Market Beats | Gold Suffers Biggest Drop in Four Years; Blackstone, TPG to Buy Hologic for $18.3 Billion; Bitcoin Whales Move Wealth Onto Wall Street; Amazon’s 15-Hour AWS Outage Rekindles Fears Over Cloud Concentration Risk; Warner Bros. Discovery Weighs Possible Sale; Walmart Pauses Hiring of H-1B Visa Holders; Novo Nordisk Board Resigns

—— Gold Suffers Biggest Drop in Four Years; Blackstone, TPG to Buy Hologic for $18.3 Billion; Bitcoin Whales Move Wealth Onto Wall Street; Amazon’s 15-Hour AWS Outage Rekindles Fears Over Cloud Concentration Risk; Warner Bros. Discovery Weighs Possible Sale; Walmart Pauses Hiring of H-1B Visa Holders; Novo Nordisk Board Resigns

1. Gold Suffers Biggest Drop in Four Years

Gold prices slumped the most in four years, dragged down by easing geopolitical tensions and technical signs of exhaustion after an extended rally.

Spot bullion dropped as much as 3.8% to $4,201.12 an ounce in London trading, after briefly touching a record high of $4,381.52 earlier on Monday. The metal’s explosive gains in recent weeks pushed indicators such as the Relative Strength Index well into overbought territory, prompting profit-taking among investors.

A stronger US dollar added further pressure by making precious metals more expensive for international buyers. Meanwhile, haven demand has waned as US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping prepare to meet next week to negotiate trade differences.

Seasonal buying in India — traditionally one of the world’s largest consumers of gold — has also wound down, curbing physical demand. Combined, these factors drove gold 3.6% lower on the day, marking its steepest decline since 2021.

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2. Blackstone, TPG to Buy Hologic for $18.3 Billion

Private equity giants Blackstone Inc. and TPG Inc. have agreed to acquire Hologic Inc., a leading women’s health medical-device maker, for as much as $18.3 billion including debt, marking one of the year’s biggest leveraged buyouts amid a resurgent M&A boom.

The firms will pay up to $79 per share — $76 in cash plus as much as $3 in contingent payouts tied to performance milestones — representing a 15% premium to Hologic’s prior closing price. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Singapore’s GIC Pte will take minority stakes in the company.

Hologic closed Monday at $71.87 a share, valuing it at about $16 billion. Financing for the deal is being arranged by Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays, Royal Bank of Canada, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.

The buyout underscores how private equity firms are seizing on open credit markets and the Trump administration’s permissive stance toward large-scale mergers. The deal follows last month’s record-setting $55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts Inc.

Hologic’s strong margins, recurring revenue from hospital diagnostics contracts, and limited direct competition make it an attractive target for leveraged buyers. The firm’s three major divisions also provide opportunities for asset sales and operational refocusing once taken private.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is advising Hologic, while Citigroup is advising the Blackstone-TPG consortium.

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3. Bitcoin Whales Move Wealth Onto Wall Street

Some of the world’s largest Bitcoin holders are moving their digital fortunes into Wall Street’s balance sheets, using a new generation of exchange-traded funds to integrate their crypto wealth into the regulated financial system — without selling a single coin.

A regulatory shift in July allowed for in-kind transactions in Bitcoin ETFs, enabling large investors to deposit Bitcoin directly into a fund in exchange for ETF shares. The process, long used in other ETFs, is tax-neutral — no cash changes hands and no taxable sale occurs.

The result: a volatile digital asset becomes a conventional brokerage line item, easier to pledge as collateral, borrow against, or include in estate planning. BlackRock has already processed more than $3 billion worth of these conversions, according to Robbie Mitchnick, its head of digital assets. Bitwise Asset Management and liquidity provider Galaxy have also reported growing demand from wealthy crypto investors eager to move their holdings into traditional wealth platforms.

It marks Bitcoin’s latest transformation — from an anti-establishment experiment to an increasingly institutionalized asset. By swapping coins for ETF shares, investors maintain their crypto exposure while bringing it into a regulated, bank-compatible form. The ETF wrapper legitimizes what was once “off-grid” wealth, turning decentralized assets into collateral that mainstream finance can understand and manage.

Mitchnick said many large holders are realizing “the convenience of keeping their exposure within their existing financial adviser or private-bank relationship.”

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4. Amazon’s 15-Hour AWS Outage Rekindles Fears Over Cloud Concentration Risk

Amazon Web Services suffered a roughly 15-hour outage on Monday that disrupted operations for hundreds of major companies — including Apple, McDonald’s, and Epic Games — marking what some analysts describe as Amazon’s worst service failure since 2021.

The incident struck at the core of AWS’s value proposition: that centralized, expertly managed infrastructure can deliver more reliable performance than any individual company’s own servers. Coming at a time when AWS is already facing slowing growth and intensifying competition from Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud — both buoyed by demand for AI services — the outage raised uncomfortable questions about reliability and dependence on a few dominant providers.

While AWS remains the world’s largest cloud operator, the failure underscores systemic risk in a market heavily concentrated among three giants. Outages like this challenge the perception that cloud infrastructure is inherently more stable.

Analysts say the event could encourage some customers to diversify workloads across multiple clouds. “The outage will likely fuel customers wanting to spread their infrastructure between multiple clouds,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Anurag Rana, though he added that Amazon is unlikely to lose meaningful market share due to high switching costs and limited data center capacity.

“The promise of the cloud is: ‘Don’t worry, you’ll always have compute and storage,’” said Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson. “If you can’t deliver that, customers remember.” Still, migration is expensive and complex — meaning most clients will stay put unless they suffer major financial damage.

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5. Warner Bros. Discovery Weighs Possible Sale

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. said it is exploring potential strategic options after receiving unsolicited interest from multiple parties, including possible full or partial sales of its assets. People familiar with the matter said Netflix Inc. and Comcast Corp. are among those considering bids for certain divisions of the media and entertainment conglomerate.

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said its board is evaluating “a broad range of alternatives,” including a potential breakup by mid-2026 or separate deals for its Warner Bros. and Discovery Global units. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav said, “After receiving interest from multiple parties, we have initiated a comprehensive review of strategic alternatives to unlock the full value of our assets.” Warner Bros. declined to comment on specific suitors.

Paramount Skydance Corp., the film and television group led by David Ellison, has reportedly made at least one offer for the entire company that was rejected for being too low. According to CNBC, Paramount submitted multiple bids below $30 per share, all of which were turned down.

Warner Bros. Discovery shares jumped as much as 12% in New York trading Tuesday and have climbed from about $12 to nearly $20 since Paramount’s interest was first reported last month.

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6. Walmart Pauses Hiring of H-1B Visa Holders

Walmart Inc. has paused extending job offers to candidates requiring H-1B visas, according to people familiar with the matter — the latest sign of disruption caused by the Trump administration’s newly imposed $100,000 visa application fee. The move primarily affects the retailer’s corporate workforce, the people said.

The administration introduced the steep fee last month as part of an effort to overhaul the H-1B program and curb perceived overuse. The policy has sent shockwaves through industries that rely on skilled foreign labor. Walmart, which employs roughly 2,390 H-1B holders — a small portion of its 1.6 million-strong U.S. workforce — is the largest user of the visa among major retail chains.

While Walmart ranks among notable employers of H-1B talent, it is far outnumbered by tech firms like Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Meta Platforms Inc., which depend more heavily on such workers.

“Walmart is committed to hiring and investing in the best talent to serve our customers while being thoughtful about our H-1B hiring approach,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

The pause has added to uncertainty for both employers and visa holders since the new fee was announced. Many foreign professionals say they are frustrated by unpredictable immigration shifts despite long-term compliance with U.S. law, while employers argue that restrictive quotas and costs limit their ability to fill key roles.

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7. Novo Nordisk Board Resigns

The chair and six independent directors of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk are stepping down after a disagreement with its majority shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The shake-up comes as the company faces slowing profit growth and a decline in its share price.

Chair Helge Lund said the board had called an extraordinary general meeting after failing to reach a “common understanding” with the foundation on the future composition of the board. The foundation has proposed five new directors, including its own chair Lars Rebien Sørensen to serve as Novo Nordisk’s new chair, and plans to nominate two more next year.

Sørensen — who previously led Novo Nordisk as CEO and joined the board as an observer after the ouster of Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen earlier this year — said the move was not a “coup.” He intends to step down as chair within two to three years.

He described the company as operating in a “new reality,” one defined by a faster-paced and more consumer-oriented obesity market.

The foundation, he said, wants to move faster than the previous board but fully supports new CEO Mike Doustdar and the transformation plan announced last month — including 9,000 job cuts — which he called a necessary but painful response to market changes. Shares fell 1.6% after the announcement.

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