Hi! Sticker shock: The world’s biggest soccer tournament kicks off on Thursday, but the collectibles hunt is already well underway, with Panini saying US demand for 2026 World Cup stickers is three to five times above 2022 levels. Today we’re exploring:

TOGETHER WITH

Freaky friday

For a while, commenting on the stock market has left pundits with a difficult task: find new ways to write the same thing. Or, more specifically, try to say “AI stocks power markets to fresh highs” without sounding like a broken record.

Well, we weren’t saying that on Friday, after AI- and tech-driven carnage took US stocks back to prices not seen in… well, days.

For the S&P 500 index, Friday was pretty rough. For the tech-heavier Nasdaq 100, it wasn’t far off the worst of the tariff turbulence of April 2025. For chip stocks and the AI trade, though, this was a DeepSeek-level dive without any actual DeepSeek-like event, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF shedding over 9%.

The obvious bogeyman for markets, a resumption or escalation in the US-Iran war, ended up being sidelined by a more mundane banana peel: a blowout jobs report that sent yields spiking, slashing the chance of rate cuts in the rest of 2026 and triggering a wave of selling in high-profile AI and tech stocks.

Instead, we were served a big momentum unwind — putting a swath of this year’s winners on sale.

While there’s often a lot of chatter about markets being forward-looking, it’s just as important to remember the opposite (that they are backward-looking) is also true. The AI trade came into Friday’s session on an absolute tear — had that not been the case, and the jobs print had instead come across the tape after a month of miserable returns, then Friday might have been a total non-event.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess — but as much as there’s been some irrational exuberance in markets this year, there’s also been an awful lot of rational exuberance. Investors are actually paying slightly less per dollar of profit for the S&P 500 than they were at the start of the year, with the P/E ratio now around 20.5x, down from 22x. Indeed, corporate America is printing profits like never before.

If that earnings trend continues and the AI trade gets back on track, Friday may simply end up being one of those days when the market lets off a little steam. If those trends now break, all bets are off.

Are you overlooking the middle?

Mid caps like MDY hit a rare balance of growth, stability, and US focus—and they may deserve a more prominent role in your long-term strategy. 

Explore the outperformance potential of mid caps with this tool and discover how the first mid-cap ETF delivers cost-efficient, liquid exposure to 400 US-based mid-sized companies in a single trade. 

MDY also gives investors the ability to invest in the next generation of industry leaders before they become household names. Innovators like NVIDIA, Netflix, Starbucks, and JetBlue Airways all started as mid-cap holdings.

Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway

Some of the biggest winners at the 79th Tony Awards on Sunday were revivals of beloved American shows, including “Death of a Salesman” and “Ragtime,” with John Lithgow and Lesley Manville snagging trophies for their roles in “Giant” and “Oedipus,” respectively.

But The Great White Way itself might also have been celebrating something of a revival, with the awards show capping off a record-breaking run. Industry data from trade association The Broadway League reveals that the 2025-26 Broadway season was the highest-grossing ever, besting the prior year’s record after generating nearly $1.91 billion in ticket sales.

The season, which officially began on May 26, 2025, and wrapped on May 24 this year, saw total attendance reach 14.6 million, filling roughly 90.8% of seats across 74 productions, per The Broadway League.

The weekly average attendance for 2025-26 works out as ~280K — much greater than prepandemic levels, which were at ~257K per week from 2013-2020. Adjusting for the additional week that was included in the prior season, grosses were up 3.5%, attendance was up 1.8%, and average ticket prices were 1.7% higher at ~$131 a pop, per CNBC.

The show does go on

On that last point, the cost of Broadway tickets continued to surge as a spate of star-studded productions featuring the likes of George Clooney and Denzel Washington drove a 14% attendance bump for plays. Indeed, CNBC reported that the 21 plays released this season grossed a combined ~$463 million — more than 2x what the category notched only two seasons ago.

Meanwhile, attendance for musicals fell 4.7%. Even so, Apple’s musical-based-on-musicals still broke a leg, as the Broadway adaptation of TV show “Schmigadoon!” won four awards last night... officially making the tech giant an EGOT.

Read this on the web instead