John Lewis is launching an online chatshow and a social media studio to make the department store chain and its products more visible to chatbots and more prominent in AI search results.

The Gift List “vodcast”, hosted by the television presenter Angela Scanlon (pictured), will air on YouTube, with clips distributed through other social media channels. The format follows the success of Dish, the podcast run by sister chain Waitrose.

Guests will discuss the good and bad presents they have given and received. The broadcaster Louis Theroux will appear on the first show. Six episodes are planned in the run-up to Christmas, with more to follow if the series takes off.

Shift in how customers find products

Peter Ruis, the outgoing managing director of John Lewis, said that a year ago 0.3 per cent of its customers were searching for products through AI large language models such as ChatGPT. That figure has since risen to 2.5 per cent, he said, with usage growing exponentially across all age groups.

Shoppers are increasingly influenced by tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini to find and recommend products, as well as by content on Instagram and TikTok. The large language models tend to prioritise third-party advice and live content when compiling their answers, which is pushing retailers to rethink how they get discovered online and to change their marketing plans.

For John Lewis, the ability to respond quickly to trends with clips of influencers or experts filmed for social media has become as important as its Christmas television advert or its “never knowingly undersold” price pledge. Examples include the opening of the British Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, which is expected to spur interest in cross stitch, and the launch of the Harry Potter television series before Christmas.

Budget and business rates

Ruis, who leaves John Lewis on 6 September after almost three years as managing director, said the chain had to move with the times as it faced an economy that was “a bit swirly”.

He said the chancellor’s budget in October would come at a “critical period” for retailers, and that he wanted to see more help on business rates, an issue on which high street firms have been pressing for a cut in their bills.

Ruis said strong trading in the first week of September, together with recent changes including modernised cafes and sports departments, the social media push and a “toy boom”, made him optimistic about the run-up to Christmas.

John Lewis was due to publish its half-year figures in the week beginning 7 September. Ruis said it had been a “summer of winners and losers” but indicated there was now “decent momentum” as shoppers still had money to spend. The partnership reinstated its staff bonus earlier in 2026 after sales and underlying profits rose over its last financial year.

The chain recorded its highest ever sales of garden furniture, fans and air conditioning over the summer, but Ruis said it was not yet clear whether the “Burnham bounce” over the summer would last. “People are not going to splurge when you have got inflation swirling,” he said.

Departure

Ruis announced his departure in August, saying he intended to “pursue new projects”. He gave no further indication of his plans on 3 September but said there was “no misalignment” on strategy with the partnership’s relatively new chair, Jason Tarry.

“We are getting things done at pace,” Ruis said. He added that there was “never a good time” to leave but that it was “far better to leave a winning team at the top of its game and all that excitement with events next year to unveil, rather than finishing bottom of the league and running out of the door”.

Ruis said his departure did not mean he had lost confidence in the future of John Lewis. He said it was not a traditional department store reliant on fashion and beauty in the mould of Harvey Nichols, which was bought out of administration in August by Frasers Group, the retailer founded by Mike Ashley.

John Lewis sells a third of all prams and pushchairs bought in the UK, along with garden furniture and the latest technology, Ruis said, adding: “This is not stuff Harvey Nichols can sell.”

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Mumbai: Overseas investors extended their buying streak in Indian equities for a fifth consecutive fortnight in the second half of August, with consumer services, financials and healthcare emerging as the biggest beneficiaries of foreign inflows. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) pumped ₹13,010 crore into Indian equities during August 16-31, after investing ₹16,609 crore in the first half of the month, according to NSDL data.

“A major part of the foreign portfolio investors’ participation has come from secondary market block deals and offer for sale,” said Sriram Velayudhan, senior vice-president, IIFL Capital Services. “Their focus has been on growth-oriented sectors like consumer services, new-age financial services and healthcare.”

Consumer services attracted the highest inflows during the fortnight at ₹5,019 crore, extending a sectoral buying trend that has gathered momentum in recent months. Financial services saw inflows of ₹3,959 crore, while healthcare attracted ₹3,021 crore.

Read more: Nominal GDP growth set to surge to 12%. Why the stock market may still struggle to rally

“Within consumer services businesses, there has been an inclination towards platform businesses like Nykaa, Eternal, Lenskart and Meesho, where profitability visibility has improved significantly, or hotel businesses like Indian Hotels, which is heading towards seasonally stronger quarters,” said Sunny Agrawal, head of fundamental equity research at SBI Securities.

Capital goods returned to favour in the second half of August after witnessing outflows in July and in the first half of August, while healthcare attracted more than ₹5,900 crore of FPI inflows during August. “The financial services industry is likely to report robust earnings growth for the residual FY27 and hence institutional interest is likely to be favourable, underpinned by comfortable valuations,” Agrawal said. “The healthcare sector also has structural tailwinds across sub-sectors like hospitals, diagnostics and CDMO, which would have led to FII buying momentum in the sector.”
Oil, gas and consumable fuels witnessed the highest outflows at ₹2,251 crore during the second half of August.

QuickBooks Online users began reporting access problems Thursday morning, with outage-tracking site Downdetector logging a spike in complaints starting around 9:45 a.m. EDT, adding to a bumpy stretch of reliability issues affecting Intuit’s cloud-based accounting platform this week.

The outage tracker’s official account flagged the surge in a post shortly after the reports began, asking affected users how the disruption was impacting them and directing people to its live outage dashboard for updates. The hashtag “QuickbooksOnlineDown” began circulating on social media as small-business owners and accountants compared notes on the disruption.

Thursday’s reports follow a pattern of intermittent trouble that has affected Intuit’s QuickBooks services over the past several days. According to independent status-tracking service EagleStatus, QuickBooks Online experienced multiple flagged incidents in both the United States and Canada earlier this week, including reported issues on Sept. 1 at both 8:56 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., following an earlier disruption on Aug. 31.

Intuit’s own official status page confirmed a login-related issue affecting QuickBooks Online on Sept. 1, describing the problem in a posted update before marking it resolved.

“Some users may encounter issues when trying to Login to QuickBooks Online,” the status update read, before Intuit later confirmed the issue had been fixed. “The issue has been fixed and we confirm the system recovery across all regions. We apologize for the inconvenience this caused and thank you for your patience.”

That login disruption came just a day after a more significant outage affected Intuit’s developer-facing services. According to Intuit’s Developer Group status page, a major outage beginning the afternoon of Sept. 1 caused intermittent QuickBooks Online API timeout errors, sandbox company loading issues within the Developer Portal, and OAuth connection failures affecting third-party applications integrated with QuickBooks.

Intuit’s engineering team posted a series of updates throughout that incident as they worked to identify and resolve the underlying cause.

“We’re currently seeing a widespread issue affecting sandbox company loading in the Developer Portal, app connection (OAuth) failures, and QuickBooks Online API timeout errors,” the company said in one update during the Sept. 1 incident, later confirming that “the QuickBooks Online APIs are returning intermittent 503 timeout errors due to an internal incident.” The issue was formally marked resolved later that evening, at 8:45 p.m. Pacific time.

QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software widely used by small and midsize businesses to manage day-to-day finances, including tracking income and expenses, generating invoices, processing payroll, and syncing bank transactions. The platform integrates with more than 750 third-party applications, meaning disruptions affecting its core services or underlying APIs can ripple outward to a wide range of connected business tools beyond the QuickBooks interface itself.

Because so many small businesses depend on QuickBooks Online for time-sensitive financial tasks, including processing payroll, sending invoices and reconciling bank transactions, even relatively brief service disruptions can create meaningful downstream frustration for business owners who rely on the platform as a core part of their daily operations. Historical data on the service’s reliability, compiled by independent outage-tracking site Outage.Report, shows QuickBooks Online has recorded relatively limited total downtime over the trailing 12 months, with the platform’s most recent previously tracked incident occurring roughly 258 days prior to this week’s disruptions and lasting about one hour and 14 minutes on average.

Thursday’s disruption is not the first time QuickBooks has experienced a significant, widely felt outage. In one previous incident affecting Intuit’s broader suite of products, a major outage beginning late one evening took down not only QuickBooks but also the company’s Intuit.com website along with associated products including Quicken, TurboTax and Quickbase, affecting hundreds of thousands of customers who relied on Intuit’s online services at the time. Intuit later attributed that earlier, more sweeping outage to an error that occurred during a routine overnight maintenance procedure.

Intuit maintains a dedicated QuickBooks status page where customers can check for known outages or scheduled maintenance windows affecting the platform, along with an option to subscribe to notifications whenever a service goes down, undergoes maintenance, or is restored to normal operation. The company has also directed customers to its QuickBooks Community forum, where members of Intuit’s support team post regular updates during active incidents and customers can check whether others are experiencing similar issues in real time.

As of Thursday morning, Intuit’s official status page had not yet posted a specific update addressing the reports beginning around 9:45 a.m. EDT, leaving affected users largely reliant on crowdsourced outage trackers like Downdetector for early indications of the scope and likely cause of the disruption. Independent monitoring services that check QuickBooks Online’s availability on a rolling basis had not, as of the time reports began circulating, posted a formal confirmation of a new incident tied specifically to Thursday’s spike in user complaints.

QuickBooks Online’s recent stretch of reliability issues, spanning a login disruption, a developer-facing API outage, and now Thursday’s fresh wave of user reports within the span of just a few days, comes during a period when many small businesses are actively processing routine financial tasks tied to the start of a new month, a time when disruptions to core accounting software can carry outsized practical consequences for business owners managing payroll, invoicing and bookkeeping deadlines.

As of Thursday late morning, it remained unclear how long the latest round of QuickBooks Online access issues would persist or whether the disruption was connected to the same underlying systems affected by earlier incidents this week. Affected users were advised to monitor Intuit’s official QuickBooks status page, along with the QuickBooks Community forum and independent outage trackers, for the most current information as the company worked to address the reported issues.

Costco Next, an online marketplace Costco members often regarded as one of the retailer’s most coveted hidden perks, has quietly disappeared from the company’s website. 

The service gave members up to 40% off on certain products not offered at its warehouses. The program featured items from a specific list of vendor partners, ranging from home goods and luggage to electronics.

Shoppers visiting the Costco Next online page are now met with a message: “Access to Costco Next storefronts is no longer available.” 

Costco said shoppers seeking to return items previously purchased through the program should contact the vendors directly. 

COSTCO’S LESSER-KNOWN MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS, EXPLAINED

“Please refer to the list below for contact information for vendors with active return policies. For eligible returns and warranty inquiries, contact the vendor directly,” the retail giant said. 

The program previously featured about 80 vendors, including Anker Electronics, Caraway, Travelpro and Priority Bicycles. In the program, shoppers who selected an offer through Costco’s website were redirected to a custom storefront on the vendor’s website, where they completed the purchase directly with the brand. 

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
COST	COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP.	925.41	-3.07	-0.33%

Some shoppers said they noticed the closure on Sept. 1, with the move apparently coming without warning. 

“A real bummer for the deals,” one Reddit user said. 

COSTCO BRINGS BACK FAN-FAVORITE KIRKLAND TREAT AFTER TWO-YEAR ABSENCE

The decision came as the platform appeared to be gaining momentum.

During the company’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call on May 29, 2025, Costco Next’s quarterly sales equaled the platform’s total sales for the entire 2022 fiscal year. 

Nino Garcia, assistant general merchandise manager at Costco Next, previously said the concept was born in 2016 and took several years to fully materialize as the retailer refined the program. 

CLICK HERE TO GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO

“The Costco Next idea was born in 2016 but did not fully materialize until a few years later,” Garcia said. 

“There was a real learning curve as we developed the program, and there were a lot of refinements, from site improvements and product selection, to ensuring that every supplier understood the concept. In the end, Costco’s goal will always be the same: offering our members quality goods at a great value.” 

FOX Business reached out to Costco for more information.

ET Intelligence Group: While India Inc’s aggregate operating margin has been under pressure over the past few quarters amid higher input costs, large-cap companies have taken a bigger hit compared with their mid- and small-cap counterparts. A higher operating leverage and India-centric focus have helped mid- and small-cap companies.

According to an ETIG analysis of 3,340 companies excluding banks and finance companies, the operating margin of the large cap sample for the June quarter contracted by 280 basis points year-on-year to hit a 13-quarter low of 14.3%. In comparison, though mid- and small-caps operate at a lower profitability, their margins showed lesser contraction. For small-caps, it fell by 100 basis points to 7.7% whereas mid-cap margin remained flat year-on-year at 12.8%.

Each of the three samples showed a higher proportion of raw material costs relative to sales, which affected margins. For large-caps, the ratio increased by 530 basis points year-on-year to 36%. The mid- and small-caps had a greater proportion of input costs in revenue compared with the large-caps. For mid-caps, the ratio went up by 300 basis points to 45.8% while it rose by 550 basis points to 57.5%.

For the total sample, operating margin fell by 230 basis points year-on-year to 13.5%. It skidded below 14% for the first time in at least 13 quarters.

Read more: Banks offer semi-fixed loans to deploy surplus liquidity

Additionally, mid- and small-caps fared better than large-caps in terms of revenue and net profit growth. Revenue grew at a nine-quarter high of 23.7% and 30.2% for mid- and small-caps respectively. Net profit also grew in double digits – 21.2% for mid-caps and 26.7% for small-caps. While large-caps posted strong revenue growth of 22%, net profit growth was modest at 1.6%, the slowest in seven quarters.

SYDNEY — Australian shares closed lower Friday, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index falling 13.6 points, or 0.15%, to 9,006.5, snapping a two-session winning streak despite a strong overnight lead from Wall Street and a rally in gold prices.

Friday’s session had opened on a positive note, with futures pointing to a gain of roughly 22 to 25 points, or about 0.25%, following a robust overnight performance on U.S. markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.18% to 1.2%, the S&P 500 gained around 1.06% to 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.4% overnight, buoyed by Nvidia’s confirmed $12.93 billion acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face, its second-largest deal ever, along with a broad rally in software stocks following Snowflake’s beat-and-raise quarterly earnings report.

Despite that positive overseas lead, the local market ultimately gave back its early gains to finish the session in negative territory, extending a choppy pattern that has characterized Australian trading throughout the first week of September. Thursday’s session, by contrast, had ended firmly higher, with the ASX 200 rising 0.45% to 0.46% to close at 9,020.1, driven by strength across the gold, financials and healthcare sectors.

A significant driver of Friday’s softer tone came from a fresh batch of companies trading ex-dividend, a mechanical factor that typically weighs on an index’s headline performance regardless of underlying market sentiment. Stocks trading without entitlement to their latest dividend payout Friday included auto retailer Eagers Automotive, fuel retailers Ampol and Viva Energy Group, and broadband provider Aussie Broadband, the latter of which is set to pay a 3.6 cents per share fully franked dividend on Sept. 21.

Gold miners were positioned as one of the session’s few bright spots, with Evolution Mining and Newmont Corporation both tipped for strength after the price of gold surged overnight. According to CNBC, gold futures climbed 2.4% to $4,520.10 an ounce, with the rally attributed to a softer U.S. dollar and falling Treasury yields following dovish comments from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, who indicated he could support holding interest rates steady if incoming inflation data continues to show signs of improvement.

Energy stocks including Santos and Woodside Energy Group also found support from continued strength in crude oil prices, which extended their recent climb overnight amid the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran. According to Bloomberg, West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.8% to $91.69 a barrel Thursday, building on gains recorded earlier in the week as the geopolitical standoff in the Middle East continued to keep energy markets on edge, with reports of Iran striking U.S. bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates adding to the tension.

Uranium producer Paladin Energy also drew attention Friday after brokerage Bell Potter reiterated its buy rating and $14.80 price target on the stock, citing continued confidence in the company’s outlook within the broader nuclear fuel sector.

Beyond the day’s trading action, broader economic data released Friday added to a more cautious undertone for the Australian market. The country’s Home Value Index fell 0.4% in August, extending a decline that has now persisted since early 2022 and leaving national home prices roughly 18% below their January 2022 peak, according to figures cited by market commentators. The continued weakness in the housing market has weighed on the broader domestic demand outlook, adding another layer of uncertainty for investors already grappling with the prospect of further Reserve Bank of Australia tightening.

Interest rate markets have continued pricing in the possibility of additional RBA rate hikes in the months ahead, with futures markets reflecting roughly 13 basis points of tightening priced in for the RBA’s September meeting and a full 25-basis-point increase anticipated by the bank’s Melbourne Cup Day meeting on Nov. 3. That expectation has continued to weigh on rate-sensitive sectors of the Australian market, particularly the major banks, even as resource-linked stocks have found support from rising commodity prices tied to the ongoing Middle East conflict.

Regional context has also weighed on sentiment, with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand raising its Official Cash Rate to 2.75% earlier in the week, a move that has added to a broader narrative of central banks across the Asia-Pacific region grappling with sticky inflation pressures amid elevated energy costs.

Friday’s session also came against the backdrop of a well-documented seasonal pattern for Australian equities. According to historical data compiled by Market Index, the ASX 200 has averaged a 0.42% decline in September since 1980, making it historically the worst-performing month of the year for the index, with total returns data since 2001 showing an even steeper average decline of 0.65% for the month. Analysts have pointed to a long list of historically significant September market events, ranging from the 1990 Gulf War oil shock to the September 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2022 inflation-driven selloff, as context for the month’s consistently weak seasonal track record, even as they caution that historical patterns do not guarantee any particular outcome in a given year.

Company-specific volatility also remained a feature of the Australian market this week, with aged care operator Regis Healthcare among the most dramatic movers, falling more than 27% in a single session earlier in the week amid ongoing uncertainty tied to government aged care funding policy. Elsewhere, payments company Block and technology stock 360 Capital both posted strong gains during Thursday’s session, each rising more than 4%, reflecting continued pockets of strength within the local technology and financial sectors even as the broader market has traded with a distinctly cautious tone through the first week of the new month.

With the local market’s early-September performance continuing to reflect a tug-of-war between resource-sector strength tied to rising commodity prices and broader concerns over domestic interest rates, housing weakness and the unresolved Middle East conflict’s implications for global energy markets, investors are likely to remain focused on incoming economic data both locally and in the United States for further direction as the ASX 200 looks to build on its recent gains heading into the following week of trade.

NEW YORK — The Russell 2000 Index, the benchmark tracking small-cap U.S. stocks, edged higher Thursday morning, trading at 2,964.50, up 11.33 points, or 0.38%, as of 9:55 a.m. ET, as investors weighed a modest pullback in Treasury yields against lingering concerns over the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate move.

Thursday’s gain came as the broader stock market extended its rebound from a rocky start to the week, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average also trading higher amid easing bond yields and news of a major acquisition by chipmaker Nvidia. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield eased to around 4.75%, pulling back after touching its highest level since November 2023 earlier in the week, offering some relief to small-cap stocks, which tend to carry higher debt loads and greater sensitivity to borrowing costs than their large-cap counterparts.

Despite Thursday’s modest advance, the Russell 2000 has faced meaningful volatility in recent sessions, reflecting broader uncertainty over the direction of Federal Reserve policy. According to market strategist Phil Rosen, writing this week, the index remains up 25% over the trailing 12 months, but has given back ground recently amid growing speculation that the Fed could move to raise interest rates rather than cut them further.

“Small-cap stocks have almost nothing to show for the last four years before this one,” Rosen wrote, noting that the Russell 2000 is up 28% since 2021, with nearly all of those gains arriving within just the past year. Rosen said the rally had largely priced in expectations of lower borrowing costs, but that traders have increasingly begun pricing in the possibility of a Fed rate hike before 2027.

According to data cited by Rosen, futures markets tied to the CME show roughly a two-in-three probability of a rate hike at the Fed’s meeting later this month, a shift in sentiment Rosen attributed in part to a hawkish-leaning speech delivered by Fed official Kevin Warsh at the Jackson Hole symposium the previous week.

“Since Warsh spoke last week, the 2-year Treasury yield has climbed to its highest level since 2023 while the Russell 2000 has fallen more than 3 percent, a steeper drop than the S&P 500’s 1.3 percent,” Rosen wrote, underscoring the outsized sensitivity small-cap stocks have shown to shifting rate expectations compared with larger, less leveraged companies.

Small-cap companies are widely viewed as more exposed to changes in benchmark interest rates than their large-cap peers, given their comparatively higher reliance on debt financing and floating-rate borrowing structures. According to estimates from Bank of America cited by Rosen, every 25-basis-point increase in the Fed’s benchmark rate reduces Russell 2000 operating earnings by roughly 2%, illustrating the direct earnings impact that even modest policy shifts can have across the small-cap universe.

Rosen also flagged a potential warning sign embedded within this year’s rally, noting that unprofitable companies within the Russell 2000 have actually outperformed their profitable counterparts during the run-up, a pattern some market watchers view as indicative of speculative excess rather than fundamentally driven gains, and one that could leave the index particularly vulnerable if borrowing costs rise further.

Thursday’s modest rebound in small-cap stocks followed a similarly positive session Wednesday across the broader market, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 295.07 points, or 0.56%, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each gained roughly 0.5%, snapping a three-day losing streak that had been driven largely by concerns over elevated bond yields and rising oil prices tied to the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran.

Historical performance data compiled by asset managers has generally painted small-cap stocks as significant beneficiaries during Federal Reserve rate-cutting cycles, given their heightened sensitivity to borrowing costs. According to data cited by asset manager ProShares, the Russell 2000 has outperformed the S&P 500 by at least 4% annualized over the one-, two- and three-year periods following each of the last seven Fed rate-cutting cycles. That historical relationship, however, cuts both ways, meaning renewed speculation about a potential rate increase, rather than further cuts, has introduced fresh uncertainty into the outlook for small-cap performance heading into the final months of 2026.

Earlier this year, small-cap stocks had significantly outperformed their large-cap peers, with the Russell 2000 at one point outpacing the S&P 500 by as much as 8 percentage points, according to analysis from Russell Investments. That performance gap has narrowed considerably since, as investor caution tied to developments in the Middle East and shifting interest rate expectations weighed more heavily on smaller, more economically sensitive companies compared with their larger counterparts.

Small-cap valuations, meanwhile, continue to trade at a meaningful discount relative to large-cap stocks, a dynamic some analysts view as a potential source of longer-term opportunity even amid near-term volatility. Analysts tracking the broader small-cap earnings picture have projected earnings growth in the high teens to low 20% range for small-cap companies over 2026 and 2027, though realizing that growth in the face of a potentially higher interest rate environment remains a key point of uncertainty for investors evaluating the space heading into next year.

For now, Thursday’s gain leaves the Russell 2000 modestly higher on the day, even as the index continues navigating a more uncertain macroeconomic backdrop than it faced earlier in the year, when expectations for continued Fed rate cuts had helped drive a substantial rally in small-cap shares. With the Fed’s next policy decision looming later this month, and Friday’s closely watched U.S. labor market report set to offer additional clues on the economy’s trajectory, investors in small-cap stocks are likely to remain focused on incoming economic data and Fed commentary for signals on whether this year’s small-cap rally can find its footing again, or whether renewed rate hike concerns will continue to weigh on the sector in the weeks ahead.

This article was written by

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