The heat from Washington was just too great, with antitrust investigations and a lot of back-channel personal threats.  Trump supporter Larry Ellison would have paid anything to get (WBD) and shut down CNN, which it owns. Paramount had to raise its bid from the original $19 bid to $31 and leverage an incredible 7:1 to win. It wasn’t worth it for Netflix to overpay for the 20% of (WBD) subscribers they don’t already have. (NFLX) is up 10% on the news.

The markets think so, selling off big at the Friday opening. Iran’s large-scale purchases of anti-ship missiles pose a problem for the US, as any serious military strategy will tell you. The bond market is starting to discount a US recession, as the markets had enough to worry about!

Global equity fund inflows eased to a five-week low in the seven days to February 25 as investors turned cautious amid growing unease over the heavy costs and potential disruption linked to artificial intelligence and the imminent Iran War. Investors bought a net $19.75 billion worth of global equity funds, marking the smallest weekly inflow since $9.55 billion in the week to Jan. 21, LSEG Lipper data showed.

Meta Platforms (META) has signed a multi-billion-dollar deal to rent artificial intelligence chips from Google (GOOGL) to develop new AI models, The Information reported on Thursday, citing a person involved in the talks. The report of the multi-year deal comes as companies pour billions into chips and AI infrastructure to meet the demand for artificial intelligence.

the highest since March of 2022. Excluding food and energy, it was up a ballistic 0.8%. Inflation is coming for your wallet. For the full year, core wholesale prices accelerated 3.6%, while the headline index posted a 2.9% gain. Both figures are well ahead of the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation goal and suggest that rising prices are still a factor for the U.S. economy.