• A Chaturbate content moderator has sued the porn site, alleging he’s suffered “psychological trauma.”
• The lawsuit said Chaturbate neglected industry-standard mental health protections for moderators.
• The plaintiff said in the lawsuit that he developed PTSD as a result of the content he was exposed to.

A content moderator for the popular porn site Chaturbate has sued the adult live-streaming platform, alleging in court papers that he has developed PTSD as a result of his daily exposure to “extreme, violent, graphic, and sexually explicit” material.

In the lawsuit filed last week in the US District Court for the Central District of California, plaintiff Neal Barber accused Chaturbate and its operator of negligence for “knowingly and intentionally” failing to provide their content moderators with “industry-standard mental health protections” like content filters, wellness breaks, trauma-informed counseling or peer support systems.

Barber, the lawsuit said, has suffered “psychological trauma” and other severe emotional injuries since his November 2020 hiring. He is currently on medical leave “due to PTSD” from his content moderation work, the court papers added.

A spokesperson for Multi Media, LLC — the owner of the pornographic website which is also named as a defendant — told Business Insider in a statement on Monday: “The company has not been served nor has it reviewed the complaint and therefore cannot comment on the matter at this time.”

“With that said, it takes content moderation very seriously, deeply values the work of its moderators, and remains committed to supporting the team responsible for this critical work,” the statement continued.

Attorneys for Barber did not immediately respond to a request for comment by BI.

Lawyers for Barber allege in the lawsuit his injuries “were not only foreseeable, but preventable.”

“Had Defendants taken even the minimal precautions adopted by companies in Defendants’ industry, Plaintiff would not have suffered these injuries,” the lawsuit said. “Plaintiff is informed and believes that numerous other members of the proposed class have also suffered emotional harm from engaging in the content moderator duties required of them by Defendants.”

Barber’s lawsuit said his role was known as “customer service risk supervisor,” and that his job was to act as a content moderator for the Chaturbate website, where hosts can broadcast sexual live video streams and viewers can interact with them in real time.

“Because platforms like Chaturbate host vast amounts of live, unfiltered, and sexually explicit content, content moderators are essential to maintain compliance with legal standards, enforce platform rules, and prevent the dissemination of illegal or abusive material,” the lawsuit said.

The content moderators, the court papers said, serve as the “first line of defense against child exploitation, non-consensual content, violent content, obscene content, self-harm, and other violations.” Without them, the porn site “would become unmanageable, unsafe, and legally vulnerable,” said the lawsuit.

Barber and the proposed class, the lawsuit said, “have been and continue to be routinely exposed to some of the most graphic, disturbing, obscene and psychologically damaging content found anywhere online.”

“Their jobs require them to monitor live-streamed material which too often involves child sexual abuse imagery, self-harm and suicide threats, extreme violence, and highly obscene, degrading, or dehumanizing sexual acts,” the lawsuit said. “Much of this content is created to be intentionally shocking, often non-consensual, and designed to provoke trauma.”

The lawsuit alleged that Chaturbate’s lack of mental health protections for its employees “was not a routine workplace oversight but a conscious disregard of nondelegable duties imposed by law and public policy, including the obligation to provide a safe and healthy work environment.”

Chaturbate and Multi Media previously faced another lawsuit last year brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who accused the entities of violating the state’s age-verification law. A settlement that called for Multi Media to pay a $675,000 penalty was ultimately reached between the parties.

• My husband and I can’t afford a starter home in Houston, so we had to move in with his parents.
• The living arrangement is difficult because we have no privacy, but my in-laws are also helpful.
• I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, but I’m glad this is an option for us as we save money.

I never thought I’d find myself arguing about dryer sheets with my mother-in-law at midnight, but that’s my new reality.

A few years ago, my husband and I moved in with his parents because the rent in Houston was eating into our savings. A “temporary stay” at my in-laws was supposed to be a temporary solution. We estimated six months, tops. Now it’s three years, two career changes, and many “Are you still there?” jokes from my sister.

Although we’re saving money, it comes at a cost, as I’ve learned you can’t hide in a multigenerational household.

It’s not easy living with my in-laws for this long

I feel like I’m always sneaking around. I often creep into the kitchen early in the morning to prepare coffee without waking my mother-in-law up early.

Date nights are like an escape plan. My husband and I whisper what we’re streaming on Netflix because the television in our room has a wall that my in-laws’ closet shares. Our arguments stay half-whispered, half-swallowed. Thin walls are our biggest problem.

Irritants become daily tightropes, too. I once found my wet laundry heaped in a basket. There was no note, just a crisply folded pair of jeans that never quite dried. I was annoyed but couldn’t say anything.

There is a whole choreography to claiming fridge shelves, freezer space, and the prime pantry corner. We also have to label our leftovers in Sharpie so no one “accidentally” eats our takeout after a late night.

I realize there are benefits to this living arrangement

If you’re imagining anarchy, you’re on the right track, but that’s only half the picture. There are perks that I sometimes forget about.

When both my husband and I got COVID, my mother-in-law filled our bedroom doorway with soup, saltines, and bottomless mugs of mint tea.

When our toddler threw a tantrum because I cut his toast “incorrectly,” my father-in-law leapt into the conversation and calmed him down in the way only granddads can. I have watched my son spend more time with grandparents in one week than I did in a year.

I also get cooking lessons from my mother-in-law; she taught me to make tamales on Christmas. We worked together, using her mother’s steamer pot, which is older than my marriage.

Either way, this is where my family needs to be right now

Some days, it’s stifling. Other days, it’s the only reason we’re still afloat.

In Houston, starter homes look like luxury listings. This arrangement means our savings account exists at all. It means backup when day care falls through or the car breaks down. It means someone slips a plate of mango slices into my hand when they know I’ve had a rough day.

The American dream needs a rewrite; sometimes it is not a white picket fence but a third fork at the dinner table, an in-law on the couch in the middle of a telenovela, and a sign that you don’t have to do it all alone.

Do I dream about owning my own place someday? Yeah. I dream of shutting a door and knowing nobody else can hear. But when we finally unpack that last moving box, if we ever do, I will miss the smell of tortillas in the morning, the stories of distant cousins I never met, and the way this messy, chaotic house has quietly taught me that family isn’t just who you wed.

• Marines completed a training exercise deploying sonobuoys for submarine hunting from an MV-22 Osprey aircraft.
• The event marks increased Marine and Navy coordination in anti-submarine warfare.
• Sonobuoys can detect enemy submarines, allowing them to be targeted for attack.

Marines just wrapped up a training exercise that saw troops tossing sonobuoys out of the back of MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, part of an effort meant to boost how the Marines and Navy can work together to fight enemy submarines.

“We’re past the question of whether the Marine Corps can contribute to ASW,” said Navy Capt. Bill Howey, director of maritime operations for Commander, Submarine Group Two, in a press release on the training. “Now we’re refining how they contribute and then integrating that into the fleet playbook.”

Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) involves detecting, tracking, and neutralizing enemy submarines using specialized ships, aircraft, sonar systems, and underwater weapons. It is a critical component of naval defense aimed at protecting fleets and strategic waterways from hidden underwater threats, though it hasn’t traditionally been a mission in which Marines have been involved.

Expendable sonobuoys, like those used in the exercise, are launched, or in this case dropped, from the air (from fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft and uncrewed airborne platforms) and are used for detecting and tracking submarines. They can also help with targeting subs for a torpedo attack.

The recent training was part of a yearslong reshuffling for the Marine Corps from fighting counterinsurgency warfare in the Middle East toward peer-level warfare against adversarial nations like China or Russia. It seems to be among the first times the DoD has relied on the Osprey for sonobuoy deployment.

Maj. Sean T. Penczak, the executive officer of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 162 said that “the Osprey’s unique capabilities as a tiltrotor aircraft allow it to excel within the framework of distributed aviation operations and expeditionary advanced base operations.”

“Its ability to cover long ranges with a payload comparable to the P-8, while maximizing time on station for time-critical tasking, has made it highly effective in the anti-submarine warfare arena— demonstrating its versatility and value as emerging threats continue to evolve,” he said of the Osprey.

The other aircraft Penczak referenced is Boeing’s P-8 Poseidon airplane, which is based on the civilian 737-800 and was created for maritime missions like anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare. The plane can deploy torpedoes and anti-ship missiles and serves as a premier airborne ASW platform.

NATO countries have stepped up their anti-submarine warfare efforts in recent years in the Atlantic Ocean and Arctic amid more frequent Russian submarine activity. They are also ramping up efforts to combat unintentional damage and sabotage to undersea cables and critical infrastructure, sometimes relying on sensor systems, uncrewed surveillance, and patrols.

Sonobuoys like the ones used recently aren’t new to the US military’s arsenal of submarine detection tools, though they are a new tool for Marines. The sensors were developed during World War II in response to German U-boats’ attacks on Allied vessels in the Atlantic.

A DoD technical paper described this tech as a “simple, reliable, inexpensive, technically complex, adaptive, and effective device that has been produced by the millions and used for almost seventy years.”

“A few years ago, the idea of Marines flying [anti-submarine warfare] missions might have raised eyebrows,” Col. James C. Derrick, commanding officer, Marine Aircraft Group 26, said in his statement. “Now we’re doing it as part of the plan, using the Osprey’s unique capabilities to help enable naval maneuver.”

• When my husband turned 60, he decided we were going to spend half the year in Florida.
• I struggled going from New York City to our rental condo in North Miami.
• Now I go back to New York every two weeks while he stays at the beach.

The second my husband turned 60, he decided it was time to join the million residents who spend part of the year (in our case, six months) in Florida.

My spouse sold me on the sun, sand, and surf — and a North Miami condo rental on the 20th floor with ocean views. I didn’t protest when he suggested it — so many of our friends who are empty nesters have made the part-time move to Boca, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, or Delray.

But when we shipped our car stuffed with bags down to Aventura in December, I quickly realized this was far different from New York City.

I tried to make the most out of it

The first week, my hubby was gleeful playing pickleball and snoozing on the terrace. I, however, immediately experienced a rosacea flareup from the 85-degree heat and humidity and wound up at a dermatologist’s office.

The doctor asked if I could stay out of the sun. “Can you write me a prescription to go back to New York?” I responded. Instead, she sold me $159 worth of sunscreen products and sent me on my way.

As the weeks crawled by, we went on a few double dates with other couples. “You’ll like them. They’re about our age,” my spouse assured me. They were — give or take 20 years. A few already had grandchildren and were on their second hip replacement.

Rather than pout, I decided to make the most of my situation. Every day, I would don a wide-brimmed baseball hat and take a long walk around the exercise trail leading around the golf course. As I logged in my 10,000 steps, I dodged kids on bikes, Door Dash deliveries on motorized scooters, even a four-foot-long lizard and a family of wild ducks. Once, on my second loop, I passed a woman pushing her Maltese in a stroller. I peered inside the carriage; the dog looked more miserable than I.

I felt out of place

Strolling back through the security gates into the condo complex driveway, I called a friend to vent.

“This is so not me! I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone!” I said to hear while complaining about how no one wore black.

She was talking me off the ledge when I suddenly heard screeching tires. I turned to see a blue Cadillac coming straight at me. It swerved side to side wildly, hitting a few palm trees in its path and taking out the arm of the security gate. I screamed and jumped into a bush as it sped past, finally coming to a hard stop in front of the condo fountain.

I ran after the car, prepared to scream at the driver for trying to mow me down. An old, bent-over gentleman emerged from behind the wheel, and his nurse stepped out of the passenger side. She apologized, and I saw that the man was clearly in shock — he was 97 years old, I found out.

I made my way upstairs, thankfully unharmed but covered in dirt from my tumble into the landscaping. I told my spouse what happened.

“Florida,” he shrugged. “What are you gonna do?”

There was plenty I could do — for starters, book my return flight home the next day.

“This IS home,” he reminded me.

I didn’t want to be here

I went into the bathroom, slammed the door behind me, and cried. This life wasn’t me, and despite wanting to be a good wife and spend quality time with my husband, I didn’t want to be here. I felt completely lost.

I talked to my spouse and explained how I was feeling. To his credit, he told me to travel back and forth as much as I needed. Delta Air Lines became my new best friend.

We struck a compromise: I return to New York every two weeks, spend a week or two recharging my batteries, and then return.

I now see my daughter, do my work, and meet up with friends. When I’m home and he is in Florida, I don’t miss the surroundings, but I do miss him. He comes back to NYC a few times as well, and the rest of the time we spend together in what I try not to call “Aventorture” (at least not in front of him). As we reach the end of May and our official “move out” time for the snowbird season, I’m actually starting to feel more at ease. I got this.

I found a few things that keep me entertained and sane: local theater, an Air Supply concert, and the Ralph’s coffee stand at the Aventura Mall that doesn’t run out of oat milk. It will never be NYC, but maybe when I’m 97 (hopefully not still driving), it may seem ideal.

• Starbucks built out a remote office in Newport Beach that its new CEO, Brian Niccol, can use.
• A leading architectural firm and boutique contractor were tapped to complete “Project Sunshine.”
• Niccol moved Chipotle’s headquarters to Newport Beach while CEO. At Starbucks, he brought the office home.

Starbucks has built out a 4,624-square-foot office — replete with “luxury” finishes — that CEO Brian Niccol can use while home in Newport Beach, California.

Business Insider has learned that construction of the 13th-floor space — dubbed “Project Sunshine” in internal documents — was completed on July 2.

Photos reviewed by BI show the office features polished chrome finishes, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific coastline, and an espresso machine that would cost $14,000 if you weren’t a multinational coffee giant.

It’s a five-minute drive from Niccol’s home base and about 1,200 miles from Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle, where most corporate workers were recently told to return to the office four days a week or leave the company.

“Like every company, we want our CEO to be as productive as possible given the intense demands on his time,” a spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement.

“Brian spends the majority of his time visiting stores across the country and around the world and working in Seattle where he has both a home and an office. For when he is in California, he has access to one of our Starbucks offices — which will also be used by other Starbucks partners (employees) — with meeting space allowing him to use his time effectively and keep moving the business forward.”

The company’s plan to build a Newport Beach office was first disclosed in an SEC filing that outlined Niccol’s executive compensation package when he was hired last August.

In addition to giving him a $1.6 million base salary and stock rewards of more than $95 million in his first four months on the job, the filing said, the company would establish a “small remote office” near Niccol’s home in Orange County so he wouldn’t have to commute daily to Starbucks’ Seattle base.

Starbucks has said that Niccol purchased a home in Seattle after starting in September 2024. It’s not clear how often he is at the company’s main office.

The Newport Beach outpost is located in a commercial complex owned by the Irvine Company. It’s near two country clubs, a steakhouse, and a hotel. Just outside the building lobby, in the shade of a row of palm trees, there’s a ping-pong table, a flat-screen television, and outdoor workspaces that can be used by all tenants.

Construction permits reviewed by Business Insider show Gensler, one of the world’s leading architectural firms, was hired to design the space.

Pacific Tusk Builders, a boutique contracting firm with a portfolio of projects for brands including Nickelodeon and Microsoft, completed the construction, permits show.

Representatives for Gensler — known for designing the second-tallest skyscraper in the world, the Shanghai Tower, Chase Center in San Francisco, and Los Angeles’ Academy Museum of Motion Pictures — did not respond to a request for comment.

A representative for Pacific Tusk Builders told BI the project was “confidential,” and they could not discuss details of its build-out.

A floor plan for the construction, seen by BI, details instructions for the architectural firm and contracting team to create a space with “elegant lighting” and “luxury” finishes, including “gothic white oak” flooring and custom sinks and countertops.

Renovations to the existing space were to include a near-total remodel from floors to light fixtures, including custom colors, polished concrete, and oak floors, and multiple conference rooms with picturesque views, according to the floor plan.

The floor plan shows an executive office with an ensuite bathroom, from which an existing shower was removed; a board room; six offices; two meeting rooms; open workspaces, and a break area. The executive office is the largest room at 576 square feet — including the private bathroom.

A spokesperson for Starbucks told BI the recently completed office is the first phase of construction for its satellite office in Newport Beach, and the company has additional space to expand its footprint in the area over time.

Photos of the corner office reveal an open, airy layout with sleek leather furniture and a combination of both classic and new Starbucks-themed artwork, including a “Back to Starbucks” poster — a nod to Niccol’s revitalization campaign at the company.

Niccol came to Starbucks from Chipotle, where, as CEO, he oversaw a huge expansion, a doubling of revenue, and an eight-fold increase in the stock price. During his tenure at the Mexican restaurant chain, he moved the company’s headquarters from Denver to Newport Beach.

With Niccol now at its helm, Starbucks is attempting to reverse slumping sales, improve the customer experience, and address problems with its mobile ordering system and long wait times.

Niccol previously faced backlash from some shareholders, corporate partners, and environmentalists for using the company’s private jet to travel from Newport Beach to Seattle, where the iconic brand is deeply embedded with the local culture; critics said it clashed with the company’s sustainability goals.

The strict RTO mandate he issued earlier this month has also raised hackles among some corporate employees. It revoked the remote status of some managers and required others to relocate to Seattle or Toronto, or leave.

As Business Insider has reported, some corporate Starbucks employees have expressed discontent about the culture shift, posting fliers about it and venting in Slack channels.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert at ktangalakislippert@businessinsider.com or Signal at byktl.50. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Trump wants to depose Rupert Murdoch ASAP.
• His lawyers said the media mogul is 94 and has had “health scares.”
• The lawsuit involves a Wall Street Journal article on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

President Donald Trump wants to depose Rupert Murdoch as soon as possible.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to force Murdoch to sit for a deposition for his lawsuit on an expedited basis, arguing that the News Corp. executive is 94 years old and his “recent significant health scares” could hinder his ability to show up in court for a trial.

“Murdoch has suffered, or is continuing to suffer, from multiple health issues,” Trump’s filing notes.

The filing goes on to note reports that Murdoch collapsed during an interview with a journalist several years ago and was hospitalized after getting COVID-19, among other health issues in recent years.

The request from Trump’s lawyers comes in a lawsuit the president filed against Murdoch and News Corp. over a Wall Street Journal article about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

According to the Journal report, Trump wrote a “bawdy” letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday that included a cryptic message.

“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter said, according to the Journal, which also reported that it featured an illustration of a nude woman and featured Trump’s signature.

The Journal article did not accuse Trump of any sexual misconduct related to Epstein. Epstein’s 50th birthday, in 2003, was well before he pleaded guilty to sex crimes and registered as a sex offender. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on a separate set of criminal charges for sex trafficking.

Trump’s lawsuit says the Journal “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity” and that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

“If the purported letter in the Article somehow actually exists, which it does not, and the Defendants have it in their possession, which they do not, Murdoch has easy access to it,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their Monday filing requesting an expedited deposition of Murdoch.

The Journal has said it stands by its reporting. A News Corp. spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s Monday filing.

US District Judge Darrin Gayles, who is overseeing the defamation lawsuit in Miami federal court, asked Murdoch to respond to the request for an expedited deposition by August 4.

On Monday, Trump told journalists that he had a “breach” with Epstein because the pedophile hired employees who had worked for him.

“He stole people that worked for me,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place — persona non grata.”

• Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney is back at the athleisure brand she founded in 2013.
• The parties separated after reported financial struggles, and Haney publicly criticized the brand.
• Haney’s return follows OV’s recent acquisition by a private equity firm.

Outdoor Voices is going founder mode — literally.

The apparel brand Tyler Haney founded in 2013 said Monday that it was bringing the entrepreneur back after a controversial five-year separation.

Haney said in a video posted to the brand’s Instagram on Monday that she’d been working on a new collection with the brand for about the last nine months.

“I’m so excited to step back into this role as founder, as an owner, and as a partner,” she said in the video.

As of Monday, the brand had deleted all other content aside from the video from its Instagram page.

Haney and OV parted ways in 2020 after the company had reportedly sustained losses of as much as $2 million a month in 2019, Business of Fashion reported.

OV’s new leadership told Business Insider in 2021 that the company had managed to turn a profit for the first time.

But, from the sidelines, Haney publicly criticized OV as missing the mark.

“Yikes! Y’all have lost your way,” she posted in a since-deleted comment from 2023 on a photo of a green polo dress that the brand posted on social media.

“The future is not bright for the OG Exercise Dress,” she said in another post from 2023.

Haney went on to launch new ventures, including a plant-based energy drink and a blockchain customer loyalty community called TYB.

Now back at OV, Haney said she’s bringing the brand back to its “Doing Things” mission to “maximize happiness through movement and celebrate sweat.”

“It’s been super cool to reassemble the OG creative team and some new players,” Haney said.

Private equity firm Consortium Brand Partners said in June that it had acquired Outdoor Voices with the intent of re-establishing the “core pillars” Haney founded the brand on: people, planet, and product.

CBP also owns a majority stake in Reese Witherspoon’s Southern lifestyle brand Draper James.

CBP president Jonathan Greller said in a June statement that Outdoor Voices “faced challenges within its business framework,” but that the brand is now the “healthiest it’s ever been.”

• You might’ve missed one of Mark Zuckerberg’s latest watches.
• The Meta CEO wore a striking purple timepiece last month while announcing new Oakley Meta glasses.
• The DB28xs Purple Rain from De Bethune originally sold for $99,000 when it was released in 2024.

Mark Zuckerberg added a splash of color to his multimillion-dollar watch collection earlier this summer.

The Meta CEO was seen sporting an eye-catching purple watch in June in an Instagram post announcing Oakley Meta glasses.

A closer look shows it’s the DB28xs Purple Rain from Swiss watchmaker De Bethune.

When it was released in 2024, the watch, a limited edition of 25, was priced at $99,000.

On the resale market, it can fetch $100,000 to $120,000, depending on condition, Eugene Tutunikov, CEO of SwissWatchExpo, told Business Insider.

Joshua Ganjei, CEO of European Watch Company, said this De Bethune isn’t your typical luxury piece.

“It’s not a mainstream flex—it’s a connoisseur’s statement,” Ganjei told Business Insider. “Seeing someone like Zuck embrace such a niche, design-forward piece speaks volumes about his evolving taste and the growing influence of independent haute horology.”

The science behind the watch’s color is fascinating: It’s made using the thermal oxidation of titanium metal, getting its striking purple shade from the heat released by the chemical reactions of heated titanium.

This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has been seen sporting a piece from the high-end watchmaker. He wore a DB25 Starry Varius while speaking at a live taping of the “Acquired” podcast in San Francisco in September.

Zuckerberg’s interest in watches appears to stem from an interaction he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, shared with Anant Ambani at Ambani’s pre-wedding party in March 2024. Photos showed Zuckerberg and Chan admiring a Richard Mille watch worn by the Reliance Industries heir.

“You know, I never really wanted to get a watch, but after seeing that, I was like, watches are cool,” Zuckerberg can be heard saying in a video of the interaction.

Zuckerberg’s watch collection includes everything from a $120 Casio to a $900,000 Greubel Forsey. He’s also been seen wearing pieces from Rolex, Patek Philippe, and F.P. Journe.

• CEA Industries stock is surging on an announcement that it plans to start piling up crypto.
• The wild 833% rally kicked off on Monday after the company announced it would amass BNB tokens.
• The surge is being helped by retail traders, who are talking the stock up online.

A tiny nicotine vape company is going parabolic on Monday on a plan to be the latest firm to join in on the crypto treasury craze.

CEA Industries, which produces nicotine vapes and primarily serves Canada’s market, announced a strategic pivot Monday morning.

A company statement said that CEA is taking steps to establish what will become the world’s largest publicly traded BNB treasury. BNB is the native token of Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. As of Monday afternoon, the token is the fifth-largest crypto, with a market cap of $116.3 billion.

CEA plans to fund the initiative through a Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) offering that could raise as much as $1.25 billion in gross proceeds.

According to the statement, it “consists of a common equity PIPE delivering $500M in gross proceeds ($400M in cash and $100M in Crypto), plus up to $750M in cash which may be received from exercised warrants to be issued in the private placement.”

“BNB Chain is one of the most widely used blockchain ecosystems globally, yet institutional access has been limited until now. By creating a U.S.-listed treasury vehicle, we are opening the door for traditional investors to participate in a transparent way. This is a significant step in bridging digital assets and mainstream capital markets ,” the company’s incoming CEO, David Namdar, said.

Following the news, the stock ripped higher by as much as 833%, jumping from Friday’s closing price of $8.88 to an intraday high of $82.88.

The wild rally looks like a continuation of last week’s meme stock madness, with shares of CEA boosted by bullish traders online. According to the retail trader forum Stocktwits, mentions of the company on the site were up 12,000% on Monday, with sentiment spiking to “extremely bullish.”

But there’s also more news driving the stock higher compared to the moves in the DORKs last week, which surged despite no updates from the companies.

Crypto treasuries have been in focus this year, with numerous companies announcing plans to start hoarding cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum in corporate treasuries. The list includes Trump Media & Technology Group, which recently made a large bitcoin and related securities purchase.

Corporations appear to be aiming to replicate the success of Strategy, which has been amassing vast amounts of bitcoin on its balance sheet since 2020, helping send the stock to dizzying heights in recent years.

One of the market’s largest tokens by market cap, BNB is likely sparking similar enthusiasm, as investors hunt for the next big crypto treasury play. CEA’s statement says that it will provide the treasury with “opportunities to generate income and rewards on the BNB Chain and Binance ecosystem.”

• Elon Musk wrote that he would “walk the line personally” of Samsung’s Texas chipmaking plant that will make Tesla chips.
• Samsung’s chip plant is only miles away in Taylor, which Musk wrote was “convenient.”
• Musk has previously employed a hands-on, “founder mode” approach to running Tesla and X, formerly Twitter.

Two particular lines in Elon Musk’s posts about Tesla’s new chip deal highlight just how far his “founder mode” approach extends. In this case, right down to his stated terms of Tesla’s manufacturing agreement with Samsung.

In a $16.5 billion deal, Samsung will produce Tesla’s new AI6 chip from the manufacturing plant it is building in Taylor, Texas, which is expected to open in 2026.

Located outside of Austin, Samsung’s plant is close to where Musk moved in 2020, and where his company Tesla later moved in 2021. In an X post, Musk wrote that he would personally monitor the plant’s activity.

“This is a critical point, as I will walk the line personally to accelerate the pace of progress,” Musk wrote. “And the fab is conveniently located not far from my house.”

In other words — “founder mode.”

Musk also wrote that Samsung “agreed to allow Tesla to assist in maximizing manufacturing efficiency.”

The Tesla CEO wrote that the deal, which Bloomberg first reported, was one of “strategic importance” for the automaker. Neither Tesla nor Samsung responded to a request for comment.

Musk has long been known for taking a founder-mode approach to running his companies, an in-the-details entrepreneurial mindset that has flourished in Silicon Valley. He famously slept on the factory floor during Tesla’s Model 3. He personally renamed and reorganized an entire company when taking over Twitter, now X, and he set up shop in D.C. during his DOGE era.

The term “founder mode” itself, though, is newer.

Its origins stem from a 2024 talk that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky gave for the startup accelerator Y Combinator. In it, he advised against the common principle that leaders of large-scale companies should hire good employees and give them space to do their job.

In a September essay titled “Founder Mode,” YC cofounder Paul Graham reflected on Chesky’s talk, writing that there are “things founders can do that managers can’t.” Graham coined the term “founder mode,” describing leaders of big companies who work on the ground across the company, delving into the details at a granular level, and not just via their direct reports.

Chesky later embraced the mantra named after his talk, along with much of Silicon Valley. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke wrote on X that “we need founder mode companies in all industries.”

In his essay, Graham thanked a variety of tech leaders for reading early drafts, including YC CEO Garry Tan, venture capitalist Ron Conway, and Musk himself.

While the terms Musk describes for Tesla’s manufacturing deal and his plans to personally walk the Samsung assembly line are very “founder mode,” he’s not the only CEO keeping a close eye on a company’s supply chain.

Tim Cook rose through the ranks at Apple before becoming CEO by closely managing Apple’s supply chain. The iPhone giant famously keeps a very close eye on its manufacturing partners, many of which are in China.

A United airport sign photographed in 2019 and confirmed to be legitimate by the airline revealed that Apple was buying 50 business class seats a day for its employees to travel from San Francisco to Shanghai, a travel hub connecting to Zhengzhou and Shenzhen, which have been called “iPhone cities.” The iPhone maker is also known for having a broad team of operations overseers.

Samsung’s new chip deal with Tesla marks a major win for its foundry business. As of 1 p.m. in New York, the company’s stock price was up 6.8%.

And while Tesla’s assembly line workers have experienced Elon Musk’s founder mode approach, it sounds like soon Samsung’s will too.

• The US Army and its allies practiced getting HIMARS in and out quickly on an Indo-Pacific island.
• Keeping land-based, long-range precision strikes mobile could be critical in a conflict.
• Rapid deployment and frequent movement increase survivability while allowing for increased range.

The US Army and its allies recently pulled off a rapid missile launcher deployment to a remote Pacific island. It was a high-speed test of fire-and-move tactics and how they would bring long-range firepower to a future fight in the region.

The test occurred last week and built on US military efforts to boost range, flexibility, and survivability for HIMARS and other weaponry in the region.

During Talisman Sabre 2025, a joint exercise in Australia, a Royal Canadian Air Force C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft flew a US Army M142 High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and Australian soldiers to Christmas Island for the test.

The HIMARS launcher, along with a supporting communications vehicle, was flown to a forward airfield — extending the range of the munitions carried — and then driven to the simulated strike location. Afterwards, the vehicles were quickly packed up and flown out.

Christmas Island, a strategic Australian territory in the northeastern Indian Ocean, sits near maritime routes that have grown more consequential as China expands its naval and military activities in the region. That buildup has raised concerns for regional powers like Australia and India, among other nations, watching China’s presence in the Indian Ocean with increasing attention.

Per the Australian Ministry of Defense, last week’s operation demonstrated how the US and its allies can rapidly deploy and use land-based, long-range precision fires for deterrence. One key element is getting the weapon out of the position before an enemy can target it and conduct counter-battery fire.

The US military and its allies and partners have been focused on this capability, prioritizing rapid deployment of HIMARS and other weapons to dispersed sites so that enemy forces would have a harder time tracking them than at fixed locations.

HIMARS, as a flexible rocket artillery and missile platform, have value in the Pacific. They fire Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), and new Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The latter is for land targets; however, it’s been tested against sea targets.

PrSM has a range of about 310 miles and is deemed more precise than its predecessor, the MGM-140 ATACMS. GMLRS have a standard range of about 43 miles; however, the extended one reaches out to 93 miles.

Being able to rapidly deploy these weapons and others to island environments in the region offers the Army and its allies flexible strike options, including against naval targets.

In June 2024, the Army tested the PrSM against a moving ship target off the coast of Palau in the Pacific. And earlier this month, the Army fired a Standard Missile-6 from the Mid-Range Capability, or Typhon, missile system in Australia toward a maritime target, sinking it.

US military officials have said that being mobile and rapidly relocatable is crucial in the Indo-Pacific, where US forces are bracing for potential conflict with China, recognized by the Pentagon as a premier threat and pacing challenge for the department.

After last week’s HIMARS test, Lt. Col. Ed Guelfi, of the US Army’s 17th Field Artillery Brigade, said: “Collectively, we have rapidly deployed a HIMARS to demonstrate our ability to put combat power anywhere, at any time of our choosing.”

• Bank of America thinks the global economy is leaning away from the worst-case scenario: stagflation.
• Factors like Trump’s policies & AI investment could support an economic boom instead, the bank said.
• Stagflation, where inflation rises while growth slows, is thought to be even harder to remedy than a recession.

The US economy may have successfully steered clear of a dire outcome many observers were warning of just a few months ago.

That’s according to analysts at Bank of America, who said they believe the US economy could be more on track for a cyclical boom rather than an episode of stagflation, a nightmare situation in which inflation rises while economic growth slows.

Stagflation is commonly thought of as even worse than a typical recession, as policymakers are prevented from cutting interest rates to boost the economy.

For a while, that scenario was one of the biggest fears on investors’ minds as they weighed the impact of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.

But strategists said they think the economy is now leaning away from such a situation, even as many global fund managers surveyed by the bank said in June that they thought the global economy would slip into stagflation over the next 12 months.

“The latest fund manager survey shows a small increase in investors expecting a Boom rather than the base case of Stagflation,” analysts wrote, defining a “boom” as above-trend economic growth and above-trend inflation.

“We agree with this building minority, and present below corroboration from our quantitative work,” they added.

Here are three reasons the bank sees stagflation risk fading.

1. Trump’s pro-growth agenda

President Donald Trump’s America-first economic agenda is expected to act as a tailwind to the US economy, BofA strategists said.

The bank pointed to stimulus measures included in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” as well as the push to boost activity in US manufacturing.

“Moreover, with mid-term elections a few quarters away, it behooves the current administration to implement pro-growth policy now,” the bank’s strategists added.

2. Big spending

Companies and the public sector are spending big on artificial intelligence, infrastructure, and manufacturing, BofA said.

For AI in particular, analysts said they were expecting $700 billion in capex from the so-called hyperscalers through 2025 and 2026, with “upward revisions each quarter.”

“The number of companies outside of the US planning to expand manufacturing capacity in the US continues to increase. Municipalities have also refocused on infrastructure with aged capital stock fraying as domestic activity increases,” they added.

3. Economic recovery mode

Bank of America’s US Regime Indicator, a gauge for where the US currently is in the business cycle, looks to be “on the brink” of an economic recovery, analysts said.

The US Regime Indicator ticked lower in June, which indicates that the economy is still in a “downturn” phase. Downturn phases are typically followed by economic recovery phases, the bank suggested.

The US Regime Indicator saw six inputs from the economy improve last month, strategists noted, which also suggests that the economy could soon be on the uptrend. Here were the six positive changes analysts saw:

1. Earnings per share revisions. Earnings revision breadth bottomed out around -25% in April, according to Morgan Stanley data. Since then, it’s improved to -5%, the bank said in a June note, implying that the market is growing more optimistic on corporate earnings.
2. GDP forecasts. Despite a contraction in the first quarter, real GDP was projected to expand 2.8% year-over-year in the second-quarter, according to advanced estimates from the Commerce Department.
3. Manufacturing strength. The Institute for Supply Management’s Production Index, one measure of activity in manufacturing, rose to 50.3 in June, which signals that production moved into expansionary territory.
4. Leading Economic Indicators. A collection of economic indicators showed signs of improvement on a year-over-year basis, BofA said.
5. Capacity Utility. The use of “installed productive capacity” in the goods and services sector also improved on a year-over-year basis, strategists added.
6. High-yield credit spreads. Credit spreads—which is the yield paid over a benchmark—have narrowed, which signals higher investor confidence and lower levels of financial stress among companies.

• Sophie Rose secured a role at OpenAI through a strategic LinkedIn outreach.
• She had an offer within weeks and had to relocate from New York to San Francisco.
• Cold outreach and personal branding on LinkedIn are key strategies for career advancement.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sophie Rose, a 29-year-old OpenAI employee based in San Francisco. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

Roughly two years ago, I joined OpenAI to build out what was then the associate team. I saw that a leader on the go-to-market team posted that she was hiring a founding account associate for a role in San Francisco.

I had the fortune of already being connected to her on LinkedIn. But we’d never spoken outside a note I attached to my initial invite.

I directly messaged the leader on LinkedIn about the role, and within five weeks of sending that message, I had an offer in hand. Finding information, drafting notes, and writing communications to stand out among the noise is so important in this world of AI.

My LinkedIn reach-out was short and direct

When I saw the job post, I was working at an early-stage startup in the conversational AI space.

I’d been admiring OpenAI from afar for a bit, and as time went on, it was pretty clear that it was time for me to move on from the startup I was at. The company wasn’t growing, and it didn’t have the trajectory that I wanted to see.

I was living in New York City, and the job post clearly said that it was a San Francisco-based role with no flexibility. So, in my note, I congratulated the lead on her role and said I saw she was hiring for this founding account associate job. I added that I’d love to learn more, plan to apply, and would be willing to relocate for the opportunity.

Within five weeks, I had the offer to work at OpenAI

In my case, I wanted to go the extra mile. I asked to talk with the person who posted the job. In her response, she said she couldn’t jump on a call but would push my résumé through the initial screening.

I applied the next day and immediately followed up with her, thanking her and saying I looked forward to exploring the opportunity with OpenAI.

It was the best interview process I’ve ever had. After I got the job, I had to break my New York City apartment lease that I had just signed. My husband and I picked up our bags and moved to an apartment we had never seen in San Francisco.

Cold outreaches are good job-seeking tactics, but don’t ask for the person’s time

For many of my peers, their OpenAI job started with a cold outreach to someone they might have heard of or had a mutual connection with. I think that’s how you can ultimately get ahead or pivot in your career.

If the message and wording are right, you can really get in touch with anyone. I get lots of these notes myself from people trying to ask for my time or message me cold, and the most important advice I’d give is not to ask for time.

I asked for time in my note, which I wouldn’t have done in hindsight. If you do ask for time, be very clear on why you need their time. Do you have specific questions that you can’t ask directly in that LinkedIn note? Probably not. But if you do, then great.

Be careful how you construct your follow-up note

I personally don’t love generic follow-up messages. It goes back to whether you have an actual ask, something to say or seek, or concrete advice that you’re looking for.

My challenge to people would be to not send that generic follow-up. For more senior leaders, podcasts are an amazing outlet to hear what matters to them, learn about their personal and professional values, professional journeys, and other things that resonate with them.

Wait — maybe three weeks later — or look for something new that the person you’re reaching out to is posting or talking about. Whatever the case, wait for the right moment when you have something to give in that follow-up note.

Building a personal brand is one of the most strategic things someone can do for their career

Before I applied to OpenAI, I started posting on LinkedIn and reviewing different generative AI tools. For the business world, LinkedIn is an amazing professional page where you can show what you’re passionate about and how you communicate.

If you think posting is cringeworthy or wonder what people will say, fight that stigma. You’re thinking about it way more than anyone else.

Posting on LinkedIn is a great way to stand out among the masses, differentiate yourself, show what you care about, and inspire others. You never know who will read it, who will reach out because of it, or what opportunity could present itself.

Do you have a career journey story to share? Contact this reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Russia is training to sink fake ships with explosive-packed naval drones.
• It’s an innovative tactic that Ukraine has used to batter Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
• However, since Ukraine lacks a proper naval force, Russia’s training is likely aimed at NATO.

Russian forces have been using naval drones packed with explosives to practice attacking and sinking ships, mimicking one of the tactics that Ukraine has leaned on to fight Moscow’s warships.

However, the Russian training does not appear to be directed at the Ukraine war since Kyiv does not have much in the way of a traditional navy; rather, it is likely pointed at NATO and a potential confrontation with the military alliance.

Russia’s defense ministry released footage on Saturday of its “July Storm” naval exercises, and one of the publicized demonstrations showed forces from the Baltic Fleet use uncrewed surface vessels to destroy a fake enemy ship.

The footage showed a naval drone approaching the mock target in the middle at a perpendicular angle and impacting the structure, causing a massive blast.

The defense ministry said the exercise involved naval drones, aerial drones, helicopters, and ships — all of which have been involved in battles in the Black Sea.

Ukraine did not have much of a navy at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, especially after scuttling what little it had to keep the Russians from getting their hands on it. To project maritime power and fight back, Kyiv launched an asymmetric military campaign using domestically produced naval drones and missile strikes to harm Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet.

These operations damaged or destroyed dozens of Russian warships and forced Moscow to relocate the bulk of the Black Sea Fleet from its long-held headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula to the port of Novorossiysk on the other side of the region.

Russia has attempted to strengthen its defenses around the Black Sea, such as by adding more combat patrol aircraft to better monitor the area, but Ukraine has adapted to this by equipping its naval drones with surface-to-air missile launchers.

Russia’s July Storm exercise includes a host of other training scenarios, including anti-submarine, mine-laying, and missile strike operations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement carried by the defense ministry that “the Navy’s exercise is primarily designed to thoroughly train naval forces in repelling maritime attacks and performing the full range of extremely challenging and unconventional operational and tactical missions, and other tasks in a realistic simulated environment.”

Putin said that “the training incorporates experience gained during the special military operation,” using the Kremlin’s terminology for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While the exercises might have been inspired by the Ukraine conflict, they are likely pointed at a potential clash between Russia and NATO, whose forces are increasingly training for naval drone warfare. The US Navy, for instance, has integrated new training scenarios designed to teach sailors how to survive this threat, which is appearing in more places.

Naval drone warfare has not been limited to the Black Sea. In the Red Sea, for instance, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have used these weapons to strike commercial vessels in their campaign against key Middle East shipping lanes.

• Morgan Stanley says that corporate earnings are in a “rolling recovery.”
• The bank is doubling down on its bullish forecast for the S&P 500 to jump to 7,200 in a year.

Morgan Stanley sees the outlook for corporate earnings boosting stocks to new heights in the coming 12 months.

After markets were battered in April amid Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, earnings are getting a boost from a handful of sources.

The bank said that April’s price action represented the end of a “rolling earnings recession” that began in 2022.

“Now, we appear to be transitioning to a rolling recovery backdrop aided by positive operating leverage, AI adoption, dollar weakness, cash tax savings from the OBBBA, easy growth comparisons, pent up demand for many sectors, and a high probability of Fed cuts by 1Q26,” the bank’s chief investment office Michael Wilson wrote.

The bank sees the S&P 500 rising to 7,200 in its bull case, a 12% jump from Friday’s close. It also said the probability of such an outcome for the broad index is on the rise. Wilson said that high valuations that some observers have been fretting over appear to be justified.

The bank recommends the industrials sector as its top pick, even after it has been the top-performing sector of the S&P 500 year-to-date.

Major market indexes have risen steadily over the past week, with the S&P 500 closing at record highs on July 25. The index is up 9% year-to-date.

Morgan Stanley’s prediction comes as economic uncertainty appears to be easing. With President Donald Trump announcing a new trade agreement with the European Union and the Federal Reserve expected to cut interest rates later this year, investors may be feeling more confident in the market’s strength.

“The historically sharp inflection we’re seeing in earnings revisions breadth confirms this process is underway,” the bank stated, noting that it sees this phenomenon as underappreciated.

• Business Insider got access to a NATO AWACS flight on a mission over Eastern Europe.
• The aircraft, an E-3 Sentry, is decades old and nearing the end of its service life.
• But crew members said the aging plane is still a surveillance and command and control workhorse.

NATO AIR BASE GEILENKIRCHEN — Stepping aboard the E-3 Sentry feels a bit like walking into a museum. The modified Boeing 707/320 passenger jet is decades old, and the dated interior is a constant reminder.

But don’t let the jet’s age fool you. The E-3, an Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, is packed with highly advanced technology that enables it to perform surveillance, communications tasks, and battlefield command and control.

“It’s an aging aircraft, but it’s still relevant,” Capt. Jasper, a Dutch surveillance controller who monitors air and surface activity, explained. Over the past couple of decades, he said, whenever there was a conflict, “the NATO AWACS was always the first one to deploy.” In the early days of the Ukraine war, these aircraft were just about flying around the clock.

Business Insider recently flew aboard a NATO AWACS from Geilenkirchen, in western Germany, to the Baltic region and back. The eight-hour surveillance mission was tasked to support an alliance security operation in the Baltic Sea following the sabotage of critical undersea infrastructure.

The modified E-3 began engineering, testing, and evaluation in 1975, and two years later, the first operational aircraft was delivered to the US Air Force. NATO received its first of 17 E-3s in early 1982; 14 planes are operating out of Geilenkirchen Air Base.

During its more than 40 years in service, the Sentry has flown to support missions and conflict operations around the world, including over North America, Europe, and the Middle East. More recently, the NATO alliance has increased its focus on Eastern Europe and monitoring of Russian activity following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

For a “very old aircraft,” it is “still very relevant nowadays,” said Capt. Jasper, who, like other members of the multinational crew that BI spoke with during the flight, could only be identified by his rank and first name for security reasons.

Every year ‘will be more challenging’

While the interior of the E-3 gives off Cold War relic vibes, the aircraft is a highly sophisticated flying radar and airborne command post packed with sensitive technology and computer monitors displaying a range of highly classified information that was sanitized thoroughly before BI was allowed to take a look.

The aircraft is equipped with a large 360-degree rotating radar dome, which can see over 300 miles across the air and surface, and advanced sensors that can detect friendly or hostile objects from far away.

Data collected by the E-3 can then be distributed in real time to allied aircraft, ships, or ground stations, giving battlefield commanders essential situational awareness in war or peacetime. And unlike fixed land-based radars, the aircraft is not restricted by terrain or the curvature of the Earth.

“We have a unique capability,” Capt. Jasper explained. “We can fly, we can see a little bit further, we can see a little bit lower, and we can take maritime assets as well.”

The E-3 is a flexible command and control platform capable of battle management; it can coordinate with other aircraft — fighter jets, bombers, or tankers — whether during a conflict sortie or just during a training run.

Maj. Ben, an American officer and the AWACS’ fighter allocator in charge of coordinating with other aircraft, described the E-3 as a “critical C2 (command and control) node,” explaining that “it provides that long reach of a radar for our higher headquarters, as well as communications.”

“We have the radar, we have the radios, to be able to reach out at long ranges and communicate, coordinate, and control any aircraft that we can see, and then we can talk to,” he said. “We’re also able to reach back to higher headquarters and pass along any critical information so they can make better decisions” with that real-time data.

The E-3 doesn’t necessarily look any different than it did back in the 1980s, but even though the airframe remains the same, the systems have continuously been updated over the years, explained Dutch Capt. Donny Demmers, a public affairs officer who was permitted to share his full name.

A recent $1 billion final modernization effort, for instance, is intended to provide the AWACS with new communications and networking capabilities, according to a NATO fact sheet.

The E-3’s system upgrades over the years have been so significant that Capt. Jasper, who previously flew with the plane from 2010 to 2015, needed to renew his training when he returned in 2022. There had been so many changes.

However, as time goes on, Demmers said the logistics of maintaining the aircraft have become increasingly challenging, especially because production lines are not cranking out readily available spare parts, like the engines.

“It’s still safe, but every year we pass, it will be more challenging” to keep the aircraft up to standard, he said.

NATO announced plans in 2023 to eventually replace the E-3 fleet with Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail, a derivative of the US aerospace giant’s next-generation 737 aircraft. The first new aircraft is expected to be ready for operational duty by the early 2030s, with the E-3s set to retire after 2035.

But until that day comes, the E-3 crew is more than happy with its performance and believes that the mission will continue on uninterrupted.

“It’s still a good jet and we are performing our task. We are fulfilling the higher command’s objectives that they’re giving us,” Capt. Marek, a Polish passive controller who works with the AWACS’ advanced sensors, said of the E-3.

“NATO is planning to change the platform,” but this process takes time, he said. “So our maintainers, our logistics, are doing their best to keep these jets in that perfect status. And I have no doubts that it will still be an operational jet for many years.”

• Oppenheimer raised its S&P 500 year-end target to 7,100 in light of recent trade deals.
• US companies show strong earnings, and the Fed is likely to cut rates later this year.
• Investors should continue to bet on Big Tech and US exceptionalism, Oppenheimer says.

Call it a comeback.

After markets went haywire in April, Trump’s trade deals might have just saved the bull market, according to Oppenheimer’s chief investment strategist John Stoltzfus.

After lowering his year-end S&P 500 price target after the Liberation Day tariff announcements, Stoltzfus has reinstated his 7,100 target from December 2024, setting the stock market up for its third consecutive year of 20% gains.

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s EU and Japan trade deal, Stoltzfus believes the coast is clear for the S&P 500 to continue reaching all-time highs.

“We believe that enough ‘tariff hurdles‘ have been overcome for now to reinstate our original price target for the S&P 500 of 7100 by year-end,” Stoltzfus wrote in a note on Monday morning.

US exceptionalism in the stock market remains intact, Stoltzfus said. The EU trade deal Trump announced on Sunday sets tariffs of 15% on most European imports, half of the 30% Trump initially threatened.

The EU has also agreed to purchase a “vast amount” of US military equipment and invest an additional $600 billion in the US.

It’s not just trade deals, though. US companies have held up financially through the volatility, and they’re on track for a better-than-expected second quarter earnings season, Stoltzfus said. Out of the companies that have already reported second quarter earnings, 84% have beaten analyst estimates. Wall Street will be watching this week closely, as 164 companies — including the S&P 500’s biggest names such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta —are set to report results.

Helping the S&P 500’s continued climb is the slow place of inflation. Price increases have remained relatively steady and inflation has drawn closer to the Fed’s 2% target despite tariff volatility.

“Monetary policy by the Fed has brought down the pace of inflation (if not yet to its 2% target level) without thus far causing a recession. This in our view is a substantial achievement considering inflation has gone from 9% in June of 2022 when the Fed recognized that inflation was out of hand to around 2.7% in June of this year,” Stoltzfus wrote.

Stoltzfus’ 7,100 year-end price target implies a forward multiple of 25.8x and an earnings projection of $275.

Investors should continue to bet on information technology, consumer discretionary, communications services, industrials, and financials, according to Stoltzfus.

• The stock market is headed for its biggest week of the summer.
• Investors are watching Magnificent Seven earnings, the Fed meeting, and a barrage of macro data.
• Trump’s August 1 deadline for tariff negotiations will cap off the week.

This week is jam-packed with potential catalysts to move markets.

Investors are looking at a heavy week of economic data and market-moving updates, with the Federal Reserve set to kick off its latest policy meeting, four out of the Magnificent Seven due to report earnings, and GDP and jobs data on deck.

Here are the things investors can expect to look forward to:

Mag 7 earnings

More of the biggest tech giants in the US are set to report earnings for the last quarter, offering investors some insight on the state of the AI trade and whether companies are still willing to shell out for artificial intelligence chips.

Here’s who is on deck to report after the close:

• Wednesday: Meta, Microsoft.
• Thursday: Amazon, Apple

Of the Mag 7 group, Alphabet and Tesla already reported earnings last week.

• Alphabet beat earnings and revenue estimates for the second quarter, but investors were concerned about the company’s unexpected $10 billion increase in capital expenditures.
• Tesla, which has been mired in a long-running EV sales decline, saw its biggest quarterly revenue drop in at least a decade.
• Chip titan Nvidia will report at the end of August.

Of the 34% of S&P 500 companies that have reported their results so far, 80% have beat earnings estimates, above the running average for the last 10 years, according to the latest update from FactSet.

Data deluge

The market is also gearing up for fresh inflation, jobs, and economic growth data coming out this week. Here’s the timeline of what investors can expect:

• Wednesday

  • Second-quarter GDP (second estimates). Economists expect the second estimate for second-quarter GDP to show that the economy expanded 2.3% year-over-year last quarter. Advanced estimates from the Commerce Department suggested that real GDP rose 2.8% year-over-year.
  • ADP private payrolls. Economists expect the private sector to add 82,000 in July. That compares to the 33,000 jobs the private sector lost in June, according to last month’s ADP report.

• Thursday

  • Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure will get an update this week. Core PCE rose 2.7% in May, with June’s figure also expected to clock in at 2.7%.

• Friday

  • July Jobs report. Economists expect the US to add 102,000 jobs in July, down from the 147,000 payrolls added in June.

Trump’s tariff deadline

Trump’s August 1 deadline for tariff negotiations is coming up at the end of the week.

Trump announced a fresh trade deal with the European Union on Sunday, which includes a 15% tariff on European imports and several stipulations for the EU to invest in the US and purchase more goods in key sectors. Yet, other countries are still negotiating.

The US has only inked a handful of trade agreements with other countries, but Trump’s team has said in recent weeks it expects more deals to follow.

Some investors are hoping Trump will extend his deadline for tariffs, as he did earlier in the year, but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the deadline is set in stone with “no more grace periods” planned when speaking to Fox News on Sunday.

Countries that haven’t reached a trade agreement with the US by then will be subject to the tariff rate the president proposed on Liberation Day, or the tariff rate he proposed in a slew of letters sent to 23 countries that he also published on Truth Social.

Some sector tariffs, like Trump’s 50% tariff on copper imports, are also set to kick in on Friday.

Fed meeting

All eyes are on Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday as the central bank concludes its July meeting and announces its next interest rate decision to the public.

Markets largely expect the central bank to keep rates steady as it eyes the impact of tariffs on inflation. Investors are pricing in a 98% chance the Fed will leave its benchmark rate unchanged this week, and a 44% chance the Fed will cut rates just once or twice by the end of the year, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

“While the Federal Reserve is under pressure to cut interest rates, it’s clear that this economy has been able to and should continue to be able to withstand the current level of interest rates. Stocks are up almost 10% so far this year, and we haven’t seen a rate cut in eight months,” Paul Stanley, the CIO of Granite Bay Wealth Management, wrote in a note.

Trump has been highly critical of the Fed Chair, pushing for lower interest rates this year. But the president seemed to suggest he would accept whatever decision FOMC members came to when visiting the Fed last week.

“Well, I’d love him to lower interest rates. Other than that, what can I tell you?” Trump said when speaking to reporters on Wednesday. “We would be helped if interest rates would come down, but we’re going to see how the Board rules on that soon. I’d love to see them come down a lot,” he later added.

• I used ChatGPT to create a budget that would help me gain control of my finances.
• The AI tool created a strategy that keeps my finances balanced and helps me stay ahead financially.
• Since implementing the plan, I haven’t overdrafted my account at all.

Last summer, I felt completely broke and buried in debt. I had a stable job with regular pay increases, but still found myself constantly overdrafting my account.

Between living in a pricey US city and dealing with inflation, credit-card debt, and lingering student loans, I felt like I could never quite get ahead of my finances.

The stress was overwhelming, affecting my mental health, and adding to my shame about managing adulthood.

One day, while scrolling through social media, I saw people using ChatGPT for everything from mapping out their schedule to setting personal goals.

That’s when it hit me — maybe I could use the AI tool to create an optimized spending plan.

I identified and labeled my monthly expenses, then asked ChatGPT for a spending plan

To start, I wrote down all my fixed monthly expenses like rent, bills, and subscriptions. Then, I labeled which items were necessities.

This forced me to decide whether my monthly coffee subscription was necessary or if I really needed two different gym memberships.

Then, I entered my monthly expenses and dates when certain payments were due into ChatGPT using the following prompt:

Help me develop a monthly budget. These are my fixed expenses and the days they’re due:

ChatGPT also asked me to list all my income sources, so I did.

The AI tool then offered to create a spreadsheet to track my expenses, but I declined because I didn’t want to be tied to something I needed to update constantly.

Instead, I asked for a spending plan to overcome my biggest challenge — making ends meet at the beginning of the month, when most of my major bills were due.

It created a plan to help me cover my monthly expenses and maximize my remaining income

What I needed wasn’t more math, but a strategy to lighten the load and smooth out my cash flow. ChatGPT helped me build exactly that.

The AI platform suggested I split my paychecks in half, using a portion for my current bills and holding the rest in a savings account for the ones due later in the month.

This way, when the first of the month came around, I’d already have those expenses partially covered from my previous paycheck.

But I won’t lie — this was tough to navigate during the first month. I had to dip into my already dwindling savings and live on a strict essentials-only rule. However, I knew it could be worth it in the long run.

The staggering strategy ChatGPT suggested keeps my finances balanced, helps me stay ahead instead of catching up, and eliminates the panic of paycheck-to-paycheck living.

Once my essential expenses were covered, I wanted to ensure my leftover income would be used intentionally. So, I sent a follow-up prompt, this time asking for a breakdown of my remaining funds.

After sharing more details about my income and savings goals, ChatGPT produced a plan I found to be super helpful. With it, I can allocate money to my savings and debt repayment while leaving myself cash for personal spending.

Since using ChatGPT, I’ve noticed a big difference in my financial situation

Perhaps I could’ve figured out these plans or similar ones myself with a bit of research, a pen, and paper. However, I’m grateful I had a little help.

Since implementing some of these strategies last year, I’ve felt much more in control of my finances and haven’t overdrafted my account at all.

I now prioritize savings and debt repayment without cutting out personal spending — something I never thought was possible.

Using the platform to optimize my budget allowed me to break my income into smaller, manageable chunks. It shifted my focus from surviving paycheck to paycheck to actually planning ahead.

Now, I live within my means and have started to rebuild my savings. But most importantly, I feel calm about money for the first time in a long time.

That said, ChatGPT isn’t perfect. I found I had to be really specific with my prompts. The more detailed and clear I was about my income, expenses, and goals, the more useful and accurate the guidance was.

At the end of the day, ChatGPT isn’t a financial advisor. But it can be a really thoughtful and responsive budgeting partner if you’re willing to put in a little effort up front.

• Emma Roma Jayne lost 130 pounds after weight loss surgery.
• She established healthy habits to maintain her lower weight, and has kept it off for three years.
• Roma Jayne lifts weights three times a week and follows the 80/20 rule.

At age 22, Emma Roma Jayne had no confidence.

The content creator and TikTok strategist, based in Australia, told Business Insider that she was very active growing up, but an injury forced her to stop playing sports and she “started piling the weight on.”

In March 2022, Roma Jayne decided to get bariatric surgery: a weight-loss procedure to reduce the size of the stomach, meaning you can’t eat as much and feel full faster. At the time, GLP-1 medications like Ozempic weren’t on her radar. Roma Jayne complemented the surgery with therapy to treat her eating disorder.

“Instead of working on my mental health, I would just binge and eat and get the dopamine from food,” she said.

To be eligible for the surgery, she had to commit to making serious, long-term lifestyle changes to prevent gaining the weight back, including having regular sessions with a nutritionist and a personal trainer for six months pre-surgery and two years after.

“People think that it’s like a ‘lose weight quick’ thing. And that’s all you have to do and you’ll be happy and everything will be solved, but your hunger does come back,” Roma Jayne said of bariatric surgery. “If I had those bad habits, that lifestyle that I had before weight loss surgery, I would 100% gain my weight back.”

The data is mixed, but one a review of studies published in the journal Obesity Surgery found that up to 76% of patients regained a significant amount of weight six years after bariatric surgery. Reasons included the size of their stomach growing over time, inadequate support post-op, and patients struggling to break unhealthy habits.

Following the advice of her nutritionist, Roma Jayne initially followed a high-protein, low-carb diet to lose weight, started working out six times a week, and lost 132 pounds over two years.

Three years post-op, she’s maintained her lower weight by mainly eating whole foods and being as active as possible. She has what she sees as a more balanced and sustainable approach to her diet and fitness routine.

Roma Jayne, now 24, shared the four habits that she said have helped her stay in shape.

1) Eating mostly whole foods and the occasional treat

As working out regularly and eating a healthy diet became habits for Roma Jayne, she became more interested in and passionate about nutrition. After the surgery, she ate small portions and few carbs to lose weight, but she no longer excludes any food group as her focus is long-term health.

She still eats lots of protein as she learned that it helps her maintain her weight, but avoids ultra-processed foods and prioritizes whole foods, which are linked to better overall health.

Roma Jayne said that she eats nutritious, balanced meals, such as homemade pizza and wholemeal wraps, around 90% of the time, but isn’t scared of the occasional sweet treat.

“If I want to have chocolate, I’ll just have some chocolate. I don’t restrict myself too much,” she said.

Roma Jayne’s approach echoes what’s known as the 80/20 rule, or eating healthily 80% of the time and being more flexible the remaining 20%.

Dietitians have told BI that this is a sustainable way to eat and maintain your weight, because restrictive diets often lead to cravings, which make it harder to eat high calorie foods in moderation.

2) Strength training three times a week

Roma Jayne lifts weights at the gym three or four times a week. Her current goal is to maintain her fat loss, while gaining muscle, which is known as body recomposition.

Research suggests that strength training helps burn fat while also building muscle mass, which improves the metabolism.

3) Parking a little further from her destination

In the past, Roma Jayne would go to the gym but struggled to be consistent as she saw it as a punishment for being overweight rather than a way to look after her health.

Now she tries to stay as active as possible because it makes her feel good.

Aside from her formal workouts, she’s conscious of her step count and takes opportunities to walk during her day.

For example, sometimes she parks a few minutes away from her office or goes for a walk on her lunch break. “Just any way to get out and about,” she said.

4) Prioritizing healthy habits over the number on the scale

Over the last few years, Roma Jayne’s weight has fluctuated, but she makes an effort to be kind to herself when it does. She focuses more on sustaining the healthy habits she has established than worrying about the exact number on the scale, as she knows they count for more.

“My weight fluctuates so much, and I think it’s just I know that I’m exercising well, I’m eating well, I’m healthy. So as long as I know that I’m doing my best, what is on the scales just doesn’t really matter,” she said.

Obesity experts agree that weight alone is not an accurate measure of a person’s health. Other factors, such as how much muscle mass a person has and water retention, can increase the number on the scale. Plus, research suggests that where on the body the fat is located might have more bearing on a person’s health than how much of it they have.

“I think the biggest thing that’s really helped me maintain these habits and maintain my weight loss is really just doing what’s best for myself. And that’s in every aspect of my life,” Roma Jayne said.

• The aviation industry won’t face tariffs thanks to the newly announced EU-US trade deal.
• Aviation’s global supply chain and international reach mean tariffs would be particularly painful.
• Airlines and planemakers have spent months preparing workarounds in the event of tariffs.

The EU-US trade deal includes a significant win for aviation after months of fears that the industry would face punishing tariffs.

At April’s “Liberation Day” announcement, Donald Trump initially imposed a 20% tariff on all exports from the European Union. Since negotiations have only seen that lowered to 15%, the deal is largely being seen as a win for the US.

However, some European companies, like Airbus, still have reason to be cheerful because aircraft and their components are facing zero tariffs.

The aviation industry has faced a nervous few months of waiting, given its reliance on a highly complex and global supply chain — already under huge strain since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Optimism was already boosted at last month’s Paris Air Show when Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he favoured returning to a zero-tariff agreement from 1979, in line with much of the industry’s top players.

Meanwhile, planemakers and airlines have been devising creative ways to avoid Trump’s levies.

For example, Delta Air Lines deployed a similar tactic from a past US-EU trade war.

In May, the airline had an Airbus plane delivered to Japan instead of the US. So long as the jet was only used for international flights, it wouldn’t be officially imported to the US, so there would be no tariffs to pay.

The Irish budget airline Ryanair, Europe’s biggest carrier by passengers, was also preparing ways to limit the impact.

CEO Michael O’Leary said in an earnings call last week that, even though its deals with Boeing made the planemaker responsible for paying fees, the airline was willing to help find ways around it. He suggested registering planes in the UK, which also faces no aviation tariffs, or even delaying some deliveries.

However, the concerns aren’t over for everyone yet.

While reaching a deal makes the future of the economy more predictable, many companies are expected to pass the costs of tariffs onto consumers.

That could therefore see travel demand further falter as people find themselves with less money to spend.

In its second-quarter earnings last week, American Airlines reported record revenue but lowered its profit forecast. It predicts adjusted earnings per share between a loss of 20 cents and a profit of 80 cents, down from profits between $1.70 and $2.70 issued in January.

But CEO Robert Isom said he was more optimistic about demand given growing GDP and trade-deal progress.

“I think that all lends to a customer that’s more willing to get out there and spend on travel and do some things that they want to do,” he said.

• Tesla’s Cybertruck has been a major sales disappointment since it launched in 2023.
• The “apocalypse-proof” truck is so big and heavy that it is very difficult to sell outside the US.
• Now, Tesla’s engineering VP has said that the EV giant is considering building a smaller pickup truck.

Elon Musk’s “apocalypse-proof” Cybertruck has been a major disappointment, but it could be about to get a smaller sibling.

Lars Moravy, Tesla’s engineering VP, said in an interview on Saturday that the EV giant is considering making a smaller pickup truck, as sales of the beefy science-fiction-inspired Cybertruck continue to struggle.

“We always talked about making a smaller pickup,” said Moravy, in response to a question about whether Tesla needed a mini version of the Cybertruck for international markets.

“I think in the future, as more and more of the robotaxi comes into the world, we look at those options and we think about, OK, that kind of service is useful not just for people, but also for goods,” Moravy, who was speaking at an event hosted by Tesla owners and investors in California, added.

“We’ve definitely been churning in the design studio about what we might do to serve that need for sure.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Moravy’s interview, which was sent outside regular US working hours.

The Cybertruck was launched with a huge fanfare in 2023, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicting the automaker could sell over 250,000 of the “apocalypse-proof” trucks a year.

However, those stratospheric sales have failed to materialize. Tesla has shifted around 11,000 Cybertrucks in the US so far this year, after selling nearly 39,000 over the whole of 2024, per data from Cox Automotive.

The futuristic pickup launched in the US with a price tag close to $100,000, far above the $39,900 Elon Musk suggested back in 2019. The cheapest version now starts at over $60,000.

The Cybertruck is also not available in China and Europe, Tesla’s biggest markets outside the US. Both markets have strict vehicle regulations that make selling big and bulky pickups like the Cybertruck — which weighs over 6,000kg — extremely difficult.

One of the first Cybertrucks to appear in the UK was seized by police earlier this year for not being road-legal, while another that was registered in the European Union had to be modified to soften the trapezoid truck’s notoriously sharp edges.

Tesla has expanded Cybertruck sales to Canada and Mexico, and in April announced it would begin selling the pickup in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.

The Cybertruck’s slow sales and slower international expansion suggest it will be little help in turning around Tesla’s sales slump. The EV giant said earlier this month that second-quarter sales had fallen 13.5%, its second year-over-year decline in a row.

• I’ve taken several Disney cruises with my family, but I just started cruising with friends instead.
• My friends have truly bonded through traveling together, and we’ve all become closer.
• We’re already planning our next cruise in the group chat, and we’re so excited.

My kids are good sports. They’ve never been huge fans of cruising, but they still go with me sometimes. I, on the other hand, love cruises with all my heart and would choose a cruise over most other kinds of vacations.

And while I’ve always thought of them as perfect for a family getaway, to let my kids off the hook, I decided to try something new and took a group of girlfriends with me on a Disney cruise last year. It was exactly what I needed, and now, we cruise together all the time. We’ve sailed on three cruises together in the last year, and have a fourth in the works.

This group of friends and I have a lot in common. We all like Disney quite a bit, love a ship spa day, and have similar evening cruising styles — we like grabbing an early dinner and seeing a post-dinner show, followed by activities like late-night karaoke or trivia.

What’s more, even though these friends and I all live within a 30-minute drive from each other, schedules, jobs, and family commitments often keep us from seeing each other as much as we’d like, so cruising together gives us several days to catch up and connect without the interruptions of daily life.

Traveling with friends has been a win-win

Traveling with these friends instead of my teenagers has been a win-win for everyone in my family. While my husband and I have also done Disney cruises kid-free, he can’t always take off work to go along with me. My kids, who are deep into the years of teenage social lives and part-time job schedules, get to skip a trip they wouldn’t really enjoy, anyway.

Plus, there’s something incredibly fun about experiencing a cruise with your girlfriends. What’s more, none of us drinks alcohol, so there are no wild nights at the bar or morning hangovers nursed over Bloody Marys. Instead, we prioritize wellness and fun while on board, fitting in everything from spa treatments during the day to dressing up in themed outfits each evening.

Cruising has made our friend group stronger

Whether we’re meeting Daisy Duck on the Disney Magic’s pirate-themed night or watching the Broadway-quality stage production of Moana aboard the Disney Treasure, traveling with my friends has taught me that sometimes, it’s fun to be a kid with your adult pals.

While cruising with these ladies, I’ve laughed so hard my stomach hurt, cried while sharing about tough times in my life, and made memories that will last forever. Everything about growing our friendships through travel has been magical, and I credit cruising together with deepening our bond.

We’ve already scheduled our next voyage

In fact, we’ve enjoyed traveling together so much that we have another trip on the calendar. In November, we’ll hop on board Disney’s brand-new ship, the Disney Destiny, and add it to our list of ships we’ve explored together.

Anticipating a trip is almost as fun as the actual cruise, so our group chat has already started pinging with outfit ideas, thoughts on which excursions to book, and plans for how to decorate our stateroom door during the cruise.

I highly recommend taking a cruise with friends

Would my friends and I have just as much fun on other cruise lines together as we do aboard Disney ships? Probably. Still, our shared love of Disney magic and embracing our inner children makes a Disney cruise the perfect adults-only girls’ trip for us. I’m well aware of the “Disney adult” jokes and some people’s disdain for grown women wearing sparkly Minnie Mouse ears, but the criticism doesn’t bother me. Life is too short not to experience things that bring you joy, and being those Disney people with my friends is something that makes me happy.

Through our time together on Disney cruises, our friendships have gotten stronger. This means that when life gets hard for one of us, we’re all ready to support each other, and when one of us is celebrating a win in their own lives, it feels like something great happened to each of us. Cruising with friends is about taking a fun trip together, yes, but it’s also about building a closer relationship, something that’s hard for busy, working moms to do.

If you’re considering taking time away from your family to travel with girlfriends, this is your sign to try it. Not only will you have fun and build stronger friendships, but there’s a chance your kids (and husband!) will be relieved to stay home, too.

• A recent newsletter from Citadel Securities included six executives’ beach recommendations.
• Their suggestions get philosophical, ranging from historical deep-dives to the journey of the cell.
• Here’s their chosen media, which includes books, a podcast, and even a YouTube series.

For some Citadel Securities leaders, fun in the sun means getting philosophical.

A recent newsletter from Ken Griffin’s trading firm, which is behind nearly a quarter of all US stock trades, included six executives’ beach reads and listens. Their recommendations appeal to a range of potential beachgoers, including everything from diet advice to a 1927 classic to a YouTube series that explains egg freezing.

Here are six Citadel Securities executives’ summer media recommendations.

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

Matt Culek, the chief operating officer, recommended the book by Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey to anyone who thinks that AI will transform business and daily life — so, basically, everyone. He called it a “compelling account of OpenAI’s founding, Altman’s leadership, and the fierce competition among leading AI firms.”

The book, published in May, tracks OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s journey from his childhood in St. Louis, his time at startups, his temporary ouster at OpenAI, and his current leadership. It’s based on more than 200 interviews and has 3.97 stars on Goodreads.

The Cell: A Visual Tour of the Building Block of Life

Chief Technology Officer Josh Woods said that the 2015 book is “as informative as it is visually stunning.” Written by the writer and lecturer Jack Challoner, “The Cell” chronicles scientific breakthroughs around life’s basic unit, tracking the evolutionary journey from single- to multi-celled organisms. On Goodreads, the book has 4.37 stars.

Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures

Shyam Rajan, the global head of fixed income, suggested Austrian writer Stefan Zweig’s 1927 classic, which was originally published in German. According to Rajan, the book “thoughtfully captures the catalysts that changed the trajectory of history ranging from the fall of Constantinople to the discovery of the Pacific Ocean.”

Other vignettes include an affair between a 74-year-old and a 19-year-old, and the story of a man who legally owned a good portion of California. The book has a 4.24 rating on Goodreads.

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

It seems like the summer of health for Alex DiLeonardo, the company’s chief people officer, who recommended the “eye opening” book about how to prevent chronic illness through nutrition.

“Our colleagues take the same optimizing lens to their life that we take to the market,” DiLeonardo wrote in his suggestion. Published in 2015 by American physician Michael Greger , “How Not to Die” examines the top 15 causes of prominent diseases. It has 4.42 stars on Goodreads and includes a checklist of the 12 foods Greger thinks we should eat daily.

Wind of Change: Did the CIA write a power ballad that ended the Cold War?

Dane Skillrud, COO of systematic equities & FICC, recommended a podcast instead of a book. The eight-part miniseries from 2020 is hosted by New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe and follows his investigation into whether the CIA wrote the song “Wind of Change” by Scorpion, a German rock band. According to rumors, the CIA wrote the 1990s hit to impact the fall of the USSR.

“It’s a useful reminder of the importance and power of new ideas, music, and language,” Skillrud wrote in his recommendation. The series has 4.8 stars on Spotify.

Huge if True: An optimistic show about using science and technology to make the future better

For the COO of technology and low latency, Jeff Maurone, summer media means YouTube. He recommended video journalist Cleo Abram’s series on the future of technology, saying that “she is a tremendous storyteller who helps me navigate how technology and AI are changing our world.”

Recent episodes focus on everything from DNA editing to getting sucked into a black hole to egg freezing to interviews with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

• Opendoor isn’t a meme stock, says the hedge funder whose thesis sparked a huge rally in the shares.
• Eric Jackson, known for his call on Carvana in 2023, thinks Opendoor can rally more than 3,000%.
• He says Opendoor shouldn’t be lumped together with other meme stocks that surged this week.

The architect of the latest meme stock rally doesn’t want you to call him that.

Eric Jackson, the founder of EMJ Capital, is bullish on Opendoor—the online real estate platform that embarked on a blistering rally after he posted his thesis on X—but it isn’t a meme stock, he says.

In his eyes, it’s the real deal, a pandemic-era darling with big turnaround potential despite a 92% tumble since its peak.

Jackson is known for what ended up being a correctly bullish call on Carvana in 2023. He laid out his views on Opendoor on social media on July 14, sparking not only a rapid rise in the stock, which also seems to have revived the meme stock trade among a newer group of unloved stocks, including Kohl’s, Krispy Kreme, and GoPro.

But for Jackson, Opendoor isn’t a joke. He declined to disclose the value of his firm’s stake, but it’s now the single biggest position in EMJ Capital’s portfolio, he told Business Insider.

“I never thought of it that way,” he said of investors who called Opendoor a meme stock. “So I sort of take offense, because I find all the meme stocks to be, to me, kind of terrible businesses that I would never want to own. Whereas I see Opendoor as a legitimate turnaround story.”

Opendoor will probably be the only company among the meme-stock cohort that won’t be forgotten about by next week, he said, adding that he sees the latest speculative buying spree fizzling out. Indeed, most of this week’s meme stock cohort was already giving up their biggest gains by midday on Friday.

Opendoor’s stock price spiked as high as $4.97 this week in intraday trading, an almost 830% increase in July.

The stock has since pared its gains, trading around $2.46 a share on Friday, but Jackson still thinks shares could hit $82 within the next several years, a gain that would mark a 3,200% increase from current levels.

The next leg-up for the stock could come in the next few weeks when the company reports third-quarter earnings, Jackson said.

‘I’m not here to pump up a stock’

Opendoor first appeared on Jackson’s radar in 2022, around the time he started paying attention to Carvana. In a podcast called “The Compound and Friends,” he said he believed both companies, which were struggling at the time, could stage a massive turnaround.

His bet on Carvana paid off. Shares of the online used car retailer have risen almost 7,000% since the beginning of 2023.

The bet on Opendoor — until now — did not. The stock traded between $1-$3 a share around the time Jackson finally gave up on the call and cashed out his shares nine months ago.

“It’s like having a painful ex in your history and you just don’t want to look at their Instagram page or something like that, because it just brings up bad feelings,” he said.

Jackson thinks the story could be different this time around for a few reasons:

• Opendoor stock now looks similar to Carvana when Jackson first made his call on the used car seller. Opendoor shares were trading under $1 around the time he fired off a series of posts about the company on X.
• Opendoor has aggressively slashed its costs in recent years. In 2024, it cut its workforce by 17%.
• The firm doesn’t have much competition in the iBuying space now that Zillow and Redfin have exited that business.
• Opendoor was likely “thrown for a loop” by the Fed keeping interest rates higher for longer than expected in 2022 and 2023, Jackson said. High borrowing costs significantly impact the real estate sector, but most investors expect the central bank to cut rates several more times this year, potentially stimulating fresh activity in the housing market.
• Opendoor might also be able to benefit from a big AI play, Jackson told BI, citing conversations with a former company insider.

Jackson says what he sees going for Opendoor sets it apart from the meme stocks at the center of this week’s euphoric rally.

“Does Kohl’s have an AI strategy? Does American Eagle, other than hiring Sydney Sweeney, have an AI strategy? I mean, GoPro — I mean, come on,” he said of the other meme stocks in the spotlight.

On social media, Jackson frequently tells his followers he’s on the quest to find the next “100-bagger,” a term coined by the investor Chris Mayer to describe an investment that has the potential to return 100 times its value over the long run.

Jackson’s firm, which has also started leaning on AI models to identify stocks with glimmers of potential, tries to look for three things, he said:

• Have other people given up on the stock?
• Does it look substantially mispriced?
• Does it look like it has a sustainable turnaround trajectory?

If the answers are “yes,” it could be a winning trade, though he acknowledges the approach isn’t an exact science.

Successful investments Jackson has made that he deems as 100-baggers include Alibaba, Microsoft, Coinbase, and Roku, he said in a post on X in June.

The Opendoor call, in particular, has garnered him a lot of attention. Speaking to Bloomberg, Jackson said his firm had received 600 calls or emails from people inquiring about his fund and investment ideas in the last several weeks. Since posting the Opendoor thread on X, he told BI he’s spoken with investors all over Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America who buy into his call, but he has also come across “a lot of negative stuff” on X about his thesis.

“I guess it comes with the territory when you stick your neck out there as a real person with real thoughts. You get all these anonymous trolls chirping back at you,” he said.

“I really hope that if all of retail and all institutional investors truly believe in this $82 story, my hope is they zero in with like, the Death Star on this planet, and just buy and hold,” he said, adding that he believed investors could stage a rally similar to Cisco’s meteoric rise during the dot-com bubble.

Importantly, he emphasized that he’s not a fan of people saying he sparked the meme stock rally.

“But I’m some grifter or flipper, no. I’m in this for the long run. I’m not here to pump up a stock and jump out of it. I’ve never done that.”

• Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint is atop the leaderboard midway through 2025, besting peers like Millennium.
• The $11 billion firm was the biggest launch in industry history, starting with more than $8 billion in 2018.
• The manager has leaned on its fixed-income expertise to drive strong returns this year.

There were sky-high expectations for the ExodusPoint Capital Management when it launched 7 years ago. It’s starting to meet them.

The $11 billion firm was the largest launch in industry history in 2018 thanks to the stellar track record of cofounder Michael Gelband, who previously led Millennium’s fixed-income division. He told former colleagues that his unit generated $7 billion in trading revenue in his eight years at Izzy Englander’s firm, and hedge fund backers rushed to invest in his new firm, which started trading with a record $8.5 billion.

But putting all of the capital to work, hiring scores of investors, setting up the necessary infrastructure, and finding the right leadership took time. The firm, which was also cofounded by former Millennium equities executive Hyung Lee, was a relative disappointment at the start, with the difficult reality of being compared to funds like the cofounders’ former employer and Ken Griffin’s Citadel from day one.

Now, a little over seven years after the manager first began trading, the New York-based firm has outperformed its peers in 2025 and over the last 12 months. The manager is up more than 9% after a 1.8% June gain. Since the start of July 2024, ExodusPoint has returned more than 18%.

A person with direct knowledge of the firm’s operations pointed to several factors as to why. This person is not permitted to speak publicly about the manager’s operations.

In a roller coaster equities market, ExodusPoint has benefited from its fixed-income lean. Roughly 75% of the firm’s risk is in fixed-income books, the person close to the firm said, which is Gelband’s specialty, though the cofounder does not manage money himself. Jon Hoffman, a former Lehman Brothers trader who worked with Gelband at the bank, is one of the firm’s best-known portfolio managers with his basis-trade strategy.

Gelband is now the sole chief investment officer after Lee stepped down in 2024 (the cofounder, who had relocated to Puerto Rico, is currently a senior advisor). The firm made several hires in 2023 who have led units that were previously under Lee’s purview, such as Adam Galeon and Michael Lapsa, who run long-short equities and systematic strategies, respectively. Peter McConnon, once the head of London macro for Balyasny, was also brought in during this time as a senior managing director of fixed income and macro.

While members of the original team such as Lee and former chief risk officer Dev Joneja have moved into advisory roles, Garrett Berg, a day-one employee who has since been promoted to president and COO, and Kunal Kumar, a former Balyasny executive who joined in 2023 and is now chief risk officer, have been a big part of the progress on both the investment and non-investment sides of the business, this person said.

The firm also adopted a cash hurdle for performance fees last year, meaning ExodusPoint only collects performance fees when it returns more than a Treasury bill. This has lowered the overall fee rate of the firm, boosting net returns.

Lastly, the firm has been strategic about how it expands and hires. While headcounts at multistrategy funds have exploded in recent years, ExodusPoint reduced its staff slightly since 2022, according to regulatory filings compiled by industry data tracker Old Well Labs.

The firm’s overall headcount stood at 688 in 2022 and is now roughly 650, the data show.

After raising $1 billion in new cash in 2023, the firm is closed to new capital, like many of its peers, and is not looking to expand into different strategies or markets like commodities or private credit, the person said.

• Astronomer went from a little-known tech firm to a global sensation this month.
• It began with a viral clip of its then CEO and head of human resources embracing at a Coldplay show.
• The company seized the moment, creating an ad featuring Gwyneth Paltrow that highlighted its work.

Astronomer, a once little-known tech company, looked to the stars to turn a viral disaster into a marketing opportunity.

The company was introduced to the world after a “kiss cam” at a Coldplay show caught its now-former CEO, Andy Byron, embracing its now-former head of human resources, Kristin Cabot, before the pair ducked for cover.

The video ricocheted around the world, and the executives resigned days later.

Astronomer then moved to shift the narrative, and it did so by working with two A-list Hollywood stars: Gwyneth Paltrow and Ryan Reynolds.

Reynolds started the viral ad agency Maximum Effort in 2018. It has promoted the “Deadpool” movies, in which Reynolds also starred, and has made humorous ads for Match.com, Mint Mobile, the NAACP, and others. Reynolds is the chief creative officer.

It’s not clear who reached out to whom first. Maximum Effort and Astronomer did not immediately respond to messages from Business Insider. The ad agency, however, confirmed on LinkedIn on Sunday that it was behind Astronomer’s new ad, which featured Paltrow, poked fun at the controversy without ever mentioning it, and highlighted the company’s work.

Public relations experts told BI after the Coldplay incident that Astronomer could probably capitalize on what was otherwise a bad situation. The company’s collaboration with Maximum Effort appears to have done just that.

The commercial has been well-received, and some PR professionals told BI the company has fully succeeded in leveraging its accidental fame.

“Creating a video clever enough, yet with just enough controversy, to spread online and capture mainstream media attention is generating millions of dollars of free, positive publicity for Astronomer,” Kristi Piehl, founder and CEO of Media Minefield, told BI.

She said Paltrow’s script was “on message” and, importantly, focused on what Astronomer does, not what its former executives did.

“The video shifts the narrative, allowing Astronomer to have the last word,” Piehl said.

In the video, Paltrow is presented as a “temporary spokesperson” for the firm. She says the company has “gotten a lot of questions over the last few days” and wanted her to answer the “most common ones.”

But rather than share any new details about the now-infamous “kiss cam” moment, Paltrow promoted Astronomer’s products.

“If you want to talk crisis communications, this is a 2025 era playbook on how to do this the right way from a corporate standpoint,” Sam Amsterdam, founder and managing partner at Amsterdam Group Public Relations, told BI.

“They chose not to make this a crisis. This was a deliberate attempt at being pragmatic, at brand building, at brand defining,” he said.

Ryan McCormick, cofounder of Goldman McCormick PR, said the public is used to seeing corporate responses to crises that “miss their mark,” but that wasn’t the case this time.

“Astronomer nailed it here, and I think public interest in them will only increase for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Having made it through to the other side of a viral controversy, the company appears ready to move on. In a LinkedIn post on Sunday, Astronomer’s cofounder and new CEO, Pete DeJoy, thanked Maximum Effort for its “remarkable work.”

“As Gwyneth Paltrow said, now it’s time for us to return to what we do best: delivering game-changing results for our customers. We look forward to what this next chapter holds for Astronomer.”

• Kayla Tlatelpa is a full-time manager at a pharmaceutical company and a part-time caregiver.
• Her mom is partially paralyzed and is cared for by home care aides and family.
• Over time, Tlatelpa has learned how tapping into resources can help balance work and life.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kayla Tlatelpa, 33. She’s been caring for her 69-year-old mother, who is paralyzed on the left side of her body, while also working as a manager in New Jersey. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been working at a pharmaceutical company for the past five years, most recently as a manager. I also care for my mom part time, but I’m always on call.

I only recently disclosed my caregiving responsibilities to my employer. I never wanted it to seem like an excuse for me not to deliver on my work. I had associated help or support with pity, and I’ve gone through a lot, but I don’t want to be pitied.

Now, I realize the value in tapping into support and resources.

I started wearing the caregiver hat while in high school

My mom was in a car crash in 2008. She was rear-ended and thrown into oncoming traffic. My grandparents were also in the car. My mom was the most beaten up from the collision.

Two days after the crash, she had a stroke and was in an induced coma for almost a month. We found out that she had become paralyzed on the left side of her body. Since then, she’s been in a wheelchair.

Once you’re a caregiver, you’re almost always a caregiver

As a caregiver, even if you’re not physically present, you have a financial or mental obligation. You’re always thinking about who you care for.

I’m the only one among my siblings who knows how to transfer my mom, bathe her, and do all those activities of daily living. My siblings took care of insurance and finances when I couldn’t. Everyone played a role, but I was the one who just jumped into being a hands-on caregiver.

We have two amazing home care aides who are there every day. We pay out of pocket to cover hours outside what insurance covers. We also pay for occasional overnight care and bonuses ourselves.

My siblings and I split the monthly total for the aides, extra care hours, and expenses like bed pads.

I chose a state college

I wanted to experience being away from home. I was able to move away for school because of my dad and home care aides, but caregiving responsibilities for my mom ramped up when I moved back after college in 2015.

I lived at home again for a few years and moved out in 2021. I live on my own now in an apartment not too far from my parents. Being a caregiver now means physically being there three days a week or when a home care aide calls out.

I also helped my brother during his last few months

My brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died in June 2022. I would go to his home in Connecticut during the week, and I would still make it into the office when I had to, which was two days a week.

I still checked in on my mom, too, but I was the one by my brother’s bedside. I took work calls on the train or next to his kids playing so that he and his wife could have time together.

I started a new job within the same company in September

For so long, I just didn’t feel like there was a place for me to disclose at work.

In February, a higher-up told some of us at lunch that they had to be a caregiver and step away from delivering the way that they were used to. It was the first time that I heard that type of messaging from someone so high up without an emotional, dramatic twist.

I realized just how much power there is in vulnerability — you don’t have to go through these traumas to be understanding. We can be vulnerable as a team and say, “I’m at capacity with my workload. Is there someone else who can take it on?” That lunch was such a life-changing thing for me.

I’m more accepting of my situation now. I extend myself as much as I can, but I’m feeling OK when I do have to step away because I shouldn’t have to feel bad for having to be there for my parents. My team has been great in bringing it up and recognizing it.

Prior to that lunch in February, my take on balancing it all was poor

I really struggled with balancing work, caregiving, dating, and social activities.

Before last year, I was doing overnight duty twice a week, but I realized my dad doesn’t work, and even though I would love to help him, I have to go to the office. I stepped away from that responsibility.

I now have a routine where I choose where to overextend myself. For so long, I wanted to be everyone’s favorite aunt who showed up to all the soccer games and dance recitals and still made it to mommy duty on time.

A shift in pride and perspective, and doing therapy more often, has been life-changing. I’ve also started doing hot yoga. Working out makes me feel I’m doing something positive for myself, and it can also be relaxing.

I always describe caregiving as an overwhelming experience

Caregiving is filled with negative emotions but also so much love and so many belly laughs. I have a really close and beautiful bond with my parents that I don’t think my other friends have.

I’ve connected with so many people who I didn’t think understood my life up until this point, after I posted about my experience on TikTok.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer last year, and she’s in remission now. I’m the one who was there, and then I was pulled away from work.

Navigating those heavy moments comes with a lot of big emotions, but I can’t imagine it being any different.

Are you a caregiver? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

• For a large swath of the US, data centers are driving energy prices higher.
• Wholesale electricity prices are up 22% from 2024.
• Ratepayer advocates warn Big Tech’s energy demand is hitting consumer wallets.

Your electric bills may have shot up in recent months, and you might be tempted to blame your roommate, who never turns the lights off, or your old window air conditioner unit.

It’s not because of your roommate. It’s not your window unit. It’s actually Big Tech’s fault.

Customers of the biggest regional power grid operator in the US could see their bills go up next year, largely due to skyrocketing demand for electricity coming from AI data centers.

Last week, PJM Interconnection closed its annual capacity auction with prices for wholesale electric capacity up 22% from 2024, another record-breaking year. As a result, monthly electric bills in PJM’s territory, which covers 67 million customers, could increase up to 5% next year, the grid operator said.

PJM Interconnection territory spans thirteen states from the Midwest to the East Coast— including all or parts of Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Every year, PJM’s summer auction determines the cost of wholesale electricity for the following year. Though its territory doesn’t cover the entire US, the energy industry looks at the PJM auction as a bellwether for electricity prices for the entire country.

PJM’s territory includes Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, home to the world’s biggest concentration of data centers. It also includes areas of the country where data centers are rapidly expanding, such as Columbus, Ohio. The grid operator identified data center expansion as the primary driver of demand in its territory, which caused the jump in wholesale electricity prices.

After a decade of little to no growth, electricity demand in the US is expected to grow 2.5% annually through 2035, driven largely by data centers, according to the Bank of America Institute.

Utility bills are climbing faster than the pace of inflation, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That trend is expected to continue through the next year.

In Maryland, People’s Counsel David Lapp has been urging state and federal regulators to intervene on behalf of residential utility customers and small businesses.

“We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations—data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure,” said Lapp. “Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis.”

Got a tip for this reporter? Contact Ellen Thomas at ethomas@insider.com.