Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk.
Big Tech's capital allocation story is reshaping the shareholder bargain in real time. The five largest technology companies are collectively committing roughly five hundred billion dollars to AI infrastructure, and that spending is crowding out buybacks and dividends. Shareholders are being asked to trust the long game, and patience is wearing thin in some corners of the market.
Shifting to healthcare royalties, Royalty Pharma posted stronger third-quarter portfolio receipts and raised its full-year two thousand twenty six guidance to three point five five billion dollars. That upward revision signals continued confidence in the underlying royalty stream, particularly as late-stage drug pipelines at partner companies hold up better than expected heading into year-end.
And on the housing front, Home Depot's CFO is putting numbers to what many suspected. The rate lock-in effect is now a structural feature of the market, not a temporary one. Homeowners who financed at three percent have no incentive to sell into a seven percent world, so renovation spending is absorbing what would otherwise be transaction volume. Home Depot is both beneficiary and warning signal.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
