Bergeron rejects Ethan Allen succession plan as 5.2% holder demands new CEO

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[1] Doug Bergeron Comments on Ethan Allen's Reactionary "Succession Plan" (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/202609 ...)[2] Doug Bergeron Comments on Ethan Allen’s Reactionary “Succession Plan” (https://www.marketscreener.com/news/doug-berg ...)[3] Bergeron challenges Ethan Allen's CEO succession plan ahead of vote (https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/ ...)[4] ethan allen interiors inc (ETD) (https://www.rttnews.com/companies/45067/ethan ...)

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Sep 21 2026, 18:32

Joby flies 3,199 miles autonomously in US first

A converted Cessna Caravan equipped with Joby Aviation's autonomy stack flew 3,199 miles across the United States without a single control input from its onboard safety pilot, the longest such demonstration yet for a company whose commercial future depends on regulators accepting software in place of a human hand. "This journey across America offers a glimpse into a new era of aviation," JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Aviation, said. "Autonomy has an important role to play in the future of flight, allowing us to connect remote communities, deliver critical supplies, respond faster to disasters, support military operations, and keep pilots out of harm's way." The eastbound leg of Joby's 2026 Electric Skies tour departed Buchanan Field Airport in Concord, California, and ended at Dare County Regional Airport in North Carolina's Outer Banks, near the site of the Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903. The aircraft taxied, took off, navigated and landed autonomously, supervised remotely from Joby's Autonomy Headquarters in California and from Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina — at the furthest point, 2,323 miles from the aircraft. Joby says the system has now logged more than 400 flights and 800 hours of automated operations across controlled and uncontrolled airspace. The operational detail matters more than the distance. The Caravan transited Phoenix Deer Valley Airport, one of the busiest general aviation fields in the country, rerouted around thunderstorms in real time, and landed at airports the system had no prior familiarity with. That last point is the commercial argument: a fleet that can be dispatched to an unfamiliar airstrip without a bespoke approach procedure is a fleet that can serve the low-volume routes freight and medical logistics operators actually care about. Joby acquired the core technology from Xwing's autonomy division in 2024 and has since tested it in three major U.S. military exercises, including REFORPAC, where aircraft flying in Hawaii were controlled from Guam roughly 4,000 miles away. ## Certification is the gap the flight does not close Flying autonomously and being certified to fly autonomously for hire are separate problems, and Joby's demonstration addresses only the first. The company's approach — bolting an autonomy system onto an already-certified airframe rather than seeking approval for a clean-sheet autonomous aircraft — is designed to shorten the regulatory path, but the Federal Aviation Administration has not published a certification basis for remotely supervised commercial cargo operations at this scale. The tour's western legs fed data into the Utah Department of Transportation's uFLY coalition, which is evaluating how high-altitude and extreme-environment operations integrate into FAA-managed airspace; the North Carolina legs supported the state's eLIFT-NC healthcare logistics program. Those state-level partnerships are as much a regulatory strategy as an operational one. The commercial case Joby is building rests on cost, not novelty. Autonomous freight removes the pilot from the cost structure of short-haul logistics, which is the single largest variable expense on routes too thin to justify scheduled service. Joby has not disclosed per-mile operating costs for the Caravan platform, and the company has not said when it expects to begin revenue autonomous cargo flights. Its publicly traded equity story remains tied to the S-4 tiltrotor air taxi, where it competes with Archer Aviation, and to a defense logistics pipeline that also draws interest from established contractors. Joby's first air taxi flight under the White House-backed eIPP program came during the Fort Worth stop at Alliance Airport, a reminder that the passenger business and the autonomy business are being advanced on parallel tracks with different regulators and different timelines. For investors, the 3,199-mile flight is a credibility marker rather than a revenue event. It confirms that the Xwing-derived stack performs outside controlled test ranges, which supports the defense and cargo optionality that has kept a pre-revenue company valued at a premium to its near-term cash flows. It does not shorten the certification calendar, and it does not answer the question that will ultimately set the stock: whether the FAA will allow a remote supervisor to stand in for a pilot in command on a revenue flight. Until that rule exists, autonomy remains a demonstration asset. The westbound return leg, with stops planned in Raleigh, Washington, Louisville, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City and Portland, will generate more flight hours and more data — and the same unanswered regulatory question. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Sep 21 2026, 18:26

Musalem calls for further Fed hikes with core inflation at 3%

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said policy rates may need to rise further, arguing that inflation stripped of supply shocks is still running at 3 percent and that without added restriction price growth could sit well above the central bank's 2 percent objective in 18 months. "Additional policy restraint may be warranted," Musalem said, adding that any tightening should be "front-loaded and gradual" rather than "delayed and large." He spoke in remarks published by the St. Louis Fed. The call lands against a fed funds target range of 3.75-4 percent, set after the Federal Reserve's most recent quarter-point reduction. Musalem's own projection implies a reversal of that direction: a hike would be the first increase since the tightening cycle that lifted the benchmark from near zero to 5.25-5.50 percent between March 2022 and July 2023, a 525 basis point campaign that preceded the fastest disinflation in four decades. The transmission chain runs through the front end first. Two-year Treasury yields, the maturity most sensitive to the policy path, sit near 3.6 percent, while the 10-year trades around 4.1 percent — a spread that has narrowed from roughly 60 basis points of inversion in 2024 as the market priced a shallower easing cycle. The dollar has weakened about 5 percent on a trade-weighted basis over the past year, a move that itself adds to imported goods costs and complicates the disinflation arithmetic. Equities have absorbed the shift so far: the S&P 500 has continued to grind higher on AI capital spending, but rate-sensitive small caps and unprofitable growth names have lagged the index by double digits over the past 12 months. Musalem's inflation math is the crux. He said price growth remains "too high" at 3 percent even after excluding supply-related factors, a reading that sits a full percentage point above target and matches the core PCE print that has held in a 2.8-3.1 percent band for six consecutive quarters. His 18-month horizon implies that absent further tightening, the Fed's own models show inflation converging to target far more slowly than the two-year window policymakers have repeatedly described as acceptable. The commodity channel sharpens the argument. Musalem flagged that supply shocks now extend beyond crude to base metals, with copper — the benchmark for electrification and grid demand — trading near record levels after a year in which LME inventories fell to their lowest since 2005. Oil has been the traditional cost-push culprit; a metals-led shock is harder to dismiss as transitory because it feeds directly into capital goods, construction and the AI data-center buildout that has been the economy's main growth engine. His sequencing preference carries its own signal. Arguing for front-loaded, gradual increases over delayed, large ones is a framework that implies a higher-for-longer path rather than a sharp tightening cycle — a distinction that matters for the shape of the curve. The last time a Fed official publicly floated hikes while the committee was in an easing cycle was 1998, when the Fed ultimately cut three times. The more recent precedent is 2021, when several regional presidents warned that inflation would prove persistent months before the committee abandoned "transitory" language and accelerated tapering. Musalem also removed one of the doves' strongest arguments. He described the labor market as stable near full employment and explicitly not a source of inflationary pressure — a characterization that undercuts the case for pre-emptive cuts to protect employment. Payroll growth has averaged roughly 50,000 a month over the past three months, below the 100,000 breakeven pace the Atlanta Fed estimates is needed to hold unemployment steady, yet the jobless rate has stayed in a 4.1-4.4 percent range. The stakes are concentrated in the March and April meetings. Futures markets currently price a terminal rate near 3 percent, implying two to three more cuts; Musalem's framework would require that pricing to unwind toward 4 percent or higher, a repricing worth roughly 100 basis points at the front end. That shift would raise real borrowing costs for corporates refinancing debt, compress equity multiples on long-duration cash flows, and lift the dollar against the yen and euro. The next inflation print and the March employment report are the two data points that will determine whether Musalem remains a lone voice or becomes the committee's direction. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Sep 21 2026, 17:55

Nasdaq leads US indices higher as Goolsbee warns on 2 rate risks

The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.1% on Monday as technology buyers returned to the market, even after Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said inflation driven by overheating demand would require a faster and more front-loaded rate response. "If the through line is that it's coming from overheating demand, I think the implication is that the rate response is more aggressive and more front-loaded," Goolsbee said, speaking to reporters after an event in London. He added that the Fed is now in more of an "action scenario" given the current mix of inflation pressures, pointing to services and the artificial intelligence investment boom as sources of demand-side price pressure. The advance was broad but tech-led. Nvidia, Microsoft and Broadcom carried the Nasdaq Composite to its session high in afternoon trade, while the S&P 500 added 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged with a 0.2% gain as defensive and industrial names underperformed. Semiconductor and software names led the gainers; utilities and consumer staples were the weakest groups. Volume ran below the 20-day average, a signature of a rally driven by dip-buyers rather than fresh institutional allocation. The cross-asset tape did not confirm the equity move. The 10-year Treasury yield held near recent highs, the dollar index firmed, and gold traded little changed — a combination that leaves long-duration growth valuations exposed if Goolsbee's guidance is echoed by other Fed officials. Goolsbee also said the unemployment rate is "pretty close" to full employment and that business contacts report a tightening labor market, which removes the labor-market slack argument for cutting. Goolsbee framed the debate as one about pace rather than destination. The mix of supply and demand pressures matters more for how fast the Fed moves than for where rates end up, he said, and if supply-shock inflation proves persistent the Fed's only option is to reduce aggregate demand. He rejected the idea that the Fed would cut rates to help the US finance its debt, and said a central banker's job is not to respond to markets or the president but to economic conditions. That framing is what keeps the next pullback in view. A demand-driven inflation read justifies higher rates, and higher rates compress the multiple investors pay for earnings that arrive years from now — precisely the profile of the megacap technology names doing the lifting. The rally is therefore self-limiting: the stronger the demand signal from AI capital spending, the stronger the case Goolsbee is making for a more aggressive policy response. Traders will get the next test at the Fed's September meeting, with the policy statement and updated projections due then. Between now and that date, the market's read on whether Goolsbee is a lone voice or the leading edge of a broader committee shift will decide whether the Nasdaq's advance extends or reverses. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.