📈$18Bn Bond Bonaza: With the ongoing cash drain of data centres, Oracle injected some liquidity into its finances with the 2nd largest bond offering this year. Demand for the juicy fixed-income securities was almost 8x the supply availabe (USD $18 Bn) with a rare 40 year bond in the offering.

📈All Aboard The BABA Train: Alibaba’s share price just surged past the highest it has been in over 4 years. Why? They plan to spend more on AI than an intial $50 Bn target. Rather than “buy the dip”, Ark Investment scooped up a further $16 M of BABA at its all-time-high.

📈Quantum Finance Is The New Meta: HSBC recently took IBM’s quantum computing abilities for a test drive on a new and exciting frontier — bonds. Often the security of choice for pensioners, HSBC found they could predict bond prices 34% better compared to regular strategies.

📈Stablecoins Heat Up: Tether, the issuer of the USD stablecoin USDT, is shaking the investor money tree for a spare $20 Bn. Its new fundraising round would see Tether exchange 3% equity for $20 Bn, on par with similar funding rounds for OpenAI.

🌎Netanyahu Faces Empty Hall at UN: At the United Nations General Assembly that ended Friday, most delegates walked out of Netanyahu’s speech in protest. The Israeli PM vowed to “finish to job” in eliminating Hamas from Gaza and critized countries that recognized Palestinian statehood. He also used a “pop quiz” and other visual aids which drew heavy backlash for its perceived insensitivity.

🌎War On Knees: The FBI Agents Association said in a statement that a group of FBI agents (15-20) photographed kneeling at a 2020 racial justice protest after George Floyd’s murder have been dismissed, the association condemened the FBI, calling their firing a violation of rights.  

🌎Lisa Cook Monaco: Despite Trump still trying to fire Lisa Cook, he’s added another Lisa to the list. Heading up Microsoft’s Global Affairs and a former Biden official, Monaco has since been stripped of all her security clearances for unknown reasons. Trump also mentioned that he expects more people he views as enemies to face criminal charges.

🌎New Day, New Tariff: On Friday Trump announced a 100% tariff on pharmaceuticals from October 1st. The catch? It only applies if the company doesn’t have a manufacturing plant in the US, but pharma-heavyweights stock didn’t budge across the board as a potential “TACO” is still possible.

👔The Lorax Hates This One Trick!: OpenAI clearly isn’t buying the “AI Bubble” propaganda floating around: They just signed a USD $100Bn deal with Nvidia to build 10 GW of GPU datacenters (near prime woodland), plus expanded on its ‘Stargate’ initiative with Oracle and Softbank by building 5 more U.S. data center sites of around 7 GW.

👔Intel Optimism At An All-Time High: Intel approached TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) Thursday about manufacturing investments or potential partnerships one day after holding separate talks with Apple over a possible investment. Intel has already lined up support from Nvidia, Softbank, and the U.S. government.  

👔Prime Probe Reaches Conclusion: Amazon reached a USD $2.5Bn settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations in 2023 where the company was accused of “intentionally designing its Prime interface to sign up users without their express consent”, and making it far too “difficult to drop the service afterward”.

👔Teddy Bears Quietly 20x’d While You Chased AI: Shares of Build-A-Bear Workshop $BBW ( ▲ 0.66% )  have soared more than 2,000% since 2020 which means that it has technically outperformed Nvidia and most megacaps. The rally doesn’t seem like meme-stock froth either as Q2 sales are up 11% compared to last year and their guidance was raised again.

🤪Chuck E Cheese Serves Time: Children were horrified in Tallahassee, Florida when Chuck E Cheese was taken away before their very eyes. Jermell Jones, the man behind the mousy costume had fallen on tough times and stolen a credit card.

🤪Certificates Just Got Worth a Whole Lot Less: Researchers at NYU have recently demonstrated that three AI reasoning models can pass the entire Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program, levels I to III. The 1000 hours of study and several years of prep are now a thing of the past.

🤪”Beware: Attack Squirrel”: Residents in a Californian neighbourhood have had to become extra vigilant this past week as locals warn of a “very mean squirrel”. More than 5 people have been attacked with at least one of them going to the ER.

🤪Fat Bear Week!: The U.S. National Parks Service is celebrating fat bear week this week and have collated a compilation of all of their favourite fat bears over the past year (link above).