AST SpaceMobile and Starlink may prove friend, not foe, to these wireless stocks

Investing.com -- Online travel agencies are expected to push harder into international travel and non air services in 2026 as domestic aviation growth slows and competition among platforms increases.

The brokerage said growth across India’s main OTAs is now coming from categories outside domestic flights.

MakeMyTrip reported strong gains in international flights and hotels in its latest quarter. Bus bookings also grew at a fast pace.

Rival Ixigo told investors that its international flight business is expanding faster than domestic. Yatra said its recent growth has been supported by corporate travel and higher margin hotel and events segments.

Competition is rising but has not yet translated into price cuts. Ixigo has lifted its domestic air market share to about 10 percent and holds a mid to high teens share of the bus segment, helped by new customers booking flights for the first time.

Yatra said it has strengthened its position with large and medium sized companies, supported by its acquisition of corporate focused travel platform Globe.

OTAs are spending more on advertising to capture demand. MakeMyTrip and Ixigo both increased promotional spending as a share of gross bookings in the first half of the fiscal year as they prioritised growth. Yatra raised its margin guidance for the year on the back of gains in profitable categories.

AI is set to play a larger role in how platforms attract and retain users. MakeMyTrip’s assistant Myra is now handling more than twenty five thousand daily queries and converting more users than traditional agents, according to management.

Ixigo runs most customer interactions through its automated tools. Yatra’s AI product for corporate clients is reducing servicing costs by managing search, bookings and cancellations.

These shifts indicate that in 2026 the sector is likely to lean on international travel, new verticals and broader use of AI systems to support growth while keeping competition in check.

Investing.com -- Global equity valuations have climbed back to levels that leave investors debating whether the market has become too expensive.

UBS strategists say the picture is mixed: valuations are clearly elevated, but history shows that stretched multiples alone rarely bring a rally to an end.

The MSCI All Country Index (LON:ACWD) now trades above 19 times 12-month forward earnings, roughly 30% above its 20-year average. UBS notes that this premium is concentrated in fast-growing, highly valued sectors such as technology.

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IT stocks make up more than 28% of the global benchmark, compared with just 11% a decade ago, amplifying the index’s headline valuation.

The United States remains the global outlier. The S&P 500 trades at 23 times forward earnings, near the top of its historical range. The NASDAQ Composite’s trailing price-earnings ratio sits around 30, far below its dot-com-era extremes but still a sign of strong optimism.

By contrast, valuations in other major regions look more contained: European equities are about 10% above their long-term average, China is roughly 7% above, and Japan continues to trade at a discount.

UBS argues that expensive markets do not automatically signal an imminent reversal. Past cycles illustrate the point. Warnings about “irrational exuberance” in the mid-1990s preceded years of additional gains, and concerns about a “QE bubble” in 2013 were followed by further advances.

Elevated valuations tend instead to imply more modest long-term returns. The bank notes that the S&P 500 may find it difficult to replicate its 9.7% average annual performance of the past two decades from these starting levels.

What’s next for stocks?

The near-term outlook hinges on earnings. UBS expects S&P 500 earnings per share to grow 11% in 2025 and another 10% in 2026, providing the fundamental support needed to keep markets moving higher. Liquidity conditions also remain conducive, helping sustain risk appetite.

Longer term, UBS highlights artificial intelligence as the swing factor. If AI delivers the productivity gains many expect, markets could “grow into” today’s valuations, easing pressure on multiples.

The reverse is also true: an AI disappointment would bring valuations into sharper focus and represents a key downside risk.

In UBS’s view, today’s market is expensive but not necessarily fragile. Strong earnings growth and plentiful liquidity can support further gains, but the margin for error is thinner than in past years.

Investing.com - Shareholder resolutions have nearly doubled globally over the past five years, in a sign of increased activism among investors, according to analysts at Bernstein.

In a note examining over 15,000 companies around the world, including historical proxy reports, the analysts including Yannick Ouaknine found that more than two-thirds of these resolutions pertained to governance.

However, growth of these types of resolutions has been slower compared to proposals for corporate environmental or social changes, the analysts said.

Social issue resolutions have doubled in count over the last five years, and currently represent 15% of the total, their research showed.

There has also been a significant surge in environmental resolutions, tripling in number from 2020 to 2024. However, the share of these resolutions within the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) categories "remains small," rising from 6% in 2020 to just 12% by the end of October, the analysts flagged.

Meanwhile, boards have tended to be much less willing to vote in favor of shareholder resolutions, instead backing management plans and standing against investors, the analysts said, noting that, up to October 25, board support was 31% for shareholder proposals and 95% for those from executives.

In addition, within shareholder resolutions, boards mostly recommended governance proposals -- typically revolving around issues like director-level and capital structure shake-ups -- and rarely backed environmental or social changes, the analysts said.

Notably, boards at the top 30 companies in the U.S. benchmark S&P 500, pan-European Stoxx 600 and Asia-focused MSCI APAC index, have not supported nor approved any shareholder resolutions put forward at annual general meetings this year, the analyst said.

Among the resolutions, shareholders at Google-parent Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon all raised issues related to the use of artificial intelligence.

"Listing the shareholder resolutions across the top 30 companies within S&P 500[,] [t]he most important issue that cut across many sectors was artificial intelligence and specifically oversight of AI," the Bernstein analysts said. "This was followed by human-related social issues like discrimination; diversity, equity and inclusion; child safety and human rights. The next big issue was climate impact."

Against this backdrop, the analysts argued that the next phase of ESG investing will likely increasingly depend on the quality of corporate dialogue.

"Engagement that anticipates rather than reacts to controversies will define top-tier performers. Over time, transparency on engagement outcomes -- quantified through metrics and overlaid against financial impact -- will form part of mainstream valuation frameworks," the analysts said.

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Investing.com - This week saw the S&P 500 third-quarter earnings season mostly come to a close, with companies in the benchmark index broadly showing solid returns relative to consensus expectations.

But much of the upbeat sentiment around the reporting period was overshadowed by emerging fears over a potential "bubble" forming in the soaring enthusiasm around artificial intelligence. Stocks were buffeted by fears that frothy tech sector valuations, runaway mega-cap spending on AI, and a rush of circular dealmaking may ultimately prove to be unsustainable.

The worries were front and center when semiconductor group Nvidia reported its latest results on Wednesday. The company, whose chips have made it an integral part of the AI narrative and fueled a meteoric rise in its stock price, posted blockbuster returns. Equities initially rallied across the world following the report, but the uptick lost steam as the AI bubble fears persisted.

Nvidia’s earnings provided a final note to a chorus of recent statements about AI’s place in corporate America, with businesses underlining a focus on rapidly adopting the technology. According to data from Goldman Sachs, some 47% of S&P 500 firms discussed AI on their post-earnings calls, specifically in the context of productivity and efficiency.

These were especially prevalent in the communication services and financials sectors, while the most common use cases of AI were in coding and customer support, the Goldman analysts including David Kostin and Ben Snider said.

However, the analysts flagged that only a handful of these companies actually said they had seen a quantified, "discrete" benefit from AI on their quarterly revenues or profits.

"The combination of continued corporate AI adoption and concerns about the risks to the AI infrastructure complex has increased recent investor focus on the next beneficiaries of the ever-expanding AI trade," the analysts added.

Screening for some of these potential beneficiaries, particularly companies with "elevated labor costs and high wage exposure to AI automation that have recently mentioned AI efficiency," the Goldman analysts highlighted tax services firm H&R Block, Inc., staffing company Robert Half, IT services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, software engineering name EPAM Systems, and advanced analytics company IQVIA Holdings.

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