The first time Danny Rimer laid eyes on Dylan Field, Field was just 18 years old.

Then, Field was an intern at the buzzy startup Flipboard. Field gave a presentation to the startup’s board, self-assuredly outlining his research about the features users loved and which ones flopped. Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures since 2002, remembers it very clearly. 

“What was interesting was not only did he do a very good quantitative job of figuring out what features made the most sense, but the way he presented it was incredibly visually appealing and original,” Rimer told Fortune. “I remember him as an 18-year-old and thinking: ‘Wow, this person has a unique, compelling way of conveying information.’”

Rimer met Field again shortly thereafter, as Field was looking to raise a seed round for Figma. It was 2013, and the biggest tech IPO that year was Twitter, and there wasn’t necessarily optimism about design as a market. Field also wasn’t in a rush to put out a product. 

“Here was this 19-year-old, who had a lot of clarity about what he wanted to do—democratize the world of design, and provide tools to everyone,” said Rimer, a college art history major who was drawn to Figma’s taste and ambition. “He had this ambition of dropping out of university to go after this crazy idea, where it’s clear that he’s not going to be able to come up with a product for over two years. In the world of move-fast-break-things, here were two folks [Field and Figma cofounder Evan Wallace] who were saying, ‘We’re not going to have anything for two years, so we hope you’re comfortable with that.’”

Rimer—whose investments also include Etsy, Dropbox, Discord, and Dream Games—bit, leading Figma’s 2013 seed round. At the seed, Index invested $1.8 million, and over the next 12 years invested a total of $86.5 million in the company, a source familiar with the matter told Fortune. Index sold roughly 5% of its shares, a sliver of its total stake, in the IPO to create a float, collecting about $66 million. As Figma shares soared on their first day of trading Thursday, Index’s remaining stake in Figma swelled to north of $7 billion. The source told Fortune that the seed multiple by market close on IPO day was 1300% multiple on invested capital—ultimately, an almost 90x return. 

Rimer declined to comment on specific numbers. Nevertheless, Figma’s absolute shredding of the public markets goes to show not only that tech IPOs are back, but that the company’s original thesis—that design matters and is expansive—was right all along. 

“It was a time when we thought everyone in the world wanted to be a designer,” Rimer said. “Design was sort of what architecture was in the early 20th century, during the Bauhaus movement. Everyone was talking about being a designer of apps, of software, of fashion. It was a term that became synonymous with the future. So, we thought design meant a lot more than just designing software or graphic design, that it would be an all-encompassing term. And that probably meant most people would want to try out their chops at designing.”

It’s why Rimer and the Index team—also backers in two of the venture capital success stories of this year, Wiz’s $32 billion mega-sale to Google and ServiceTitan’s IPO—don’t subscribe to the much-quoted total addressable market (or TAM) metric. Chasing an exact TAM can be misleading, Rimer said. 

“We learned a long time ago to think of the total available market as noise, and we’re probably going to get it wrong,” he said. “An example: We invested in Etsy, while most folks were thinking: How big can Etsy be? How many Sunday crafts people are there going to be in the world? 100,000? 200,000? And we said, this is actually a phenomenon. Everyone wants to make their passion their vocation. We could have millions of these folks. Conversely, we passed on Airbnb because we were thinking, how many hotel rooms they can cannibalize, instead of thinking Airbnb is actually going to expand the market dramatically again.”

Figma amid the AI boom, Rimer said, is a full-circle moment of sorts, as AI creates more vibe designers in the way it has created vibe coders. 

“We did not predict that AI was going to create another exponential curve of opportunity for Figma,” Rimer said. “We already thought that the number and the speed of apps and software being created pre-AI was already really compelling. But, of course, AI has lowered the bar for anyone to create an app, and anyone to be a developer. So, the core necessity of design has only become more central for a much larger pool of people.”

The intern with the thoughtful slides had it right all along: Design wasn’t peripheral. It was fundamental. 

ICYMI… The Term Sheet Podcast has officially launched! I can’t wait to talk to you all every week. Our first guest: Will Hurd, chief strategy officer at CHAOS Industries. Episode 1 is live here.

See you Monday,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Apple blew past Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter earnings report released Thursday, revealing robust growth driven by persistent iPhone demand, surging services revenue, and resilience in key international markets—even as tariff anxieties and questions over its artificial intelligence (AI) roadmap loomed over the industry.

For the quarter ended June 28, 2025, Apple posted revenue of $94 billion, representing a 10% increase compared to the same period last year. Net income soared to $1.57 per share—up 12% from a year ago and significantly ahead of analyst forecasts, which had pegged earnings per share at $1.43 on expected revenue of $89.22 billion. Gross margin nudged up to 46.5%.

CEO Tim Cook celebrated the results, noting “Apple is proud to report a June quarter revenue record with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and Services and growth around the world, in every geographic segment.” Apple’s board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per share, payable August 14 to shareholders of record as of August 11. 

The installed base of active devices hit a “new all-time high,” according to CFO Kevan Parekh, underscoring Apple’s customer loyalty amid intensifying market competition. Apple shares climbed more than 2.5% post-market on the results.

Segment highlights

Apple’s signature iPhone business was the principal engine of growth, generating $44.6 billion in sales—up from $39.2 billion the previous year. This far exceeded most forecasts and reinforced the iPhone’s dominance, even as competitors ramp up their global push.

The Services segment, encompassing the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple TV+, Apple Music, and iCloud, also set a new record: revenue there hit $27.4 billion, a 13% increase over last year. The success of Apple TV+ was underscored by the summer box office triumph of “F1: The Movie,” which has grossed nearly $513 million worldwide. Mac sales also posted double-digit growth, rising to $8 billion.

In contrast, iPad and Wearables revenue both saw modest declines, but these were more than offset by the core and services businesses.

International & trade dynamics

Growth was broad-based—notably including China, where Apple outperformed expectations with $15.4 billion in sales. This comes amid a tense geopolitical environment: President Donald Trump, seeking to enact tariffs of at least 25% on non-U.S.-made iPhones, had warned Apple to “manufacture in the U.S., not India, or anyplace else.” The company had projected a $900 million headwind from tariffs this quarter but successfully navigated the challenge, in part by accelerating its shift in device manufacturing from China to India.

Looking ahead

Despite these achievements, investor scrutiny remained focused on Apple’s comparative lag in artificial intelligence rollouts—especially as competitors like Meta and Microsoft grab headlines for major AI advances.

Apple’s stock, while buoyed after the earnings beat, has fallen 16% year-to-date, underperforming the broader S&P 500. Still, many analysts remain bullish, citing Apple’s ecosystem strength, user retention, and ability to deftly manage global headwinds. Some analysts have expressed impatience with Tim Cook, even arguing for him to be replaced. Longtime Apple bull Dan Ives has thrown his support behind Cook but argued for a transformative M&A deal for Apple to get a leg up in the AI race, slamming a recent presentation as something that “felt like an episode out of ‘Back to the Future,'” although though that was a film, not an episodic TV series.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

IPOs are prismatic. 

They’re about the past and the future, about the company that’s going public and the wider market. IPOs are moments of truth—will public market investors, literally, buy what VCs have been backing for years? It’s also an event that tests how people are thinking about the wider IPO market. Are we, after all this time, so back?

On Wednesday, Figma, the design software unicorn led by Dylan Field, completed its initial public offering, raising $1.2 billion in proceeds ($1.4 billion if you include the over-allotement) for the company and some of its early shareholders, signaling strong demand for its shares which will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. Figma seemingly sailed through its investor roadshow, upping its share price from the initial $25 to $28 range to the $33 it ultimately priced at. And after the company’s $20 billion planned merger with Adobe fell apart a year-and-a-half ago, the $19 billion valuation that Figma has fetched in its IPO is a pretty remarkable testament to its potential as a standalone business.

Derek Hernandez, emerging technology senior analyst at PitchBook, says that even compared to successful IPOs of late, Figma is singular, with its year-over-year revenue growth approaching 50%, and its Q1 profitability (Figma’s Q1 net income was $44.9 million). 

“Figma stands out even among recent high-growth software IPOs like Circle and CoreWeave,” Hernandez said via email. “Figma has both scale and earnings and is a prime example of a high-growth, VC-backed company with a strong narrative that the market is eager for, positioning it as one of the most credible high-growth listings this year.”

This is, ultimately, high praise—in June, stablecoin firm Circle was priced at $31 a share, and closed yesterday at about $190, while CoreWeave’s initially muted IPO still has the company up about 150% year-to-date. High praise, of course, also means high expectations. This, perhaps, has long been true of Figma: A look at the company’s SEC filings shows that a staggering four top VC firms have stakes in Figma valued north of $1 billion—Index, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia. 

And while the fallout from the failed Adobe merger was public, that attempted merger also lingers in the background as a positive signal of sorts, “which served as a massive validation of Figma’s strategic importance and market position,” said Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, via email. Adobe looms in Figma’s past and its future, added Martin, who noted that Figma has both the opportunity and challenge of “overtaking Adobe as the leading design software company, with its cloud-native collaborative platform.”

One interesting detail: Figma itself only raised $411 million. Most of the proceeds are going to a group of selling shareholders (including VCs) each taking a small slice off the table. But the biggest selling shareholder is MCF Gift Fund, part of the Marin Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization which sold 13.4 million shares for a cool $441 million.

For today, though, it appears that Figma could be the harbinger of a simmering truth: that the market for venture-backed IPOs is in a thoughtful recovery. PitchBook’s Hernandez points out via email that there have been 119 offerings year-to-date, up 45% year-over-year. 

“Figma could serve as a bellwether for the market today,” Hernandez wrote Fortune. “It may provide proof-of-concept for other SaaS names, such as Canva, Netskope, and Databricks… Should Figma stumble out of the gate, especially with all its strengths, this may reinforce some caution among late-stage VCs and delay other large tech floats.”

This isn’t a 2021 deluge, but it’s not an early-2024 drought either. 

“While investor appetite has been selective, Figma shows that there’s still strong demand for companies with compelling growth stories, strong fundamentals, and clear differentiation—especially in categories like SaaS and AI,” said Rainmaker Securities’ Martin via email. “We’re not back to the frothy environment of 2021, but high-quality companies are beginning to test the waters successfully again.”

If IPOs are prisms, Figma’s a flashpoint. Now, we see what shines through. 

Introducing the Term Sheet Podcast… After years in your inbox, Term Sheet’s coming to a podcast feed near you. Today, we’re launching the Term Sheet Podcast—bringing this long-loved newsletter to life in audio and video. Each week, I’ll sit down with investors and founders to break down the biggest deals, trade takes, and drop at least one dad joke. First up: Will Hurd, Chief Strategy Officer at CHAOS Industries. He’s been a presidential candidate, congressman, and undercover CIA officer. You won’t want to miss it, so listen here. And, as always, hot takes, reviews, and general feelings go to [email protected]. 

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Venture capitalists love the spotlight. They’re on X, they’re in the White House, and they’re constantly chasing press coverage of Series A deals into B2B SaaS companies that might become the next Salesforce, but could just as likely fold in a few years. 

Today’s VCs hold an inordinate amount of cultural capital, and for good reason: They fund many of the companies that undergird not only our economy, but our social fabric, and they are often instrumental in shaping tomorrow’s trends. But still, they represent a small fraction of the broader investment landscape, which is why I’m always astounded by the sheer scale of the private equity industry. 

I spent the past few months reporting on Ares Management, an alternative asset manager that spun out of Apollo in the late 1990s. Originally, I was interested in the firm because of its role in the booming field of private credit, which has become such a buzzword that it seems like high finance’s equivalent of AI (and they’re related, with much of new private credit capital going to fund data centers).

Ares’ bread and butter business is lending to other alternative assets firms like KKR and Apollo, raising money to help fund their buyouts of middle market companies that most venture firms would never be interested in (though that’s changing), and occasionally taking small equity stakes themselves. The strategy has paid off, especially with the rise of private equity more broadly after the 2008 financial crisis, with Ares now aiming to grow its assets under management to $750 billion by 2028. Compare that to Insight Partners, one of the larger venture players dabbling in private equity, which has $90 billion. 

As with tokenization, private credit is taking on an increasingly greater role in our economy as companies take longer to go public or decide never to go public at all. Rather than turning to public markets for funding, they must look to other means, with firms like Ares waiting in the wings. 

For everyday investors, that limits the type of companies where they can put their money—though some firms like Apollo are starting to offer vehicles like ETFs, as well as tokenized funds, that provide access to private companies. Critics argue that the lack of transparency, however, creates a whole host of potential problems. 

A firm like Ares may have less name recognition than a Sequoia or Andreessen Horowitz, though it has arguably a greater role in shaping how money moves in our economy (and they’re taking on a higher profile through sports, with three Ares executives among the new Baltimore Orioles leadership group). These are the “masters of the universe” that Tom Wolfe famously wrote about in his 1987 Wall Street classic The Bonfire of the Vanities, but they’re often more hidden from view. You can read my feature on Ares’ rise, including its unique structure of a CEO and two co-presidents leading its next era of growth.

Leo Schwartz
X: @leomschwartz
Email: [email protected]

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• U.S. stock futures pointed to more gains after a week filled with record highs as Wall Street cheered the U.S.-EU trade deal announced on Sunday. Investors are also bracing for a frantic week loaded with market-moving events such as earnings from top companies, key economic reports, the Fed’s policy meeting and more trade news.

Wall Street looks to begin a jam-packed week on a high note as investors cheer the U.S.-EU trade deal that was announced on Sunday.

The agreement with America’s biggest trading partner removes a key source of market uncertainty and the threat of a damaging trade war. It also adds to an increasingly bullish narrative as the S&P 500 notched five record highs last week.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 161 points, or 0.36%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.34%, and Nasdaq futures rose 0.46%.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was flat at 4.386%. The U.S. dollar dipped 0.12% against the euro but was steady against the yen.

Trump’s deals with the EU and Japan set 15% tariffs rates on both trade parters, who have also vowed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S.

Gold edged down 0.15% to $3,330.50 per ounce. U.S. oil prices rose 0.1% to $65.22 per barrel, and Brent crude climbed 0.1% to $68.51.

Investors will not be able to look away over the coming week as every single day could produce significant market-moving news.

High-stakes trade negotiations between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are scheduled to start on Monday in Stockholm. That comes as a tariff truce between the two sides is due to end Aug. 12, though they are reportedly going to extend the deadline by 90 days.

Tariff drama will continue throughout the week as other countries try to reach deals with the U.S. before Friday’s deadline, when a pause on aggressive “reciprocal” rates will expire.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs face legal challenges, with a court hearing scheduled Thursday on whether the president has authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose wide-ranging duties.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve will begin its two-day policy meeting. Analysts don’t expect the central bank to adjust rates, but Governor Christopher Waller has indicated he will dissent and call for a cut.

Chairman Jerome Powell’s press briefing on Wednesday afternoon will likely be dominated by questions related to the White House’s attacks about renovations at the Fed’s headquarters and calls from Trump allies for Powell to be ousted due to the project’s cost overruns.

Meanwhile, several closely watched datasets are due that will offer more clues on how tariffs may—or may not—be impacting the economy. On Tuesday, reports on consumer confidence, home prices, and job openings will come out.

On Wednesday, ADP’s private-sector payroll survey, second-quarter GDP data, and pending home sales are scheduled.

On Thursday, weekly jobless claims and the personal consumption expenditures report, which includes the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, are due.

And on Friday, the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing activity index, and construction spending round out the week in data.

Don’t forget earnings. Boeing announces quarterly results on Tuesday, Microsoft follows on Wednesday, while Apple and Amazon report Thursday. Oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron put out their numbers on Friday. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Foreign investors returned to U.S. stocks and bonds in force in May, just a month after retreating in the wake of President Donald Trump’s unexpectedly aggressive tariffs. New data show record net inflows, as the highest tariff rates were on hold to allow breathing room for trade talks. U.S. stocks have since retaken record highs, though bond yields remain elevated.

Just as American consumers have demonstrated extraordinary resilience amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs, foreign investors apparently have a strong stomach for market chaos.

The most recent data from the Treasury Department shows that foreigners plowed a net $311.1 billion into U.S. securities in May, a record high, after pulling out $14.2 billion in April.

“All this is notable because so many commentators prophesied the end of US ‘exceptionalism’ after the turbulence of recent months,” Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote Wednesday in a post titled “US exceptionalism roars back” on his Substack. “The reality is that markets are far more accepting of all the ups and downs than people realize. US ‘exceptionalism’ is alive and well.”

Meanwhile, for the 12 months through May, net foreign inflows neared their all-time high from July 2023, when they topped $1.4 trillion to mark the peak of the American exceptionalism narrative in markets, he added.

The rebound in May signals a stunning turnaround from April, as Wall Street feared the end of U.S. supremacy in the global economy and markets.

In the immediate aftermath of “Liberation Day,” the S&P 500 flirted with a bear market, crashing nearly 20% from its prior high while the Nasdaq passed that threshold.

The 10-year Treasury yield initially plunged but then soared more than 70 basis points in just days as investors worried top U.S. debt holders would dump their holdings.

But a month later, the opposite happened.

“The hurdle for the US to experience genuine capital flight is high and certainly wasn’t breached in April,” Brooks wrote.

To be sure, the 10-year yield remains above its pre-Liberation Day level, and the dollar has suffered its worst first half in more than 50 years.

And while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have retaken their prior records and continue to charge even higher, stock indexes in Europe and China are still outperforming U.S. rivals.

Meanwhile, talks with Japan and trade partners have cemented tariffs rates that are higher than the initial 10% baseline. Negotiations with other countries are still ongoing, and failure to reach a deal could send tariff rates even higher.

Nevertheless, market veteran Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, was also heartened by the data showing record inflows into U.S. markets.

“So, we take comfort from the data that confirm that it is the bears on the outlook for a massive selloff in US bonds, US equities, and the US dollar who might be delusional, not us,” he wrote on Monday. “Our faith in the kindness of strangers has been validated by the latest Treasury data.

Just a few months ago, top names on Wall Street were sounding the alarm on Trump’s tariffs and their long-term repercussions.

Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin warned in April that the country was eroding its “brand,” explaining that from American culture to its financial and military strength, the U.S. is an aspiration for most of the world.

 “On the financial markets, no brand can compare to the brand of the U.S. Treasuries… we put that brand at risk,” he said, adding that it takes a very long time to remove the tarnish on a brand. 

In May, Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, said the era of U.S. exceptionalism has “been put on pause.”

And last month, Deutsche Bank said America’s prized exceptionalism is the collateral damage of Trump’s tariff war.

“Our outlook argues that the structural foundations of U.S. exceptionalism—particularly the ability to finance itself cheaply via the dollar’s reserve status—have begun to erode,” economist Jim Reid wrote in a note. “So we remain structurally bearish on the dollar and expect U.S. term premia to keep rising.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• The White House’s recent criticism of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters renovation project has highlighted the central bank’s sources of funding. Unlike federal departments that receive taxpayer dollars via appropriations from Congress, the Fed is self-funded, largely via interest income from government securities it holds.

The Federal Reserve’s funding has come under scrutiny as the White House attacks the $2.5 billion headquarters renovation for cost overruns.

That controversy was underscored on Thursday, when President Donald Trump and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell disagreed over the cost during a visit to the central bank. Trump’s allies have suggested the project could be grounds for ousting Powell, but the president has said he would not fire him, though Trump continues to demand lower rates.

Unlike the Pentagon and a new weapons system that has blown through its budget, the Fed and its operations are funded differently.

While the Defense Department and other executive branches receive money from Congress, the Fed is self-funded, largely via interest income from government securities it holds.

That means no taxpayer dollars have been appropriated for Fed operations — including building projects like the headquarters renovation.

Most of the Fed’s income comes from assets such as Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities that sit on the central bank’s balance sheet and earn interest.

That balance sheet exploded in size during the Great Financial Crisis and COVID-19 pandemic as the Fed bought trillions of dollars of bonds to prop up the economy.

Other sources of income include interest on foreign currency investments held by the Fed; fees for services like check clearing, funds transfers, and clearinghouse operations provided to depository institutions; and interest on loans to depository institutions. 

To be sure, the Fed’s mission isn’t to maximize its earnings from trading securities. Instead, it has a dual mandate of stable prices and maximum employment. Buying and selling assets is only a means for achieving those ends.

Meanwhile, the Fed also has costs, including interest payments on reserve balances, interest payments on securities sold via repurchase agreements, and operational costs like payroll and its buildings. Costs go up when the Fed hikes interest rates like it did in 2022 and 2023 to tamp down inflation.

When income exceeds those costs, the Fed hands over the surplus to the Treasury Department. In fact, in the decade before COVID, the Fed sent about $1 trillion to the Treasury.

When the Fed’s costs exceed its income, the central bank creates an IOU known as a “deferred asset” to pay for operations. As interest rates rose, the Fed’s deferred asset grew from $133 billion in 2023 to nearly $216 billion in 2024. As of Wednesday, it was $236.6 billion.

Once rates come down further and income tops losses again, the Fed will pay back the deferred asset and then resume giving the Treasury any excess earnings.

“In conclusion, tighter monetary policy to rein in inflation has resulted in a reduction of net income for the Fed,” the St. Louis Fed said in a 2023 explainer. “This does not mean that the Treasury has to recapitalize the Fed, but rather that the Fed records a negative liability in the form of a deferred asset. This deferred asset accumulates until the Fed sees positive net income, which should happen once interest rates on the long-duration assets it owns start exceeding the interest paid on bank reserves and reverse repo facilities.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

It was once a symbol of rebellion against the well-heeled Wall Street establishment. Today, it’s just another day in markets.

This week proved the point. Opendoor surged 43% in a single day. Krispy Kreme rallied 39% in a matter of hours. GoPro briefly spiked 73%. Reddit message boards lit up once again with rocket emojis and call-option bravado.

Yet it wasn’t the magnitude of the surges that mattered — but the indifference they met. Customary warnings about speculative excess fell on deaf ears. What once felt seismic now feels like a normal part of daily trading — another episode in a US financial system where bursts of retail speculation are routine, expected, and largely unremarkable.

By the end of the week, with the quick rallies faded, the broader market ended with modest moves after a record-setting run. Meanwhile, crypto — once cast as the financial resistance — continued its steady march into the mainstream. A new blockchain-based project involving the likes of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was announced. Crypto funds posted their biggest four-week cumulative inflow ever. Michael Saylor’s Strategy clinched another $2.8 billion in capital markets to fund additional Bitcoin buying.

Taken together, the week offered a broader lesson: retail-driven speculative behavior no longer signals generational angst or post-pandemic distortion. It has instead become a settled feature of the current cycle. Short-dated options are part of the retail toolkit, trading platforms span everything from sports betting to complex stock bets, and manic episodes rarely require justification to take hold.

Peter Atwater, an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary who studies retail investors, said the current wave of activity reflects a shift in both market sentiment and investment toolkit. Meme stocks trading, he says, has lost its sense of novelty — and that’s precisely the point. “We’ve normalized memeing,” he said. “There’s a yawn to it now.”

In Atwater’s view, the most aggressive traders have already moved on to riskier frontiers – digital tokens, leveraged ETFs, prediction markets — while meme stocks have become more of a cultural rerun. “It’s like 30-year-olds dancing to music 20-year-olds used to party to,” he said.

That meme stocks can rip without stimulus checks, lockdowns or zero rates isn’t especially surprising anymore. It is, in its own way, a marker of the moment: everyday speculation, embedded in the architecture of modern markets. Contracts that expire within 24 hours made up a record 62% of the S&P 500’s total options so far this quarter, according to data compiled by Cboe Global Markets Inc., with more than half of the activity being driven by retail trading.

“This generation is far savvier about options and market structure,” said Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “While my generation was perhaps taught to ‘buy a house’ this one knows to ‘buy the dip.’”

It’s not happening in a vacuum. This week earnings season offered few surprises. Tariff deadlines slipped again. Noise from the White House blurred into the investment backdrop. The S&P 500 climbed 1.5% on the week and closed at a record high.

And in the end, a group of volatile stocks became yet another playground where regular investors aimed to quickly turn a profit, often by cornering short sellers or leveraging options. Opendoor Technologies Inc., capped a six-day winning streak with a 43% pop on Monday. The following days saw stocks with high short interest such as Kohl’s Corp., GoPro Inc., Krispy Kreme Inc. and Beyond Meat Inc. surge intraday then pare into the close. 

Competition for gambling dollars is more brisk than it used to be. Since the post-Liberation Day selloff, a Goldman Sachs basket of the most shorted stocks has jumped more than 60%. In credit, CCCs, the riskiest tier of the junk bond universe, are on track to rack up a seventh week of gains. Crypto funds took in $12.2 billion in the past four weeks, their biggest cumulative inflow for such period, according to Bank of America Corp. citing EPFR Global data. US leveraged-loan market just had one of its busiest weeks ever with junk-rated companies rushing to reprice their borrowings multiple times.

And while the latest frenzy was reminiscent of 2021’s pandemic-era burst, there were a few key differences. This week’s action was fleeting, lasting one or two trading days before petering out. Concerted campaigns in the options market played a smaller role. More than half of the top 100 stocks in the S&P 500 index were trading with inverted one-month call skew in 2021, a sign of bullish intent, according to Cboe. This week it got only as high as 21% for the group.

“The market makers and institutions have really adjusted to this phenomenon,” said Garrett DeSimone, head quant at OptionMetrics. They’re “able to hedge their risk and they know how to price these options in across these scenarios,” he said.

If it signaled anything, enthusiasm for memes is more evidence that an ever-more-empowered retail cadre is a fact of Wall Street life that isn’t going anywhere, at least not soon.  

“I don’t think it’s the beginning of a new trend, but it is very interesting to watch because it speaks that the retail investor really wants to be involved in this market,” said Jay Woods, chief global strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. “This is bullish. This is not bearish. This is not significant of a top.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Stocks climbed to more records on Wall Street. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% Friday, setting an all-time high for the fifth time this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.2% to its own record set the day before. Deckers helped lead the way with a gain of 11.3%. The company behind Ugg boots and Hoka shoes reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected. That helped offset a sharp drop for Intel, which sank 8.5% after saying it would cut thousands of jobs as it tries to turn around its struggling fortunes.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising toward more records on Friday and coasting toward the close of another winning week.

The S&P 500 was 0.5% higher in late trading and on track to close at an all-time high every day of this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 221 points, or 0.5%, with less than an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was adding 0.4% to its own record set the day before.

Deckers, the company behind Ugg boots and Hoka shoes, jumped 12.3% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected. Its growth was particularly strong outside the United States, where revenue soared nearly 50%.

Edwards Lifesciences rose 4.3% after likewise topping Wall Street’s expectations for profit in the latest quarter. It said it saw strength across all its product groups, and it expects profit for the full year to come in at the high end of the forecasted range it had given earlier.

They helped offset a drop of 9.3% for Intel, which fell after reporting a loss for the latest quarter, when analysts were looking for a profit. The struggling chipmaker also said it would cut thousands of jobs and eliminate other expenses as it tries to turn around its fortunes. Intel, which helped launch Silicon Valley as the U.S. technology hub, has fallen behind rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices while demand for artificial intelligence chips soars.

The pressure is on companies to deliver solid growth in profits in order to justify the rallies in their stock prices to record after record in recent weeks. Wall Street has zoomed higher on hopes that President Donald Trump will reach trade deals with other countries that will lower his stiff proposed tariffs, along with the risk that they could cause a recession and drive up inflation. Trump has recently announced deals with Japan and the Philippines, and the next big deadline is looming on Friday, Aug. 1.

Besides potential trade talks, next week will also feature a meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates. Trump again on Thursday lobbied the Fed to cut rates, which he has implied could save the U.S. government money on its debt repayments.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though, has continued to insist he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs affect the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move. Lower interest rates can help goose the economy, but they can also give inflation more fuel.

Lower rates also may not lower the U.S. government’s costs to borrow money, if the bond market feels they could send inflation higher in the future. In that case, lower short-term rates brought by the Fed could actually have the opposite effect and raise the interest rates that Washington must pay to borrow money over the long term.

The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady following Trump’s latest attempt to push Powell to cut interest rates. Trump also seemed to back off on threats to fire the Fed’s chair.

“To do that is a big move, and I don’t think that’s necessary,” Trump said. “I just want to see one thing happen, very simple: Interest rates come down.”

If Trump fired Powell, he’d risk freaking out financial markets by raising the possibility of a less independent Fed, one unable to make unpopular choices necessary to keep the economy healthy.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.38% from 4.43% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do, held steady at 3.91%, where it was late Thursday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes slipped across much of Europe and Asia.

Stocks fell 1.1% in Hong Kong and 0.3% in Shanghai. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he will meet with Chinese officials in Sweden next week to work toward a trade deal with Beijing ahead of an Aug. 12 deadline. Trump has said a China trip “is not too distant” as trade tensions ease.

___

AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump took to social media Thursday morning to support Elon Musk’s car company, a startling development given their bitter public feud.

”I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The post wasn’t enough to help Tesla’s stock, which fell sharply after the company reported another quarter of lackluster financial results and Musk warned of some potentially “rough quarters” into next year. At midday, the stock was down around 9%.

Late Wednesday, Tesla said revenue fell 12% and profit dropped 16% in the April-June quarter. Many prospective buyers have been turned off by Musk’s foray into right-wing politics, and the competition has ramped up in key markets such as Europe and China.

Investors have been unnerved by Musk’s social media spat with the president because Trump has threatened to retaliate by ending government contracts and breaks for Musk’s various businesses, including Tesla.

But Trump struck a starkly different tone Thursday morning.

“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government. This is not so!” Trump wrote. “The better they do, the better the USA does, and that’s good for all of us.”

After Trump’s massive budget bill passed earlier this month, Tesla faces the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit and stands to make much less money from selling regulatory credits to other automakers. Trump’s tariffs on countries including China and Mexico will also cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars, the company said on its earnings call.

Musk has blasted the budget bill on his own social media platform X for adding to U.S. debt at a time when it is already too large. The Tesla CEO has called the budget pushed by the president a “disgusting abomination” and has threatened to form a new political party.

On Wednesday’s call, Musk said the electric vehicle maker will face “a few rough quarters” as it moves into a future focused less on selling cars and more on offering people rides in self-driving cars. He also talked up the company’s business making humanoid robotics. But he acknowledged those businesses are a ways off from contributing to Tesla’s bottom line.

Tesla began a rollout in June of its paid robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and hopes to introduce the driverless cabs in several other cities soon. Musk told analysts that the service will be available to probably “half of the population of the U.S. by the end of the year — that’s at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals.”

“We’re in this weird transition period where we’ll lose a lot of incentives in the U.S.,” Musk said, adding that Tesla “probably could have a few rough quarters” ahead. He added, though, “Once you get to autonomy at scale in the second half of next year, certainly by the end of next year, I would be surprised if Tesla’s economics are not very compelling.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tesla’s second quarter earnings signaled the company continues to go through a difficult patch, with both revenue and adjusted earnings per share missing the average Wall Street estimates. Revenue was $22.5 billion, down approximately 12% year over year, the sharpest decline in at least a decade. Adjusted earnings per share was 40 cents, down from 52 cents a year ago. Analysts, on average, had forecast revenue between $22.62 billion and $22.64 billion and adjusted EPS of $0.41 to $0.42 per share, with Tesla below the midpoint on each.

Tesla’s double-digit percentage revenue decline was primarily attributed to the ongoing slump in vehicle deliveries. Improved energy storage deployments and new service offerings provided minor offsets, but could not outweigh the hit from lagging car sales and persistent price competition across the electric vehicle industry.

Operating income also fell significantly, coming in at $923 million, which was below consensus estimates of $1.23 billion. Net income dropped year over year as margins continued to shrink, pressured by lower average selling prices, higher raw material costs, and global trade headwinds.

Tesla had previously reported deliveries of more than 384,000 vehicles in the quarter—a drop of more than 13% from the previous year—with production holding steady at just over 410,000 vehicles. This marks the second quarter in a row of reduced year-over-year deliveries.

Wall Street had entered the earnings week with tepid expectations, citing declining sales, compressed margins, and elevated spending on research and development as factors dampening short-term prospects. While Tesla’s results were slightly weaker than forecast, shares saw only a modest uptick in after-hours trading, as investors focused on the company’s long-term ambitions rather than current sales struggles.

Robotaxi, AI, and a new affordable model

Tesla’s leadership used the earnings release to reaffirm its pivot toward next-generation technologies. CEO Elon Musk highlighted the launch of Tesla’s first Robotaxi pilot service in Austin, along with vague remarks related to the ongoing development of a long-rumored “more affordable” Tesla model.

Musk signaled that, amid stiffer automotive competition, Tesla’s strategy increasingly centers on breakthroughs in autonomy, artificial intelligence, and energy solutions as pillars for future growth.

Multiple challenges continue to weigh on Tesla, including expiring U.S. electric vehicle tax credits in October 2025, ongoing trade disputes and tariffs affecting costs and global supply, and intensifying competition from established automakers and Chinese EV brands. More generally, the brand has growing reputational issues associated with Musk and his support of President Donald Trump, even after the two had a falling out that coincided with fierce criticism of each upon the other. During Musk’s brief role helping the administration, his sometimes successful attempts at slashing government spending provoked ire from much of Tesla’s traditional customer base, with environmentalist and left-leaning politics. Other investors said they wished the distraction would go away.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Taylor Nissi is a senior VP and wealth advisor at the wealth management firm Farther.
• He shared his top tips he would give to clients navigating recent market volatility amid tariffs.
• Nissi said everyone should have three buckets: emergency fund, growth strategy, and retirement plan.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Nissi, a wealth advisor at Farther. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It's important that people have a financial plan they can refer to during times of economic uncertainty.

In the current climate, people may want to reevaluate their risk strategies for their investment portfolios and cash management.

As a wealth advisor, it's my job to help both small business owners and employees through this time of economic uncertainty. Here are my top tips.

Make a plan and prioritize your emergency fund

We like to say you should have three buckets. The first bucket is your emergency fund, the second is your taxable growth strategy, and the third is your long-term retirement plan.

Having a financial plan gives people a reference point to return to during market fluctuations. It can help with decision-making in times of high anxiety.

Everyone should prioritize building their emergency fund or "first bucket." Your emergency fund is a way to prepare for market risk and life risk.

If your household has one income, you should have at least six months saved in your emergency fund. If you have two incomes — either two income earners, one person with two incomes, or a person with one income and a trust fund — that number could drop to three months.

Any other money you know you'll spend in the next 24 months, a college tuition to pay or a house down payment, for example, should all be added to your emergency fund.

This money should be held somewhere that it can be easily converted to cash without affecting its market price. You want something safe, easy to access, and earning a little interest: High-yield savings accounts, money market accounts, or short-term CDs are all good.

If you're not coping, remove volatile assets like stocks and add bonds

The "second bucket" is your taxable growth strategy: investments to help your money grow, even in accounts where you pay taxes, like a regular brokerage account. We've been talking with a lot of clients about how they felt when the market crashed in early April. Our clients hold a lot of wealth in stocks and were very uncomfortable.

If clients were very stressed or couldn't sleep at night, then we'd look at their "second bucket" and change the allocation of their portfolio to more bonds and fewer stocks.

However, we'd also tell people that selling stocks and buying bonds can impact your long-term financial goals. If you sell stocks when prices are down, you lock in those losses. Buying bonds instead may mean you miss out if the stocks rebound.

If you were emotionally OK during a volatile market, I'd say continue buying stocks. They're the best way to compound wealth. You want to buy companies with strong balance sheets and a strong moat around them.

Do not make reactionary portfolio decisions

If you make an emotional decision to sell everything and go to cash, there could be a knock-on impact on achieving your financial goals.

If my clients call me and tell me they want to sell everything, I generally try to walk them back, share historical data about why that might not be a good idea, and tell them to sleep on it.

Taking your money out of the market, say the S&P 500, when you're most uncomfortable and returning after a couple of days will reduce your annual average returns.

Knowing when to invest back in is the hard part. The best days in the market often come immediately after the worst days. So if you take your money out on the worst day, and wait for some kind of "all clear sign," you will almost certainly miss the best days.

I talk a lot about what we learned through the 2008 financial crisis. A lot of the people who got hurt the most were the people who reacted emotionally.

Consider long-term investments

If you're younger, under 50, I'd advise clients to own mostly stocks in their "third bucket," their retirement savings plan. Stocks have much more growth potential compared to bonds. If you didn't cope emotionally with what happened in early April, you could adjust to having fewer stocks and more bonds, but that will have a downstream impact.

If you are nearing retirement, you should be thinking about moving some of your "third bucket" assets into more stable investments. Or if you cannot handle the market swings, think about building a more stable and less growth-oriented portfolio.

I always try to help my clients who are getting ready to retire be conscious of the "sequence of returns" risk. This is when you have to pull money out of your retirement fund during bad market conditions, which can drain your savings faster than you planned for.

If you retire during a market decline, you'll be forced to sell assets at a discount rather than their fully appreciated value, which will decrease your future value. Selling investments while they're down means you'll have less money left to grow in the future, so your total retirement fund shrinks faster.

If you're preparing to retire in the next two or three years, your third bucket should have an emergency fund of its own. You want to have two years of expenses in cash in addition to the emergency fund you already have. It will protect you against stagflation and market uncertainty.