in the form of David Ellison’s Skydance takeover of Paramount and now Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The combination aggregates 200 million new subscribers to pit against (NFLX). Normally, challengers are dismissed, but this time it is backed by Larry Ellison, who was made richer this week by the 30% jump in Oracle shares.

which explains the out-of-the-blue $80, or 23% pop in the stock last week. It’s his first purchase of the stock in the open market since February 2020. Musk bought 2.57 million shares at various prices on Friday, which tallies up to about $1 billion, a significant insider acquisition that traders took as a vote of confidence from the outspoken CEO. I’ve seen Elon do this many times before, carry out a massive BUY at a key technical point to trigger a short squeeze. Remember that for the first decade of his career, Musk did nothing but fight off short sellers. Back then, the short interest in Tesla was 35%. Now it's 3%.

says the US Energy Secretary. Fusion energy, which powers the sun and stars, has the potential to produce abundant carbon-free electricity, but efforts to harness it have proved elusive. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced in 2022 that they were able to produce a fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumed for the first time, but only at the millivolt level.

Alphabet is up 32% YTD, leading gains among "Magnificent 7" stocks. Stock trades at 23x earnings vs 5-year average of 22. Alphabet joined other tech giants Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) in hitting a $3 trillion valuation, while AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), the world's most valuable company, boasts a market cap of $4.25 trillion. Technology and AI-linked stocks have powered Wall Street's main indexes to record highs lately amid growing hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this week.

falling from 11.9 in August and missing the expected reading of 4.30. This marks the first negative reading since June, indicating that manufacturing activity in New York State declined in September, with significant drops in new orders and shipments. Optimism for the next six months also remained muted.