Good morning, you're tuned in to Markets Desk.
PepsiCo is under pressure in North America, where price cuts on snacks failed to reignite volume growth. The company managed an earnings beat anyway, carried almost entirely by its international operations, which raises a harder question about the domestic consumer's appetite for discretionary spending at any price point.
Shifting to the macro picture, the dollar is facing a structural challenge that goes beyond the usual rate differentials. Foreign policy disruptions under the current administration are accelerating a dedollarization trend among central banks globally. The historic buffer that bond markets provided to dollar demand is fading, and that is not a short-term technical story — it is a slow-moving but consequential shift in reserve currency confidence.
On the private markets side, Anthropic has become Silicon Valley's most coveted unlisted asset. Early investors and insiders are holding their positions tightly, creating a scarcity dynamic that is driving secondary market interest to extraordinary levels. With AI infrastructure spending still accelerating, the appetite for pure-play AI exposure at scale is showing no signs of cooling.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
