Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ: NBIS), an AI cloud computing infrastructure and GPU-powered services company, has delivered share price gains of 11.3% over the past six months, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 6.7% advance over the same period.

The outperformance comes alongside a meaningful upward revision in earnings expectations, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Nebius’s current-year earnings climbing 16.2% over the last 60 days.

That combination of price momentum and rising analyst earnings estimates has earned Nebius a Zacks Rank of #1, the firm’s highest Strong Buy designation, along with a Momentum Score of B.

Nebius operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence infrastructure and cloud services, a sector that has attracted sustained investor interest as enterprise demand for GPU-powered computing capacity continues to grow rapidly.

Japan Tobacco Inc. (OTC: JAPAY), the Tokyo-based multinational tobacco producer, presents a contrasting but similarly compelling picture, with its shares rising 3.3% over the past three months against the S&P 500’s 3% gain across the same window.

While the margin of outperformance is narrower than Nebius’s, Japan Tobacco’s earnings estimate trajectory has also moved higher, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current-year earnings increasing 3.7% over the past 60 days.

Like Nebius, Japan Tobacco carries a Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buy rating and a Momentum Score of B, placing both companies in the same select tier of Zacks-rated equities despite operating in entirely different industries.

The pairing of an AI infrastructure pure-play and a legacy consumer staples giant under the same momentum and ranking framework illustrates how earnings revision trends can surface opportunities across very different corners of the market.

Zacks’s momentum scoring methodology evaluates price performance relative to peers and the broader index, meaning a B score for both companies reflects sustained relative strength rather than short-term volatility-driven moves.

Investors tracking high-conviction names with improving earnings outlooks and market-beating price action may find both NBIS and JAPAY worth monitoring as November trading gets underway.

The post Two Strong-Buy Stocks Beating The S&P 500 With Momentum Scores Worth Watching: Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) And Japan Tobacco (OTC: JAPAY) appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan handicapping outlet, moved its Michigan Senate rating from Toss Up to Lean Democrat on Monday, citing that poll along with additional public and private survey data.

Analyst Jessica Taylor, writing for Cook Political Report, said the outlet was “basing our final ratings change on new public and private polling, including a New York Times/Siena poll over the weekend that put the race at an 11-point spread for El-Sayed.”

The shift carries significant national implications, as Cook now considers Democrats more likely than not to capture a Senate majority heading into Election Day.

The rating adjustment arrived against a turbulent 72-hour backdrop for El-Sayed’s campaign, after a surprise endorsement shook the race late Sunday.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), El-Sayed’s former primary challenger, crossed party lines to back Rogers after reportedly feeling snubbed by the Democratic nominee.

Despite the dramatic headlines the Stevens move generated, Cook Political Report was clear that its decision to upgrade the race had already been forming before the endorsement surfaced.

Cook stated the Stevens cross-party backing did not alter its assessment of the contest’s trajectory in any way.

What did move the needle for Cook’s analysts was evidence that core Democratic constituencies, including Black voters, had consolidated strongly behind El-Sayed as the campaign entered its final days.

Decision Desk HQ, a separate forecasting organization, goes further than Cook, rating the Michigan race as likely Democratic and assigning El-Sayed a 75 percent probability of winning the seat.

Michigan’s political volatility makes the contest particularly consequential, given that President Trump carried the state in both 2016 and 2024, while former President Biden recaptured it in 2020.

The Cook Political Report described Monday’s Michigan move as part of its final Senate ratings release for the entire 2026 midterm cycle, underscoring the weight of the call so close to Election Day.

The post 11-Point Poll Lead Pushes Michigan Senate Contest Into Lean Democrat Territory, Putting Senate Majority Within Reach appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) shed 8% while rivals D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) and Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI) each dropped 7%, pulled down by a tech selloff triggered by earnings from Intel and Amazon.

Analysts who follow the sector now describe quantum names as a leveraged bet on the AI trade, meaning they amplify both rallies and retreats in technology sentiment.

The immediate catalyst was Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) post-market report, which sent that stock tumbling 28% after the chipmaker guided fourth-quarter revenue to between $15.0 billion and $16.0 billion, below the third quarter’s $16.5 billion result.

Slowing PC demand drove the weak Intel outlook, yet the company’s push into quantum computing appears financially insulated, as it ended the quarter holding $54.0 billion in cash and short-term investments following a $23 billion stock sale.

Intel’s quantum ambitions are also expanding: the company agreed to acquire Classiq in a deal Bloomberg reported at approximately $2.3 billion, with the goal of assembling a “full-stack quantum computing platform.”

On the other side of the ledger, Amazon Web Services, one of the cloud platforms that rents access to IonQ’s hardware, posted 39% revenue growth in the third quarter, a figure that undercuts the notion of a broad AI spending pullback.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy projected even stronger momentum ahead, forecasting growth “of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028,” which raises the question of whether rising cloud demand will eventually lift IonQ’s own contracted revenues.

Amazon’s stock still slid 2% after its trailing-12-month free cash flow swung to a $42.4 billion outflow, a consequence of accelerating capital investment in AI infrastructure.

None of Friday’s moves alter the underlying financial trajectory that analysts have penciled in for IonQ, with consensus estimates calling for revenue to more than triple this year to $455 million.

IonQ’s valuation has compressed alongside the share price, with its forward price-to-sales multiple sitting near a five-year low of 20x as of Thursday’s close, a level that Friday’s decline pushed even further down.

Complicating the valuation picture, IonQ’s share count has nearly doubled since the end of 2024, and Bank of America applied a 2x multiple to the company’s foundry sales, weighing on the overall figure.

The gross margin trajectory is also drawing scrutiny: IonQ’s second-quarter gross margin fell sharply to 24.9% from 59.8% in the same period a year earlier, a deterioration investors will want to see explained when management speaks.

The event that analysts say will actually matter is IonQ’s earnings report after the close on November 5, its first to incorporate results from the SkyWater foundry partnership, with D-Wave and Rigetti following on November 10.

Management has guided for roughly 100% organic growth this year, and whether that trajectory holds, alongside any recovery in gross margins, will determine whether the market’s AI-proxy treatment of quantum stocks is deserved or simply a costly distraction.

The post Quantum Computing Stocks Treated As AI Proxies As IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), D-Wave (NYSE: QBTS), And Rigetti (NASDAQ: RGTI) Tumble On Big Tech Earnings appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) posted fiscal year 2025 revenue of $24.6 million, a figure that represents growth of 178.5% compared to the prior year.

That kind of top-line acceleration is rare even among high-growth technology companies, let alone those operating in a market where commercial adoption remains early and uncertain.

Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI), by contrast, saw its revenue contract by 34% over the same period, a decline that raises pointed questions about its near-term commercial traction.

Despite this divergence in revenue trajectory, both companies are consuming cash at broadly similar rates, a dynamic that complicates any straightforward comparison of their financial health.

D-Wave’s commercial model is built around annealing-based quantum systems designed specifically for optimization problems, an approach that has found a receptive audience among enterprise and government clients.

The company recently deepened its public-sector ambitions by establishing a dedicated government-focused business unit, signaling a deliberate push to capture federal spending on emerging technologies.

Rigetti takes a different architectural path, developing superconducting quantum systems and offering customers access through a full-stack quantum cloud platform.

The company also maintains development partnerships with major government agencies, giving it institutional credibility even as its revenue numbers have disappointed in the near term.

Both firms are best understood as early-stage bets on a technology that analysts believe could one day transform fields ranging from pharmaceutical discovery to global logistics networks.

The investment calculus heading into 2027 hinges on whether revenue momentum or platform depth ultimately determines which quantum computing approach wins broader commercial adoption.

For risk-tolerant investors, D-Wave’s demonstrated ability to grow revenue at scale offers a tangible near-term signal, while Rigetti’s technical infrastructure and government relationships represent a longer-horizon wager on superconducting quantum architecture.

The post D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) And Rigetti (NASDAQ: RGTI) Are Headed In Opposite Revenue Directions Ahead Of 2027 appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

The stock fell to $325 in morning trading, a 4% drop from the prior session’s close of $338.32, making it the worst performer among large-cap tech peers on the day.

CEO John Ternus, navigating his first earnings call since succeeding Tim Cook, described memory pricing as “unprecedented” and warned that Apple expects its memory purchase costs to keep climbing beyond the December quarter.

The scale of Apple’s exposure is visible in its supply chain commitments, with COO Sabih Khan disclosing that purchase obligations jumped by $33 billion between the June and September quarters alone.

Memory constraints are also expected to limit Mac and iPad availability during the holiday period, even as demand for those products is running ahead of company forecasts.

The irony is that Apple’s underlying September-quarter results were strong, with EPS of $2.10 beating Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of $2.00 and revenue of $114.48 billion clearing the $113.46 billion estimate.

iPhone revenue led the performance at $57.58 billion, surpassing analyst estimates of $56.48 billion, while Parekh projected that the December quarter should be the best revenue quarter in Apple’s history, with total revenue growth of 7% to 10%.

A one-time tariff refund, however, flatters those results, having contributed $0.05 to EPS and a full percentage point to the reported 47.9% gross margin; stripped of that benefit, margins would have declined from the June quarter.

Services revenue of $31.57 billion nearly matched its $31.58 billion estimate, but Parekh’s guidance for Services growth of 8% to 9% in the December quarter fell short of the 10.7% analyst expectation, adding another layer of concern.

Greater China continued to weigh on the overall picture, with Apple reporting $17.54 billion from the region against an estimate of $18.75 billion, a gap that points to ongoing competitive pressure in a critical market.

The margin squeeze is structural rather than cyclical: Apple sits on the consumer hardware side of the AI infrastructure build-out, meaning rising memory prices embed directly into the cost of every iPhone, Mac, and iPad it ships.

Even the Services segment carries new cost exposure, since server-side Siri AI processing generates inference expenses that did not exist at meaningful scale in prior periods.

Among peers, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) slipped 0.7% to $503.80, while Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) edged up 0.3% to $608.25, and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) gained a matching 0.3% to $279.70, leaving Apple with the steepest single-session loss in the group.

Over the prior week, Apple was down 6%, Microsoft fell 5%, and Alphabet declined 12%, suggesting broader sector pressure was already building before Apple’s earnings release.

Bulls can draw comfort from an installed base exceeding 2.5 billion active devices and iPhone Duo demand that remains ahead of available supply, but management’s own language about memory pricing offers little reason to expect near-term margin relief.

U.S. stock futures are pointing to a lower open, with Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) results and midterm election voting adding further uncertainty to the session’s backdrop.

The post Memory Costs Overshadow Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Record Quarter As Holiday Margin Guide Disappoints Wall Street appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

That target reduction unfolded as the stock itself closed at $5.38 on October 22, down 39% over the prior month alone, while peer Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) shed 33% across the same stretch.

For context, the Nasdaq 100 gave up just 6% during that period, underscoring how severely sentiment has turned against advanced nuclear developers as a group.

The math produces an eye-catching number: NuScale trades roughly 51% below its consensus analyst target, implying theoretical upside of about 106% over the next twelve months.

Whether that gap represents genuine value or simply reflects how quickly forecasts are still being revised downward is the central question confronting investors right now.

The sell-off accelerated in mid-October when hotter-than-expected September inflation data pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to 5.26%, punishing companies whose profitability remains years in the future.

NuScale dropped 10% in that single session on October 14, with Oklo sliding 8.6%, as higher financing costs magnified doubts about projects that require enormous upfront capital.

Analyst downgrades piled on throughout the month: UBS moved to Sell in September with a $6 target, RBC trimmed to $7, and Barclays downgraded to Underweight on October 20, cutting its target to $5 from $11 and citing commercial delays and contract uncertainty.

Citi subsequently set its target at $4, and Truist landed at $8, leaving NuScale with a wall of skepticism from major institutions even as management works to sign definitive agreements.

CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer framed the broader mood on October 1, arguing that “Fermi marked the top for all sorts of long shot nuclear energy companies,” capturing how quickly enthusiasm for the sector reversed.

The commercial uncertainty is most acute for NuScale, whose partnership with ENTRA1 Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority has yet to produce binding power purchase agreements that would convert project ambitions into contracted revenue.

A manufacturing agreement signed with Doosan Enerbility on October 29 advanced production of key reactor components, but it did nothing to resolve the more fundamental question of whether customers will commit at the scale necessary to justify current projections.

UBS has projected construction timelines of more than five years, cash consumption approaching $700 million between 2026 and 2028, and continued losses extending through 2030, a timeline that demands patient capital and tolerance for dilution.

NuScale’s diluted share count ballooned from roughly 51 million in fiscal 2022 to 164 million in fiscal 2025, illustrating how heavily the company has leaned on equity issuance to fund its development runway.

The company did end June with $1.9 billion in cash and investments, providing enough liquidity to sustain operations through the near term without an immediate financing crisis.

Oklo’s position looks comparatively stronger on execution evidence: its Groves Isotope Test Reactor achieved first criticality in August, establishing a controlled nuclear chain reaction less than a year after breaking ground.

That milestone does not represent a commercial power plant, but it offers a tangible proof point that distinguishes Oklo from NuScale at a moment when investors are demanding demonstrated progress rather than project announcements.

NuScale’s November 5 earnings call represents the next significant opportunity for management to address commercial progress, though analysts and investors will be watching closely for any movement on definitive customer commitments.

Until those agreements materialize, NuScale looks less like a discounted opportunity and more like a speculative position where the risk of further target reductions outweighs the apparent gap between price and consensus.

The post Wall Street’s NuScale (NYSE: SMR) Price Target Has Collapsed 73% In A Year, Yet The Stock May Still Be Overvalued appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

Topgolf and TMRW Sports have struck a multi-year deal placing TGL presented by SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) and the inaugural WTGL season directly inside Topgolf venues and Toptracer Range facilities across the globe.

The most immediate fan-facing element is the Topgolf WTGL Challenge, which opens November 8 and runs through December 23, putting guests on the same custom-designed competition holes featured in WTGL match play.

Three participants who complete those holes will be chosen at random to receive a $500 gift card redeemable for official WTGL merchandise, with full sweepstakes rules posted at topgolf.com/WTGLChallengeRules on the launch date.

WTGL, created by TMRW Sports in partnership with the LPGA, makes its debut on November 8, fielding five teams of the world’s top women golfers at the SoFi Center on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Rufus Hack, president of golf at TMRW Sports, framed the collaboration as a way to collapse the distance between spectators and competitors: “Fans won’t just watch our leagues, they’ll get to play them. Together, we can give fans more ways to experience TGL and WTGL, take on the same holes as the pros and stay connected well beyond match night.”

Beyond the challenge format, select Topgolf venues will host match-night watch parties throughout the TGL and WTGL seasons, offering gameplay discounts, league talent features, and programming designed to make each broadcast a social event.

High-stakes access is also on the table, with promotions giving fans opportunities to win greenside tickets, VIP Clubhouse passes, suite nights, and behind-the-scenes entry at SoFi Center.

The agreement reaches well past individual venues through Topgolf Media Networks, the company’s recently launched sponsorship and licensing division, anchoring a national campaign across email, social content, and more than 28,000 digital screens installed in Topgolf properties.

Topgolf CEO David McKillips described the alignment between the two organizations as strategic rather than incidental: “Through our partnership with TMRW Sports, our Topgolf venues and Toptracer Range partners are able to turn casual viewers into active participants by giving millions of players a taste of TGL and WTGL action in real time.”

Toptracer, the ball-tracking platform already embedded in TGL and WTGL television broadcasts, operates across more than 1,450 sites in 38 countries and logged 45 million hours of play in 2025 alone.

Range operators adopting Toptracer have reported a minimum 50 percent revenue increase in their first year, a figure that underscores why the technology is central to Topgolf’s broader commercial strategy.

TGL, co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, previously earned the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Alpha Award for Best Sports Innovation and houses seven franchises, including Motor City Golf Club making its league debut this season.

The partnership feeds into Topgolf’s stated ambition to recruit 10 million new committed golfers by 2030, a goal it is also pursuing alongside organizations including First Tee, Youth on Course, and Special Olympics.

With more than 100 venues worldwide and WTGL’s first match less than a week away, both organizations are positioning the deal as a long-term infrastructure play rather than a single-season promotional arrangement.

The post Topgolf And TMRW Sports Team Up To Let Fans Play The Same Holes As PGA Tour And LPGA Pros (NASDAQ: SOFI) appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

Revenue growth at the streaming giant has decelerated in each of the last three quarters, slipping from 16.2% in fiscal Q1 to 13.4% in fiscal Q2 and then to 11.8% in fiscal Q3.

Management guided to just 11.5% growth for the current fiscal fourth quarter, extending a trajectory that contrasts sharply with the accelerating momentum that defined the company two years ago.

The advertising business added another layer of concern after management, speaking on its October 20 earnings call, lowered its full-year 2026 ad revenue forecast to $2.7 billion from the $3.0 billion target it set as recently as July.

Management acknowledged the ads segment is trailing its own aggressive internal targets for the year, though it stressed the unit is still expanding at a rate exceeding 80% annually.

Executives also flagged that the United States market is not growing as quickly as the company would like, and that the revenue gap between its ad-supported tier and its standard ad-free plan is narrowing, which continues to weigh on near-term top-line results.

Against that backdrop, the stock has shed 44.3% over the past twelve months, a performance that leaves it trailing the S&P 500’s 11.5% gain by a wide margin, with shares currently changing hands at $62.34.

That price puts Netflix at a technically significant level, one where buyers intervened twice during 2024 and drove substantial recoveries, with gains of 93.7% and 123.7% respectively from closing prices near $59.70 and $59.86.

The business environment surrounding those rebounds was notably different, however, characterized by accelerating sales growth rather than the cooling numbers investors are seeing today.

Any recovery attempt faces two layers of overhead resistance, first at $72.61 and then at $77.65, a ceiling where a prior rally stalled and which sits roughly 24.6% above the current price.

A $10,000 position held today would be worth approximately $12,460 if the stock recovered only to that $77.65 resistance level, a far smaller payoff than the roughly $20,870 the same investment would have generated during the 2024 bounces.

On the downside, support gives way below $59.22, a price Netflix has not closed beneath since May 3, 2024, and a break there would leave the shares below every close recorded over the past two years.

Despite the sell-off, the company’s underlying profitability picture remains strong, with its operating margin climbing to 31.3% over the twelve months ending September 2026, the highest quarter-end reading in records stretching back to late 2016.

The shares trade at 17.5 times trailing earnings, a discount to the S&P 500’s 22.8 multiple, and the valuation has been lower at just one quarter-end since late 2016.

Investors seeking clarity on whether the revenue slowdown is stabilizing or deepening will get their next reading in January 2027, when the company reports fiscal Q4 results alongside its first formal guidance for the full year ahead.

The post Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) Margin Record Masks A Revenue Slowdown As Shares Test Critical Floor appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

The newly established Deloitte Oracle business group draws on a workforce of more than 20,000 Oracle-certified practitioners operating across the globe, representing one of the largest Oracle-focused talent pools in the consulting industry.

Deloitte plans to certify an additional 2,000 practitioners across Oracle’s AI, applications, cloud infrastructure and data technologies within the next 12 months, signaling a significant near-term investment in expanding the group’s capabilities.

The consolidation brings together previously separate Oracle-focused disciplines spanning AI, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, data platforms, managed services and enterprise applications under a single organizational structure.

Jason Salzetti, Chair and CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP, framed the move as a direct response to client feedback, saying: “Clients have been clear that they want one team to work with end to end. Bringing our Oracle capabilities together into a single group is how we deliver that.”

The group’s formation deepens a partnership that stretches back more than three decades, with the two organizations having previously launched Project Amplify, a collaborative initiative targeting accelerated adoption of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, data platforms and enterprise AI tools.

Agentic AI sits at the center of the new group’s commercial strategy, with Deloitte combining its Zora AI offerings with Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Oracle AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications to drive workflow automation across client organizations.

Pavel Krumkachev, principal and US Oracle business group leader at Deloitte, described the broader shift underway, noting: “Clients running Oracle are no longer just modernizing ERP — they’re rebuilding how work gets done with agentic AI.”

Beyond AI, the group will address six additional priority areas including applications modernization, cloud migration via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, cybersecurity and digital trust, data platform development, ongoing managed services and smart manufacturing through the Smart Factory by Deloitte facility in Wichita.

Deloitte’s AI-infused service delivery platform, Ascend, along with its Forward Deployed Engineering talent program, will underpin delivery across all seven focus areas from initial implementation through to sustained operations.

Mark Hura, president of Global Field Operations at Oracle, pointed to the logic of combining Oracle’s technology stack with Deloitte’s sector knowledge, stating: “Oracle brings cloud infrastructure, data, applications and AI capabilities, while Deloitte brings deep industry knowledge and transformation experience.”

The 11 Oracle Partner of the Year awards Deloitte received this year, among them the Global – One Oracle Transformation award, reflect the tenure and scale of a relationship that the new organizational structure is now designed to commercialize more effectively.

The post Deloitte Unifies Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) Capabilities Under Single Business Group As AI Adoption Accelerates appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.

The driver behind that profitability leap is a business most investors once overlooked: collectibles, which generated $356.3 million in revenue during the second quarter, a 56.5% year-over-year increase.

That single category now accounts for roughly 45% of GameStop’s total sales, a mix shift that has fundamentally altered how analysts assess the company’s earnings quality.

StoneX became the latest firm to formalize that reassessment on Monday, initiating coverage of the stock with a Buy rating and a $33 price target.

Analyst Mike Hickey credited executive chairman Ryan Cohen with rebuilding the company’s earnings foundation, pointing to the growing collectibles segment as an additional source of durable upside.

GameStop has been methodically shrinking its traditional store footprint, reducing costs, and redirecting resources toward higher-margin product categories including trading cards and authentication services.

A partnership with PSA adds structural depth to that pivot, allowing GameStop locations to function as drop-off points for card grading and creating a recurring relationship with collectors rather than a transactional one.

StoneX is not the only firm making a bullish case: Yorkville Ives has separately argued that GameStop is evolving into a leaner collectibles and capital-allocation platform rather than a conventional retail chain.

The legacy video-game business continues to contract structurally, and total revenue remains under pressure, meaning the company’s financial health now depends heavily on collectibles outpacing the ongoing decline in its original core segment.

Capital-allocation decisions and outside investments introduce an additional layer of unpredictability, and GameStop’s history as a meme-stock vehicle means volatility remains a persistent feature of the stock.

What has changed is that institutional analysts are now framing the bull case around operating margins and category growth rather than social-media momentum, a shift that reflects how substantially the underlying business has been restructured.

Investors tracking the name will want to monitor collectibles revenue growth, operating margin trends, and store-level economics to gauge whether profitability can keep expanding even as the company’s headline revenue figure stays compressed.

The post GameStop (NYSE: GME) Operating Income More Than Doubles As Wall Street Begins Pricing In Collectibles Transformation appeared first on Foreign Policy Journal.