medalova would join the company on Monday as part of a transition period before assuming the chief executive officer role full time in the new year. She said: "I am delighted to be joining Yorkshire Water and grateful to the Board for the opportunity to lead the business through its next chapter. "Yorkshire Water faces huge challenges but also great opportunities for continued improvement and I look forward to working with Nicola Shaw, the leadership team and colleagues across the business as I get up to speed."

Yorkshire Water boss resigns after firm downgraded