Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on the stories moving money and markets.
On the housing front, Harvard researchers are sounding the alarm. Their annual report paints a stark picture of a market under pressure — rising vacancies sitting alongside costs too steep for most buyers and renters to absorb. Local governments are scrambling for solutions, but structural relief remains elusive.
Shifting to the corporate suite, Choice Hotels' interim CEO Dominic Dragisich sold roughly twenty-two thousand six hundred common shares in late May, a transaction valued at approximately two point five eight million dollars. Insider sales of this size draw attention, particularly when leadership is in transition — investors will be watching whether this signals a change in confidence or simply routine portfolio management.
And in the infrastructure layer powering artificial intelligence, the pick-and-shovel trade is generating real numbers. Vertiv, which supplies power management and cooling systems to data centers, posted sales growth of thirty percent last quarter. As hyperscalers continue to pour capital into compute capacity, the companies keeping those facilities running are quietly becoming some of the more compelling plays in the AI buildout.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
