For: September 18, 2026
>>Ahead Of The Bell
(New York, NY) -- The opening bell rings this morning on Wall Street after stocks closed higher yesterday. Tech has been driving the broader market higher, with names like Nvidia and Amazon both rising about two-percent. Microsoft also gained about one-percent. Meanwhile, oil prices saw a decline, with U.S. crude trading less than one-percent lower to around 101-dollars per barrel. At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 316 points to 51-778. The S&P 500 gained 85 points to 76-37. The Nasdaq rose 439 points to 26-418.
>>Trump Administration To Hold Million Dollar Pitch Competition
(Washington, DC) -- Five entrepreneurs from across the U.S. will compete in Washington, DC today for a million dollars in cash from the Trump administration. The Million Dollar Pitch Competition will feature five small businesses from California, Georgia, Iowa, Maine and Wyoming pitching their products for celebrity judges including Nicki Minaj, with the event hosted by former TV Superman Dean Cain. A news release by the Small Business Administration says the five finalists were chosen from about 12-hundred businesses across the country. They'll be greeted by President Trump in the Oval Office and the competition, which is being taped for a TV special, will air in October.
>>Starship Test Flight Target Date Pushed Back
(Harlingen, TX) -- SpaceX is moving back the target date for its next launch from Starbase. The company says it is now considering September 28th for the Starship 14 test flight after initially eyeing next Tuesday, the 22nd. SpaceX hopes this will be the first flight to send Starship into orbit around Earth.
>>Weekly Jobless Claims Fall
(Washington, DC) -- Fewer Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week than expected The Labor Department said Thursday that it received 196-thousand initial requests in the week ending September 12th. That's about ten-thousand fewer than the previous week, and below the 207-thousand most analysts had forecast.
>>OpenAI Finds More AI Models Displaying Concerning Behavior
(San Francisco, CA) -- OpenAI has found six new reports of artificial intelligence models showing "unexpected or concerning" behavior. This, as AI firms face mounting pressure to be more transparent about their development processes. The ChatGPT maker reported models adding unrelated instructions for certain tasks, searching for exposed code to fabricate information or uploading files to the internet to cite themselves. The company noted these are individual instances rather than overall trends.
>>SEC Reveals "Innovation Exemption" For Tokenized Stock Trading
(Washington, DC) -- The SEC is revealing its long-awaited "innovation exemption," a new order to clear a path for tokenizing stock trading in the U.S. Tokenized stocks are digital versions of real-world stocks, represented by digital tokens on the blockchain, which is the technology that forms the foundation of cryptocurrency. The Securities and Exchange Commission noted in a fact sheet that "Over the past several years, advancements in distributed ledger technology have facilitated innovations in trading across non-security crypto assets." But it suggested that these platforms could face challenges with complying with Federal securities laws without big potential changes to its business model.
