The Barakah Brief #91: Stocks, AI & Tech, & Economic Brief
The Barakah Brief #91 covers key stock developments, AI & tech trends, the latest Fed rate hike, and economic market developments
Stock Brief
Is Nike About to Get the Boot From the Dow?
Nike’s recent decline has renewed speculation about whether it still belongs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is set to leave the S&P 100 on Sept. 21 after its market value fell to about $53 billion. At roughly $36 a share, Nike is by far the lowest-priced stock in the Dow, giving it only a 0.4% influence in the price-weighted index.
The stock is trading below the levels Verizon and Dow Inc. reached before they were removed from the index. Nike is also facing a difficult business outlook, with analysts expecting sales to fall year over year in both the current quarter and the fiscal quarter ending in November. The company has been part of the Dow since 2013, but its falling share price and weaker results could eventually lead index managers to replace it.
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Salesforce Delivers an AI Boost at Dreamforce Despite a Three-Day Stock Decline
Salesforce shares slipped again Thursday, marking a third straight session of losses, even as the company reaffirmed its target of delivering 11% annual revenue growth through fiscal 2030.
At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce focused heavily on its plans for artificial intelligence. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei both appeared at the event, lending support to the company’s AI strategy.
Also Read: Nvidia’s Huang Takes a Different Line on AI Risk At Dreamforce Conference
Some investors remain concerned that autonomous AI agents could eventually reduce the need for software licenses tied to individual employees. However, analysts came away with a somewhat more positive assessment of Salesforce’s position in the AI market. The company said that nine of the 10 largest AI companies use its platform, and that recurring revenue from those customers has increased by an average of 435% over the past year.
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Meta’s Muse AI Agent Gains Momentum, Sending Shares Higher
Meta Platforms is gaining momentum following the launch of Muse, its new consumer AI assistant. Analysts on Wall Street say the product’s early traction could create a significant growth opportunity for the company and give Meta’s stock more room to climb over the next three months.
Meta shares rose 0.7% to $677.96 on Thursday, putting them on pace for a fifth consecutive day of gains. By Wednesday’s close, the stock had climbed 10% since Muse launched on Sept. 8. Meta’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, described Muse as the company’s biggest consumer AI release since ChatGPT and said it was already generating more daily U.S. downloads than Threads, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
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Why Tesla’s Falling EV Deliveries May Not Hurt Its Stock
Tesla shares climbed 1.2% to $362.21, outpacing the broader market as S&P 500 futures rose 0.8% and Dow futures gained 0.7%. The stock had also advanced 0.4% on Wednesday, even as the S&P 500 fell 0.5% after the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates.
The gains came despite a warning from Goldman Sachs that Tesla’s third-quarter deliveries could miss expectations. Analyst Mark Delaney projects deliveries of about 435,000 vehicles, below the consensus estimate of 456,000. He maintained a Hold rating on the stock and a $360 price target. Tesla delivered nearly 500,000 vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, aided by the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, but deliveries later fell to 418,000. Analysts still expect the company to deliver roughly 1.8 million vehicles in 2026, up from about 1.6 million in 2025.
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AI & Tech Brief
Washington and Beijing Move Toward Rules for Artificial Intelligence
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss artificial intelligence during a summit in Washington next week, amid significant differences between the two countries over AI safety: the United States emphasizes keeping humans in control, while China focuses more heavily on threats to its political system. Ahead of the meeting, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese official He Lifeng are scheduled to hold preparatory talks in New York.
Tech Employees Warned AI Tools Could Pose an “Existential Threat” to Publishers
A newly unsealed legal filing alleges that employees at OpenAI and Microsoft recognized that scraping news websites to train artificial-intelligence models could seriously harm, or even destroy, the publications producing that content. The filing cites internal documents, including a statement from a senior Microsoft employee who warned that the companies’ AI content strategy could create a “doom loop” for the web by diverting traffic and revenue away from publishers. OpenAI and Microsoft have defended their practices, arguing that using copyrighted material to train AI models qualifies as fair use because the material is used in a transformative way.
Researchers Exploited Claude to Gain Access to an OpenAI Account
Two weeks after a group of AI agents reportedly broke containment at OpenAI and tried to hack the AI platform Hugging Face, OpenAI became the target of an AI-assisted attack.
Independent security researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to access an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account. That access allowed them to view and suggest changes to the company’s private software cache.
The researchers were working under OpenAI’s bug-bounty program, which permits security experts to test its systems under controlled conditions. They quickly reported the vulnerability, and OpenAI awarded them $6,500.
The incident, disclosed to The Wall Street Journal, underscores the growing cybersecurity risks posed by advanced AI tools. As AI systems become more capable and the software ecosystems they interact with grow more complex—defending against AI-assisted attacks is becoming increasingly difficult.
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Economic Market Brief
Fed Unanimously Approves First Interest-Rate Increase in Years
Fed officials largely projected one additional rate increase this year as an energy shock and a surge in AI investment reshape the inflation outlook.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday for the first time in three years, reversing course after the rate cuts it approved last year. The unanimous decision lifted the benchmark federal-funds rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 3.75% to 4%, signaling renewed concern over inflation despite the White House’s insistence that price pressures have eased.
Most Fed officials also projected one additional rate increase this year in forecasts released after the meeting. While recent attention has focused on monthly inflation readings, analysts said the more significant shift in the economic outlook has been driven by rising energy and commodity prices.
In the Fed’s latest projections, 16 of 18 officials anticipated at least one additional rate increase this year, potentially pushing the benchmark rate above 4%. Only four officials expected rates to end next year below that threshold.
Ali Merchant is a seasoned financial markets professional specializing in technical analysis, treasury & capital markets, trading, research, and fund management. He is Strategic Advisor at Musaffa and Founder of TWT Learning, which provides education, research, and advisory services to fund and hedge managers and family offices. Ali has traded FX, FX options, US stocks & options, indices, commodities, oil and metals futures, and holds a CMT charter with memberships in AAPTA and CMT, US & Canada. He has worked with ABN AMRO, Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv, MAK Allen & Day Capital, and Bridge Information Systems, produced TA reports for Bloomberg and Reuters, and trained 2,000+ market participants across North America, the GCC and Asia.