Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the stories behind them.
Apple posted one hundred eleven billion dollars in quarterly revenue, and the transition at the top is now fully in motion. Tim Cook marked his eighty-ninth earnings call before stepping down in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus. Investors will be watching closely whether Ternus can sustain Cook's margin discipline in a tariff-heavy environment.
Shifting to pharma, Eli Lilly delivered a double beat to open two thousand twenty-six, with earnings and revenue both clearing estimates by a wide margin. The real headline is Foundayo, its new oral GLP-one candidate, which could fundamentally reshape the weight-loss drug market. A pill format removes the single biggest adoption barrier — the needle — and that changes the addressable population dramatically.
Meanwhile, the OpenAI trial turned combative Thursday as Elon Musk testified that he believed he had founded a nonprofit and that the organization was, in his words, stolen from him. The case cuts to the heart of whether OpenAI's pivot to a for-profit structure worth hundreds of billions of dollars was legally permissible. The outcome could set precedent for how mission-driven startups handle structural transformation.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
