Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets.
Walmart briefly slipped out of the trillion-dollar club following its latest earnings report, but analysts are making a confident case for a return by two thousand twenty-seven. The retail giant's scale, grocery dominance, and accelerating advertising and membership revenues give it the structural runway to reclaim that valuation within two years, making the current pullback look like an entry point.
Shifting to the space sector, Rocket Lab just set a new record with the Space Force, completing a launch turnaround in under seventeen hours — a feat that underscores the company's operational edge over larger competitors. That kind of mission tempo is exactly what the Pentagon is paying for, and it strengthens Rocket Lab's positioning in a defense contracting landscape that increasingly rewards speed and reliability.
On the political economy front, Anthropic and OpenAI spent a combined twenty-seven million dollars trying to influence a Manhattan congressional race, and the winner, Micah Lasher, wasted no time telling both companies he won't be taking direction from them. It's a pointed signal that AI industry lobbying is generating backlash, and that regulatory risk for these firms may be harder to buy away than their balance sheets suggest.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
