CHICAGO (Reuters) -In a head-to-head contest in a small corner of agricultural futures markets, a legacy spring wheat contract that has traded for more than 140 years is fending off a challenge from a competing contract launched this spring by CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange.
Spring wheat, grown in the northern Plains of the U.S. and Canada, is favored for bagels and frozen dough. The contract was introduced in 1883 on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and has long set the price for premium-quality wheat used by North American millers and exported around the world.
Compared to other commodities, trade in spring wheat contracts is relatively modest. But it is among the only major agricultural commodity derivatives not dominated by CME Group, which in recent decades has expanded from its 19th-century origins as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange into a $99 billion behemoth with acquisitions including the Chicago Board of Trade and Kansas City Board of Trade. Now, nearly 2 million contracts are traded daily for corn, soybeans, winter wheat and livestock.
But CME’s much smaller rival, Miami International Holdings, or MIAX, which bought the independent Minneapolis exchange in 2020 and moved it off of CME’s electronic trading platform this summer, is winning the battle in spring wheat.
“It’s David versus Goliath,” said Joe Nussmeier, a broker with Frontier Futures.
Earlier this summer, CME’s spring wheat futures, saw hefty daily trading volumes of tens of thousands of contracts. Those volumes have faded to a few dozen a day, according to CME data. It also shows that open interest, which reflects the number of active contracts held by traders, has plummeted from a peak of nearly 2,100 contracts to around 600.
Large grain handlers and millers including CHS, Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill’s joint venture Ardent Mills, who represent the bulk of commercial trade in spring wheat, are sticking with MIAX.
Traders said that most of the CME’s early volume bump came from “market makers,” or traders given an incentive by CME to trade the contract to boost market liquidity and facilitate trading for others. But those traders do not often take longer-term positions like commercial traders such as grain millers and elevators who use futures to hedge against the risk of owning large inventories of grain.
“It does not feel like there’s any commercial participation, and what the product needs to thrive is a commercially backed hedger, whether it be an end user or a grain elevator,” said Nussmeier.
CHS and ADM declined to comment. Ardent Mills did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
LEGACY CONTRACT
MIAX shares jumped 38% last Thursday, the day of its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the exchange operator at about $2.5 billion.
CME Group’s new spring wheat contract is a near look-alike in terms of structure, and both were traded electronically on CME’s Globex trading platform until June 30, when MIAX debuted its Onyx trading platform.
Despite the new competition, trading in MIAX Minneapolis wheat futures has been steady at around 7,000 to 14,000 contracts per day this month after falling 31% in July, a drop traders said was due largely to technical problems associated with the shift to a new trading platform. Open interest has held around 60,000 to 70,000 contracts, close to historical levels.
Cash markets are also backing MIAX as bids for spring wheat posted by grain elevators across the northern Plains largely remain tied to its contract, not CME’s.
“The legacy MIAX contract is still the favored contract,” said Jeffrey McPike, a U.S. analyst with brokerage WASEDA Commodities.
In July, three CME employees traveled to Fargo, North Dakota, to promote the new contract among a group of some 50 millers and traders gathered for Wheat Quality Council’s annual spring wheat crop tour.
CME-branded swag and a barbecue brisket dinner did not translate to more trade.
John Ricci, CME’s global head of agriculture products, said the exchange would give its spring wheat contract “time to build.”
(Reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago and Karl Plume in Fargo, North Dakota. Editing by Emily Schmall and David Gregorio)
An 18-story office tower near Manhattan’s Hudson Yards sold at a significant discount to its 2018 purchase price, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Property investor David Werner bought 440 Ninth Ave. for slightly more than $100 million in cash — less than half the last price of $269 million, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing private details.
LAAM has collaborated with Neem to introduce a new system of payments and a wallet for an organization to its marketplace. The collaboration gives sellers instant access to their earnings through LAAM-branded wallets powered by the Neem wallet system. The integration streamlines payouts, collections, refunds, and reconciliations across LAAM operations.
LAAM will credit seller balances directly into LAAM-branded wallets. Sellers will access funds immediately and will be able to withdraw to any bank account. Instant access removes cash flow friction for small designers and growing brands. The arrangement makes payouts predictable and fast. LAAM will also issue instant refunds to buyers into the same branded wallets. This change strengthens post-purchase service and supports customer retention.
Buyer payments will flow through Neem Payment Button. The Payment Button accepts cards, bank transfers, mobile wallets, and Raast. Payments will reconcile in real time in the Neem business dashboard. Real-time reconciliation will reduce errors and trapped liquidity for LAAM. The system will give LAAM clear visibility of collections and settlements.
Neem will provide a full-stack solution that includes wallet ledger reconciliation and a business portal. The solution will let LAAM manage vendor payments, payroll disbursements, and seller settlements on one platform. The unified ledger will provide a single source of truth for money movement inside the marketplace. This approach reduces operational complexity and cuts reconciliation time.
LAAM serves more than one million monthly users and supports hundreds of designers and brands. The partnership will allow LAAM to increase payment volumes safely as the volume of transactions expands. As a result, AAM will be capable of expanding the payment options and launching new financial services based on the Neem wallet.
Neem has proven experience across sectors. The company already supports insurance logistics and courier platforms with embedded wallets and payment infrastructure. Neem will bring the same technical controls, security, and compliance to LAAM. The task of fraud controls and regulatory requirements will remain with Neem, whereas LAAM will be dealing with the merchant experience and product development side.
Sellers and buyers will notice faster settlements, clearer account statements, and simpler refund flows. Market operations will benefit from fewer failed reconciliations and lower operational costs. LAAM will gain the flexibility to pilot additional financial services for sellers, such as instant working capital and branded loyalty wallets.
The companies will roll out the integration in stages and will track metrics in the areas of payout speed, reconciliation accuracy, and customer satisfaction. The partners will optimize flows using performance statistics as well as merchant feedback. The rollout will involve onboarding guides, training, and support to make sure merchants go with the new wallet features without interference.
The alliance will leave LAAM in a position to enhance seller liquidity and consumer-level experience, as well as decrease the back-office burden. The Neem wallet system will serve as the payment backbone of LAAM as the network expands to the region.
Friday is Fed Day. That’s when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will address the central bank’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Investors will be listening carefully to Powell for hints on whether central bankers might cut interest rates as many three times before the end of the year, as the market thought was possible a week ago, or whether they will, at best, cut only twice, as the market thinks now after the rather hawkish minutes of the Fed’s July meeting were released Wednesday afternoon. According to the CME FedWatch tool, the base case for the year remains at two rate cuts, where it has been for a while. The wild card? The odds of only one or up to three. The market this week has signaled which stocks might do better under each of those extremes. In the acute rotation that began on Tuesday, when the up-to-three rate cuts by year-end scenario was on the table, we saw investors book profits in momentum stocks and high-growth year-to-date winners and buy value-oriented and lower multiple names that can actually benefit from more cuts via upward earnings revisions. Stocks like Palantir , for which three or one rate cuts mean nothing in the face of their ties to artificial intelligence and other secular trends, were sold heavily Tuesday and into Wednesday’s session. Names like Club stock Home Depot , which needs lower policy rates to spur cheaper mortgages, were bought. Investors looked past Home Depot’s quarterly earnings and revenue misses to signs of a better back half of the year. When the Fed minutes came out Wednesday afternoon, the market rotation eased. Palantir bottomed and closed off its lows on Wednesday and made it into the green Thursday. Home Depot, on the other hand, came off Wednesday’s session highs and closed lower. The stock was lower again Thursday. Again, fewer rate cuts means earnings revisions won’t be upwardly revised as much as we may have thought to start the week. If Home Depot, or any other rate beneficiary, was priced for two cuts, but we could see three, investors had reason to believe the earnings estimates were too low. That thesis doesn’t hold up, though, if the odds of that third rate cut diminish or go to one. The reason all this attention is on the Fed is that low rates are generally considered to be positive for stock valuations. Whether you want to value a stock via the lens of a discounted cash flow model or a multiples-based price-to-earnings ratio , lower rates tend to result in a higher present value for stocks. That’s especially true for the high flyers that don’t have much profit, if any, in the present but are expected to see robust earnings grow in the future. The reason? Future earnings have a higher present value at a lower rate because they are discounted back at a lower rate. That textbook school of thought, however, does appear to conflict with the real-world market action of the past couple of days, with premium-valuation stocks getting hit as investors started to price-in a more dovish Fed, only for the rotation to let up as soon as the Fed minutes dropped and pointed to central bankers, perhaps, maintaining more of a hawkish stance after all. Historically, it’s been the other way around. It comes down to relative year-to-date performance and which companies need low rates to win. While lower rates do result in a higher present value being ascribed to future earnings, the current growth names, largely tied to the AI investment trade, have proven their ability to grow regardless of the interest rate environment. Low rates may help momentum stocks’ valuation, but they don’t do much in terms of upward revisions to earnings estimates over the next three to six months — again, many don’t even have real earnings to begin with. More cyclical names, on the other hand, stand to see earnings estimates revised higher as they generate money here and now. Lower rates can also catalyze business investments among a host of others. Palantir probably isn’t going to make more money in the third and fourth quarters because the Fed lowers the overnight bank lending rate 75 basis points instead of 50 basis points. Home Depot, on the other hand, absolutely stands to make more money should rates on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage finally dip under 6.5%, a historically important level that has led to increased housing activity. In 2022, when the Fed was hiking rates from the Covid-era level of near 0%, the market move was out of the growth names and into more mature names that were making money. Back then, our mantra for the year was to only invest in companies with real earnings. “We do not want companies that only grow sales but lose boatloads of money,” Jim Cramer told Club members then, adding that 2022 was the year that “you want to own companies that make stuff, that do tangible things, that innovate.” The focus then was on what rates meant for valuation. When the cost of money is cheap or non-existent, as was the case during the pandemic, some investors could rationalize speculating on a flying car company’s potential earnings 10 years out, but if the cost to borrow rises, then the more traditional view is it’s better to own a real car company whose valuation is based on its current financial profile. The focus now is less on valuation dynamics and more on earnings revisions. Helping that move is also the simple fact that so much money has been made this year in the high-flyers that investors are ready to jump on any reason they can to book profits there and rotate into year-to-date underperformers such health care, which is the third worst performing sector in the S & P 500 year-to-date but leading to the upside this week. Bottom line So, as we await Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, be mindful of this dynamic and understand that while a dovish tone has traditionally been supportive of the high-flying growth stocks due to valuation dynamics, that may not be the case this time around. Wall Street is more focused on near-term earnings revisions than valuation model dynamics. If dovish talk is, as it should be, taken to mean lower mortgage rates and more infrastructure investments, it will be the economically sensitive, cyclical names that benefit, more so than the secular growth names that are tied to themes like AI that couldn’t care less about 25, 50, or even 75 basis point changes in the federal funds rate. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Intel Corporation today announced that company executives will participate in the following investor events to discuss Intel’s business and strategy:
On Aug. 28 at 8:45 a.m. PDT, David Zinsner, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will participate in a fireside chat at Deutsche Bank’s 2025 Technology Conference.
On Sept. 4 at 9:50 a.m. PDT, Zinsner will participate in a fireside chat at Citi’s 2025 Global TMT Conference.
On Sept. 8 at 3:45 p.m. PDT, John Pitzer, corporate vice president, Corporate Planning and Investor Relations, will participate in a fireside chat at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference.
Live webcasts and replays can be accessed publicly on Intel’s Investor Relations website at intc.com.
Intel’s participation, speakers and schedule are subject to change.
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS – JUNE 29: People walk through the gate on Harvard Yard at the Harvard University campus on June 29, 2023 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admission policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Constitution, bringing an end to affirmative action in higher education. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
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When 92% of university students report using AI tools but only 36% receive any formal institutional training, we’re witnessing a disconnect that could define the next generation of work. Students are experimenting with generative AI at unprecedented rates, but often without the frameworks, feedback, or professional application they’ll need in their careers.
This creates what an AI preparedness paradox. Students are learning to use tools like ChatGPT for quick answers but not necessarily to evaluate sources, check outputs, or apply AI responsibly in professional settings. According to a survey from the Digital Education Council, 58% of students reported they do not feel they have sufficient AI knowledge and skills, and 48% said they do not feel adequately prepared for an AI‑enabled workplace.
The cost of this gap is already measurable. According to PwC, 40% of the workforce will require reskilling within three years. Workers with AI skills now earn up to 56% more than their peers. This same report shows that job postings on LinkedIn requiring AI skills have increased by 7.5% year-over-year, even as total job postings decline by double digits.
Given the introduction of agents in the workforce, AI is no longer just a tool waiting for prompts; it is evolving into a complex series of specialized workflows. This shift is already visible in industry, where companies are embedding role-based AI systems into everyday workflows. The risk is that students who only learn AI as a shortcut, rather than as a collaborative partner, will graduate unprepared for workplaces where agentic systems are the norm.
Two announcements this month, however, suggest potential solutions that may close this gap. The first announcement was Grammarly’s launch of nine student-focused AI agents. The second is the University of Hawaii’s partnership with Google Cloud to build an AI-powered career pathways platform. These initiatives show how education and technology companies can collaborate to build AI literacy while strengthening workforce pipelines.
Grammarly’s Agents: Teaching Skills Employers Value
Grammarly’s student-specific AI agents, which debuted August 18, introduces context-aware partners that reinforce both academic integrity and professional readiness in educational settings. “We believe students deserve AI tools that meet them where they are academically while preparing them for where they need to go professionally,” according to Jenny Maxwell, Head of Education at Grammarly. Here are the agents that the company has introduced:
Critical Thinking: The Citation Finder and Expert Review agents teach students to evaluate evidence and seek subject-matter expertise. Through this agent, students learn to identify gaps and strengthen arguments; skills central to professions from consulting to law.
Communication: The Reader Reactions and Proofreader agents emphasize clarity and audience awareness. A marketing student, for instance, can test whether a case analysis reads differently to a professor versus a peer group. This mirrors the type of data analysis that real-world marketers are required to do.
Ethics: The AI Detector and Plagiarism Checker reinforce originality and responsible use. Rather than blocking AI outright, these tools teach students to integrate it transparently and appropriately, an increasingly vital competency as employers wrestle with the ethics of AI adoption.
Where early AI tools functioned as passive assistants—waiting for users to craft the right prompts—agentic systems like these are now taking on defined roles. In education, this means AI is no longer just correcting grammar or crunching data; it is stepping into structured, domain-specific functions that mirror the professional tasks students will encounter in the workplace.
For institutions, this is both an opportunity and a warning. The same shift is unfolding in industry, where companies are deploying specialized agents for HR screening, compliance, marketing analysis, and customer engagement. Students who learn to collaborate with these agents in school will be far better prepared to thrive in workplaces where agentification is fast becoming the norm.
Hawaii’s Brain Drain Meets An AI-Powered Solution
If Grammarly addresses the micro-level of student skill-building, the University of Hawaii System is working at the macro level to retain talent in a state that has long struggled with “brain drain.”
More than half of Hawaii’s bachelor’s degree holders leave the state for mainland opportunities, according to UH data, with the number climbing to nearly two-thirds among graduate degree holders. The causes are complex, but a lack of accessible career pathways is a major driver.
The new Hawaii Career Pathways platform, developed with Google Cloud, uses Vertex AI and BigQuery to analyze student skills, prior coursework, and career interests. The system then matches students with local job opportunities and provides personalized guidance through Gemini AI.
“Universities have a crucial opportunity to lead in both the adoption of AI and ensuring our students are prepared to join the workforce of the future, today,” according to Garret T. Yoshimi, VPIT & CIO, University of Hawaii.
This approach serves multiple goals simultaneously. The platform demonstrates how students can apply their academic learning connects directly to real opportunities in Hawaii. In addition, employers gain visibility into emerging talent pools. Finally, the state gains a tool to strengthen its workforce pipeline, reduce outmigration, and preserve cultural and economic vitality.
The initiative also prioritizes inclusion. By using Google Translate, the platform supports Pacific Islander students in their native languages—a recognition that equity in AI readiness is critical for regions with diverse demographics.
Hawaii’s initiative is part of a growing recognition that talent retention is a competitive asset in the AI economy. States like Michigan and Colorado are already investing in retention bonuses and career alignment programs. UH’s use of AI to directly link students to employers could provide a model for other regions facing similar outmigration challenges.
A Blueprint For Workforce-Ready Education
What unites Grammarly’s and UH’s initiatives is a response to a deeper shift: the agentification of work. Across industries, AI is taking on defined roles, from “grader” to “career counselor” to “market analyst.” The real challenge for higher education is ensuring that students learn to collaborate with these systems rather than graduate unprepared into workplaces already transformed by them.
At the individual level, Grammarly’s agents demonstrate how role-based AI can become a learning partner, teaching critical thinking, communication, and ethical reasoning—the same competencies employers now expect students to apply in professional contexts.
At the institutional level, the University of Hawaii’s pathways platform shows how agentic systems can close the last mile between academic achievement and workforce demand, continuously matching skills with opportunities and reducing talent flight.
At the system level, the blueprint extends even further. Institutions need to build their own agentic capabilities—AI systems that track labor market trends, monitor graduate outcomes, and adjust curricula in real time. Rather than reacting to disruption, universities can become proactive engines of workforce readiness.
To thrive in an agentified economy, institutions must embed role-based AI into the student experience and build institutional agents that align education with evolving market realities. Those who move first will not only graduate AI-fluent students but also strengthen their regions with talent that is resilient, adaptable, and prepared for a future of continuous change.
In other words, the next frontier isn’t only teaching students to use agents; it’s empowering institutions themselves to act agentically—deploying AI systems that integrate workforce analytics, curriculum design, and career services into a living feedback loop. Institutions that take this step will be able to move from reactive to proactive, ensuring their graduates stay employable at the point of graduation and that institutions stay resilient as the future of work evolves.
