ANALYSIS: As Nicola Willis stands on Thursday to deliver her third Budget to Parliament she will be adding to an historic tradition far older than New Zealand as a state.
ANALYSIS: Finance Minister Nicola Willis has been sceptical about government picking winners but is it the moment for something more active?
The product, called Base MCP, connects a user’s Base Account to AI clients such as ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an emerging standard that allows AI systems to securely interface with external tools and applications.
Cette semaine «L’Agefi» et Conser - ESG Verifier comparent deux ETF qui investissent dans un panier d’actions marchés émergents. S’y ajoutent les dernières nouvelles de l’investissement ESG.
The outlook for blockchain technology firm Zetrix AI Bhd continues to be promising, following the company's first quarter ended March 31, 2026 (1Q26) results that came in within market expectations.
Hap Seng Plantations Holdings Bhd's earnings will remain highly sensitive to crude palm oil (CPO) price movements, given its pure upstream planter exposure and reliance on CPO and palm kernel (PK) production volumes and average selling prices, analysts say.
Apple’s Tim Cook isn’t the only well-known tech CEO stepping away from the chief executive role this year. Now, Dropbox, Inc. (Nasdaq: DBX) founder and CEO Drew Houston has announced he, too, is departing the company he is synonymous with. Here’s what you need to know about Houston’s departure and how investors are reacting to the news. What happened? Today, Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston announced he will be retiring from the chief executive role at the company. Houston has been with the cloud storage provider in the role since he founded Dropbox in 2007. It’s hard to understate how revolutionary a cloud storage solution like Dropbox was 19 years ago, when Houston brought online cloud storage to the masses. Before Dropbox, the standard way most users transferred files between their devices was by using external hard drives, USB sticks, or emailing files to themselves. Dropbox proved there was an easier way to transfer files: using the burgeoning cloud. The technology was also simple and reliable to use: simply add a file to your Dropbox, and it was available nearly instantly on all your devices. That ease quickly made Dropbox a Silicon Valley darling and a platform that quickly became popular with ordinary, everyday internet users. Of course, since then, online storage and file sharing have become integrated into nearly every major internet platform, with Dropbox now facing stiff competition from the likes of Google Drive, Apple iCloud, and Microsoft OneDrive. Still, the progenitor of the online storage and file-sharing space has a large user base even today. The company says that Dropbox currently has 700 million global registered users, of which more than 18 million are paid users. For its most recent quarter ending March 31, Dropbox reported $629.5 million in total revenue. Why is Dropbox’s founder leaving? It should be noted that Houston is not departing his CEO role yet. Though the Dropbox founder announced his departure from his chief executive role today, it will not occur until sometime later. Houston did not give a date when the departure would actually happen. And once it does, Houston will still stay on at Dropbox as Executive Chairman. What has happened today is that Houston is no longer Dropbox’s sole CEO. Now Houston’s title is co-CEO, and he shares that role with the company’s other newly appointed co-CEO, Ashraf Alkarmi. Alkarmi’s previous role at the company was product chief, and he has been with the company since 2024. After a transition period in which the two co-CEOs lead the company together, Houston will step down from his role to become executive chairman, leaving Alkarmi as the company’s sole CEO. In an email to employees that Dropbox later published on its website, Houston did not say why he was stepping aside, but alluded to his interest in artificial intelligence . “My focus right now is making sure Dropbox is in the strongest possible shape,” Houston wrote. “But knowing me, it won’t be long before I’m getting credit card alerts for my Cursor token spend.” The Dropbox founder told CNBC that he is interested in the entrepreneurial AI space because “there’s never been a more exciting period to be building things.” Dropbox stock drops on Houston’s upcoming departure After news of Houston’s departure was announced, shares in Dropbox fell in early morning trading. As of the time of this writing, DBX shares are currently trading down about 2.3% to $26.80. That puts Dropbox stock firmly in the red, year to date. Since 2026 began, Dropbox’s shares have now declined about 2.95%. Over the past 12 months, DBX shares have been down about 5.6%. They are also well below their all-time high of over $43 per share in June of 2018, just months after the company initially went public. Dropbox, like most software-as-a-service companies, has been facing increased pressure and apprehension from investors in the age of AI, which many expect to eat into the business models of legacy SaaS companies. In its most recent Q1 2026 quarter, Dropbox reported $629.5 million in total revenue, up just 0.8% However, despite Dropbox’s most recent lackluster quarter and stock price, Houston will be departing a company that made history on the stock market. Dropbox was the first company from the Y Combinator startup accelerator to go public, which it did in 2018. At the time, Dropbox was valued at around $12 billion. Today, the company is valued at around $6.2 billion.
The Fed Should Be Concerned: Job Market Vibes Vs Data Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities, The Job Market – Vibes vs Data It seems like we are on the cusp of an agreement with Iran. We will help analyze the market implications in a SITREP if and when the details are released. In the meantime, the one question that seems to puzzle everyone, is what is the state of the job market? Yes, there are all sorts of questions around AI, the AI and data center spend, affordability , and inflation, but the state of the job market seems to be the most puzzling of late. The juxtaposition of daily discussions about no hiring, and fears of AI job losses, versus some stellar headline data . Record low consumer sentiment versus ongoing spending remaining strong . Mixed (at worst) evidence of delinquencies . There is little (that I could find) evidence of a broad-based increase in delinquencies. If you squint hard, you can see evidence of pressure on the lower income part of the population , but as of now, that’s about it. Unemployment Rate The last two headline numbers (from the Establishment Survey), as of now (before revisions), were 185k and 115k.Big numbers, an obvious A+ in terms of grading. While the headline is important, for most of the country, within days of the Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) release, we started to talk less about the headline jobs and more about the unemployment rate. So that seems like a good starting point for exploring the jobs data. We used the “official” titles from Bloomberg for the Unemployment rate (blue) and the Underemployment rate (black). The unemployment rate has been trending down and it is close to its best level in 2 years. Let’s give the unemployment rate a grade of A- (though that feels a bit stingy). The underemployment rate is a broader definition of unemployment. It captures people stuck in part-time , low-paying, or skill-mismatched jobs . The skill-mismatched subcategory (from AI) is the most interesting to me . Is that evidence of AI taking good entry level professional jobs? The underemployment rate came down early this year, but from the highest levels in the past 5 years. It has been trending higher and is well above the 5-year average. I’d give underemployment a B- grade (though that feels a bit generous). The unemployment rate is based on the Household Survey. There are a few things that stand out: The gap higher for both the size of the workforce and those employed, that occurred as of December of 2024, appears to be part of annual revisions. It stands out, but is largely noise. The size of the labor force has not shrunk much since President Trump took office. I honestly have no idea how many illegal workers show up in the data, or whether they don’t show up in the data. Given the crackdown on illegal workers, I bet most of those jobs never showed up in the data (again, I will admit to being confused how people working illegally were counted in the jobs data, but I’m told by people much more into the weeds on this stuff, that it happens). In any case, I was a bit surprised by the labor force data in the past year remaining almost stable. Both the size of the labor force and the number working has shrunk in 2026! I don’t see any way to make fewer workers sound good. The Establishment Survey has jobs of 160k for Jan, -156k for Feb, 185k for March, and 116k for April. Pretty darn good. The Household Survey has -895k in Jan (adjustments included), -185k for Feb, -64k for March, and -226k for April. Even ignoring January, the last 3 months have been awful. While the Household Survey is wildly inaccurate, we seem to accept it for the unemployment rate, so why don’t we spend any time looking at it for signs regarding the job market. Again, just weird that it is deemed so “useless” for jobs, but is A OK for determining the unemployment rate? If we used the change in Establishment jobs the past few months, we’d probably be under 4% - which would be amazing! The final most salient point in how I think about these two data series, is that they tend to converge over time. They can deviate, often for months, but they tend to converge which tells me that we are probably headed for some weaker headline prints in the coming months. For those of you not familiar with how I think about the two surveys used for jobs data: The Establishment Survey is largely inaccurate, and the Household Survey is wildly inaccurate! From the BLS the NFP data is +/- 122k at the 90% confidence level. For the Household it is +/- 676k at the 90% confidence level! (I used AI for that data, take it with a grain of salt, but you can dig deeper on the BLS site – starting with Employment Situation Technical Note ). Imagine reporting your quarterly returns as we made somewhere between losing $1 billion and making $5 billion, but we won’t really know for at least a year. When you really think about the margin of error, it seems almost insane how many really smart people are forced to treat something that amounts to at best, a kind of, maybe reasonable, rough guess as to the current situation as gospel truth. The BLS takes the time to point out that a reading of +50k, gives a 90% confidence that the actual number of jobs is between -72k and +172k (meaning 10% of the time, like once a year, it is likely to be off by more than that!). I’m almost disgusted with myself (even more than usual) that I am going to try and make a point using data that is just so bizarre! But the Household Survey is a solid D. If there is any convergence in the two different jobs totals, then we should expect some pain in the Establishment Survey (i.e., the headline number). I am not sure what to make of the Labor Force Participation Rate (hence the color purple rather than green or red). Lower participation rates can occur when times are good. Families are making so much money that a member of the family can step out of the labor force. Maybe stock market gains are so great that you don’t need to work? Overtime pay is so good, one member can step back? Lower participation rates can occur when times are bad. People get so frustrated with being able to find work, they just give up and drop out of the pool of people trying to get work. It’s all a bit of a guess, but I suspect the labor force participation is a negative signal. I continue to believe that the JOLTs data overstates jobs available (it doesn’t fully capture how many ghost jobs are out there, how many ads are on employment websites that are stale or weren’t removed, etc.). Even if I’m not correct on my assumption that it is overstated, the jobs available picture deteriorated over the past several years and hasn’t really improved. That would provide some support that labor force participation is dropping due to frustration with the ability to find a job. My “favorite” piece of data is the QUIT data. I like it because it “crowd sourced.” It is one of the few pieces of data where we get to see what the average worker is thinking. People tend to QUIT when they know they can find another job easily! People tend to stay in jobs, even ones they don’t like, until they find a better job, in a tough labor market. That seems to fit. I don’t like the HIRE rate quite as much, but it is difficult to fake. It did tick higher recently (I put some green on the chart) but it is NOT showing robust hiring. This whole section earns a C. Uber Eats or Law School According to AI “Law school applications have surged roughly 15% to 33%!” Nothing says, I’m worried about AI, so I should go to law school, because certainly AI won’t affect the need for junior lawyers. We tend to see law school applications spike when it is difficult for college graduates to get jobs . We saw this with the GFC. Then, at least, it made more sense. Law school is a great place to hide out for a few years and wind up with a pretty good job if you can do well. But right now? If it is a bad time to graduate from college, I am not sure that in 3 years (as AI improves) it is going to be a great time to graduate from law school. I could be wrong, but off hand, becoming a lawyer “suddenly” (see the spike in applications) seems to be a traditional response in a world that is rapidly evolving. All of which brings me to my least favorite part of the jobs data – the birth/death model! I know that not all of the adjustment passes through to the establishment number. But I still think it is useful to think about this number. My contention is, and remains that: At one time people applied for an EIN (Employment Identification Number) because they were creating a real business. Hire a couple of people and make a go of it. I believe that with the gig economy people apply for an EIN when they are looking for a side hustle to make some extra money. One client this past week told me that one of the fintech firms provides basically one click functionality to create an LLC and get an EIN. For those with rental properties, get an EIN for each one? For more sophisticated participants get one for Uber, Lyft, etc.? The gig economy has become a major way to supplement income. With more tools making it easier to run gig jobs as businesses, more will do it. I believe the Big Beautiful Tax Bill provides some benefits to those running their gig businesses as such. I think that the number of jobs created for each EIN application is less than 1 (many are already working, so just adding another enterprise to their toolkit), hence the birth/death model methodology massively overstates jobs. Given the large annual job revisions we’ve been getting , I think there is a very strong case, that overstatement of jobs during the course of the year via the birth/death adjustment is the prime culprit. This year’s birth/death model seems bizarrely similar to last year’s (and the year before): -61k in Jan 2026 vs -105k in Jan 2025 vs -121k in Jan 2024. 90k vs 136k vs 151k in Feb, -47k vs -33k vs -21k in March, and 391k vs 393k vs 363k in April. We have seen massive downward annual revisions. There has been work done blaming much of it on how the birth/death model works. Since we are repeating the pattern in the data month by month, maybe we can assume we will once again be told at the end of the year that the actual jobs were a lot worse than reported? This section isn’t particularly “damning” but I find it hard to see how it supports anyone arguing that the labor market is strong! Where The Jobs Are The first 4 months of the year have added 304k jobs to the economy (the Establishment data as of today). 221k jobs have been added in the Health Care and Social Assistance industry. 73% of jobs have been added in one industry. Yes, a large and vital industry, but that seems like a lot. Is some of this related to programs enabling you to get paid to take care of a family member? I think those are great programs, but is that job creation in the way we think of job creation? This sector doesn’t scream “growth.” If anything, it at least whispers “affordability” as for most of us, healthcare is an expense and one that I’ve seen do nothing but go up (despite how it is calculated for CPI). The US CPI Urban Consumer Medical Health Insurance City Average has declined 22% since the start of 2021! I know they follow some calculation, but whatever the calculation is, it doesn’t reflect the reality of what employees and employers face on the health insurance premium front. Yet another reason, that the AFFORDABILITY issue is bigger and more painful than the CPI/Inflation issue . But that rant, is a rant for another day. Bottom Line There seems to be, at first blush, an inconsistency between the “vibe” on jobs and the published data. I think that inconsistency goes away if we broaden what official data we look at. The Fed should be concerned about jobs. At the moment they aren’t, but they should be. I would like to see a lot more jobs being created in the ProSecTM industries, than we’ve seen of late. Maybe, if we can move beyond the Iran war, the admin will provide even more support, more quickly to these crucial industries! They are working on it as you read this, but if the President is able to direct even more attention to this, it would help. One last word on AI and jobs. We don’t know what it does for jobs going forward, but the AI and data center buildout is creating jobs right now! We can (and will) debate the outlook for jobs as AI improves and becomes more prevalent, but the buildout does create a lot of jobs – not just in the construction, but also in the power generation and other adjacent businesses. Without the AI and data center spend, we’d have even more concerns about the current job market, but that spend looks set to continue, which will help, and maybe buy us the time to get ProSecTM more fully ramped up! Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 12:00
Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan
The local stock market’s snapped its three-day climb and tumbled below the 6,000 level, as renewed geopolitical fears dampened investor sentiment.
Wall Street is abuzz with next month's expected blockbuster debut of Elon Musk's rocket and satellite maker SpaceX, but few of the biggest initial public offerings (IPOs) in recent years have paid off for investors who bought in when the deals came to market.