Good Afternoon. Welcome back from the long weekend. Consumer brands are done eating costs, price increases are back on the menu. And the Magnificent 7? Not so magnificent anymore. They are officially dragging the index instead of carrying it.

—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor

🔥 What’s Hot: 🔥

🥶 What’s Not: 🥶

1. AI “Overinvestment” Angst Creeps Back In

The News: Stocks see-sawed Tuesday coming out of the long weekend, with the Nasdaq initially down more than 1% before reversing and the major indexes ending slightly higher. The U.S. dollar strengthened, helped by weakness in the British pound after soft U.K. jobs data, while gold, silver, and copper slipped. The mood is still jittery: Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey shows a record share of managers now think companies are overinvesting in AI, and General Mills sank after cutting its annual outlook amid weak consumer sentiment.

Why It Matters: This is the market’s “show me” phase: AI spending is massive, but investors are increasingly worried the payoff curve is longer and messier than the hype curve. That skepticism hits both ends—mega-cap capex stories (who’s spending) and the software/ad ecosystem (who gets disrupted). Meanwhile, staples like General Mills flashing demand pressure is a reminder that the consumer isn’t uniformly fine—higher prices + weaker sentiment can still bite, even before you see it in headline GDP.

What to Watch: Friday’s first look at Q4 GDP, because it becomes the baseline for how much “growth cushion” the market thinks we have heading into early 2026. Watch earnings calls for explicit AI ROI language and watch the dollar’s strength: if it persists, it’s a headwind for multinationals’ overseas earnings.
Source: wsj.com

2. The Magnificent Seven Are All Red in 2026

The News: The “Magnificent Seven” is now negative year-to-date, with the group down about 6%–7% on average by mid-February while the cap-weighted S&P 500 is basically flat. The bigger twist is breadth: the equal-weight S&P 500 is up about 5%, and more than 60% of S&P 500 stocks have been beating the index so far in 2026—after years where a tiny handful of mega-caps did all the heavy lifting. Microsoft has been the laggard, as investors digest record AI spending and the time it may take to pay back, while Nvidia has held up better than most of the cohort.

Why It Matters: This is the market shifting from “buy the biggest names” to “show me the cash flow.” When the Mag 7 stop carrying the index, two things happen fast: passive portfolios feel worse (because the cap-weighted index is still mega-cap heavy), and stock pickers suddenly have oxygen again because smaller sectors can matter. It’s also a reality check on the AI trade—massive capex is easy to applaud in a keynote and harder to justify when investors start asking for margins and payback periods. Concentration rarely works well over the long term, and then the “boring” sectors look pretty smart.

What to Watch: Whether the equal-weight outperformance persists through March and April, because sustained breadth is how a market rotation becomes a regime change. Watch mega-cap earnings language around AI ROI—if management teams start giving timelines, pricing power, and margin guardrails, the Mag 7 can stabilize; if it stays “trust us,” expect more multiple compression.
Source: tipranks.com

3. The Holiday Price Truce Is Over

The News: Big consumer brands are raising prices again after holding the line through the holidays, saying they can’t keep absorbing tariff-related costs. The Wall Street Journal flagged Levi’s hiking key styles (e.g., some women’s jeans up $10 to $108, men’s originals up $5 to $84.50) and Columbia Sportswear planning high-single-digit increases on upcoming lines. McCormick expects roughly $50M in tariff-related costs in 2026 and says it’ll use “surgical pricing” plus sourcing changes. Meanwhile, UBS pointed to Adobe’s Digital Price Index showing January online prices rose by the most in its 12-year history, with online inflation running 2.9% YoY.

Why It Matters: This is the moment tariffs stop being a corporate margin problem and start becoming a consumer price problem. Companies can only “eat it” for so long—especially retailers and brands tied to imported goods—so the pass-through shows up as stealth inflation in everyday categories (clothes, home goods, appliances, pantry staples). It’s also a nasty feedback loop: higher prices slow demand, which makes companies more dependent on price hikes to protect profit dollars. Translation: your cart gets pricier at the exact moment businesses are least confident about volume.

What to Watch: The Adobe Digital Price Index and if it stays hot into February and March, because one spike can be noise but a streak becomes a trend line and watch the Fed’s reaction function: Richmond Fed’s Tom Barkin has literally described boardrooms debating how aggressively to pass costs through.
Source: wsj.com

4. Apple Podcasts Goes Full Video to Take a Swing at YouTube

The News: Apple is adding full video support to Apple Podcasts letting listeners seamlessly toggle between watching and listening, download video episodes for offline use, and get adaptive quality based on connection. Apple says it won’t charge creators or hosting providers to distribute video podcasts, but it will introduce an impression-based fee for ad networks delivering dynamic ads in video later this year.

Why It Matters: Video is where the ad money is going, and Apple doesn’t want podcasting to be synonymous with “YouTube first.” The business angle is bigger than features: dynamic ad insertion in video opens a new monetization lane and helps Apple’s Services narrative at a time when everyone is fighting for attention minutes. Also, this is a sneaky ecosystem moat: if your favorite shows look better inside Apple Podcasts, you’re less likely to wander off to YouTube.

What to Watch: Watch creator adoption—especially whether major studios and top podcasters start publishing video episodes to Apple Podcasts as a primary channel, not just a secondary repost. Watch the ad-market mechanics: Apple’s impression fee for dynamic video ads could either become a new standard (if it’s cheap and easy) or a speed bump (if networks balk).
Source: apple.com

5. Texas Turns Into America’s Small-Nuclear Sandbox

The News: Texas is quickly becoming the go-to test ground for small modular reactors (SMRs) as electricity demand climbs and the state looks for “always-on” power beyond wind, solar, and gas. A Texas Tribune report highlights multiple projects moving in parallel: Dow and X-energy are planning four 80-MW reactors at Dow’s Seadrift site with $1.2B in DOE backing, Texas A&M is building out its RELLIS “Energy Proving Ground” with multiple reactor partners, and Natura Resources is targeting a 1-MW molten-salt research reactor at Abilene Christian University in late 2026/early 2027. Texas is also putting money behind it, including a $350M Texas Nuclear Development Fund created by HB 14.

Why It Matters: The driver is simple: Texas is staring at a power-hungry future—data centers, AI workloads, and more electrification—and it doesn’t want reliability to be a weather problem. SMRs are the pitch for “firm power, faster builds,” but the unsexy reality is cost and permitting: they only win if they’re deployable at scale and not priced like bespoke science projects. If Texas pulls this off, it becomes a template for how the U.S. actually adds new nuclear capacity (industrial sites + campuses + state incentives), and it could shift where the next wave of energy jobs and manufacturing clusters land.

What to Watch: Which projects hit true “steel in the ground” milestones and watch the first near-term “proof” unit—Natura’s ACU reactor target in 2026–2027 is the kind of milestone that can either validate the whole movement or turn it into the next PowerPoint that sounded like a good idea at the time.
Source: texastribune.com

1. China’s Humanoid Robots Just Did Kung Fu on the World’s Biggest TV Stage

The News: China used the Lunar New Year spotlight to flex its AI-and-robotics momentum, with humanoid robots performing martial arts on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala—the country’s most-watched broadcast. Reuters said four startups—Unitree, Galbot, Noetix, and MagicLab—appeared on the show, with Unitree featuring its G1 and H2 humanoids in a highly choreographed kung fu routine. The TV gala drew an estimated 79% of live TV viewers in China last year, giving these companies a distribution channel Silicon Valley can only dream about.

Why It Matters: This isn’t just “robots doing backflips for clout”—it’s a consumer-grade demo of China’s advantage: tight hardware supply chains, fast iteration, and a giant domestic audience that normalizes the tech. China accounted for ~90% of global humanoid robot shipments last year, and Morgan Stanley expects China’s humanoid sales to more than double to ~28,000 units this year. That’s how you go from novelty to ecosystem: more units → more data → better models → cheaper parts → more units. It’s compounding.

What to Watch: The video in the source link. Then watch whether this “robot-as-entertainment” push turns into “robot-as-product” traction—orders, deployments, and real commercial use cases beyond stage performances. Watch IPO talk around players like Unitree and AgiBot (Reuters notes they’re among names prepping for listings), because public markets will force the question: cool demo… or durable revenue.
Source: nbcnews.com

2. Cuba’s Five Week Fuel Drought Ends

The News: The tanker Nicos I.V. entered Matanzas Bay on Feb. 16, appearing to deliver Cuba’s first fuel cargo in more than five weeks, as the island grinds through an acute energy crisis tied to tighter U.S. pressure on oil suppliers. The 183-meter ship (flagged Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) docked at Cuba’s main fuel logistics hub, though the type and volume of fuel weren’t disclosed and tracking data suggested it was only partially loaded. The last widely reported foreign delivery was the Ocean Mariner arriving from Mexico on Jan. 9 with roughly 85,000–90,000 barrels, according to Bloomberg.

Why It Matters: This is what an “oil blockade” looks like in real life: not just fewer cars on the road, but blackouts, disrupted services, and supply chains that seize up because fuel is the economy’s bloodstream. The Trump administration’s Jan. 29 executive order created a tariff framework aimed at countries supplying oil to Cuba, which has chilled shipments from traditional sources and pushed Havana into scavenger mode—spot cargos, murky routing, and “who will risk it?” logistics. Even one tanker helps, but it doesn’t solve the math: Cuba’s power system needs steady flows, not occasional lifelines.

What to Watch: Watch whether additional tankers follow because a single delivery is relief but a pipeline of arrivals is stabilization.
Source: latintimes.com

3. BRICS Speeds Up Payments Network

The News: BRICS is moving faster on a cross-border payments network inspired by Brazil’s Pix and alternative messaging rails that don’t rely on SWIFT, as investor positioning on the U.S. dollar turns sharply negative. Reuters reported India’s central bank wants the bloc to prioritize linking BRICS members’ CBDCs at the 2026 summit India will host, building on a 2025 BRICS push for payment-system interoperability. At the same time, Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey shows the most bearish dollar sentiment in its dataset going back to January 2012.

Why It Matters: This is less “BRICS kills the dollar” and more “BRICS builds more exits.” A functioning payment network that settles in local currencies (or linked CBDCs) reduces frictions for trade and tourism and, importantly, reduces exposure to sanctions and chokepoints like correspondent banking. For the dollar, extreme bearish positioning can be a contrarian signal in the short run, but the policy takeaway is longer-term: the more countries invest in parallel rails, the easier it gets to route around U.S.-centric finance when politics get messy. The dollar can still be dominant and face more competition at the margins.

What to Watch: What actually lands on the 2026 BRICS summit agenda—a CBDC linkage agreement would be the first “real plumbing” step beyond speeches. Watch whether Brazil/India can get buy-in on governance (rules, standards, dispute resolution), because payments fail less from code and more from “who controls what.”
Source: ft.com

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A: Take away its credit card.

The original value of an asset for tax purposes, typically the purchase price plus improvements and fees.

“Understanding the basis of her property was essential for calculating capital gains.”

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