Category: Insights

U.S. stocks recovered from a Fed-driven selloff, with the S&P 500 rising 0.8% and the Nasdaq gaining 1.1% as Intel’s 7% rally lifted chip stocks after Trump said Apple would partner with Intel on U.S. chip design. The rebound came as the Fed rate cut stayed at the center of the policy conversation and the Fed…

U.S. markets opened the week with May CPI rising 0.5% month over month and 4.2% year over year, a three-year high, with energy prices up 3.9%, core CPI up 0.2%, and the Fed’s next rate decision set for June 17. In Tech, SpaceX raised $75 billion in a record U.S. IPO by selling 555.56 million shares at…

May reinforced the scale-first dynamic as frontier labs locked in compute, pursued M&A and IPOs, and absorbed sharper open-source price pressure. Anthropic raised $65B in a Series H at a $965B post-money valuation as Claude run-rate revenue surpassed $47B, while deepening infrastructure ties with Google and Amazon (reported commitments up to $40B and $25B). It…

Fresh from this morning, U.S. payrolls rose 172,000 in May, more than double the 80,000 estimate, while unemployment held at 4.3% and wages rose 3.4% YoY, reinforcing a resilient labor market. In markets, AI infrastructure remains the dominant story, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 69% in two months and on pace for its best…

Oil eased as a reported 60-day U.S.-Iran ceasefire extension MOU reduced Strait of Hormuz supply fears, with Brent at $93.71 and WTI at $88.90. Core PCE rose 3.3% annually and 0.2% month over month in April, keeping the Fed likely on hold as Q1 GDP was revised down to 1.6%. In tech, Groupon will cut…

☀️Now Accepting Internship Applications for Summer 2026!Stepmark Partners is excited to welcome a new cohort of Summer Analysts beginning on June 1st. If you’re passionate about the intersection of AI and deal-making, we invite you to apply with your school email. To learn more, please email da@stepmark.ai. This week’s news showed AI continuing to reshape…

☀️Now Accepting Internship Applications for Summer 2026!Stepmark Partners is excited to welcome a new cohort of Summer Analysts from June 1st. If you’re passionate about the intersection of AI and deal-making, we invite you to apply. To learn more, please email da@stepmark.ai. April data kept macro policy in focus, with CPI up 0.6%, core prices…

Markets enter the week with investors weighing resilient labor data against renewed trade pressure and a widening wave of corporate restructuring. March job openings held at 6.9 million, while hires rose by 655,000, and ADP reported April private payrolls up 109,000, ahead of expectations, reinforcing the case for a cautious Fed pause rather than near-term…

Markets opened with rates, oil, Fed politics, and consumer balance sheets in focus. The Fed held rates at 3.5%–3.75% in Powell’s likely final meeting as chair, with four dissents—the most since 1992—while Powell said he plans to remain as governor. March core PCE rose 3.2% annually as oil-driven headline inflation hit 3.5%, complicating policy alongside…

April highlighted frontier labs tightening partnerships and pushing into verticals as open-source and geopolitics intensified. OpenAI reset its Microsoft relationship with Azure priority and model rights through 2032 while making Microsoft’s IP license nonexclusive, and began limited rollout of GPT-5.4-Cyber for vulnerability detection. It also acquired Hiro Finance and TBPN to broaden consumer finance workflows…