Top stories
Meta Spent $34.9 Billion on Capital Projects in One Quarter and Burned $2.1 Billion of Free Cash. Its Commitments Now Total $454.5 Billion.
The Richest Fifth of U.S. Households Spends $1,861 a Year on Its Pets. Cinnante Canine Is Building a Business Around Them.
Union Pacific's Revenue Rose 15 Per Cent, and 6 Per Cent Without Fuel Surcharges. At CSX, Surcharges Supplied More Than Half of a $430 Million Gain.
AT&T Took a $2.6 Billion Charge on the Mexican Business It Agreed to Sell for $2 Billion. GAAP Earnings Fell to $0.13 a Share; Adjusted Earnings Rose to $0.65.
IBM's Software Revenue Grew 8 Per Cent While Consulting Was Flat. GAAP Earnings Rose 26 Per Cent, Against a Year-Earlier Quarter Cut by a $309 Million Tax Charge.
Texas Instruments' Revenue Rose 28 Per Cent and Its Guide Is Flat at the Midpoint. Federal Chip Grants Supplied $1.1 Billion of Its $8.4 Billion Free Cash Flow.
Tesla Spent $4.73 Billion on Capital Projects Against a Forecast of $7.94 Billion. It Has Cut This Year's Budget to $20 Billion From More Than $25 Billion.
Housing Starts Fell 5.2 Per Cent to 1.221 Million, Inside the Census Margin of Error. Signed Contracts Fell 7.3 Per Cent, and in Every Region.
Northrop Grumman's Backlog Hit a Record $109.6 Billion. Its Cash Forecast Needs at Least $2.1 Billion in the Fourth Quarter, Less Than Last Year's $3.2 Billion.
3M Gave Amazon a Warrant for 3.16 Million Shares at $164.89. Most of It Vests Only After Amazon Pays 3M $6 Billion for Data Center Gear.
SpaceX Earned $4.4 Billion in the Third Quarter, $1.6 Billion of It Outside Operations. Musk Says SpaceX and Tesla Have Each Formed a Merger Committee.
The Big Read
BusinessAmerican Express Raised Its Forecast After Earning $5.42 a Share. Its Cards Now Carry an Average Fee of $136 a Year, 14 Per Cent More Than a Year Ago.
The company sells itself as a spending network, but the fastest-growing line in the quarter was the annual fee. A separate $350 million regulatory penalty and a charge to cut about 5 per cent of jobs sit in the same results.
The entrance to the American Express Centurion Lounge at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, in May 2022. Lounge access is one of the benefits Platinum cardholders' annual fee pays for. File photograph.
American Express earned $5.42 a share in the third quarter of 2026, up 31 per cent, on revenue of $20.1 billion, up 9 per cent, and raised its full-year earnings forecast, the company said in its third-quarter earnings release on Friday. Strip out a one-off gain and the figure is $4.68, up 13 per cent.
That is a good quarter by any measure the company reports. The more revealing number is not in the headline. Cardholders paid American Express $2.97 billion in annual card fees in the quarter, 16 per cent more than a year earlier, while the amount they charged on their cards rose 8 per cent. The fee is growing twice as fast as the spending it is supposed to unlock.
About 74 cents of the $5.42, by this publication's arithmetic, came from one transaction and one charge, not from cards. American Express sold its equity stake in Global Business Travel Group, the corporate travel management company, and booked a pre-tax gain of $982 million, or $1.11 a share after tax. Management said on the call that it was using part of the gain to fund a $336 million restructuring charge, which cost 37 cents a share after tax. The two items together explain the gap between reported and adjusted earnings.
Money
PulteGroup's Orders Fell 6 Per Cent With Mortgage Rates Above 7 Per Cent. Its Land and Housing Inventory Has Grown by $1.2 Billion This Year.
One of the largest U.S. homebuilders is selling fewer houses per community while holding its margin.
Business
LKQ Replaced Its Chief Executive as Its European Margin Fell to as Little as 4.1 Per Cent. His Successor Gets $15.3 Million to Sign On.
The board has been reviewing a possible sale of the company since January.
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Infrastructure Everybody Depends On Should Not Be Owned by a Competitor
Coverage Should Follow the Approval, Not the Advice
You Cannot Delegate the Thing You Have Never Done
Technology
AI Researchers Moved Their Date for Human-Level Machines 13 Years in One Survey. Nova Reach Founder Rishabh Singh Has Stopped Picking a Year.
Forecasts for artificial general intelligence keep moving, in both directions, by years at a time.
P&G Raised Prices Just 0.4 Per Cent and Sold 2.4 Per Cent More Volume. It Expects a $1.4 Billion Commodity Hit, Most of It Still to Come.
The world's largest household-goods maker has not yet passed higher oil costs on to shoppers.
American Airlines Made $115 Million Flying Passengers Last Quarter and Paid $435 Million in Interest. Fuel Will Cost It More Than $7 Billion Extra This Year.
Fares rose almost as fast as fuel, and the airline still made money from flying.
Argentina's 1995 Immunity Law Lists 8 Ways to Sue a Foreign State. Two Courts Say Juan Carlos Ruffier's Case Against the U.S. Fits None of Them.
Argentina's Law 24.488 lets foreign states be sued at home for wrongs committed on Argentine territory.
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Schwab Reported Record Revenue of $7.17 Billion and Its Stock Fell Anyway. Margin Loans Have Nearly Doubled in a Year to $187.9 Billion.
Markets
The Chip Index Has Fallen Eight Sessions in a Row, a Run Last Seen in October 2008. The Semiconductor ETF Is Down 16 Per Cent Since 6 October and Still Up 64 Per Cent for the Year.
Money
Moody's Zandi Puts the Iran War's Cost at Almost $2,000 a Household. Only $1,100 Is Energy, and Diesel Is Still 74 Per Cent Above Last Year.
World
France's Assembly Votes on Its Revenue Budget on Tuesday. The Finance Committee Rejected It 31 to 3, and Paris Pays About 137 Basis Points Over Berlin.
Technology
China Has Proposed Export Curbs on 40 Technologies, 23 of Them in AI. Fourteen Would Be Banned Outright.
Editor's Choice
Warsh Would Not Say Whether the Fed Will Hike Again on 28 October. His Last Words Before the Quiet Period Were About AI.
The chair's last public remarks before the blackout were about AI and the shape of the economy, not the rate.
Latest News
Everything we have published, newest firstValero Reports Thursday Against a $21.23 Consensus. A Year Ago It Earned $3.66, and in the Second Quarter $12.54.
Valero Energy reports third-quarter results on Thursday 22 October. The consensus estimate on Nasdaq's earnings calendar is $21.23 a share, against $12.54 adjusted in the second quarter and $3.66 a year ago. Nothing has been reported yet.
Merck KGaA Will Pay $20 an ADS in Cash for Silence Therapeutics, a 130 Per Cent Premium. The Price Is Built on One Drug, Not Yet in Phase 3.
Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, agreed on 19 October to buy Silence Therapeutics for $20.00 in cash per American depositary share, an equity value of about $1.3 billion and an enterprise value of $1.1 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027 and still needs shareholder, court and regulatory approval.
Business
McKesson Is Paying $1.4 Billion for Half of Option Care. The Deal Sets Up a Framework for It to Buy the Rest.
Clayton Dubilier & Rice and McKesson agreed on Monday to take Option Care Health, the largest independent home infusion company in the United States, private for $32.05 a share. McKesson is putting in about $1.4 billion for 49 per cent, and the agreement sets out a framework for it to buy the private equity firm's majority later. Lenders have committed more money to the deal than the two buyers have.
Fifth Third Earned $828 Million With Comerica Fully Folded In. Its Efficiency Ratio Is 62.4 Per Cent, Against 54.9 a Year Ago.
A bank that grew by almost half has to show it is also getting better. The first full quarter after the systems conversion shows costs falling and margin slipping.
China Grew 4.5 Per Cent in the Third Quarter. Investment Is Down 7.2 Per Cent This Year, and Private Investment 10.4.
The headline improved by two-tenths of a point. Underneath it, the economy is being carried by exports and services while investment, property and household spending on goods go the other way.
Business
Pentagon Contractors Lose Their Critical-Minerals Waivers on 1 January. The Aerospace Industry Says Replacement Supply Is Not Expected Until 2028 or Later.
An executive order signed on 20 July tells the Pentagon to stop issuing routine waivers for Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean magnets, tungsten, tantalum and molybdenum on 1 January 2027. An Army Materiel Command official said on Wednesday the service will "see some impact come January." Industry says it still does not know what an acceptable mitigation plan looks like.
The Navy Lent Six Pearl Harbor Welders to Electric Boat and 95.5 Per Cent of Their Weld Tests Passed. About 130 More Public-Yard Workers Are Coming.
A Navy pilot that sent a supervisor and five nuclear welders from Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard to General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, produced a 95.5 per cent pass rate on radiographically tested welds, the Navy said on 16 October. A Navy official said about 130 more public-shipyard workers are being lined up to support Electric Boat.
Ships at the pier still run their own generators for lights, air conditioning and refrigeration.
The Numbers
The First Russian Diesel Cargo Since Washington's Licence Was 40,000 Tons, Bound for Morocco. U.S. Pump Diesel Is 9 Cents Higher Than on the Day the Licence Was Signed.
Russia resumed diesel export loadings at the Baltic port of Primorsk this week, and the first reported cargo, about 40,000 metric tons, is heading to Morocco, not the United States. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said U.S. deliveries need a contract, a vessel and two to three weeks. AAA put U.S. diesel at $6.32 a gallon on Sunday, against $6.23 when the Treasury licensed Russian diesel on 9 October.
What We’re Following
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Truist Is Selling $7.7 Billion of LightStream Loans to Carlyle, Weeks After Shedding $5.5 Billion of Auto Loans. It Also Took a $1.45 Billion Securities Loss.
Anthropic Told Investors Quarterly Revenue Hit $16.8 Billion, Reuters and the FT Report. The Dollar Gain Was Smaller Than the Quarter Before.
EU Leaders Pressed Brussels for Quotas on Chinese Chemicals and Machinery. The Hybrid-Car Deal Covers €15 Billion of a €360 Billion Deficit.
Thoma Bravo's Proofpoint Will Pay $6.3 Billion in Cash for Varonis at $49.75 a Share. The Premium Is 52 Per Cent Against June and 17 Per Cent Against September.
Tesla Reports on Wednesday With Capital Spending Forecast at $7.94 Billion, Up 253 Per Cent. Analysts Expect Free Cash Flow of Negative $4.09 Billion.
Tesla reports third-quarter results after the close on Wednesday 21 October, with a webcast at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. S&P Global Market Intelligence's consensus has capital spending at $7.94 billion and free cash flow at negative $4.09 billion, against roughly positive $4 billion a year earlier. Those are forecasts, not results.
GM Reports on Tuesday After U.S. Sales Fell 6 Per Cent. Analysts Still Expect North American Profit to Rise About 31 Per Cent.
Falling sales and rising profit usually mean pricing and cost are doing the work. The report will show whether that holds, three months after GM raised its operating-profit guidance and cut its net-income range.
Opinion Voices
Argument and analysis from our columnists
Featured Voices
The reporters and editors behind the coverage
Cory Chamberlain
Senior Writer
AI Researchers Moved Their Date for Human-Level Machines 13 Years in One Survey. Nova Reach Founder Rishabh Singh Has Stopped Picking a Year.
JPMorgan Reports Tuesday After a Quarter With $5.6 Billion of One-Off Gains. Analysts Expect Revenue of About $51 Billion.
Devon Is Selling 4 Per Cent of Its Production for $4.2 Billion. The Buyer Has Now Made 10 Eagle Ford Deals Since 2023.
Alison Acosta
Technology Correspondent
Meta Spent $34.9 Billion on Capital Projects in One Quarter and Burned $2.1 Billion of Free Cash. Its Commitments Now Total $454.5 Billion.
IBM's Software Revenue Grew 8 Per Cent While Consulting Was Flat. GAAP Earnings Rose 26 Per Cent, Against a Year-Earlier Quarter Cut by a $309 Million Tax Charge.
Tesla Spent $4.73 Billion on Capital Projects Against a Forecast of $7.94 Billion. It Has Cut This Year's Budget to $20 Billion From More Than $25 Billion.
Daniel Okafor
Markets Editor
PulteGroup's Orders Fell 6 Per Cent With Mortgage Rates Above 7 Per Cent. Its Land and Housing Inventory Has Grown by $1.2 Billion This Year.
American Express Raised Its Forecast After Earning $5.42 a Share. Its Cards Now Carry an Average Fee of $136 a Year, 14 Per Cent More Than a Year Ago.
P&G Raised Prices Just 0.4 Per Cent and Sold 2.4 Per Cent More Volume. It Expects a $1.4 Billion Commodity Hit, Most of It Still to Come.
Margaret Holloway
Editor-at-Large
LKQ Replaced Its Chief Executive as Its European Margin Fell to as Little as 4.1 Per Cent. His Successor Gets $15.3 Million to Sign On.
The Richest Fifth of U.S. Households Spends $1,861 a Year on Its Pets. Cinnante Canine Is Building a Business Around Them.
Northrop Grumman's Backlog Hit a Record $109.6 Billion. Its Cash Forecast Needs at Least $2.1 Billion in the Fourth Quarter, Less Than Last Year's $3.2 Billion.
Thomas Gutierrez
Staff Writer
Comcast Lost 144,000 Broadband Customers in a Quarter and Has Stopped Buying Back Its Shares. Its Parks Profit Fell 17 Per Cent.
AT&T Took a $2.6 Billion Charge on the Mexican Business It Agreed to Sell for $2 Billion. GAAP Earnings Fell to $0.13 a Share; Adjusted Earnings Rose to $0.65.
Merck KGaA Will Pay $20 an ADS in Cash for Silence Therapeutics, a 130 Per Cent Premium. The Price Is Built on One Drug, Not Yet in Phase 3.
The Story So Far
The Hormuz Closure28 stories
- 10 Oct Oil Fell on Trump's Pledge of No Iran Strike, Then Closed Higher on a Hurricane. Tanker Attacks Are Running at a Wartime High.
- 3 Oct Oil Is Up 61 Per Cent Since February. American Natural Gas Costs What It Did a Year Ago.
- 3 Oct The Trucking Companies Going Bankrupt Are Small. Diesel Is Paid in Days, Freight in Months.
- 3 Oct The G-7 Will Release 100 Million Barrels. Some May Already Have Been Promised in March.
- 29 Sept LNG Canada Will Double to 28 Million Tonnes. The Announcement Has a Date in the 2030s and No Price.
- 28 Sept The 30-Year Treasury Closed at Its Highest Since the Bond Came Back in 2006. Households Had Already Marked Up Their Inflation Forecast.
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Editors’ Picks
America Imported a Record $421 Billion in August. Without Computers, Chips and Telecom Gear, Imports Are Down This Year.
Schneider Is Paying a 42% Premium for PTC. The Price Is Still Below Where PTC Traded a Year Ago.
Customs Took In $333 Billion in Fiscal 2026. Refunds Sent About $147 Billion Back Out.
The Cranberry Brief