Chapter 1: What is the world's largest restaurant chain making its U.S. debut?
Good afternoon. Today is Monday, January 26. I'm your host today, Rina Sherbel, filling in for Kim Kahn. Our top story so far. The largest restaurant chain in the world by number of locations isn't McDonald's or Starbucks. It's China-based Mishue Ice Cream and Tea, trading under tickers MXUBY and MXUGF.
The beverage and dessert chain was founded in 1997 as a small ice cream stall near a university targeting students and budget-conscious consumers with ultra-low-priced treats. Over time, Mishwa expanded its menu to bubble tea, fruit tea, milk tea, coffee, and other value-focused drinks, leaning on a franchise model that drove rapid store growth.
More recently, it has pushed aggressively overseas, especially in Southeast Asia, where it now operates thousands of locations in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Growth plans now center not just on opening more shops, but on strengthening its supply chain backbone, including new production facilities in Henan and Henan and an international supply chain platform in Southeast Asia to support franchisees.
Chapter 2: How is AppLovin performing after its recent upgrade?
In the U.S., Mishwe entered the market with its first store in Los Angeles in December, marking its formal North American debut, followed by two locations in New York. Among active stocks, Applovin, under ticker APP, is higher after Needham upgraded the mobile software company to buy from hold.
Analyst Bernie McTernan said additional work on its e-commerce business has given the firm more confidence in the trajectory of e-commerce revenue growth in 2026, just as the stock has pulled back from its highs a month ago. USA Rare Earth, ticker USAR, is surging after the company said it entered into a non-binding letter of intent with the U.S.
Department of Commerce and announced a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, confirming earlier reports. And Corweave, under ticker CESAR, CRWV is rallying after NVIDIA, I'm not telling you that ticker, invested $2 billion in the company and expanded their collaboration to help CoreWeave accelerate the build-out of more than 5 gigawatts of AI factories by 2030.
The company is also planned to deploy multiple generations of NVIDIA infrastructure across CoreWeave's platform through early adoption of NVIDIA's computing architectures, including the Rubin platform, Vera CPUs, and Bluefield storage systems.
Chapter 3: What recent developments have occurred with USA Rare Earth and CoreWeave?
In other news of note, Apple has unveiled a new version of its popular AirTag item finder with a longer range than the original. The updated AirTag is available to order on Apple's website today and will hit Apple Store locations later this week.
It includes Apple's second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the same one used in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch Series 11, and can locate items from up to 50% farther away than before. It also features an upgraded Bluetooth chip and a chime that's about 50% louder. The second-generation AirTag is available in single packs for $29, four packs for $99.
Apple first introduced the AirTag back in 2021. In the Wall Street Research Corner, Morgan Stanley has a new list of 10 big calls for navigating what it calls, quote, extreme volatility, but three stand out. First, they see a two-world split in AI. U.S.
frontier large language models make a step-change leap in capability in the first half of 2026, and Chinese rivals do not catch up on the same timeline.
Chapter 4: What are the features of Apple's second-generation AirTag?
They think investors will go from worrying about adoption early in the year to turning bullish as those non-linear AI gains start to show up.
second they expect compute demand to keep outstripping supply as ai use cases get more complex data centers and intelligence factories become the new capex background with tight capacity but still attractive economics for the winners and third morgan stanley thinks transformative ai starts to show up in macro data by late 2026 driving rapid price declines in some activities widening wage inequality
pushing capital spending higher and boosting the value of assets that can't be replicated by AI. You can see all 10 in our story on Seeking Alpha. And for those who don't know, or for those who may have forgotten, we're having our Investing Experts Live Event Top Ideas for 2026. tomorrow. That's January 27th from 12 to 3 p.m. Eastern.
You can register now and hear Stalwart investing group analysts like Samuel Smith, Stephen Bavaria, Andre Cardinal, and Beth Kindig. Look for that event.
Chapter 5: What investment predictions does Morgan Stanley have for 2026?
Don't miss it. Got some great ideas coming at you. And in the meantime, have a great Monday.
That's all for today's Wall Street Lunch. Look for links for stories in the show notes section. These episodes will be up with transcriptions at SeekingAlpha.com slash WSB. And join the highest level discussion of any stock or ETF with our community of serious investors like you. Find us at SeekingAlpha.com slash subscriptions.