Ask a British marketing director what they would do if discounting were taken away tomorrow, and you tend to get a laugh followed by a slightly panicked silence.

Welcome offers, free trials, win-back codes and loyalty tiers are wired so deeply into how UK consumer businesses acquire customers that removing them sounds less like a strategy question than a parlour game. Sweden has been running that experiment for seven years, and the results are worth a look.

One offer, and that is the lot

When Sweden reopened its gambling market to licensed competition in 2019, it wrote in a rule with no real British equivalent. An operator may give a player a bonus at the first occasion that person gambles with them, and never again. No reload offers. No cashback. No VIP tier returning money to the customers who spend most. The Swedish Gambling Authority has fined operators for getting the timing wrong.

What this does to the shop window is immediate. A typical Swedish welcome package runs to about a hundred kronor, call it eight pounds, plus a handful of free spins. That is the entire lifetime discount budget for a customer who might stay five years and spend a great deal more.

What moves into the space a coupon leaves

Something has to do the work the discount used to do, and that something turns out to be the product itself. Visit a Swedish-licensed online casino and the front page is doing a different job from its British counterpart: game range, withdrawal terms, the regulator’s mark, links to the national self-exclusion register. Retention economics shift in the same direction. When you cannot buy a customer back after they drift, the only defence against churn is not irritating them in the first place, which puts an uncomfortable weight on payment speed, support response times and whether the thing works on a five-year-old phone. Swedish operators talk about payout times the way British retailers talk about next-day delivery, and for much the same reason.

Brand carries more than it used to, as well. Where every licensed competitor offers roughly the same nothing, the deciding factor becomes which name a customer already trusts. That is slower and dearer to build than a coupon, and considerably harder for a rival to copy.

The same squeeze, without the legislation

British businesses are not about to have discounting legislated away, but plenty are arriving at the same place by a different road. Acquisition costs have climbed across almost every consumer category, margins have not, and a decade of promotional habit has trained customers to wait for the sale rather than pay the price. The lever still exists here. It has simply become expensive enough that pulling it hurts.

Sweden’s rule carries a genuine cost too, and it would be dishonest to skip past it. The regulator’s channelisation figure, the share of play that stays with licensed operators, has slipped from 86 per cent in 2023 to 84 per cent last year, and for casino products specifically it sits at 81 per cent. Take promotional freedom away from the businesses you regulate, and some customers go looking for it elsewhere. For a UK founder wondering what a company looks like when it can no longer buy attention, though, Sweden remains the most detailed answer anyone has. Its operators did not find a clever workaround. They spent the money on being worth choosing instead: the slower path, and the one that tends to survive a bad quarter.

Intel shares surged more than 7% Tuesday morning, climbing to $97.93 as of 9:41 a.m. Eastern time, as semiconductor stocks broadly rallied ahead of a highly anticipated earnings report from rival Advanced Micro Devices due after the market closes.

Tuesday’s gains build on a volatile several weeks for Intel, whose stock has swung sharply between rallies and steep pullbacks even as the company’s underlying turnaround story, led by Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan, continues to unfold. Shares closed Monday at $91.00, up a modest 0.89%, before extending gains further in Tuesday’s session as broader risk appetite returned to the chip sector.

A wild recent stretch for Intel shares

Intel’s stock has been on an extraordinary run over the trailing 12 months, at one point posting gains exceeding 350% to 460% depending on the measurement window, as investors bought into the company’s turnaround narrative following a brutal stretch in 2025 that saw shares hit a 52-week low near $19. The stock later climbed as high as $142.35 before pulling back sharply in recent weeks amid broader semiconductor sector jitters.

Much of that recent volatility traces back to late July, when a disappointing earnings report from Samsung triggered a wave of selling across chip stocks tied to concerns about PC and server chip demand. Intel shares fell roughly 9% to 10% on multiple occasions during that stretch, at one point ranking among the worst performers in the S&P 500 on a single trading day as investors reassessed the broader chip sector’s near-term outlook.

Intel’s own second-quarter earnings, released July 24, initially failed to stabilize the stock despite topping expectations. The company reported revenue of $16.1 billion, up 25% year-over-year and ahead of the high end of its own guidance of $14.8 billion, while also guiding third-quarter revenue to roughly $16.3 billion, comfortably above analyst consensus estimates of $15.1 billion. Despite the beat, CNBC commentator Jim Cramer described the stock’s subsequent decline as “some of the most hideous selling” he had witnessed, attributing the drop to broader anxiety around AI infrastructure spending rather than any specific issue with Intel’s results. Cramer has since argued that Intel stock “belongs at $110,” well above where shares have traded in recent sessions.

Analysts remain divided on valuation

Wall Street’s views on Intel remain notably split heading into Tuesday’s rally. Rosenblatt raised its price target on the stock to $65 from $50 but maintained a Sell rating, arguing the stock’s dramatic run has outpaced its underlying fundamentals. That stands in sharp contrast to the broader Street consensus price target, which sits closer to $112, reflecting continued optimism from other analysts about Intel’s foundry business and its expanding role in AI infrastructure.

Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland has maintained a more neutral stance but raised his price target to $115 from $80 in recent weeks, citing stronger-than-anticipated server CPU demand, while KeyBanc’s John Vinh has taken a more bullish position, reiterating a Buy rating with a price target of $155.

Foundry progress and AI demand fuel optimism

Much of the bullish case for Intel centers on the ongoing revival of its foundry business, which has shown signs of improvement after years of losses and delayed manufacturing milestones. Intel’s foundry segment generated $5.4 billion in revenue during the first quarter, a 20% sequential increase driven by higher production of advanced chips, with external foundry revenue reaching $174 million during the same period. While the segment remains unprofitable, losses have moderated, and management has said it expects further operating improvement in the coming quarters.

Intel has also continued expanding its advanced packaging business, recently deepening a technology partnership tied to its EMIB packaging platform, an area where rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing has reportedly been developing competing technology aimed at the same high-performance computing and AI chip market. Separately, research firm Omdia has projected global semiconductor revenue will surge 94.1% year-over-year in 2026, citing industry-wide bottlenecks in high-bandwidth memory production, a forecast that has added to broader bullish sentiment across chip stocks including Intel.

A rally tied to the broader market, not just Intel

Tuesday’s jump in Intel shares appeared closely tied to broader strength across the semiconductor sector rather than any single Intel-specific announcement. AMD shares also climbed sharply in Tuesday’s session ahead of its own earnings report, while the broader market extended a multi-day rally driven by easing tensions in the Middle East, falling oil prices, and a string of strong corporate earnings reports from companies including Caterpillar and Palantir Technologies. That supportive macro backdrop has helped lift previously beaten-down chip names, including Intel, even as some analysts continue to debate whether recent price gains fully reflect the execution risk still facing the company’s multi-year turnaround plan.

Government backing remains a factor

Intel’s rise over the past year has also been shaped in part by direct financial support from the U.S. government, which took a stake in the company last year as part of a broader push to maintain domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity. That backing, combined with new customer commitments from companies including Google and reported discussions involving Apple and Nvidia around potential foundry partnerships, has continued to feature prominently in the bull case for Intel shares even as the stock’s underlying earnings power remains a subject of debate among analysts.

With AMD’s second-quarter results due after Tuesday’s closing bell, investors will be watching closely for any read-through to Intel and the broader chip sector, particularly around AI infrastructure demand and server CPU competition between the two companies. Given Intel’s history of sharp single-session swings in both directions over the past year, analysts caution that Tuesday’s rally, like the sector-wide selloffs that preceded it, may prove more reflective of shifting market sentiment than a definitive signal about the company’s longer-term execution on its turnaround strategy.

Welcome back. Big fashion retailers are leaning further into secondhand clothing to drive fresh sales growth, score sustainability credentials and generate brand buzz, Clara Hudson reports this morning for The Wall Street Journal.

• Banana Republic recently launched limited-edition drops featuring pieces from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.
• Reformation expanded its “preloved” section, where it sells vintage items from brands including Prada and Bebe alongside its own styles.
• H&M has rolled out roughly a dozen secondhand pop-ups in recent years, including new SoHo, Stockholm and Vienna locations.

“A lot of this is about the customer, but it’s also good business sense,” said Sofia Måhlén, team lead of circular business models at H&M. The resale market is growing faster than conventional retail, she said.

Still, the top-line impact remains modest: Resold items accounted for just 0.8% of H&M’s total sales revenue in 2025, including the company’s other brands and investments.

I asked Clara how marketers are balancing traditional high-volume business models with secondhand strategies.

Mumbai: Arbitrage fund investors were surprised Monday to see the net asset values (NAV) of their portfolios surge an average 0.46% in a single day, translating into an annualised yield of 167%. What explains such drastic movements in an asset class that barely yields 7% a year or about 0.02% a day? Well, this happened on the first day after the introduction of the closing auction session (CAS) for F&O stocks by the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Fund managers said teething troubles with the new auction system will cause skewed NAVs. “For arbitrage funds, the CAS does introduce some execution and hedging considerations,” said Kaivalya Nadkarni, fund manager, DSP Mutual Fund.

Arbitrage strategies typically involve taking offsetting positions in the cash and derivatives markets simultaneously. “While the cash market for securities with available derivatives halts at 3:15 pm, the equity derivatives market continues to trade until 3:40 pm. This makes it more challenging to establish and hedge positions simultaneously,” said Nadkarni.

Read more: Closing auction keeps traders on edge as divergence persists

Fund managers warn investors against trading in arbitrage funds with an eye on capturing risk free gains.

“Short-term NAV movements should not be viewed in isolation. The observed gain is largely a valuation effect and may reverse any time as cash and futures prices normalise,” said a Kotak mutual fund note. Nadkarni said CAS participation accounted for only 2.2% of total daily turnover on the NSE and 0.7% on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), leaving considerable scope for participation to build over time.
Fund managers point out more than half of Monday’s gains have been erased from Tuesday’s trading session and slowly, as volumes increase and players get adjusted, the system will stabilise.
This, however, will also not lead to increase in returns for long term investors. “Arbitrage spreads are locked and returns will be fully realised on expiry day. However, in between, one will see a lot of fluctuations on a day-to-day basis. With these new rules, volatility will go up, at least in the initial days,” said Bhavesh Jain, president & co-head, factor investing, Edelweiss MF. To ride out this volatility, Jain said investors should increase their holding period in arbitrage funds from three months to at least six months until the closing-price mechanism settles.
Distributors, meanwhile, believe given the current volatility, investors should be extremely careful, stagger investments and have longer time frames.

“Stagger money over 8-10 trading sessions to help reduce any impact of temporary valuation fluctuations and increase your time frame to six months,” said Anup Bhaiya, CEO, Money Honey financial services, a Mumbai-based distributor.

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