Most investors think of the Nasdaq-100 index as a tech index. That’s not unreasonable, given that 66% of the index is, indeed, in the technology sector. However, if you are looking for a high-yield stock, tech usually isn’t the place to look. Which is why my pick in September is from the just over 2% weighting in consumer staples companies.

PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) has a yield of roughly 4.3%. For reference, the S&P 500 index (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) yields only about 1%, while the average consumer staples stock yields roughly 2.1%. So that yield is attractive on both an absolute and a relative basis. Here’s a quick rundown on why PepsiCo’s yield is so high and why I bought it anyway.

Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout. Continue »

PepsiCo isn’t hitting on all cylinders

In the second quarter of 2026, PepsiCo’s organic sales rose 2.4%. That’s actually not a terrible number for a consumer staples company, but it is less than half the 6% that Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) achieved. Given that these two companies are key competitors in the beverage space, you can see why Wall Street isn’t happy with PepsiCo’s business results.

To be fair to PepsiCo, its business spans beverages, snacks, and packaged food products. So it is far more diversified than Coca-Cola. Right now, that’s a headwind, but I actually see the added diversification as a net positive. I believe it gives PepsiCo more levers for long-term growth.

But right now, consumer tastes are shifting. Some of that is related to a general increase in health consciousness. And some is tied to the development of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which are changing the way people eat. The why here is less important than the fact that there is a change. PepsiCo is aware of it and is working to update its brand portfolio. That takes time, and Wall Street is famously impatient, so the stock price has fallen. I think that’s an opportunity for long-term investors like me.

PepsiCo has dealt with change before

What’s important to remember right now is that consumer buying habits shift constantly. While the current change may feel dramatic, at least partly due to the impact of GLP-1 drugs, PepsiCo has adjusted its business many times over the past 54 years. Fifty-four may seem like an oddly specific number, but it really isn’t. It is the number of years that PepsiCo has increased its dividend.

That streak makes PepsiCo a Dividend King. A company can’t create a streak like that by accident. It requires a strong business plan that gets executed well in both good times and bad. Today is just a “bad” time. Given the consumer staples giant’s long and successful history, I’m confident it will eventually get back on track. To get there, it is leaning into innovation and acquiring on-trend brands.

PepsiCo is paying you well to wait

Not only is PepsiCo’s yield high relative to the S&P 500 and the average consumer staples stock, but it is also near the highest levels in the company’s own yield history. Wall Street is basically treating PepsiCo as if it is a terrible business, even though organic sales are still increasing and the company remains highly profitable, with second-quarter earnings of $2.20 per share, up 4% year over year. This is not a money-losing start-up on the verge of bankruptcy.

If you buy PepsiCo today, you can collect an attractive yield while this historically well-run company adjusts its brand portfolio, as it has many times before. While the stock isn’t a risk-free investment, I think the risk-versus-reward balance is tilted heavily toward reward.

Should you buy stock in PepsiCo right now?

Before you buy stock in PepsiCo, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and PepsiCo wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $387,158!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,365,749!*

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Reuben Gregg Brewer has positions in PepsiCo. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

There Are Only a Handful of Nasdaq-100 Stocks That Yield Over 3%. Here’s My Top Pick to Buy in September. was originally published by The Motley Fool

Asset manager VanEck has criticized Metaplanet’s executive compensation structure, arguing that recent efforts by the Bitcoin treasury company to curb shareholder dilution still fall short of adequately aligning management with investors.

In a Friday report examining executive compensation across the 10 largest digital asset treasury companies, VanEck labeled Metaplanet’s compensation structure “Bad,” making it the only firm to fall into the lowest category. VanEck cited an equity plan equal to 14.7% of fully diluted shares and officer exposure of 8.2%.

VanEck said Metaplanet’s officer exposure is roughly 10 times the 0.8% average of the other nine companies analyzed, while its overall equity plan is nearly four times the peer average.

By comparison, Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin (BTC) holder, has an equity plan equal to 2% of fully diluted shares and officer exposure of 0.5%. VanEck rated its compensation structure “Good,” noting that its equity reserve is fixed and plan increases require a shareholder vote. 

Metaplanet is a Japanese Bitcoin treasury company that currently ranks as the third-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder, with 43,000 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

Top 10 Bitcoin treasury companies. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET

Bitcoin purchases expanded executive option pool

VanEck said the disparity stems partly from Metaplanet’s former compensation structure, which allowed its option pool to expand automatically as the company issued shares to fund Bitcoin purchases. The mechanism caused the pool to grow from 46 million shares to 319.5 million, adding roughly 273 million potential shares.

At the time, the expansion drew criticism from some Metaplanet shareholders, who called on the company to cancel the additional potential shares created by the adjustment mechanism.

Amid the criticism, Metaplanet ended the automatic adjustment mechanism in August and cut the overall pool by 41% in September, from 319.5 million to 188.2 million shares. VanEck, however, said the changes still “fall well short of the mark.”

Metaplanet’s equity compensation versus peers. Source: VanEck Research

Friday’s report called for Metaplanet to reverse the roughly 273 million-share expansion created by the adjustment clause and replace the remaining rights with a shareholder-approved compensation plan. VanEck separately noted that unless past grants are clawed back, much of the dilution has already occurred.

VanEck also recommended tying executive compensation to a metric such as Bitcoin per fully diluted share and adopting a written grant-timing policy.

Magazine: Bitcoin treasury firms can outperform BTC… but is the risk worth taking?

The Clarity Act would have cleared that up and also elevated the SEC’s sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to new authorities — most importantly full supervisory powers over the crypto commodity spot markets. Spot markets are where commodities trade directly, and since bitcoin and Ethereum’s ether were eventually determined to be commodities, it became clear the bulk of crypto trading happens in that space that’s absent a hands-on regulator (except in situations in which bad guys are manipulating the markets).

This conflict is uniquely American, because the U.S.’ regulatory regime developed completely separate securities and derivatives agencies, unlike the unification elsewhere. (Yes, everybody knows it’s unnecessarily complicated.) So figuring out which one is responsible for each asset has been a minefield from day one.

Defining the different buckets of blockchain-native assets and who would regulate them was a core aspect of Clarity. Plus, the bill did a lot of things meant to curb illicit finance. And — in a particularly contentious arena — it sought to offer limited legal protections to software developers in decentralized finance (DeFi), so they wouldn’t get prosecuted for how other people use their work.

We’ll pass on talking about the sections that actually killed the bill, which had very little to do with the legislation’s primary business. Instead, we’ll look at what happens in the Clarity-shaped hole in U.S. policy. And thanks to the SEC, we didn’t have to wait long.

Dear Quentin,

My husband, 59, and I, 55, are planning to retire over the next few years, and this is one of the biggest unknowns I’m struggling with. My mom had Alzheimer’s disease and spent seven years in a really nice memory-care facility in a smaller town. It cost about $7,000 a month. Thankfully, my parents had purchased long-term-care insurance and had paid premiums for about 12 years. 

My dad died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, so his policy was never used. But my mom’s policy ended up being worth its weight in gold. It essentially covered all of her care. By the time my mother died, the insurance company had paid out almost $600,000. We only paid about $100 a month for some extras. Needless to say, that experience has made me think.

Most Read from MarketWatch

I’ve looked into long-term-care insurance, but the premiums are so incredibly expensive, and I worry about what they’ll cost by the time it makes sense for me to seriously consider a policy. We’re fortunate financially. After 35 years in the corporate grind, we’ll have substantial retirement savings; we’ve always saved carefully; and we have no debt or mortgage. 

I also genuinely love my job, so I’m perfectly happy to work longer if that makes sense. What I really don’t want is to leave our two kids with a huge financial burden someday if one or both of us need years of expensive care. Do I self-insure? Buy long-term-care insurance? Use some combination of investments and insurance? Are there good retirement-planning tools?

I know Medicare is part of the equation, but I’d like more control over our options than simply hoping it will be enough. I’m doing everything I can on the preventative-care and healthy-lifestyle front, but unfortunately there are no guarantees. Right now, my strategy is to save as much as humanly possible and hope for the best.

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If you have a crystal ball that will tell me I will need memory care in old age, please share.

In My Fifties

Don’t miss: ‘We fear financial exploitation’: Who will manage our finances if my wife and I become incapacitated?

Dear Fifties,

Your 50s are actually not a bad time to take out long-term care insurance.

Financially speaking, given your age, you’re not too young and you’re not too old. Yes, you probably would have spent less on monthly premiums had you taken out this insurance policy in your 40s, but you would also have been paying it for a decade. It’s hard to predict the future and get that perfect balance. If your mother had Alzheimer’s, your own risk is higher than average from a statistical point of view, although that does not mean that you will develop the disease.

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Zcash (ZEC) has climbed 177.8% in a month, and the traders betting against it are paying for that move.

One short was closed at a $10.68 million loss this week, and the largest position still open sits $33.87 million underwater on Hyperliquid.

Zcash Shorts Collapse as the Token Jumps 177% in a Month

Lookonchain flagged the closed trade before the exit, citing 26 consecutive wins and an 89% rate across 47 trades. That record had produced more than $9 million in profit.

The short covered 12,285 ZEC and was worth $18.31 million earlier, with liquidation set at $1,550.66. Hyperliquid data shows the account now holds no positions at all.

Garrett Jin holds the largest short still open, covering 37,999 ZEC worth $59.37 million. He built the position at an average price of $671.05, so it now shows an unrealized loss of $33.87 million.

His 1,333 BTC long is up $4.41 million, which cushions part of the damage. Jin still has room, because his liquidation price of $4,789.42 sits above the 2016 record of $3,191.93.

Other addresses are also seeing sharp losses. One account (0xdd53…2b13) is down $12.53 million on a 13,487 ZEC short opened at $644.39. Another (0xad59…ba81) shorted 8,425 ZEC at $330.91 with 10 times leverage and now sits $10.47 million underwater.

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Spot Buyers, ETF Flows and One Very Loud Timeline

The rally that caused the damage has made ZEC the strongest performer among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies. The token trades near $1,563 and ranks ninth by market value at $26.47 billion.

The move has real buying behind it from both retail whales and institutions. Lookonchain reported that one address withdrew 15,860 ZEC worth $22.69 million from Binance in a day. Another moved 7,081 ZEC over two days.

Institutional buying has moved in the same direction Zcash ETFs took in $98.2 million in the week ending September 18, the largest inflow among 14 products. Assets rose 40.5% to $914.5 million.

Attention has followed the price. Santiment recorded Zcash social volume at a one-month high on September 17. Mentions on X ran 6.8 times their 29-day baseline, against 1.7 times elsewhere.

“The price found buyers. The attention found one timeline,” the post read.

Traders now watch whether spot demand holds. Open interest in ZEC perpetuals on Hyperliquid stands at 574,045 ZEC, worth roughly $885 million, so leveraged positions remain large on both sides.

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Read the Original story Trader With 89% Win Rate Loses $10.68 Million Shorting Zcash by Kamina Bashir at beincrypto.com

Anthropic’s initial public offering (IPO), expected no earlier than mid-October, will be a test of just how hungry the financial markets still are for exposure to artificial intelligence (AI). The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) is going to react depending on how that test goes. Its backers want a valuation of $2 trillion or more, which would top Space Exploration Technologies as the biggest IPO ever if it happens.

Don’t expect S&P 500 funds to buy it immediately, though. The road for Anthropic entering the S&P 500 is going to be slow, and it could test some nerves along the way.

Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout. Continue »

Anthropic can’t join the S&P 500 for at least 12 months

By definition, index funds tracking the S&P 500 must buy whatever the S&P 500 adds to its list of stocks.

Anthropic probably won’t get special treatment, given that on June 4, S&P Dow Jones Indices declined to loosen its rules for mega-cap listings. Those rules still require 12 months as a public company, at least 10% of shares being publicly held, and reported positive earnings under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

While SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 list of stocks within weeks of its June 2026 IPO, it still needs to wait outside the S&P 500. If Anthropic has its offering in late 2026 as planned, its earliest shot at inclusion in the S&P 500 will occur in late 2027.

Nonetheless, two of the index’s largest companies already own Anthropic, which means that holders of the index funds have some exposure already as well. For instance, Amazon reported $16.8 billion of pretax gains on its Anthropic position in the first quarter of 2026. Alphabet also has a stake in Anthropic, so a strong debut could boost it and Amazon.

Should you expect a slump after the Anthropic IPO?

Per finance professor Jay Ritter at the University of Florida, across 9,343 U.S. IPOs from 1980 to 2025, the average first-day gain was 19%. The pain came later. Measured from their first close, IPOs from 2012 to 2024 underperformed the market by 25.5% over three years, on average.

SpaceX shows how bumpy the ride can get. It priced its June 2026 IPO at $135. It then jumped to $225.64 before falling to $104.83, and was $151.10 on Sept. 16. That peak-to-trough plunge was probably quite frustrating for its shareholders.

Another factor here is that AI stocks were responsible for more than 80% of the S&P 500’s 2026 gains through mid-May, per the Jefferies investment bank. A lukewarm reception for the year’s biggest IPO stock would signal fading AI appetite, and AI-heavy index funds would feel it.

So, while over the longer term the Anthropic IPO could do well for those who buy it — as well as for any indexes it’s ultimately included in — in the near term, it’s still a risk to the S&P 500 because of what it symbolizes.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.

On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:

• Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $577,856!*

• Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $64,119!*

• Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $387,158!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See the 3 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of September 14, 2026

Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Jefferies Financial Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Anthropic’s IPO Is Coming. Here’s What That Means for S&P 500 Investors. was originally published by The Motley Fool

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