Category: 3. Business

Nvidia has unveiled its most audacious leap yet—into humanoid robotics.

Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris last month, CEO Jensen Huang introduced AEON, a full-stack humanoid robot developed in partnership with Swedish engineering firm Hexagon. More than a showpiece, AEON is fully built and operational, positioning Nvidia to extend its dominance from artificial intelligence into the physical world.

“Robotics may become the largest industry in the world,” Huang told the audience in Paris, signalling Nvidia’s next frontier.

Huang, who once faced skepticism over Nvidia’s aggressive AI roadmap, now presides over a company that has become synonymous with the technology. But AEON marks the beginning of what he calls a broader revolution—one that blends Nvidia’s AI chips, sensors, simulation software, and robotics platforms into a single end-to-end ecosystem.

The company’s robotics and automotive division generated $1.7 billion in revenue last year. Analysts expect that figure to soar to over $7.5 billion by the early 2030s, with AEON possibly accelerating those estimates.

Read More: Nvidia unveils personal AI supercomputer Project DIGITS at CES 2025

Wall Street is taking notice. Nvidia is now just $50 billion shy of surpassing Microsoft’s all-time market valuation, a milestone that could be reached within days. The firm’s stock has already climbed 19% this year, despite early headwinds from US chip export restrictions to China.

“Investors are no longer just betting on Nvidia’s chips,” one analyst noted. “They’re buying into the future of automation.”

Traditionally, Nvidia’s strongest financial performance arrives in the fourth quarter—averaging 23% growth, according to Dow Jones data. With AEON’s high-profile debut and growing industry buzz, that trend may continue, potentially propelling the company past the $4 trillion valuation mark.

The next industrial revolution?

As tech rivals such as Apple and Amazon experience plateauing growth, Nvidia is charting new territory. AEON isn’t just a robot—it’s a symbol of Nvidia’s evolving mission: building machines that think, see, and work in the real world.

With Huang at the helm, the company that once redefined graphics processing is now positioning itself to reshape the very fabric of work and industry.

By Isabel Wang

Tech can’t take all the credit for the stock market’s record rally into a ‘broader, healthier market’ heading into the second half of 2025

After months of leadership by megacap technology stocks, Wall Street kicked off the second half of 2025 with a powerful, yet potentially healthier, shift in the U.S. stock market, as the rally has broadened.

From cyclicals to small caps, more stocks have been joining the charge that has sent the S&P 500 SPX and the Nasdaq Composite COMP to new all-time highs, suggesting that this market’s recovery from April lows may have deeper roots than many anticipated.

Investors have begun rotating out of richly valued technology names and into cyclical sectors when the calendar turned to the second half of the year. The S&P 500’s materials sector XX:SP500.15 was the best performer among the large-cap index’s 11 sectors last week, up 3.6%, while the S&P 500 only rose 1.7%. The financials XX:SP500.40 and energy XX:SP500.10 sectors also gained 2.4% and 2.1% in the same period, respectively, according to FactSet data.

Small-cap stocks also have shown signs of rebounding in the second half. The benchmark Russell 2000 index RUT has popped 3.5% so far this month, outperforming other major large-cap equity indexes. The small-cap index on Thursday also closed in the green for 2025 for the first time since Feb. 20, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

“While the ‘buy everything’ approach worked really well off the April lows, and part of that was simply just a mean reversion trade after tech got asymmetrically punished … so going forward, stock selection is going to be more important and other areas of the market are starting to catch a bid,” said Talley Leger, chief market strategist for the Wealth Consulting Group.

The broadening of the tech rally beyond the so-called Magnificent Seven cohort is a sign of “a broader, healthier market,” he said.

Consumer in focus

Meanwhile, some sectors that lagged in the year’s first half could be poised for a meaningful rebound in the rest of 2025.

The S&P 500’s consumer-discretionary sector XX:SP500.25 was at the bottom of the large-cap index’s 11 sectors in the first six months of 2025, off 4.2% to log its worst first-half performance in three years, according to FactSet data.

However, a look beneath the surface shows the story wasn’t so bleak: Many consumer-related stocks have held steady, and U.S. consumers might be in better shape than sector performance suggests.

The S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary Index XX:SP500EW.25 – which gives equal value to all 51 stocks that are included in the sector, regardless of the size of the company – has actually risen 2.5% this year, according to FactSet data.

Of course, Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – one of the largest-weighted stocks in the S&P 500’s consumer discretionary sector – has been largely to blame. Comprising 18.6% of the total assets within the market-cap-weighted sector index, shares of Tesla have tumbled nearly 22% this year, as weak EV sales, lower demand, intensifying competition from other automakers and Elon Musk’s political involvement have rattled investors.

See: Opinion: Elon Musk takes us for fools as he renews his verbal assault on Trump

Another megacap tech name – Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) – accounts for roughly 42% of the weighting in the discretionary sector, but its shares have remained relatively steady, rising 1.8% year to date, according to FactSet data.

To be sure, Tesla and Amazon stand on their own perch within the consumer-discretionary sector, which also includes restaurant chains, apparel, luxury goods and travel stocks. Among those are McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU) and Airbnb Inc. (ABNB), which all can rise in a resilient economy and labor market when consumers tend to spend more, but fall when unemployment rises.

See: The June jobs report is grimy under the hood. Here’s the down and dirty.

Watch the jobs market

The U.S. economy added a stronger-than-expected 147,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% from 4.2%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan’s closely watched gauge of U.S. consumer sentiment rose to 60.5 in a preliminary June reading from 52.2 in the prior month. This was the first improvement in six months.

The Wealth Consulting Group’s Leger sees the previously negative consumer sentiment as a potential buying opportunity for the consumer-discretionary sector (see chart below).

“The connection between the University of Michigan consumer-sentiment index and the performance of the consumer-discretionary sector fell into the contrarian buy zone on our radar when everything was at its worst [in April]. Now they are rebounding off those lows, and sentiment or morale is improving,” he told MarketWatch via phone on Wednesday.

In Leger’s view, the surging stock market also adds to “the wealth effect,” which could increase consumer spending power. That, along with the improving consumer sentiment, falling oil prices, cooling headline inflation and potential interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve later this year “should release more money for spending on discretionary items,” and “help brighten the earnings outlook” for the sector, he said.

However, Marta Norton, chief investment strategist at Empower Investments, said it’s still too early to “make heads or tails” of consumers’ emotions, as even the potential tariff threat doesn’t feel as concerning as it did when it first made headlines a few months ago.

Americans cut spending in May after buying lots of new cars and other goods earlier in the year to beat U.S. tariffs, underscoring how ongoing trade wars are disrupting the economy. Personal spending fell 0.1% in May, the government said in a June 27 report. It was the first decline since January.

“I wouldn’t describe the consumer as unhealthy at all,” Norton said, but added there has been a marginal deterioration this year. “There is still a certain measure of uncertainty around what that trade policy ultimately looks like,” she said. That also casts a shadow over the long run for earnings of discretionary stocks.

Yet despite recent weakness, the consumer-discretionary sector remains expensive on a price-to-forward-earnings (P/E) basis. The forward P/E multiple of the discretionary sector, calculated by dividing its current price by Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimate for its earnings per share (EPS) for the next 12 months, was pegged at 29.07 as of Wednesday afternoon, up from around 22.56 on April 8. Furthermore, the equal-weighted version of the discretionary index was trading at 17.57 times forward P/E, compared with 13.7 in early April, according to FactSet.

When you add in that the sector’s not necessarily cheap, and that tariff headwinds remain, Norton said it looks tough to see a catalyst for meaningful moves higher for consumer-discretionary stocks.

U.S. stocks finished higher on Thursday as investors digested the June employment report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA jumped nearly 0.8%, ending only 0.4% off its prior record. The S&P 500 ended up 0.8%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 1%, with both scoring fresh record closes, according to FactSet data.

Major U.S. stock exchanges were closed on Friday for the July 4 holiday.

-Isabel Wang

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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Story Continues

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But after landing a job at Amazon in the late 1990s—when it was a bookstore-focused startup—Hart started his steep climb up the corporate ladder. In 2009, he had worked his way up to Jeff Bezos’ technical advisor, a chief-of-staff-equivalent role internally known as “the shadow.”

Now, as a new CEO of Coursera, Hart is taking the lessons he learned sitting next to the now third-richest man in the world (with a net worth of $241 billion) to transform the world of educational technology. That includes, he says, being someone who is always willing to be curious and to listen to your gut—even if the data might not back you up.

“One of the things that Jeff would regularly say is when the data and the anecdotes don’t align, trust the anecdotes,” Hart tells Fortune. “Because it probably means that you’re either measuring the wrong thing in the data, or that the data is telling you something that you’re just not seeing yet.”

This mantra would prove especially relevant in Hart’s life after he was tapped to lead Amazon’s creation of Alexa—a level of success he hopes to emulate at Coursera.

“(Coursera) is one of the leaders in the edtech space, certainly,” Hart says. “But hasn’t yet achieved what I would call the true breakout success that I was fortunate to have seen when I was at Amazon.”

Reshaping edtech with lessons learned from Amazon and Alexa

While serving as technical advisor, Hart was asked to turn Bezos’ two-sentence idea for the implementation of virtual assistant technology into a product found in consumers’ homes, later known as Alexa. 

With little background in hardware or software, Hart recalls being hesitant: “Why am I the right person to tackle this challenge?”

“He (Bezos) was unbelievably gracious. He said, ‘you’ll do fine, you’ll figure it out,’” Hart says.

Now with more than 600 million Alexa devices sold, it’s clear Hart did figure it out—in part thanks to the belief Bezos instilled in his subordinates. That lesson is one Hart says was critical in making Amazon grow from a bookstore to an e-commerce conglomerate.

“Pushing decisions down as close to the customer as possible was certainly something that I learned from Jeff,” he says. “The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move.”

Moving quickly will likely play in Coursera’s favor considering the rapidly changing world of education, including AI’s intersection with skill development. 

One of Coursera’s biggest competitors, 2U (which also owns edX), filed for bankruptcy last year and became a private company. Coursera’s public performance hasn’t been spectacular, either. Its share price currently sits at about $8.50, a far cry from its 2022 IPO at about $45.

But in the next five years, a predicted 1 billion people will gain internet access, according to Bloomberg, and thus would have access to Coursera’s thousands of online learning opportunities, that include partnerships with both industry and universities including Google, Microsoft, and IBM as well as Stanford University, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania.

“There is a huge opportunity for Coursera, not just to serve all the people who are online today and give them access to world class education so they can transform their lives, but also to do that for the population that will come online,” Hart says.

Hart’s advice for Gen Z: Optimize for learning—and ask why

For young people looking to push their careers up the corporate ladder and emulate a jump from Nordstrom to Amazon,Hart’s advice is simple: Focus on learning—not on a flashy job title or cushy salary.

“Don’t optimize for titles, don’t optimize for salary, optimize for learning. And if you do that in the long run, it will benefit you,” he tells Fortune.

And while that advice may sound on-brand coming from the CEO of an education company, treating your career like a marathon, not a sprint, and spending time discovering your broader interests is a mantra echoed by other business leaders, including Hart’s former coworker, Andy Jassy. 

“I have a 21-year-old son and a 24-year-old daughter, and one of the things I see with them and their peers is they all feel like they have to know what they want to do for their life at that age,” Jassy, the current Amazon CEO, said on the podcast, How Leaders Lead with David Novak. “And I really don’t believe that’s true.”

“I tried a lot of things, and I think that early on it’s just as important to learn what you don’t want to do as what you want to do, because it actually helps you figure out what you want to do,” Jassy added.

And while Jassy admits career success involves an element of luck and may include multiple setbacks, remaining persistent is what ultimately might land you a shot at the corner office. 

“I feel like my journey or adventure was a lot of luck, and I think maybe one of the things I did best was not overthink it,” Jassy added to Novak.

By William Watts

‘Strength begets strength’, says ClearBridge’s Schulze after S&P 500’s rapid rally off April lows

Tariffs? Deficits? So what?

Stock-market investors who were in full-fledged panic just three months ago in the wake of President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” unveiling of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners went into the long Fourth of July weekend with the S&P 500 SPX and Nasdaq Composite COMP in record territory. That’s even with a 90-day pause on those tariffs due to expire on Wednesday.

“The direction of travel for tariffs has really been one way over the last couple months, which has been a positive direction,” Jeff Schulze, head of economic and market strategy at ClearBridge Investments, with $180.4 billion in assets under management, told MarketWatch.

Stocks stumbled hard after the April 2 tariff announcement, with the S&P 500 finishing nearly 19% below its February record and on the cusp of a bear market, before roaring back after Trump announced the pause. Stock-market bulls barely looked back as equities extended their climb, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both pushing back into record territory in June.

Investors have been soothed by a framework agreement with China that helped cool tensions between Washington and Beijing. And while flare-ups between the U.S. and trading partners are possible, the expectation is that the pause will be extended for countries negotiating levies, all of which could make the July 9 deadline a “non-event,” Schulze said.

“The setup for stocks during the second half of 2025 is quite Goldilocks” – neither too warm nor too cold, but just right – as investors eye potential trade deals, the extension of the 2017 tax cuts with passage of Trump’s massive tax and spending bill, calming geopolitical tensions and a Fed that’s warming up to interest-rate cuts, said Clark Bellin, president and chief investment officer of Lincoln, Neb.-based Bellwether Wealth, which manages $630 million in assets, in emailed comments.

Congressional Republicans wrestled Trump’s fiscal legislation over the finish line shortly after markets saw an early close Thursday. That was also described as a positive for stocks, with tax cuts and other measures set to provide a fiscal tailwind.

“Enthusiasm is also heavily motivated by the fact that this growing economy will receive supply-side stimulus,” said Jose Torres, chief economist at Interactive Brokers, in a note, referring to the legislation.

Read: Trump’s big bill just passed the House. Here are the winners and losers as it goes to his desk.

So much for the bond-market vigilantes. Volatile moves in Treasury yields beginning last fall were tied by some investors to fears that Trump’s fiscal agenda would result in a further surge to the deficit. The legislation passed Thursday is projected to add $3.4 trillion to the U.S. government’s $36.2 trillion debt over the next 10 years.

Treasury yields rose Thursday, but that was driven more by good news on the economic front after a stronger-than-expected June jobs report. The yield on the 10-year note BX:TMUBMUSD10Y finished the week at 4.339%, up 5 basis points on the day but down 46 basis points from its 52-week high near 4.8% set in January. Yields and bond prices move opposite each other.

Deficit estimates don’t account for potential tariff revenues, which were $15.6 billion in April according to Bipartisan Policy Center data, analysts at Jefferies said in a Thursday note. “The key question for equity investors is whether the tax incentives will meaningfully boost economic growth and thus rein in the growth in public debt over the next decade,” they wrote.

Stocks rallied Thursday after June nonfarm payrolls rose a stronger-than-expected 147,000 and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%. Economists didn’t love all aspects of the report, but investors were in a buying mood. The S&P 500 rose 0.8% to close at a record 6,279.35, while the Nasdaq advanced 1% to end at a record 20,601.10. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA gained 344.11 points, or 0.8%, to close at 44,828.53, off 0.4% from its record close of 45,014.04 set on Dec. 4.

See: The June jobs report is grimy under the hood. Here’s a few key numbers that tell us why.

Investors may be reluctant to stand in the way of the stock market after such a ferocious rebound from the April lows. Schulze noted that the 19.8% 50-day rally off the April 8 low was the ninth-strongest such rally for the S&P 500 going back to 1950. Strong 50-day rallies have tended to be followed by impressive gains over the subsequent three-, six- and 12-month periods, he said (see table below).

“Strength usually begets strength,” he said.

Some strategists still see reasons to be cautious.

For one thing, the Wall Street consensus appears overly optimistic when it comes to the tariff outlook and thus the growth rate in calendar year 2025, said Scott Wren, global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, in a note. As tariffs arrive in force, the economy is certain to slow, pushing up unemployment and denting consumer spending.

“Our feel is that stocks are ahead of themselves, and as a result, we are looking to trim positions in markets and sectors that we find overvalued, particularly U.S. small-cap equities and the industrials and consumer discretionary sectors” in the S&P 500, which have done well in recent months, he said.

Investors could hold those funds or reinvest in sectors that appear more favorable, including tech, financials, energy, utilities and communications services, he wrote. Or, since stocks aren’t cheap, they may opt “to hold those funds to reinvest if the downside volatility we expect develops.”

-William Watts

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

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Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

It’s been a tremendous year so far for bitcoin and the crypto market.

Cryptocurrencies have gained greater acceptance in Washington, with President Donald Trump establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve and the Senate passing the GENIUS Act. They’ve also found favor with traditional finance; spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund net inflows in 2025 have totaled $14.4 billion through July 3, according to data from Farside Investors.

Bitcoin (BTCUSD) has gained about 15% since the start of year, outpacing the S&P 500’s rise of 7%. It isn’t far from the all-time high of near $112,000 set in May, edging closer to the bullish year-end targets analysts set at the start of the year.

Here’s what crypto investors will be watching for in the second half of the year.

Will Bitcoin Treasuries Go Mainstream?

So-called bitcoin treasury companies have been the talk of the town in 2025. A bitcoin treasury company is a business that holds a substantial portion of its reserve assets in bitcoin, often as an inflation hedge or in anticipation of bitcoin’s development as a global, apolitical reserve asset. Some companies, like Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR), take it a step further by issuing shares or debt to accumulate bitcoin.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has been at this for years, but there are several new players entering the arena, including Metaplanet and Twenty One. There are now an estimated 135 public companies that hold bitcoin as a reserve asset.

“The latter half of 2025 will mark a pivotal moment for bitcoin’s adoption as a treasury asset, driven by a convergence of global market trends, shifting corporate strategies, and institutional validation,” Stephen Cole, who is the co-founder and CEO of bitcoin treasury solution provider Castle, told Investopedia. “We’re already seeing bitcoin treasury companies emerge in every major global capital market and [I] expect that trend to continue,” he said.

Cole expects larger companies, including well-known tech giants, to begin establishing bitcoin positions and defining their allocation strategies by the end of the year. “For (small and medium sized businesses) and large corporations alike, the question of whether to acquire bitcoin is quickly going from if to when,” Cole added.

Do Altcoins Stand a Chance Against Bitcoin?

Some have wondered if bitcoin treasury companies will sap demand for smaller, more volatile altcoins.

“Demand for altcoins has historically stemmed from two main sources: (1) beta exposure to bitcoin, and (2) differentiated use cases that bitcoin’s blockchain doesn’t fulfill,” David Lawant, Head of Research at FalconX, told Investopedia. “What we’re seeing now is that bitcoin treasury companies and broader access to instruments like options can meet that first demand more efficiently and with less friction.”

However, Lawant says bitcoin treasuries only satisfy some of the criteria that drive demand for altcoins. He also cautioned that “the cycle is likely far from over,” and in his view, there is still time for certain types of alternative crypto assets to shine.

“Altcoins with a strong and distinct fundamental value proposition still have plenty of room to perform,” said Lawant. “Regulatory shifts such as the crypto market structure bill and a more permissive stance toward decentralized finance (DeFi) experimentation could unlock powerful new trends.”

More Crypto ETFs and IPOs

Of course, bitcoin treasury companies aren’t the only way to gain exposure to bitcoin and other crypto assets via public markets. Spot ETFs for bitcoin and ether already exist, and according to Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart, similar products could be on the way for other digital assets. Tweaks to existing ETFs, such as in-kind redemption and staking, are also likely.

“I think we will see the vast majority, if not all, of the currently filed 19b-4s obtain approval by the end of the year,” Seyffart told Investopedia. “That includes in-kind [redemptions] and staking and something like 10 individual assets [that have] attempted to get an ETF.”

Additionally, the undeniable success of the IPO for stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) has not gone unnoticed. Galaxy (GLXY) and eToro (ETOR), which are both heavily involved in the crypto market, also debuted earlier this year. According to Nate Geraci, President of The ETF Store, there could be more IPOs on the way from the likes of crypto exchanges Gemini and Kraken, and blockchain technology companies Consensys and Ripple, among others.

Ethereum’s Make or Break Moment?

Finally, ether (ETHUSD), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and long the second-largest crypto asset behind bitcoin, may also be at a critical point in its history. It has underperformed both bitcoin and some of its smaller competitors, such as Binance Smart Chain and Solana, in recent years.

A recent report from a group of Ethereum proponents gained attention for comparing ether to digital oil. Still, some investors doubt that the use of Ethereum’s tech by the likes of Coinbase Global (COIN) and stablecoin-issuers will necessarily accrue value to the ether asset itself over the long term.

That said, Lawant believes there are still plenty of reasons to not count out ether quite yet.

“There have been clear signs over the past few months that sentiment is shifting in the Ethereum ecosystem,” said Lawant. “Ethereum also benefits from being more closely tied to traditional capital markets, which is a key price driver in today’s environment. That’s evident in its active CME futures market and the launch of spot ETFs.”

Ether “also remains underowned by many institutional investors,” says Lawant. Analysts say the addition of staking to spot ether ETFs could help improve institutional adoption. “If the current developments play out as expected, there’s meaningful room for a catch-up.”

Ether is down about 85% relative to bitcoin since hitting an all-time high of 0.1475 ether per bitcoin roughly eight years ago, according to data from CoinGecko.