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Good morning.
After eight seasons, NBA superstar Luka Dončić has yet to win an MVP award or championship. On Wednesday, a master of the happily-ever-after ending agreed to buy his team. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner are set to acquire the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-setting $12.5 billion. If approved by the NBA’s board of governors, the longtime steward of Disney’s tradition of triumphant protagonists from Snow White to Simba to the Frozen sisters will help steer the fate of the LakeShow.
The Lakers are being sold by Guggenheim Partners cofounder Mark Walter, who bought the team less than a year ago for $10 billion. He also owns baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, but recent headlines have focused on a US regulatory probe into whether his companies moved $16 billion in loans between them without adequate disclosure. Walter denies any wrongdoing, saying the transactions were straightforward and done in good faith. In other words, Dončić isn’t the only one looking for a Disney-esque ending.
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*Presented by Sprott. Stock data as of market close on August 12, 2026.
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*Please see important PSLV disclosures below.
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No surprises. More time.
That’s what July’s inflation report delivered to the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Consumer Price Index update showed the broad gauge of goods and services costs rose 3.4% year-over-year. That was exactly in line with Wall Street’s expectations, and might mean another month of waiting and seeing if the Fed is done with its wait-and-see approach to prices.
Bond Theme
“The big surprise with a report that had no surprises (all of the data came perfectly in line with the estimates) is that a situation where inflation isn’t reaccelerating, coupled with the most recent, weak jobs report gives the Fed more time to wait,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management. While Fed officials will remain worried that inflation is above the central bank’s 2% target, the July employment report showing the US unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs means there’s fuel for monetary policy doves, too. For that reason, interest rates are more likely to hold steady when the Fed meets next month.
Investors are already counting on it. The CME FedWatch Tool shows the market is pricing in a 60% chance the Fed holds rates steady in September. Just two weeks ago, the odds of a rate hike were 54%. “Typically, the market would be buoyed by the thought of rate cuts, but in a world where many are expecting rate hikes, anything that can delay, or squash the need for, rate hikes will be viewed positively,” Zaccarelli added. Another future policy indicator was less certain:
- The 2-year Treasury yield, the closest thing to a bond market gauge of Fed policy, was unmoved Wednesday at 4.201%. While slowing inflation is generally positive for bonds (typically sending yields down), markets may be more keen to wait and see where the Fed’s current holding pattern leads.
- Analysts at Charles Schwab said Wednesday that, given the likelihood of persistent inflation coupled with the US economy’s resilience, they think the long-term risk of rate hikes, and thus higher bond yields, is the safer bet: “We believe there’s more upside risk than downside risk with the 10-year Treasury yield.”
  In Conflict: The biggest variable and most volatile driver of near-term inflation, of course, is the Iran War. Wednesday’s report showed energy prices fell 1.5% in July, after falling 5.7% in June, with both months coinciding with possible deescalation. Crude oil prices are now closing in on $90 a barrel after falling to nearly $70 last month and, while negotiators say they are close to a deal, we’ve been here a few times before. “Investors had high hopes that the Middle East crisis would improve,” said LPL Financial Chief Economist Jeffrey Roach. “Unfortunately, those high hopes were short-lived.”
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Betterment
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Like father, like son.
In 2020, Larry Ellison moved Oracle from California to Texas in search of lower operating costs, and later decided to relocate to Nashville, Tennessee. Now, as an antitrust lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of California and 11 other states stalls Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), his son, CEO David Ellison, is telling his executives that he will move the entertainment company to Music City (or Georgia or Texas) if the states don’t negotiate a settlement by October 1.
Sources told The Los Angeles Times in a story Wednesday that Paramount’s board has approved relocation plans but noted Ellison prefers to stay in Hollywood. If Paramount does leave, it’d be just the latest gut punch for an industry town in decline.
Filming Not in Progress
Either way, Ellison is motivated to force a speedy resolution. October 1 is also the day Paramount will begin paying WBD a “ticking fee” of about $7 million per day until the deal closes. The antitrust trial determining the fate of the merger doesn’t start until March of next year, and WBD’s board can squash the deal altogether by June 4 if it’s still unconsummated and force Paramount to pay a $7 billion breakup fee in the process.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the relocation plans could involve selling both the Paramount and WBD studio lots, while reducing production spending in the state remains another bargaining chip. It’s a threat that carries a lot of weight as California fights, and spends, to keep productions from fleeing to other locales:
- On-location productions in Los Angeles held just 4,711 shoot days in the second quarter, according to industry group FilmLA, down 13% year over year, and well below the 7,476 shoot days in the first quarter of 2023.
- The dip comes after the state last year raised its annual tax incentive program for productions to $750 million from $330 million. Total production spend in California, however, rose 5% year over year in the second quarter to $1.3 billion, still more than any other state, according to industry group ProdPro.
Behavioral Issues: At a Politico conference on Tuesday, California’s attorney general called the threat to leave California “blackmail,” but said he’d be open to a settlement featuring structural remedies. He said Ellison’s promise to theater owners to release 30 films per year wouldn’t cut it, calling the pledge difficult to enforce, and instead called for keeping “certain corporate entities separate” to maintain competition in film and TV markets.
Written by Brian Boyle
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Photo via BluSky AI
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CoreWeave did a double-double, and no, that’s not a burger order. The AI-cloud provider doubled its revenue and doubled its cash burn in the second quarter. Its stock popped nearly 20% Wednesday after executives shared quarterly results, with investors hoping the company’s outpouring of cash will fuel further demand.
After CoreWeave’s revenue rose 112% to $2.6 billion in the most recent three-month reporting period, the company juiced its sales outlook for the year to as much as $13.2 billion. CoreWeave expects to bring in as much as $3.6 billion next quarter, rising from both demand and 25% price hikes it pushed through last month. CoreWeave isn’t the only cause for AI optimism this week either, with infrastructure companies including Lumentum and Super Micro Computer also sharing promising results.
Partly Neocloudy With Scattered Storms
CoreWeave is the leading “neocloud,” or AI-cloud provider, and one of the few companies of its kind that’s publicly traded. Its earnings give insight into AI more broadly, since using its services directly indicates expected AI usage. CoreWeave sells advanced computing capacity to customers including OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft, but to meet demand, CoreWeave is burning cash:
- CoreWeave lifted its expected annual capital expenditures yesterday to as much as $39 billion, as it takes on debt to pay for the advanced chips and data centers needed to expand its services. Interest on its debt in the second quarter hit $640 million.
- Slowing down spending may not feel like an option when rivals are nipping at CoreWeave’s heels. Neocloud rival Nebius reported Wednesday its cloud revenue jumped more than 500% in the second quarter to $575 million.
Breaking the Wheel: Much of the concern about cash being poured into AI is that it’s going around in a waterwheel of different parts of the AI supply chain (for instance: CoreWeave buys chips from Nvidia, which has invested billions in CoreWeave). On the flipside, if AI demand keeps growing, CoreWeave and its peers are building the infrastructure to meet it. AI companies are also looking beyond each other for investments, with Nvidia inking a $500 billion batch of deals with Wall Street biggies including BlackRock, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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- Squaring Up: Nelson Peltz’s Trian hedge fund is leading a group of investors, including shareholders, planning a take-private bid for the world’s third-largest burger chain, Wendy’s.
- ETF Inflow: Goldman Sachs is beefing up its asset management arm by acquiring exchange-traded funds provider Neos, which manages $30 billion in assets across 19 funds, for up to $2.3 billion.
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1Source: McKinsey.
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