In partnership with
Good Afternoon. Nineteen years ago today, Steve Jobs walked onstage in a black turtleneck and told the world Apple had built "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" — all in one device. The first iPhone hit AT&T stores for $499 (4GB) or $599 (8GB) on June 29, 2007, and a generation of cable bills, taxi rides, and CD towers started their slow decline that afternoon.
The device that disrupted everything is now part of the establishment — Meanwhile Comcast, one of the cable giants the iPhone helped wound, decided to unbundle itself voluntarily before someone else does it for them. Each major index was up in a session that felt less like a rally and more like a collective exhale after five straight days of losing.
—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor
💰 Markets
S&P 500 | |
Dow Jones | |
NASDAQ 100 | |
iShares 7–10 Year Treasury | |
Bitcoin | |
Volatility Index |
🔍 Today’s Vibe
🔥 What’s Hot: 🔥
Mega-cap tech: QQQ added 2.35% as money came back to the names that took the hardest hits last week. Alphabet's Dow debut, Comcast's spinoff, and a BofA chip-equipment price-target raise all landed on the same morning. Risk got switched back on.
🥶 What’s Not: 🥶
Defensives: Verizon got dropped from the Dow and the broader utility-and-staples trade took a hit. When the VIX falls 4%, no one wants to own boring.
🔢 Big number:
$2.4 trillion — global M&A value through the first five months of 2026, up 41% year-over-year. Bain says deals are on pace for $5.3T by year-end, which would be the second-biggest year on record behind 2020's $5.6T. Comcast just added another headline to the pile.
The Last Time Stocks Were This Expensive Was December 1999.
"Right now, it's good. But it was in '72, '86, 2000, and 2007." - Jamie Dimon, May 2026.
The Shiller CAPE ratio just hit 42.3. The only time in 140 years it's been higher? December 1999.
Stocks can stay expensive for a long time...
It’s one metric to consider, but when your portfolio is built around the most expensive equities in modern history, what else you diversify with could really matter.
Blue-chip contemporary and post war art has shown near-zero correlation with the S&P since 1995.* Prices are largely driven by private collectors competing for a fixed supply of artwork by artists like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso.
Masterworks lets you invest in shares of that market.
$1.3B deployed across 500+ artworks
29 exits to date
Net annualized returns like 16.5%, 17.6%, and 17.8%, not including those unsold
*According to Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.
🇺🇸 Stateside
1. Comcast unbundles itself
The news: Comcast announced Monday it'll spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate publicly traded company within roughly a year. Shares jumped 24% in premarket and settled at +6.11% to $24.59 by mid-session — the largest single-day move in years. Co-CEO Mike Cavanagh will run the new NBCUniversal, ex-CFO Michael Angelakis takes over Comcast, and Chairman Brian Roberts stays "actively involved" in both. Comcast keeps up to 19.9% of NBCUniversal for a year post-spin.
Why it matters: This is the cable giant doing what activists have been demanding for years — separating the cash-generating broadband business from the media-and-streaming albatross. Connectivity Comcast becomes a pure-play infrastructure name with 65M+ customer relationships. NBCUniversal becomes a pure-play content company that can pursue its own M&A path (analysts already pairing it with Charter rumors). Two simpler stories beat one messy one, and the market priced that fast.
Big picture: Every conglomerate with a media arm just got handed a playbook. Expect the next round of breakups inside 18 months.
Source: WSJ / NYT / Reuters via Yahoo
2. Alphabet joins the Dow
The news: Alphabet officially replaced Verizon in the Dow Jones Industrial Average at Monday's open, with shares climbing 3.7% to $350.24. Because the Dow is price-weighted, Alphabet immediately becomes the sixth-largest weight in the 30-stock index and represents about 4% of it. It's the fifth Magnificent Seven name in the Dow, alongside Nvidia, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
Why it matters: Verizon getting kicked out of the Dow is the symbolic ending the iPhone started in 2007. The index that's supposed to mirror American industry is now 5 of 30 Mag-7 names — heavier on AI, cloud, and digital advertising than at any point in the Dow's 129-year history. Index funds tracking the Dow have to buy GOOGL on the open, but the flow is modest: only about $115B tracks the Dow versus roughly $20T indexed to the S&P 500.
What's next: Watch which name gets booted next. The lowest-weighted Dow members (Sherwin-Williams, Dow Inc., Travelers) are increasingly out-of-step with the index's tech tilt.
Source: Reuters via U.S. News / Business Insider / Channel News Asia
3. Uber loads up on Lucid
The news: Lucid shares jumped 10.39% to $6.54 Monday after Uber disclosed it had bought additional shares as part of a previously announced $500M autonomous-taxi investment. The pop also reflects a June 30 deadline for Lucid's $2,000 Conquest Offer in the U.S., which is expected to pull Q2 deliveries forward. The Saudi-backed EV maker has been cutting costs aggressively, and the Uber capital is the strongest endorsement Lucid's gotten since its 2021 IPO.
Why it matters: Uber's not making a passive investment — it's locking in supply for the robotaxi fleet it's trying to build before Tesla and Waymo dominate. For Lucid, having a strategic partner with a path-to-revenue beyond unit sales changes the bear thesis. The stock is still down hard from its post-IPO peak, but the floor under it just got a lot more concrete.
Bottom line: When your biggest customer becomes your biggest shareholder, you have a different business.
Source: Stocktwits / TechStock²
4. Lam Research gets the analyst upgrade
The news: Bank of America raised its price target on Lam Research Monday, reiterating a Buy and citing chip-equipment demand from the same AI-memory build-out that hammered Korean chipmakers on Friday. Lam shares followed semis higher in a session that finally rewarded the sector after five down days. The call lands the same week Samsung and SK Hynix are reportedly unveiling combined capex plans approaching $1.3T over the cycle.
Why it matters: Friday's "AI vertigo" headline was that consumer-tech price hikes meant the AI rally had run out of fuel. Today's chip-equipment upgrade is the counterargument: someone has to build the fabs, and there are exactly three companies on Earth (Lam, ASML, Applied Materials) that sell the tools to do it. Analysts are betting the AI capex cycle has another full leg in front of it.
What's next: Q2 earnings season starts mid-July. Lam reports on the 23rd — the read-through for the entire memory sector is on the line.
Source: Yahoo Finance
5. Doximity gets the AI tax
The news: Bank of America downgraded Doximity Monday, citing rising AI-investment requirements and the resulting pressure on operating margins. The healthcare-network social platform has been spending heavily on AI integrations behind the scenes, and the Street is starting to model that spend through the P&L. Shares slid as the broader market rallied.
Why it matters: This is the second story today (along with the Lam upgrade) that shows analysts splitting AI exposures into two distinct buckets: companies selling the AI infrastructure are getting price-target raises, and companies buying the AI infrastructure are getting margin warnings. Doximity is profitable, growing, and gets a downgrade anyway — because the math on AI spend doesn't always pencil out for end-users.
Bottom line: The AI capex cycle is a feature for the tools makers and a tax on everyone else.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Short BTC. Long ETH. Hold as Long as You Want.
Kalshi is the first CFTC-regulated perps market in the US. No expiry, no rollover, up to 5.8x leverage on BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and more. Trade price direction without touching the asset.
Using leverage increases risk of loss. Leverage is subject to the Firm's review and the customer's risk profile.
🌎 Around The World
6. Iran and the U.S. stand down
The news: A senior U.S. official told reporters Monday that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to halt military strikes and resume talks, with technical discussions set to continue in Qatar on Tuesday. Iran's president said roughly $6B in frozen Iranian assets in Qatar will be released as part of the framework. Both sides will stand down "for now," and commercial vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz can move freely. Brent crude swung between gains and losses on the day; WTI traded near $69, a four-month low.
Why it matters: Markets had been pricing a low-grade-but-rising Middle East risk premium for weeks. Today's announcement isn't a peace deal — it's a pause — but a credible pause is enough to unwind a meaningful chunk of the risk-off positioning that built up since the Hormuz tanker strike. The VIX dropped 4.29% off the news, and crude held below pre-conflict levels.
Big picture: Geopolitical risk premia compress fast when there's a credible off-ramp. The hard part is keeping the off-ramp open.
Source: Reuters via Straits Times / CBS News / U.S. News
7. Global M&A pacing toward $5.3 trillion
The news: Bain & Company's 2026 M&A Midyear Report released Monday says global deal value hit $2.4 trillion in the first five months of 2026, up 41% year-over-year. Strategic M&A value rose 36% YTD on flat valuations (median 11.6x EV/EBITDA) and a modest 2% uptick in deal count — meaning the average deal is getting larger. At the current pace, 2026 finishes at roughly $5.3T, just shy of the $5.6T all-time record set in 2020.
Why it matters: Two things drive a megadeal cycle: cheap-ish capital and clear strategic urgency. Both are present right now — rate cuts are still expected by year-end, and AI is forcing every incumbent to either acquire capability or get acquired. Bain calls this the "AI winner's paradox": the companies with the most cash to deploy are also the ones whose existing businesses are most at risk of being disrupted. Hence Comcast splitting itself today, Bio-Techne selling Friday, and Persistent Systems making its biggest acquisition ever overnight.
What's next: Watch the back half — H2 historically gets a tax-deadline-driven boost, and 2026 could top 2020 if deal momentum holds.
Source: Bain / PR Newswire
8. Persistent's $1.4B headache
The news: India's Persistent Systems crashed 11% Monday to a 52-week low after announcing it'll acquire German digital-engineering firm Nagarro SE for €1.4B (₹11,820 crore), at €81 per share. The deal is Persistent's largest ever and would lift the company into the top tier of global AI-engineering services. Indian brokerages, however, panned it as expensive, dilutive to growth, and a stretch for management bandwidth. Persistent's Pune-based stock is now at its lowest level since April 2025.
Why it matters: This is the inverse of every other M&A reaction today. The acquirer paid a premium, the strategic logic is real (Nagarro is a respected German tech-engineering shop), and yet the market hated it — because Persistent shareholders signed up for an organic-growth Indian IT name, not a roll-up. Cross-border, cross-currency, cross-culture integration is the hardest play in M&A, and the Street wants proof before it gives credit.
Bottom line: Strategic logic doesn't matter if the buyer's shareholders don't share it.
Source: Mint / Business Standard / The Hindu
🥸 Dad Joke of the Day
Q: What's a pirate's favorite letter?
A: Argh, you'd think it's R, but it be the C
📖 Vocab Word of the Day
Cost Basis Allocation:
When a company spins off a division, shareholders receive shares in the new entity without paying cash for them. To calculate the eventual capital gain or loss, you must allocate your original cost basis between the parent and the new spin-off, based on the relative fair market value of each immediately after the spin. The IRS provides a worksheet in Form 8937.
"If you've owned Comcast for a decade, your $24 cost basis will get split between Comcast and the new NBCUniversal entity when the spin closes — and the resulting basis allocation is what determines whether you owe taxes years from now when you eventually sell either piece."
📚 Recommended Reading
Stay Ahead of an Emerging Industry
Psychedelics are moving from the fringe into serious conversations around medicine, mental health, culture, and investing. The Drop In by DoubleBlind helps you stay informed with the latest psychedelic research, cultural insights, and transformative personal stories — trusted by more than 130,000 readers. Delivered every Monday and Thursday, it’s an easy way to keep an eye on one of the most fascinating and fast-evolving industries today. Sign-up here.
💬 Your Opinion Matters
Tell us how we can make Afternoon Finance even better for you.
