Top Stories — Sunday, April 19, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Trump says talks between U.S. and Iran to resume in Pakistan on Monday — CNBC
- Top Wall Street analysts are bullish on these 3 stocks for the long haul — CNBC
- SiIicon Valley's AI agent hiccups: Wasted tokens and 'chaotic' systems — CNBC
Trump says talks between U.S. and Iran to resume in Pakistan on Monday
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/19/2026, 6:07:13 PM
President Donald Trump said U.S. negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday for the next round of peace talks with Iran.
"My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations," Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.
"We're offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don't, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
Trump said Iran violated a ceasefire that's due to end on Wednesday.
Iran ratcheted up its rhetoric against the U.S. on Sunday, a day after it said it had reasserted control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's parliament speaker and top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said talks to end the war with the U.S. and Israel are continuing but that his country stands ready to resume the conflict and warned the U.S. against using a naval blockade in the strait.
"It is not the case that we think just because we are negotiating, the armed forces are not ready," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in televised remarks late Saturday according to a report on Iranian state media. "Rather, just as the people are in the streets, our armed forces are also ready."
Ghalibaf also reiterated Iran's intentions to restrict traffic through the strait, a key energy chokepoint.
"It is impossible for others to pass through the Strait of Hormuz but not us. If the U.S. does not abandon the blockade, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will certainly be restricted," he said.
Trump announced the blockade on April 12, after complaining that Tehran has not appeared to reopen the strait, one of his conditions for agreeing to the fragile two-week ceasefire that is currently in effect.
Two gunboats from Iran's Revolutionary Guard opened fire on a tanker transiting the strait, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said Saturday. It reported the tanker and crew as safe, without identifying the vessel or its destination.
Shipping sources told Reuters at least two other vessels reported coming under fire while trying to transit the waterway.
The confusion over the strait's status has left ship operators in a state of limbo.
Video footage from ship-tracking firm Kpler showed that several tankers and cargo ships attempted to exit the waterway on Friday but turned back.
Oil prices plunged more than 10% on Friday to below $90 per barrel on hopes that energy supplies would start flowing again from the region. About a fifth of the world's crude supplies passed through the strait before the war. The closure of the sea lane connecting the Persian Gulf to global energy markets has triggered the largest oil supply disruption in history.
In Mumbai, India summoned Iran's ambassador after an Indian-flagged vessel carrying crude oil was attacked while trying to cross the strait, Reuters reported.
In a White House event on Saturday. Trump declined to take reporters' questions about Iran but said, "We have very good conversations going on."
He said Iran "got a little cute," later adding, "They wanted to close up the strait again," referring to the Strait of Hormuz.
"They can't blackmail us," Trump said.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was quoted as saying the U.S. can't deprive Iran of its rights to a nuclear program.
"Trump says Iran cannot make use of its nuclear rights but doesn't say for what crime. Who is he to deprive a nation of its rights?" Reuters quoted Pezeshkian as saying via the Iranian Student News Agency.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday on the margins of a diplomacy forum in Turkey, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said his country will not hand over its enriched uranium to the United States, rejecting claims made by Trump.
"I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to United States," Khatibzadeh said. "This is non-starter and I can assure you that while we are ready to address any concerns that we do have, we're not going to accept things that are nonstarters."
Trump on Friday said that Iran had agreed to hand over its stockpile of enriched uranium.
He also said the U.S. will go into Iran and "get all the nuclear dust," referring to the 970 pounds (440 kilograms) of enriched uranium believed to be buried under nuclear sites badly damaged by U.S. military strikes last year.
Peace talks in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, between a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and Iranian negotiators headed by Ghalibaf failed to reach an agreement last weekend.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council said in a statement that Pakistan's army chief, serving as an intermediary, presented the proposals to Iran during his recent visit to Tehran, and that they were still under review.
It was not revealed what was in the proposals.
The council said Iran has yet to respond, but further talks would require the U.S. to abandon "excessive demands and adjust its requests to the realities on the ground."
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on Friday said on social media: "In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire."
However, vessels must transit through a "coordinated route" announced by Iran's maritime authorities, Araghchi said. It is unclear whether Tehran will force ships to pay a toll to pass the strait.
Israel and Lebanon agreed Thursday to a 10-day ceasefire starting at 5 p.m. ET that evening. Israel's military campaign in Lebanon against the militant group Hezbollah, which is a close ally of Iran, has been another hurdle in negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
— The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Top Wall Street analysts are bullish on these 3 stocks for the long haul
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/19/2026, 5:56:04 PM
Conflict in the Middle East has sent the market on a wild ride, but investors with a long-term horizon ought to look past short-term disruptions to find compelling stocks.
Choosing the right stocks can be challenging due to the vast universe of equities available. Investors can consider the ratings of top Wall Street analysts as they make informed decisions on their portfolios.
Here are three stocks favored by some of Wall Street's top pros, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.
This week's first pick is Lumentum Holdings (LITE), which provides optical and photonic technologies to power artificial intelligence data centers and next-generation communications. LITE shares have seen a phenomenal rise over the past year, driven by AI-led demand for the company's optical networking and related components.
Following the investor briefing at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference and related meetings, JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee reiterated a buy rating on Lumentum stock and boosted the price target to $950 from $565. The analyst said that the event and the meetings provided stronger-than-anticipated clarity into future demand across various growth drivers.
Chatterjee sees increased confidence across multiple fronts, with the company highlighting new deals and capacity expansions, strengthening belief in the upgraded financial outlook. Specifically, the analyst noted greater visibility into the impressive expansion of the opportunity for optics in scale-up networks, including significant growth drivers in co-packaged optics (CPO) and optical circuit switches (OCS).
The five-star analyst added that growing demand in scale-up networking is giving confidence in continued strength in future earnings, encouraging investors to look beyond 2027 and factor in these opportunities. Overall, Chatterjee expects 2027 earnings per share (EPS) of $24, with upside above $25. Looking ahead, he expects strength in scale-up networking to push earnings beyond $36 in 2028, with the potential for further upside from more OCS customers, higher margins, and controlled costs.
Also, Chatterjee feels that his upgraded price target and higher-than-historical average multiple is "justified given benefits from demand relative to AI investments."
Chatterjee ranks No. 8 among more than 12,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 71% of the time, delivering an average return of 44.8%. See Lumentum Holdings Financials on TipRanks.
Moving on to chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO), which is gaining from AI-led demand for its products. The company last week announced a multi-year deal with Meta Platforms to support the social media giant's rapidly growing AI compute infrastructure. Prior to this, Broadcom entered into expanded partnerships with Google and Anthropic.
Following the Meta deal, Benchmark analyst Cody Acree reiterated a buy rating on Broadcom stock with a price target of $485. Acree stated that the Meta deal significantly increased his confidence about AVGO's ability to surpass its prior target of delivering more than $100 billion in AI chip revenue in fiscal 2027, as it provides a clearer timeline and deployment visibility into one of the company's largest custom XPU (AI accelerators) programs.
The five-star analyst noted that increased conviction builds on management's prior commentary on AVGO's custom XPU business now spanning six customers, with further upside expected from Google's next-generation TPUs (tensor processing units) and Meta's MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) roadmap. Also, AVGO's XPU business is expected to gain from Anthropic scaling from 1 GW this year to over 3 GW in 2027 and OpenAI's deployment of its first-generation XPU in 2027 at more than 1 GW of compute capacity.
Interestingly, Acree believes that the Meta partnership agreement is not just limited to a typical ASIC design win. Broadcom is now involved in multiple generations of AI accelerator chip designs, advanced packaging, and networking, which is expected to drive its content per deployment higher while making it harder for Meta to switch suppliers.
Additionally, Acree observed that the deal involves an initial 1 GW+ commitment, with plans to scale to multi-gigawatt deployment over time. This establishes that hyperscale AI infrastructure is now being built at utility scale, boding well for companies like Broadcom that offer both custom chips and rack-scale networking solutions.
Acree ranks No. 71 among more than 12,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 68% of the time, delivering an average return of 29%. See Broadcom Insider Trading Activity on TipRanks.
Dell Technologies (DELL) is also benefiting from the demand for AI infrastructure. Notably, the ongoing AI boom is driving demand for the company's servers. Recently, Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh increased his price target for Dell stock to $215 from $180 and reaffirmed a buy rating.
While Rakesh acknowledges that Super Micro Computer (SMCI) is the leader in the AI server technology space, he expects Dell to gain from some shift in orders from SMCI amid the indictment of its former workers for illegal shipments of Nvidia-powered servers to China. Super Micro was not named as a defendant in the case. The five-star analyst expects this near-term headwind related to rival SMCI to benefit Dell, which has a 10-times larger AI server service and support team and a solid balance sheet to support its estimated $85 billion five quarter pipeline.
Rakesh now expects Dell's fiscal 2027 and 2028 server orders at $53 billion and $68 billion, respectively, up from the prior estimates of $50 billion and $61 billion. His revised estimates indicate that Dell could gain from a demand/sentiment shift around the AI server landscape.
Additionally, Rakesh expects Dell to gain from higher spending by major cloud service providers (CSPs) and CoreWeave. Notably, capex is now estimated at $689 billion for 2026, reflecting 64% year-over-year growth, with 2027 and 2028 capex projected to increase by 18% and 10%, respectively, to reach $888 billion.
The analyst also expects Dell's share in the AI server market to rise from 19% in 2025 to 25% in 2029. Rakesh expects the company's market share to be driven by its "scale, balance sheet, and well-developed supply chain."
Rakesh ranks No. 14 among more than 12,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 67% of the time, delivering an average return of 51.1%. See Dell Technologies Ownership Structure on TipRanks.
SiIicon Valley's AI agent hiccups: Wasted tokens and 'chaotic' systems
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/19/2026, 5:30:01 PM
Despite the C-suite's enthusiasm over artificial intelligence agents that can plow through office tasks like never-sleeping interns, the underlying technology is still rickety and a potential cost-sucker.
That much was clear this week during two separate events held in Silicon Valley, during which executives and engineers discussed the current excitement and challenges involving AI agents.
Kevin McGrath, the CEO of the AI startup Meibel said during a session that "the biggest problem that we're working with in AI right now," involves the misguided idea that everything needs to be processed by a large language model, or LLM.
"Just give all of your tokens and all of your money to an AI Claw bot that will just waste millions and millions of tokens," McGrath said, before explaining how companies need to be more deliberate when deciding which tasks are best suited for AI agents.
Since the recent rise of OpenClaw, a so-called "harness" that lets developers use various AI models to create and manage fleets of digital assistants, the tech industry has been pushing AI agents as the next big thing.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC's Jim Cramer in March that it "is definitely the next ChatGPT."
But on Wednesday at the Generative AI and Agentic AI Summit in San Jose, technical staff from companies like Google and its DeepMind AI unit, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta revealed that creating and operating AI agents is not an easy task.
One session led by Google software engineer Deep Shah focused on new techniques intended to help manage the operational costs of running tons of AI agents.
It costs money to run AI agents, and a poorly designed and maintained system to monitor those digital assistants and their actions could potentially end up burning cash instead of saving it.
"If you think of a machine learning system or any multi-agent system, there are multiple challenges you will find when you try to deploy that system at scale," Shah said. "The first one is the inference cost."
Ravi Bulusu, CEO of the startup Synchtron, pointed to the problem of complexity, noting the various ways companies organize data, choose tech platforms, and build and run software and their workforces.
Because running AI agents significantly touches all those points, "No single dimension is solved in isolation and the interdependencies are what make this hard, in fact chaotic even," Bulusu said.
The theme of AI agent complexity continued on Thursday during an AI event held in Mountain View, Calif., that featured ThinkingAI and MiniMax, both headquartered in Shanghai, China.
ThinkingAI recently rebranded as an AI agent management platform, moving away from its genesis as a mobile game analytics company when it was known as ThinkingData.
As part of its rebranding, ThinkingAI partnered with MiniMax, which in January went public in Hong Kong. It is one of China's leading AI labs and has released powerful models for free to the open-source community, becoming one of the country's so-called "AI Tigers."
ThinkingAI co-founder Chris Han said the shift to AI agent management tech is part of its efforts to expand from the video game sector to other industries that are excited about AI agents, but lack the expertise.
And despite OpenClaw's growing popularity in China, Han said that it's too complicated and too prone to security flaws for businesses.
"OpenClaw is a good tool for personal things, but definitely cannot reach the enterprise level," Han said. "In terms of the enterprise level, you have to figure out a lot of things, your memory, how to manage your agents, teams, communications; there are a lot of things you have to figure out."
Han declined to comment on any possible national security concerns over Chinese AI models that might impact ThinkingAI's strategy, but said that the service can also support AI models from companies like OpenAI and Google.
If the U.S. government were to ban Chinese open-weight AI models in the country, Han joked he might take that as a good sign.
"If that happens, maybe we are successful," Han said.
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