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Good morning.
Capex goes better with Coke. Soft drink giant Coca-Cola said Tuesday that it plans to spend $10 billion on US infrastructure from 2026 to 2030 because, if hyperscalers can do it, why not hyper caffeine producers? There is one technicality: Because Coke runs a capital-light business, the $10 billion figure represents investment across what’s called the Coca-Cola system, a collective term for the company and its independent bottling partners.
Those partners, which number in the dozens in the US, handle production, packaging and distribution while Coca-Cola provides the syrup made from secret formulas and owns and manages the brand. While many companies have pledged to reshore US operations to avoid tariffs, this model also means Coke’s production is heavily localized around the world, which mitigates the impact of trade wars on its bottom line. Instead, executives say the fresh capex represents a growth play. Coca-Cola’s stock has climbed 28% this year, and its sales grew 6% in the second quarter, including gains in North America where rival PepsiCo has fizzled of late. We’d like to teach the world to sing … about the virtues of maintaining minimal physical assets to generate revenue.
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MARKETS
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Stock data as of market close on September 15, 2026.
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Photo via Moe Zoyari/Sipa USA/Newscom
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The crypto industry suffered a seismic loss on Tuesday when the US Senate failed to advance a bill introducing a market structure framework, with the 49 votes in favor coming up well short of the 60 needed.
The industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning for the Clarity Act. A version of the bill passed the House last year, and supporters argue the regulatory certainty it would establish will draw more investors and businesses, unleashing a new era of prosperity for digital assets.
‘It’s Over’
If passed, the more-than-600-page Clarity Act would split crypto oversight authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The much smaller CFTC would gain direct control over digital commodities and, crucially, rule-making power over crypto spot markets, making it the industry’s primary regulator. The bill would also introduce disclosure rules and anti-fraud and anti-money-laundering protections.
Critics, however, argue the legislation goes too easy on crypto firms, contains loopholes and lacks real safeguards. Democrats like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wanted stricter ethics rules addressing elected officials’ crypto holdings. A group of trade associations representing US banks sent a joint letter to Senate leaders on Monday requesting changes, including the toughening of a so-called circuit breaker that would allow the Treasury Department to bar crypto firms from issuing rewards like interest on stablecoins if they cause significant amounts of money to be withdrawn from the banking system. “A circuit breaker that activates only after substantial deposit flight has already occurred is not a safeguard at all,” the letter argues. In any case, one of the bill’s most prominent backers suggested Tuesday was the end of the road:
- Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican seen as the crypto industry’s biggest champion in the upper chamber, told reporters that if the procedural vote failed, “we’re done, it’s over.” Four Republicans, including Missouri’s Josh Hawley, a noted crypto skeptic, voted against the bill. Kirsten Gillibrand, the Senate’s most pro-crypto Democrat who reportedly urged colleagues to support it, ultimately voted no.
- Bitcoin, which has experienced a late summer rally, fell 4.5% to $75,798 as of late Tuesday afternoon. Major publicly traded crypto industry companies were hit by selloffs: Coinbase fell 10.10%, Circle 11.4%, Strategy 5.3%, and Riot Platforms 6%.
  Now What? The crypto industry will likely have to wait until 2027 for further attempts at comprehensive reform. In the meantime, the SEC and CFTC are undertaking their own initiatives, such as the SEC’s first proposed major crypto rule, which addresses how token issuers can raise capital. However, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said last month that he believes Congressional legislation locking in a regulatory framework that future-proofs certainty for investors “remains indispensable.”
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Ripple
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Photo via Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/Newscom
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The last time the 10-year US Treasury yield was this high, Apple was promoting its first-ever iPhone and Rihanna’s Umbrella was topping Billboard’s Hot 100.
The yield, which serves as a proxy for long-term rates, topped 5% on Tuesday, its highest level since 2007. It’s just the latest move in a global bond market rout caused by myriad factors including energy shocks, surging US government debt, inflation and capital investment the size of national GDPs, much of it for AI projects. The odds that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates today have surged above 90%, which is also pushing up yields.
PIP for Bonds
If bonds were getting reviewed for their job performance in the traditional stock-bond portfolio, it would be time for an improvement plan. The asset is known (and appreciated) for zigging when stocks zag. As a result, experts have been debating whether it’s time to pull out the coffin for the 60/40 portfolio since 2022, when increased inflation started causing bonds to exacerbate stock losses rather than counteract them.
The popular portfolio strategy of investing 60% of portfolios in stocks and 40% in bonds is famous for offering investors the best of both worlds: steady income from bonds and growth potential from stocks. However, when the 10-year Treasury climbs above 5.25% for an extended period of time, the stock-bond correlation almost always turns positive. Now, we may be nearing that inflection point:
- “The 60/40 portfolio is broken because equity returns are driven by AI concentration rather than the business cycle, while bond returns are now driven by fiscal constraints rather than cycle dynamics,” Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, recently wrote. If the AI trade reverses or markets become more worried about government deficits, stocks and bonds could both suffer, he added.
- Matt Rowe, senior portfolio manager at Man Group, told the Financial Times that the bond component of portfolios needs to be reconsidered when it comes to risk diversification, potentially by looking at the difference between “crisis correlation” and “non-crisis correlation” between asset classes.
Pummeled Risk Premium: In a recent note, JPMorgan said that the equity risk premium (the extra return investors expect to get for holding stocks instead of bonds) of the S&P 500 has fallen to its lowest level since 2002. Stocks, the analysts wrote, could become more sensitive to ups and downs of bond yields and we could see the reinforcement of the positive bond-equity correlation.
Written by Mallika Mitra
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Room for one more?
IPOs are back and white hot in 2026, and the momentum extends far beyond the mega debuts of just SpaceX and, potentially, Anthropic. On Tuesday, the trend found its latest applicant: the Intel-backed chipmaker Altera, which filed confidentially for a US IPO to come as soon as this year. It may be the truest test yet of the market’s AI and IPO appetites.
Chip off the Intel Block
Altera’s recent history has been spotty, to say the least. The company, which makes programmable semiconductors used in telecoms, industrial automation, defense systems and, yes, data centers (where they play a complementary role to central GPUs), was acquired for $16.7 billion by Intel way back in pre-ChatGPT 2015. By last year, after the unit bled hundreds of millions of dollars, Intel sold a 51% stake in Altera to private equity firm Silver Lake at half that valuation.
Now Altera and its backers are trying to convince Wall Street that the AI capex boom has fueled a turnaround story worthy of backing:
- The company is seeking to raise $2 billion in its IPO, according to Reuters. That would make it one of the largest recent debuts for a US semiconductor firm, trailing only Arm’s $5 billion debut in 2023 and Cerebras’ $5.5 billion debut in May.
- In July, CEO Raghib Hussain told Reuters that the company expects to grow revenue by more than 20% for the second straight year and has more than doubled operating income. In its last year with Intel in 2024, the parent company said Altera’s revenue fell 48% to $1.5 billion.
Post-Post-Pandemic: The Altera debut will add to more than $160 billion raised for US IPOs so far this year excluding SPAC launches, according to Bloomberg data. Yes, the $85 billion raised for SpaceX accounts for a big chunk of that, but the volume of debuts is also surging: 331 companies have filed for IPOs so far this year and 280 have completed their debuts, according to Wall Street Horizon data through September 8. That’s more than in the first three quarters of last year, which itself marked a major rebound from 2024 and 2023.
Written by Brian Boyle
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- Reason to Celebrate: The US poverty rate fell to the lowest level on record, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
- Space Is the Place: The Pentagon acknowledged the US has launched space weapons into orbit, in a major potential development for contractors in aerospace, defense and rocket industries.
- A Suite of Solutions to Bring the Benefits of Blockchain to Financial Institutions. It’s happening with Ripple. Learn more.*
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