Category: 3. Business

Investing.com — Saudi Arabia’s benchmark index fell more than 2% in early trade on Sunday, weighed heavily by banking and materials stocks, even as energy heavyweight Saudi Aramco gained.

The Tadawul All Share Index was down about 2.2%, with financials leading declines. Major lenders including Al Rajhi Bank fell around 3.4%, while Saudi National Bank dropped more than 4%, reflecting broad-based selling across the sector.

In contrast, Saudi Aramco rose about 3.4%, tracking firmer crude prices amid heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The stock’s gains helped cushion losses in the broader index, given its heavyweight status.

Materials names such as SABIC and mining major Ma’aden were also lower, adding to downward pressure.

The divergence underscores how rising oil prices are supporting energy stocks, while concerns over regional escalation and broader risk sentiment weigh on financials and cyclical sectors.

Trading remains volatile as investors assess geopolitical developments and their potential impact on oil flows and regional economic activity.

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The humanoid arms race: can the U.S. and China actually coexist?

Steve Chen, who served as YouTube’s chief technology officer before it was acquired by Google in 2006, railed against the TikTok-ification of online life in a talk last year at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s purely entertainment,” Chen said during the talk, which was published on YouTube. “It’s just for that moment. Just shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans.”

Chen, who has two children with wife, Jamie Chen, said he wouldn’t want his kids only consuming short-form content, and then not be able to watch something longer than 15 minutes. He said he knows of other parents who force their kids to watch longer videos without the eye-catching colors and gimmicks that hook especially younger users. This strategy works well, he claims.

“If they don’t get exposure to the short-form content right away, then they’re still happy with that other type of content that they’re watching,” he said. 

Many companies have had to rush to offer short-form content after the rise of TikTok, he said, but these companies now have to balance their motivations for monetization and attracting users’ attention with content that’s “actually useful.” 

Companies that distribute short-form video, which includes his former company YouTube, could face problems with addictiveness. These companies should add safeguards for kids on short-form content, such as age restrictions for apps and limits on the amount of time some users can use them, he said.

The science seems to back up Chen’s opinion. Over the past few years, several studies have shown a mental health and attention problems are correlated with short-form video watching. A 20-year-old plaintiff has also taken Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, and other companies to court over accusations that she became addicted to their products leading to mental health problems.

Chen joins fellow tech trailblazers in sounding the alarm about social media’s impact on children, including early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Tesla’s Elon Musk. In a podcast interview, Altman specifically called out social media scrolling and the “dopamine hit” of short-form video for “probably messing with kids’ brain development in a super deep way.” Meanwhile, Thiel said he only allows his children to use screens for an hour-and-a-half per week.

Musk, who owns the social network X (né Twitter), said in 2023 he doesn’t have any restrictions on social media use for his children, but added this “might have been a mistake,” and encouraged parents to take a more active role in their kids’ social media habits.

“I think, probably, I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past and just take note of what they’re watching, because I think at this point they’re being programmed by some social media algorithms, which you may or may not agree with,” Musk said.

A version of this story originally published at Fortune.com on July 29, 2025.

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Read more: How AI, unemployment, and interest rates could shape the stock market and your investments

Barkin, from the Richmond Fed, argued that AI could create new jobs. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he said manufacturers who are having trouble finding workers are telling him that if they can leverage AI, they can hire people who would not otherwise be ready for the job market.

“However this plays out, I think the question’s not whether we’ll have jobs eliminated or jobs created, it’s what will the redeployment process look like?” he said. “How fast will it happen, and how much downside is there in the labor market while you’re transitioning from the old jobs into the new jobs?”

Then there’s the inflation side.

Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee to be the next Fed chair, maintains that AI will usher in “the most productivity-enhancing wave of our lifetimes” and be “structurally disinflationary,” paving the way for lower interest rates.

Similarly, San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly recently invoked former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, who she said looked past official data in the 1990s, which hadn’t yet incorporated higher productivity from technological advances, and held rates steady rather than raising them.

Daly suggested that perhaps the Fed should do the same with AI.

“We won’t find all the answers in the aggregate data on productivity, the labor market, or inflation,” she said. “Seeing developments before they fully emerge requires digging deeper, relying on disaggregated information that foreshadows transformation.”

Read more: How jobs, inflation, and the Fed are all related

But other members of the Fed say not so fast.

Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee told reporters this past week that the analogy of the 1990s is harder to apply to AI.

“You want to be extremely careful if one of the things driving the boom is expected future productivity — not what’s actually happened, but what’s going to happen … that makes a big difference for monetary policy,” Goolsbee said.

He warned that the Fed could “easily” overheat the economy with the expectation for massive investment premised on what’s coming in the future. If what comes is not as grand as forecast, the economy would be left with a big overhang leading into a downturn.

Meanwhile, Barr has disputed the idea of AI as a productivity accelerator that puts the Fed on a rate-cutting path, noting that the boom in artificial intelligence “is unlikely to be a reason for lowering policy rates.”

Barr warned that AI could be inflationary, offering the example of electricity supply constraints on the power grid colliding with booming energy demand from data centers.

“For all of these reasons, I expect that the AI boom is unlikely to be a reason for lowering policy rates,” Barr said.

Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari even surmised that AI is likely to keep rates elevated.

Economist Stephen Brown of Capital Economics said that, so far, the evidence shows there isn’t much inflation from stronger demand due to AI and that the Fed, at least, won’t need to hike rates.

“The disinflationary effects of stronger productivity growth already appear to be broadening,” Brown said. “Accordingly, unlike the experience during the tail end of the dot-com boom, the risk that the latest tech boom will eventually force the Fed to tighten policy aggressively seems more limited.”

Jennifer Schonberger is a veteran financial journalist covering markets, the economy, and investing. At Yahoo Finance she covers the Federal Reserve, Congress, the White House, the Treasury, the SEC, the economy, cryptocurrencies, and the intersection of Washington policy with finance. Follow her on X @Jenniferisms and on Instagram.

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From RAN to Core, the companies’ extensive joint work brings greater flexibility by moving from verification to real-world deployment

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., today announced new breakthroughs with AMD across Samsung’s network portfolio – including 5G Core, virtualised RAN (vRAN) and private networks. This achievement marks a key milestone for both companies that move forward from the joint verification stage to commercial deployments, reinforcing the level of the strategic collaboration for software and AI-driven network innovation.

Recently, Samsung was selected by Videotron to deploy its 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) and 4G LTE Core gateway solutions, powered by AMD EPYC™ 9005 Series CPUs. Through this project, Samsung is expanding its presence across Canada and beyond, accelerating its cloud-native AI core footprint while retaining operator confidence in Samsung’s proven partner ecosystem and network solutions.

At MWC 2026, Samsung will demonstrate its AI-RAN breakthrough developments by leveraging its AI-powered vRAN with AMD EPYC processors. Following last year’s validation milestone, both companies will introduce the successful results of multi-cell testing conducted at Samsung’s R&D Lab, enabling scalable deployments and greater processor flexibility within software-based network environments.

This achievement highlights Samsung’s ability and commitment to reach commercial-grade, AI-powered vRAN performance using a fully virtualised software stack on the latest AMD CPU without additional accelerators. It underscores Samsung’s ongoing shift toward software-driven architectures designed to reduce hardware dependency and provide operators with greater choice and adaptability.

“Samsung’s accomplishment with AMD emphasizes what’s possible when AI-native, open and virtualised architectures meet advanced compute innovations,” said Keunchul Hwang, Executive Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “We’re making headway to help operators fully scale AI-native networks today with commercial-grade performance and greater infrastructure optionality, ensuring their networks are ready to evolve with emerging technologies and use cases.”

“AMD EPYC CPUs are built to handle the intensive compute requirements of modern telecommunications infrastructure,” said Derek Dicker, corporate vice president, Enterprise Business Group. “Our latest multi-cell vRAN testing with Samsung demonstrates how our latest generation EPYC processors deliver the performance, efficiency and scalability that network operators and enterprises need to build next-generation networks that are ready for AI, automation and future innovations.”

The companies have also expanded their joint efforts for AI-driven enterprise solutions. At MWC, Samsung will present its Network in a Server (NIS)— a fully virtualised next-generation, Edge-AI solution powered by AMD’s CPU. This solution helps operators easily incorporate AI into their networks, reduce operational complexity and unlock new opportunities. Samsung will demonstrate various AI on RAN use cases using NIS verified in real-world environments with a major Japanese operator. These use cases span video analysis, sensor and radar detection services based on Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technology, and hyperconnectivity for next-generation devices.

Samsung is committed to embracing a robust, technology forward ecosystem of chipset partners, providing operators with diverse optionality to accelerate a flexible, AI-powered and cloud-native network evolution.

Samsung Networks has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from purpose-built RAN, virtualized RAN, Open RAN, AI-RAN, Cloud-native AI core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools and applications. The company currently provides innovative network solutions to mobile operators that deliver boundless connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Investors have a new mantra as they prepare for AI to shake up the global economy – the Halo trade.

Interest in Halo – short for “heavy assets, low obsolescence” – has risen as investors seek out companies with tangible, productive assets, which might be insulated from AI disruption, such as energy and transport infrastructure companies.

While US mega-cap tech companies have had a rough start to 2026, the Halo trade helped to push UK and EU stock markets to record levels by the end of February.

Goldman Sachs reported this week that its basket of more than 100 big-spending companies had outperformed a similar grouping of capital-light firms by 35% since 2025, as “asset intensity becomes a key driver of valuations and returns”.

“After more than a decade of under‑investment (particularly in Europe), corporates are shifting decisively back toward physical assets,” Goldman analysts told clients.

Goldman defined Halo businesses as ones which pair substantial physical capital (where barriers to replication include cost, regulation, time to build or engineering complexity) with long-lived economic relevance. “Examples include grids, pipelines, utilities, transport infrastructure, critical machinery and long-cycle industrial capacity,” they said.

They have calculated that the valuation gap between capital-intensive and capital-light businesses in Europe has narrowed significantly, with capital-intensive firms now more highly rated on a price-to-earnings basis – a key measure of a stock’s performance.

Ruben Dalfovo, an investment strategist at Saxo, said energy infrastructure companies and oil and gas majors with control over their entire supply chain are examples of Halo companies, along with “you still need this on Monday morning” businesses, such as utilities.

“Waste collection, water services and regulated power networks rarely dominate dinner party chat. They tend to show up when investors stop paying for excitement and start paying for reliability,” Dalfovo said.

The FTSE 100, which is relatively stacked with old economy companies, has hit a series of record highs in 2026. February was the blue-chip stock index’s strongest month since November 2022, and its eighth monthly gain in a row.

“Investors are rotating from expensive AI and growth stocks into businesses with tangible infrastructure and long-lived assets – energy, materials, industrials, shipping and other ‘real world’ enterprises,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote.

“In this context, the FTSE 100 is well positioned to benefit from Halo inflows, rallying from record to record, driven by energy and mining names,” Ozkardeskaya added.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 share index also hit record highs last week, helped by a rotation out of US technology stocks into other sectors.

Cyprus-based oil tanker shipping company Frontline is the best-performing member of the Stoxx 600 so far this year, up 57%. Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen, which sells high-tech systems to marine, aerospace, defence and energy producers is up 46% since the start of January.

In contrast, software and data-focused companies have come under pressure in recent weeks, as AI companies have added services that threaten their revenue models.

Last week, analysts at Citrini Research rattled the markets with a speculative report outlining a future in which autonomous AI systems had upended the entire US economy, from jobs to markets and mortgages, driving up unemployment and hammering the stock market.

Make better investment decisions with Simply Wall St’s easy, visual tools that give you a competitive edge.

• If you are wondering whether Millrose Properties is still attractively priced or has already run ahead of itself, the recent share performance gives some useful clues before we get into the valuation work.

• The stock last closed at US$31.36, with returns of 1.0% over the past week, 5.2% over the past month and 49.6% over the past year. This naturally raises questions about how much of the story is already reflected in the price.

• Recent coverage has focused on Millrose Properties as a real estate name that continues to attract investor interest, with attention on how its portfolio and market positioning stack up against peers. This context helps explain why the share price has been active and sets up an important question around whether the current valuation still looks reasonable.

• On our checks, Millrose Properties scores a full 6 out of 6 for being undervalued. Next, we will walk through the standard valuation approaches investors often rely on and then finish with a broader way to think about what that score really means for you.

Millrose Properties delivered 49.6% returns over the last year. See how this stacks up to the rest of the Specialized REITs industry.

The Dividend Discount Model looks at a stock through the lens of the cash dividends you might receive in the future, then adds them up in today’s dollars. It is essentially asking what Millrose Properties could be worth if you value it purely on the stream of dividends.

For Millrose Properties, the model uses a current dividend per share of about US$3.15. The company currently has a payout ratio of 106.61%, which means it is paying out more in dividends than it generates in earnings. Based on the inputs provided, this leads to an extremely low implied long term dividend growth rate of about 0.05%, calculated from the combination of payout ratio and return on equity.

Plugging these dividend assumptions into the DDM yields an estimated intrinsic value of around US$39.64 per share. Compared with the recent share price of US$31.36, this points to an implied discount of 20.9%. On this dividend based lens, the shares screen as undervalued.

Result: UNDERVALUED

Our Dividend Discount Model (DDM) analysis suggests Millrose Properties is undervalued by 20.9%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 46 more high quality undervalued stocks.

Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for Millrose Properties.

For profitable companies, the P/E ratio is a useful shorthand because it ties what you pay for the stock directly to the earnings it generates. It gives you a quick sense of how many dollars investors are currently willing to pay for each dollar of earnings.

What counts as a “normal” or “fair” P/E depends on what investors expect for future growth and how risky they think those earnings are. Higher growth or lower perceived risk can justify a higher multiple, while slower growth or higher risk usually leads to a lower one.

Millrose Properties currently trades on a P/E of 12.86x. That sits below the Specialized REITs industry average of 15.86x and also below the peer group average of 24.00x. This suggests the market is assigning a lower multiple than many of its comparables.

Simply Wall St’s Fair Ratio for Millrose Properties is 37.70x. This is a proprietary estimate of what the P/E could be given factors such as earnings growth, profit margins, industry, market cap and company specific risks. Because it adjusts for these elements, it can be more tailored than a simple comparison with industry or peer averages.

Set against the current P/E of 12.86x, the Fair Ratio of 37.70x indicates that, on this metric, the stock screens as undervalued.

Result: UNDERVALUED

P/E ratios tell one story, but what if the real opportunity lies elsewhere? Start investing in legacies, not executives. Discover our 19 top founder-led companies.

Earlier we mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so let us introduce you to Narratives, which are simply your own story about Millrose Properties that connects what the business is doing to a financial forecast, and then to a fair value you can compare with today’s share price.

On Simply Wall St’s Community page, Narratives let you plug in your assumptions for Millrose’s future revenue, earnings, margins and fair value, then see how your view stacks up against others on the platform.

Because these Narratives update when new information like news or earnings is added, they provide a living framework to decide whether the current price looks attractive, stretched or somewhere in between.

For example, one investor might build a Narrative that aligns closely with the US$38.60 consensus fair value and expected 2028 revenue of about US$1.1b and earnings of US$685.3m. Another investor might be far more conservative and use much lower revenue, margin and valuation assumptions. This shows in one place how different stories about Millrose can lead to very different views on whether to buy, hold or sell.

Do you think there’s more to the story for Millrose Properties? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include MRP.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

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