Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the broader economic conversation.
Jeremy Grantham, the investor who called the dot-com collapse before most saw it coming, is sounding a fresh alarm — this time pointing at SpaceX as a potential warning sign of speculative excess. Grantham's track record commands attention on Wall Street, and when he flags a private-market darling as a bubble indicator, institutional money listens carefully.
Shifting to the technology sector, Japan is emerging as an unlikely frontrunner in enterprise AI adoption. Cognition AI, the startup behind the software engineering agent Devin, says Japan ranked among its top two markets for user engagement — driven by a shrinking workforce and decades of aging legacy code that companies desperately need to modernize. It is a structural demand story, not a trend.
And in the mortgage and financial services space, Rocket Companies is reporting a complete enterprise transformation under the leadership of CMO Jonathan Mildenhall, who told the two thousand twenty six Cannes Lions Festival that the company has exceeded every brand and commercial metric set over the past two years. For a company deeply tied to interest rate cycles, that kind of broad-based performance signals genuine operational momentum beyond the rate environment.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
