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There has been a lot of talk about rising bond yields, from Japan to the UK and the US, and alongside this government debt is growing all around the world. That all plays into a feeling that many people have that life is about to get more expensive and that in many places interest rates are set to rise.

Rahul Tandon is joined by David Kuo, co-founder of The Smart Investor in Singapore and German business journalist Ellen Frauenknecht.

(Photo: Passersby stand before a stock market indicator board in Tokyo, Japan, 2 September, 2026. Tokyo stocks plunged as Japanese government bond yields rose to its highest level in 30 years and escalating attacks between the United States and Iran. Credit: Franck Robichon/EPA/Shutterstock)

Presenter: Rahul Tandon
Producer: Matt Lines

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Prof Ian Walker, head of psychology at Swansea University, said people could be “constrained by automatic habits” when it comes to water usage.

He said: “You might think, ‘I should take shorter showers’, but once you get in there, you go into auto-pilot and take the same time regardless.

“One of the best things you could ask people to do is don’t have showers and don’t wash your clothes. But that’s not going to happen either.”

He suggested an easier approach was to lock-in water savings measures, such as getting a low-flow shower.

“You do that once as a deliberate choice, but then you never think about it again.”

Welsh Water said it recognised that household budgets remain under pressure and understand that any increase in bills is difficult for customers.

“The additional income will support our investment of more than £4bn between 2025 and 2030 to maintain and improve essential services, including work to reduce pollution, improve water quality, reduce leakage and upgrade vital infrastructure,” a spokesperson said.

“The revenue we receive from customer bills is our sole source of funding for maintaining services and upgrading our infrastructure.

“Without profit-driven pressures, any financial surpluses are reinvested for the benefit of our customers, to improve services, support vulnerable households and address environmental challenges.

“We urge any customer who is worried about paying their bill to contact us. Our social tariffs and wider support schemes can make bills more affordable for eligible households.”

Xbox is introducing strict monthly time limits for Game Pass subscribers who stream games online through its cloud gaming service.

The changes, which come into effect in November, will see a subscriber to the £16.99 Ultimate monthly plan able to stream games for up to 15 hours a month – before having to purchase additional cloud play time.

Xbox said the limits were due to the rising cost of cloud gaming, and they would allow the firm to “continue to invest” in the service’s “reliability and performance”.

While some questioned, external whether the service was used by many to begin with, others called out, external the additional limits for subscribers.

Cloud gaming allows players to stream and play games online from a remote server using a phone, tablet or controller, rather than downloading and running it on a PC or console at home.

Different tiers of subscription to Game Pass will have different limits.

Premium users will get 10 hours, while those on the basic Essential tier will get five hours a month before they have to pay for extra time.

Xbox claimed just 4% of the people who use Games Pass – its Netflix-style subscription plan for games – use its cloud gaming service.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, external reported Game Pass has 30 million subscribers, which would leave the number of people affected by the cloud gaming changes at roughly 1.2 million.

“This is a pretty awful change, hopefully Xbox adds an extra zero on the end cause 15hrs is abysmal. 30 minutes a day, really?” posted one commenter on X, external.

Jez Corden of Windows Central told the BBC the announcement showed that “absolutely nothing is safe from the AI-driven component crisis,” but he added it also highlighted “where Microsoft’s priorities are”.

Both cloud gaming and AI use data centres to process information.

“For them to continue to offer unlimited access to Microsoft Copilot [AI] for free but restrict paid cloud gaming in this way shows some contradiction,” he added.

Xbox said in a blog post, external that from November, users would also be able to use the company’s cloud gaming feature without subscribing to Game Pass, but by buying “cloud playtime hours” through the Xbox store.

It has not revealed how much extra hours of cloud gaming would cost.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Shares of GameStop Corp. traded roughly flat Friday, dipping 13 cents, or 0.68%, to $19.10 as of 1:08 p.m. ET, as investors positioned ahead of the company’s full second-quarter earnings report scheduled for after market close on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

Friday’s relatively muted move came amid a broader down day for U.S. equities, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling roughly 300 points following the release of the August jobs report. The Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs last month, decisively beating the consensus estimate of 55,000, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%. Bill Adams, chief U.S. economist at Fifth Third Commercial Bank, said the stronger-than-expected data adds complexity to the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy decision.

“The August jobs report was much better than expected, focusing the Fed squarely on controlling inflation when they meet next in September,” Adams said, adding that “the next Fed decision will be finely balanced.”

For GameStop specifically, Friday’s trading reflects a period of relative calm ahead of what options traders anticipate could be a significant post-earnings move. According to data from TipRanks’ options tool, traders are pricing in a potential swing of roughly 9% in either direction once the company’s full second-quarter results are released Tuesday.

GameStop already provided a preview of its quarterly performance on Aug. 31, disclosing preliminary results showing expected net income of between $290 million and $310 million, nearly double the $168.6 million reported in the same period a year earlier. That improvement, however, is being driven almost entirely by investment gains rather than core retail performance. The company said its preliminary results include approximately $238 million in net gains tied to its eBay derivative position and equity stake, even as quarterly revenue is projected to fall to between $780 million and $800 million, down sharply from $972.2 million a year earlier.

GameStop shares climbed roughly 4% to 5% in the days following that preliminary disclosure, driven in part by a separate announcement regarding the company’s debt structure. On Sept. 1, GameStop confirmed an amendment to a previously announced exchange of approximately $1.4 billion in convertible notes, under which the company will now pay roughly $358.4 million in cash alongside issuing about 55.5 million shares of common stock. The amended terms fix the total number of shares to be issued in the exchange, meaning the transaction will not result in additional share dilution beyond that fixed amount, a structural change investors welcomed given that the original agreement had been structured to be settled entirely in stock, with the total share count tied to GameStop’s average trading price over a 35-day reference period.

Much of the broader investor attention surrounding GameStop this year has centered on the company’s evolving relationship with eBay and its shifting strategic direction under Chief Executive Ryan Cohen. GameStop first purchased a 5% stake in eBay on Feb. 4, 2026, before making a non-binding proposal on May 3 to acquire the remainder of the e-commerce company for $125 per share in a combination of cash and GameStop stock, a transaction that would value the deal at roughly $56 billion. That proposed acquisition remains pending approval from eBay, GameStop shareholders and antitrust regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice in the United States.

Cohen has publicly framed the pursuit of a major transformative deal as central to his broader strategy for GameStop since taking over as chief executive in January 2021, shortly after the company’s stock became the center of a historic retail-investor-driven short squeeze. In a January 2026 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cohen indicated he was actively seeking a significant transaction capable of scaling GameStop well beyond its traditional core video game retail business.

Despite the strategic ambition behind the proposed eBay acquisition, some market commentary in recent days has raised questions about whether the deal will ultimately move forward in its currently proposed form, with speculation circulating that Cohen could potentially abandon the bid altogether depending on how negotiations and regulatory review continue to unfold. Separately, some analysts have suggested that GameStop’s rejected earlier approach toward eBay, and the resulting derivative and equity positions the company built up in the process, effectively rescued what would have otherwise been a considerably weaker underlying quarter for the retailer’s core business.

GameStop’s underlying retail operations have continued shrinking even as its investment portfolio has grown increasingly central to its financial results. The company operates 2,206 stores globally as of its most recent full-year disclosure, including 1,598 locations in the United States, 300 in Australia and 308 across Europe, operating under the GameStop, EB Games, Micromania-Zing, ThinkGeek and Zing Pop Culture brand names. Founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage’s before adopting its current name in 1999, the company remains the largest video game retailer in the world by store count, even as its sales continue to decline amid the broader industry shift toward digital game distribution.

GameStop shares have declined roughly 61.7% over the trailing five years, according to analysis from Simply Wall St, even as the stock has experienced periodic bursts of extreme volatility tied to its status as a favored name among retail investors since the original 2021 short squeeze. Despite that long-term decline, some analysts have pointed to the stock’s current valuation as potentially attractive relative to the company’s growing investment portfolio, even as broader fundamental checks on the underlying retail business remain mixed.

With GameStop’s full second-quarter results due after market close Tuesday, investors will be watching closely for additional detail on the trajectory of the company’s core retail sales, further updates on the status of the proposed eBay acquisition, and any new guidance regarding how GameStop plans to balance its shrinking traditional retail operations against its rapidly expanding investment holdings heading into the remainder of fiscal 2026.