Moneyweb

One notable group has been absent from the 2026 stock rally: the American tech giants that have charged a nearly four-year bull run. The Magnificent Seven Index, which includes companies like Nvidia Corp, Alphabet and Amazon.com has gone nowhere this year, even as the artificial-intelligence boom it’s bankrolling continued to propel other technology names. The group as a whole has trailed 300 stocks in the S&P 500 Index this year, including relative minnows like Dollar Tree Inc. and Hubbell.

Billionaire Joe Lewis is losing money this year on one of his biggest listed holdings, but a group of private assets inside the investor’s sprawling fortune is minting big returns. The Tavistock Group founder has locked in gains of more than 500% at each of three recent art auctions in London, selling scores of pieces behind one of the world’s biggest private collections, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

A startup that helps enterprises build AI agents proved the technology’s value in the most practical way possible: by deploying one during its own fundraising. Lyzr Inc’s system ran outreach for its Series B round, which is on track to raise $100 million at roughly a $500 million valuation, according to the company. It responded to queries from more than 130 investors and helped draft dozens of investment memos.

Judith Hawarden must have been excited when she paid R5.5-million to ENS, the attorneys handling the sale of her new house. Unfortunately, she didn’t realise that the email she had received with the bank account details wasn’t from ENS but from a scammer. The email address ended ensafirca.com, not ensafrica.com, and quite understandably, she didn’t notice this. Before any of the parties involved in the sale realised what had happened, the money was transferred out of the bogus account and was gone.

Climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense across sub-Saharan Africa. Floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms are no longer isolated environmental events. They increasingly shape livelihoods, inequality, public trust and the relationship between citizens and the state. Read: Governments rely on taxes to finance schools, healthcare, infrastructure and climate adaptation policies.

It’s a good time for luxury watch collectors to buy a used Rolex Daytona Oysterflex watch. Especially if you can find one in yellow gold. The price of that model has dropped 4% since April, according to the Bloomberg Subdial Index, mirroring the slump in the bullion market that began when the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. Overall prices for the 13 gold-cased models in the index, which tracks the 50 most-traded watches by transaction value, are broadly flat since April.

After losing out big on the global AI rally, Indian equities are regaining the attention of investors seeking to weather the latest market turbulence. With the artificial intelligence frenzy roiling benchmark gauges from Asia to the US, the NSE Nifty 50 Index is becoming a safe haven of sorts for global investors. In the first half of the year, it moved 1% or more on just about one-third of the days – less than the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and barely more than the S&P 500 Index.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) left its global growth forecast largely unchanged for this year, saying that the boom in artificial intelligence helped offset the fallout from the conflict in the Middle East. “Global economic activity and the outlook are being shaped by two major forces, pushing in opposite directions with asymmetric effects across countries,” the Washington-based lender said in an update to its World Economic Outlook report published Wednesday.

El Niño has begun and forecasters predict a more than 60% chance that the naturally occurring phenomenon could become a very strong, or super El Niño later in 2026. El Niño begins with warmer water in the Pacific Ocean near the equator and can have a cascade of dramatic effects on the world’s weather. But what chain of events has to happen for high temperatures in the Pacific to translate into severe floods, droughts and storms around the world? And what role does climate change play in El Niño?

South Africa is having a moment. After years of worrying about everything that could go wrong – load shedding hammering businesses, the rand freefalling, political uncertainty making people nervous – investors are now finding reasons for optimism. In recent months, local markets have performed better-than-expected, and the mood is cautiously hopeful. But while there are positive signs, investors should be careful not to mistake green shoots for structural improvement.