In the marketplace, Oura was no ringer. The company sold 3.6 million of its smart rings, which track sleep patterns and physical activity, in the year ending June 30, capturing 2% of the entire global wearables market. It also boasts 5.7 million subscribers who pay $5.99 per month for software subscriptions.

Oura is also profitable, recording $61 million in net income in the nine months through June 2026, according to a regulatory filing earlier this month. And it expects 90% revenue growth in the fiscal year that ends today. But even with all that going for it, the company announced Tuesday it’s pausing plans for an initial public offering, signaling the IPO market may have reached an “uncertainty” tipping point.

Oura Farming

Oura planned to sell 50 million shares between $40 and $44 at a roughly $14 billion valuation, and emphasized in a statement that there was “strong demand” for its float. IPO performance in the first half of 2026 suggests a receptive market, too. Securities and Exchange Commission data released last week shows the number of US IPOs rose 16% year over year to 208 at the end of June. And the proceeds from those listings increased nearly 400% to $137 billion, boosted by SpaceX’s megacap debut.

On the other hand, macroeconomic risks have grown as the year has progressed. Investors fear AI spending could slow, energy prices and inflation might remain high and the Federal Reserve could keep hiking interest rates. Oura’s decision Tuesday was the latest signal of how heavily these concerns are weighing on pre-IPO boardrooms. Nuclear energy firm Holtec and property underwriter Bamboo Insurance also pressed pause on debuts this month, with one making the reasons abundantly clear:

• While Oura simply cited “uncertainty in the IPO market,” Holtec detailed its reasons: “rising energy costs, elevated global trade tensions, ongoing military conflicts and mounting inflation fears that have driven the central banks of major economies (EU, Japan and US) to raise their benchmark rates.”
• Those higher rates and concerns about government spending are also driving up government bond yields, with the 30-year Treasury yield reaching the highest level since 2002 on Tuesday. Wall Street analysts have warned that threatens the stock market because investors could move from equities to bonds to lock in long-term returns, which is not exactly the ideal environment for a debut.

There’s an AI in Wait: AI giant Anthropic, meanwhile, appears determined to soldier on despite delaying its IPO by a month until after November’s midterm elections. Reuters reported this week that the company has confidentially filed a prospectus, aiming to raise up to $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation. But the money-losing firm has a need for cash, given its more than $500 billion in future infrastructure commitments. That would make many investment bankers, whose bosses have warned of a trading slowdown post-SpaceX, believe in Santa.

You may soon be able to catch another set by DJ D-Sol.

Goldman Sachs’ board has been discussing disc-spinning CEO David Solomon stepping down and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron taking the reins around the end of next year or early 2028, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Waldron joined the bank at the turn of the century, about a year after Solomon. When Solomon took over as chief executive, he gave Waldron the firm’s second-most important job.

Waldron has long been seen as Solomon’s successor; the firm even offered him $80 million last year to stick around.

Sorry, Marcus

While client assets in Goldman’s management division have climbed to $1.9 trillion, according to the most recent annual report, Solomon’s tenure hasn’t been without challenges. The bank faced a post-pandemic dealmaking slump, and Solomon himself faced wide criticism for his personal leadership approach (New York Magazine asked in a headline whether he was “too big a jerk” to run the firm). He also gave up public DJ-ing after negative headlines, the Journal reported.

But by far the biggest misstep has been Goldman’s push into consumer banking. Under Solomon’s predecessor, the firm introduced high-interest accounts and loans in hopes of capturing the retail market. Solomon helped expand the consumer offerings, and the move backfired. In 2022, Goldman folded its digital consumer bank Marcus into its asset and wealth management business. In 2023, the bank disclosed $3 billion in losses related to that area of the business since the end of 2020. It also got dinged to the tune of $65 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for mishandling customer disputes related to the consumer credit cards it issued in partnership with Apple.

If Waldron does snag the top job, it’s fair to expect a continued shift away from the consumer market toward Goldman’s core offerings:

• Waldron has held several positions in the firm’s investment banking arm, including co-head of leveraged finance and co-head of the investment banking division. He has worked closely with Solomon in recent years to reshape Goldman’s strategy, which is anchored in global banking, markets and asset management.
• According to the Journal, Waldron has acted as a sounding board for Goldman leaders and partners who had doubts about which way the company was headed, including its foray into consumer lending.

AI Everywhere: Like many of its peers, Goldman is going all in on automation, and Waldron is credited with creating its AI transformation initiative “OneGS 3.0,” according to Reuters. Earlier this year, he told CNBC that the firm is “a human assembly line” that will become more digitized.

Not even halfway decent JOLTS numbers seem to be enough to give consumers a needed jolt of confidence.

On Tuesday, The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index fell to its lowest level in 12 years in September, a period that includes the COVID pandemic. Blame high gas prices, stubborn inflation and persistent worries about a weak labor market, despite evidence to the contrary: The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report, also released Tuesday by the US Labor Department, showed a stable, fairly healthy employment scene.

No Churn on Red

According to the JOLTS data, the labor market continues to lounge in a No Hire, No Fire equilibrium. Job openings dipped slightly to 7.1 million in August from the month prior. New hires ticked up to 5.2 million, while layoffs dropped to 1.6 million; the rates for each metric changed by only 0.1 percentage point from the previous month. “Employers are not as inclined to purge payrolls,” LPL Financial chief economist Jeffrey Roach wrote in comments shared with The Daily Upside.

Still, the security of a “No Fire” market is providing workers only a limited morale boost. The “No Hire” market paired with it has them feeling stuck in jobs at relatively constant pay even as the price of everything around them jumps. Today brings the latest reading of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge, but consumers have some pretty strong ideas already about where the economy is heading:

• Average inflation expectations rose 0.3 percentage point month over month to 6.1% in September. Meanwhile, more than 68% of Conference Board respondents said they expect interest rates to increase in the next year.
• “References to prices, the high cost of goods and services, and oil and gas prices in particular, rose to new heights, reflecting September’s surge in fuel costs,” said Dana M. Peterson, the board’s chief economist.

The Supercomputing Elephant in the Room: Not mentioned in the report? Artificial intelligence. While AI has yet to break Silicon Valley containment as an agent of mass layoffs, a new report Tuesday from McKinsey estimated that roughly 11 million US workers, or about 7% of the total workforce, could face employment displacement due to AI by 2035.