📈Sydney Sweeney Economy: American Eagle’s new campaign with Hollywood’s “IT Girl” Sydney Sweeney rolled out. American Eagle stock jumped 19% yesterday, ending the day up about 4%. Although, 13% of American Eagle shares avaliable for trading are sold short (it’s another meme stock).

📈Google Crushes Q2: Alphabet reported second-quarter 2025 results, beating expectations with a 14% revenue bump year over year (3.1% above forecasts). But winning doesn’t come cheap: Alphabet hiked is 2025 capital expenditure estimate by $10 billion.

📈Tokenizing Trillions: Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon are launching tokenized money market funds (mutual fund that invest in safe, short-term assets offering a stable place to park cash). The blockchain-powered funds are tradable 24/7 with almost instant settlement. This move aims to modernize the $7.1 trillion money market industry.

📈 Palantir Hits All-Time High: Palantir has hit a record trading high ($158.80), continuing a rally that’s doubled it’s valuation this year. The defense-focused data firm is gaining momentum ahead of its August 4 earnings report. Beware though! Palantir now trades at 273x future expected earnings, priciest only after Tesla in the top 20 companies.

🌎 Dam(n)! Despite ongoing environmental concerns and India voicing its displeasure with the project, China is going forward with the biggest ever dam project. Expected to cost US$167 billion (costlier than the Internatinal Space Station) it is a major component of China achieving its goal of net-zero by 2060.

🌎 Russia Strikes Kyiv: In an overnight assault Russia launched 426 drones and 24 missiles into 6 districts of Kyiv targeting civilian infrastructure. Two people died and 24 were injured. This comes after Trump reaffirmed support for Ukraine and as Russia amps up drone production.

🌎 US-Philippines Trade Deal: Amid growing concern in the South China Sea where territorial disputes put the Philippines between a rock and a hard place their PM just announced a new trade deal with Trump, TLDR: US goods: tariff free & Filipino goods: tariff of 19%.

🌎 US-Japan Trade Deal - Pending: On Tuesday Trump announced a trade deal with Japan (unconfirmed as of now). Japan agreed to a 15% tariff (from 25%) and US producers of vehicles, rice, and farm goods gain access to the land of the rising sun. Japan also committed to an investment of US$550 million in the US.

👔Meta’s “One that Got Away”?: FuriosaAI recently announced a partnership with LG AI Research after rejecting a US$800 million acquistion from Meta. The company plans to manufacture AI chips used in LLMs to compete with Nvidia’s dominance.

👔South Park to Continue for Five More Years: Paramount+ just signed off on a deal for the streaming rights to South Park. Amid an ongoing acquisition of Parmound by Skydance the deal valued the promised episodes at a massive US$1.5 billion for the 5 years.

👔Stargate off to a Bumpy Start: The OpenAI/SoftBank colab which was supposed to develop advanced data centres across the US to the tune of US$10 billion, has done nothing in the past 6 months. Established in January this year, it’s current goals consist of a smaller data centre in Ohio.

👔 Microsoft Gets Hacked: China-based hackers exploited a vulnearability in Microsoft’s SharePoint server software to breach governments, universities, and companies across at least a dozen countries. Currently, 400 victims have been reported.

🤪 Pull Up, Plug In, Pig Out: Tesla has opened a retro-futuristic 24/7 diner in LA. It’s got the Tesla Optimus bot delivering popcorn, burgers in Cybertruck boxes, and outdoor movie screens playing Startrek. It’s also fitted with 80 Supercharger stalls.

🤪 Too Much of a Good Thing: Blackmores faces a potential class action over claims that some supplements contained dangerously high levels of vitamin B6. Lead plaintiff Dominic Noonan-O’Keeffe developed lasting nerve damage, though Blackmores says its products comply with regulations.

🤪 Flattered into Madness: Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old on the autism spectrum, was hospitalized after ChatGPT encouraged his delusion of discovering faster-than-light travel. OpenAI later admitted the chatbot failed to flag signs of distress and is working to improve safety for vulnerable users.

🤪 K-pop Demon Hunters Effect: Netflix’s K-pop Demon Hunters turned fictional K-pop groups into chart-toppers, with two songs hitting No.6 and No.16 on Billboard. One of the group’s voice actors, Kevin Woo, saw his monthly listeners jump from 10,000 to 20 million.