The S&P 500 notched a record-high close on Thursday, fueled by advances in Sandisk and other heavyweight technology stocks, as tame producer price inflation data supported expectations the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates at its September meeting.

Memory ‌chip makers Sandisk ⁠and Micron ⁠Technology surged, while Broadcom and Meta Platforms also gained.

Strong forecasts in recent weeks from companies including Microsoft and Amazon have reduced investors’ concerns about massive spending on AI data centers.

“The AI earnings-driven tech boom ​continues,” said Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors in New York. “It’s an earnings boom, not a bubble.”

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 51.23 points, or 0.66%, to end at 7,799.73 points, while the Nasdaq Composite ⁠gained 215.02 ‌points, or 0.81%, to 26,803.51. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 70.91 points, or 0.13%, to 53,833.87.

The S&P 500 is up about 14% in ⁠2026, while the Nasdaq has gained about 15%.
Cisco Systems dropped after ​the networking equipment maker’s upbeat revenue forecast did not satisfy investors ​with high expectations. Iran and the United States remain at loggerheads over efforts to agree on a permanent end to the Iran war, according to a senior Iranian source, while traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz remained severely curtailed. Fresh data showed U.S. producer prices were unchanged in July as goods prices fell and the cost of ‌services increased marginally, while the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, pointing to a stable jobs market.Traders are ​pricing in a ​63% chance that ⁠the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged at its meeting next month, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.

Brent crude oil futures closed about 2% lower at $87.07 a barrel. Netflix climbed after ​billionaire investor Bill Ackman unveiled a new holding in the streaming company as part of Pershing Square’s biggest portfolio overhaul in years. Tapestry shares plunged after the Coach owner forecast muted annual revenue growth. Dell Technologies and HP both gained after quarterly results from China’s Lenovo beat expectations.

Steam users began reporting problems accessing Valve’s digital gaming platform Thursday afternoon, according to outage-tracking service Downdetector, in what appeared to be a developing disruption affecting the widely used PC gaming service.

Downdetector said user reports indicating problems with Steam began climbing at 1:06 p.m. Eastern time. The tracking service posted about the rising number of reports on its official account on the social platform X, asking affected users to describe how the outage was impacting them and tagging the post with the hashtag “SteamDown.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Valve had not issued a public statement addressing the scope, cause or expected resolution timeline for the reported disruption. Valve does not maintain a widely publicized, continuously updated public status page of its own, meaning players and outside observers typically rely on Downdetector and other third-party monitoring tools, including SteamDB’s outage tracker and community-run services like SteamStats, to gauge the scope of a disruption before Valve issues any official acknowledgment, if it does so at all.

Steam serves as the primary hub for millions of PC gamers, powering game downloads and installations, multiplayer connectivity, cloud saves, in-game achievements, community features such as user profiles and discussion forums, and the Steam Store itself, where players browse and purchase titles. A disruption affecting any of these core services can prevent players from accessing their game libraries, connecting to online multiplayer matches, or completing purchases, depending on which specific systems are affected.

Thursday’s reported disruption would not be the first time Steam has experienced service problems this year. According to data compiled by outage-tracking site Outage.report, Steam has logged 35 recorded incidents over the trailing 12 months, with an average incident duration of roughly 49 minutes and total downtime across the period amounting to just over one day. The service’s most recent previous incident, prior to Thursday, occurred roughly eight days earlier, according to the same tracker. A separate, more significant disruption affected Steam earlier this month, on August 3, when outage-tracking platforms recorded a sharp spike in user reports describing problems logging in, browsing the Steam Store, launching games and connecting to online services, an incident that, as with many Steam outages, Valve did not officially acknowledge through a public statement at the time.

Independent monitoring data from SteamDB’s outage detector has documented a pattern of brief, recurring disruptions affecting different combinations of Steam’s core systems throughout 2026, including its client software, storefront, community features, web API and matchmaking infrastructure. Most recorded incidents in that data resolved within two to eight minutes, though at least one earlier outage in July was recorded as lasting more than seven hours before full service was restored across all affected systems.

Valve has also historically conducted routine, scheduled maintenance on Steam’s servers on Tuesday evenings U.S. time, typically beginning around midnight UTC on Wednesdays and lasting for a limited window, according to SteamDB’s tracking data. Thursday’s reported disruption, however, falls outside that regular maintenance schedule, suggesting, if confirmed, that the issue stems from an unplanned technical problem rather than routine scheduled downtime.

For players experiencing issues, standard troubleshooting guidance compiled by outage-tracking services recommends first confirming that the problem isn’t related to a user’s own internet connection by checking another website, then attempting to fully restart the Steam client by exiting it completely through the system tray and reopening it. Additional steps commonly recommended include clearing the Steam download cache through the client’s settings menu, switching to a different download region if store or download performance seems affected, and, for players who only need access to previously downloaded single-player titles, switching Steam into offline mode, which allows many games to continue functioning even when the platform’s online services are experiencing problems.

Given Steam’s massive global player base, spanning millions of concurrent users across PC gaming, disruptions to the platform tend to generate rapid, high-volume spikes in social media complaints and outage reports whenever core services experience even brief interruptions, a pattern that has repeated across multiple incidents throughout 2026, including Thursday’s reported issue.

This remains a developing situation, and additional details regarding the precise scope, underlying cause and expected resolution timeline of Thursday’s reported Steam outage were not immediately available. Valve had not issued an official public acknowledgment of the disruption as of Thursday afternoon, leaving affected players largely reliant on Downdetector and other third-party monitoring tools to determine whether their individual access problems were part of a broader, platform-wide issue or a more isolated, localized disruption.

Reddit’s popular r/Bumble community – where half a million people share dating stories and discuss app features – has largely questioned the platform’s rule changes.

In particular, users have asked how Bumble was now different from any other dating app.

“If you women want men to message first, use a different app,” one person wrote, while another said they “really valued” women making the first move.

“Women get swamped with messages, so any woman who messaged me showed real interest,” they said.

Others argued the feature had already been diluted when Bumble introduced “Opening Moves” – a feature allowing women to set a pre-written prompt for men to respond to.

But some women said they supported the change – or admitted they had grown frustrated with initiating conversations only to receive no reply.

“Honestly, men barely responded when I messaged first on Bumble,” said one person, while another claimed the “majority” of men they messaged “let our matches expire.”

Professional matchmaker Sarah Louise Ryan welcomed the move, saying Bumble’s signature feature had “run its course”.

“At first, the idea was empowering, but over time the novelty wore off,” she told BBC News.

“Women were effectively being asked to hold the narrative and energy of the connection, while men were left feeling passive or anxious.

“Bumble had real success with that positioning initially, but they relied on it for too long and failed to adapt as the dating landscape shifted.”

CHICAGO — A single Powerball ticket sold in Illinois matched all six numbers in Wednesday night’s drawing to win a $1.04 billion jackpot, ending a months-long run without a winner and claiming the eighth-largest prize in the game’s history.

The winning ticket was purchased at a Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh store located at 310 N. 36th St. in Quincy, Illinois, according to the Illinois Lottery. The winning numbers for the August 12 drawing were 4, 26, 66, 67 and 69, with a Powerball number of 9 and a Power Play multiplier of 2. The identity of the winner had not been publicly announced as of Thursday morning.

The jackpot marks the largest Powerball prize won so far in 2026 and the second-largest lottery prize ever won in the state of Illinois. Wednesday’s drawing was the 44th consecutive drawing since the jackpot was last won, on May 2, a run that had steadily pushed the prize higher week after week as ticket sales climbed.

The winner faces a significant decision on how to collect the prize. The jackpot can be claimed as an annuitized payment of $1.04 billion, distributed across 30 graduated payments over 29 years, with each annual payment increasing by 5%, or as a lump-sum cash option of $450.5 million. Both figures are before taxes. According to an analysis by Casino.org, the lump-sum option would shrink to roughly $261.5 million after accounting for the 37% federal tax rate and Illinois’ 4.5% state tax on lottery winnings.

Beyond the jackpot itself, Wednesday’s drawing produced a wave of smaller prizes across the country. More than 3 million tickets won cash prizes of some amount. Four tickets, sold in Arizona, California, Florida and North Carolina, matched all five white balls to win the Match 5 prize, worth a set $1 million in most states, though California’s prize payouts are determined on a pari-mutuel basis based on total sales and the number of winners in that state. A fifth ticket matching all five white balls, sold in Massachusetts, included the Power Play option, boosting its prize to $2 million. Powerball also reported 70 tickets winning $50,000 each, with 16 of those tickets carrying the Power Play multiplier, doubling their prize to $100,000.

The retailer that sold the winning ticket also benefits directly from the jackpot win. Under Illinois Lottery rules, the store will receive a $500,000 cash bonus for selling the jackpot-winning ticket, an incentive designed to encourage retailers across the state to continue participating in the lottery program.

Wednesday’s drawing carried additional significance as the first jackpot run to include players from the United Kingdom, following the launch of Powerball ticket sales there on July 21. Powerball officials have said the expanded international player base is expected to help fuel even larger jackpots going forward by increasing the overall pool of ticket sales feeding into future prize pools.

“For more than three decades, Powerball has shown that a winning ticket can be sold anywhere the game is played, giving every $2 ticket the chance to change not only a winner’s life, but generations to come,” Powerball said in a statement following the drawing, adding that continued growth in participation across markets is helping fuel larger jackpots and greater excitement around the game.

Wednesday’s win adds to a growing list of billion-dollar-plus lottery jackpots won in recent years. The largest Powerball jackpot ever recorded remains the $2.04 billion prize won by a single ticket in California on November 7, 2022. The second- and third-largest Powerball jackpots in history were both won last year, with a $1.817 billion prize claimed in Cabot, Arkansas, on December 24, 2025, and a $1.787 billion jackpot split between two tickets sold in Missouri and Texas on September 6, 2025.

Since the current jackpot run began on May 4, Illinois Lottery players alone purchased more than $53.8 million worth of Powerball tickets, generating over $21.5 million in proceeds for the state’s Common School Fund, which supports kindergarten-through-12th-grade public education across Illinois.

The jackpot winner now has one year from the date of the drawing to come forward and claim the prize. Illinois Lottery officials have urged the ticket holder to sign the back of the winning ticket immediately and store it in a secure location until they are ready to formally claim their winnings.

With Wednesday’s jackpot now claimed, the Powerball prize resets to an estimated $20 million for the next drawing, scheduled for Saturday night, restarting the cycle that will once again begin building toward the game’s next potential nine- or ten-figure jackpot. Powerball drawings are held three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evenings, with tickets available through authorized retailers across participating states, as well as online through individual state lottery websites and mobile apps where permitted.

Conference Call Participants

Ralph Profiti – Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc., Research Division
Andrew Mikitchook – BMO Capital Markets Equity Research
Anita Soni – CIBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Raymond McCormick
Rabi Nizami – National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division

Presentation

Dubbed “Harvey Nicks” by Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, the two often found an excuse to nip into the department store for a spot of shopping and a long liquid lunch in the heyday of the 1990s.

But Catherine Shuttleworth, retail expert and boss of Savvy Marketing, said: “If you go into a Harvey Nicks store – and I did last week – they look terrible, they look really tired and basically they’ve suffered from a lack of investment.”

She told BBC Wake Up to Money that department stores “are cash-hungry monsters, they need investing, they need to look good and if you’re at the top of the luxury market that’s got to be constant”.

Harvey Nichols chief executive Julia Goddard said the deal marked “an important milestone” for the company and “provides a strong platform for the next phase of the business’s evolution”.

“Over the past year, we have made significant progress in repositioning this iconic business, investing in our flagship store, broadening our customer proposition, and strengthening the brand DNA,” she added.

As well as Sports Direct, Frasers has bought up a huge number of retailers and their brands over the years. These include upmarket fashion chain Flannels, Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes and luxury lingerie firm Agent Provocateur.

It also owns Jack Wills and House of Fraser.

Shuttleworth said Frasers’ boss Murray has “got his finger right on the pulse of how those [young] shoppers shop”.

“If you look at what the group have done with Flannels, [Harvey Nichols] is going to be more Flannel-esque than it is going to be Sports Direct-esque,” she said.

Fraser Group’s purchase of Harvey Nichols is part of its strategy to increase its presence in the luxury section.

It recently launched a takeover approach for German brand Hugo Boss, which it has a stake in already.